Director: Zack Snyder Writer: Shay Hatten, Kurt Johnstad, Zack Snyder Stars: Sofia Boutella, Djimon Hounsou, Ed Skrein
Synopsis: Kora and surviving warriors prepare to defend Veldt, their new home, alongside its people against the Realm. The warriors face their pasts, revealing their motivations before the Realm’s forces arrive to crush the growing rebellion.
This review brings me no pleasure, I promise you. I can’t quite say the same about Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver. It’s not that there is no pleasure, it’s simply that the film hammers the viewer into a kind of submission in which it is difficult to feel much of anything. I somewhat enjoyed the first film in this series, even if in a mildly bemused fashion. You can see my thoughts here. The largest sin from director Zack Snyder shown in this new film is essentially tossing away any fun from the first film.
Although I did rewatch the first, it proved more than useless, for a few reasons. First, this one opens up with an elongated sequence of narration from Anthony Hopkins. Don’t get me wrong, I love to hear that man talk, but he basically sums up the first two hours of this fantasy story in about 2-3 minutes. While I understand the purpose is to catch people up who didn’t bother with the first, it immediately brings the idea of “content” to the foreground. There is clearly no care for story (even if it is just Seven Samurai with lasers), if it can all be described this quickly. So, essentially, it makes the original film shrink in your estimation as the opening credits begin. Secondly, if you thought that original film provided a lot of exposition, oh boy, buckle in.
So anyway, The Scargiver picks up where the last film dropped us off, they were victorious and killed the villain, or so they thought. They quickly figure out that he is still alive and on the way back to the peaceful village to kill them all. That’s right, besides picking up some cool heroes, the movie starts…where the first movie started. I hope you enjoyed that circle around the universe, because now we’re back. This is where the Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven comparisons get extra on the nose. It’s fine to have similarities, but to make that same movie with different weapons? I have questions for you, Netflix.
But these, strangely, are all things I can get past. Sadly, these are not the only problems. There is legitimately a scene in which one of our characters, previously imprisoned Titus (Djimon Hounsou) leads a discussion around a table imploring each and every one of them to tell their story. He starts with his flashback and they literally go around the table elucidating their individual motivations and willingness to fight and die. This is truly the mark of a weak screenplay. Clearly, they could not figure out how to make us understand these character’s desires within the bounds of naturalistic conversation, so hey, its your turn to talk. Tell us why you hate the Empire, err Motherworld. These scenes are exhausting and also fail to make you care about these histories.
There are a few saving graces, though. Our lead warrior Kora (Sofia Boutella) with yet another more detailed tragic backstory, managed to come out mostly unscathed by the messy script and direction. Now, that doesn’t mean that her burgeoning romance with farmboy Gunnar (Michael Huisman) works, but hey, you can only do so much. Hounsou also is able to perform in a way that not only preserves his honor as a hero, but allows him to emote effectively. Of course, Snyder cuts away from his face trembling with emotion so we can see another flashback action sequence, but what do we really expect at this point?
And yeah, the action. It’s definitively cool, and it seems like Snyder can do this in his sleep. The final climactic, one-on-one battle 100% works. Of course, there is a glut of slow motion sequences, but if you’re going to get hung up on that, I’m not sure why you’re watching a Snyder flick to begin with. I will say that, unlike many action directors, the violence is well plotted, easy to follow geographically, and is ultimately satisfying. It’s just a real shame about…well, the rest.
Unless you love every, and I mean every, movie that Snyder has ever created, Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver will be an exercise in patience and frustration. The film could make a great 15-minute sizzle reel, but that’s where the entertainment ends. It is rare that a sequel can make a first film worse in retrospect, but here we sit. The fact that Snyder has stated that he wants to make six (!) films in this universe (not to mention endless director’s cuts), shows us that storytelling is not paramount for his work or for certain streamers. Content has become king, even if all of us poor subjects are the ones who suffer.
On this episode, JD and Brendan discuss Thea Sharrock’s wicked little comedy Wicked Little Letters, starring Jessie Buckley and Olivia Colman! We may not have been aware of this film until recently, but what a surprise it ended up being. It’s a very funny movie that we really enjoyed discussing here.
It’s that time of the year again where all eyes are on the Mediterranean coast for arguably the most glamorous film festival of them all. It is time for Cannes and, after the debut of Anatomy Of A Fall and Zone of Interest, both of whom won here and stormed their way to Oscar gold, the anticipation is high for these next releases. Major names are attached, some with winning history at Cannes (Jacques Audiard, David Cronenberg), are part of the competition, out of competition (Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga) with other notables coming through Un Certain Regard. The glitz of the red carpet and the very judgmental nature of the audience raises the stakes for all of these films, especially in front of a jury of their peers led by Greta Gerwig. Here’s a sample of what will come out.
The Apprentice – Dir. Ali Abbasi, CAN/DEN/IRE/USA
There’s a good reason Cannes accepted this film into competition. With the Presidential election months away, Donald Trump continues to be relevant and writer Gabriel Sherman wrote a script focusing on the early years of Trump’s career under the eyes of his lawyer, Roy Cohn, and raised under his influence alongside his wife, Ivana, and father, Fred. Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova, and Martin Donovan star in director Ali Abbasi’s (Holy Spider) biopic of the man who played a massive role in Trump’s career and how Trump was shaped after the 1980s.
Kinds of Kindness – Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos, USA/UK
Instead of going to Venice as he did with The Favourite and Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos has his immediate follow-up here with an anthology piece starring Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qually, and Hong Chau. Reteaming with his fellow countrywoman, co-writer Efthimis Filippou, it is back to a modern tale of that surreast feel Lanthimos is known for. What exactly to expect here is unknown, but it doesn’t matter. Only thing to do is hold on for the ride that Lanthimos loves to bring us on as with films like Dogtooth and The Lobster.
Limonov: The Ballad – Dir. Kirill Serebrennikov, FRA/ITA/SPA/RUS
Ben Whishaw plays the Russian writer and politician Eduard Limonov from his years as an exile from the former Soviet Union and now spending his life in the United States and France. While not a complete portrait of the controversial author (who died in 2020 in Russia as a neo-fascist advocate), Limonov tracks the life of this radical who found his footing in subcultures and made himself into a well-known literary figure. It was co-scripted by Pawel Pawlikowski, who at one point was going to also direct the film before passing it onto the Russian-born Serebrennikov, whose last film, Tchaikovsky’s Wife, played at Cannes in 2022.
Megalopolis– Dir. Francis Ford Coppola, USA
This is probably the biggest film to come out this year because it has been the 85-year-old’s pet project for decades. After many stalls, Coppola independently made what probably will be his last film with Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Jason Schwartzman, and Talia Shire leading an ensemble cast. It is a science fiction story of a city being rebuilt by an ambitious architect conflicting with the corrupt mayor and the mayor’s daughter (Nathalie Emmanuel) deciding to go out on her own to discover what she hasn’t seen. Coppola is two-time winner of the Palme d’Or with The Conversation and Apocalypse Now, cementing him as a legend at Cannes. If he releases one last masterpiece, he may become the first director to win a third.
Parthenope – Dir. Paolo Sorrentino, Italy
Following his semi-autobiographical The Hand of God, Sorrentino stays in Naples with a story about the titled woman who, in Greek mythology, drowned herself and washed up on a rock in Naples. But, according to Sorrentino’s story, she is not a myth, and it follows her life from the 1950s through today. Gary Oldman stars alongside an ensemble including Celeste Dalla Porta, Silvia Degrandi, Isabella Ferrari, Silvio Orlando, and Luisa Ranieri as the mystery of the non-mythical woman is traced throughout the decades.
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Director: Shane Atkinson Writer: Shane Atkinson Stars: Steve Zahn, John Magaro, Dylan Baker
Synopsis: When Ray discovers that his wife is cheating on him, he decides he’s going to kill himself. His plans suddenly change when a stranger mistakes him for a low-rent hitman.
LaRoy, Texas is a Coen Brothers-inspired black comedy noir. It has all the elements for that particular mix to succeed; a hot and unbothered blonde, a down-on-his-luck reluctant protagonist, a sneaky detective, and a smug villain. But it lacks one of the most important elements of this specific sub-genre, and that is a captivating script.
The feature starts with a simple premise, a driver picking up a hitchhiker. What could go wrong? With that simplicity on the table, LaRoy, Texas starts with an expected conversation that fails to build up the tension to the ensuing crime. The film soon moves to another world; a bored former beauty queen wife and her loser husband, his emotionally abusive brother, and a murder in between. Both worlds collide and we find ourselves watching as the husband flees the city with the help of a friend.
The hitman shows up in the film, oozing a presence that promises menace but borders on cheesy, overt wickedness. Dylan Baker plays him with an in-your-face performance, not as subtle as I would have preferred, but still enjoyable to watch, although in more than one instance I sensed a Steve Buscemi impact underneath the surface. John Magaro shows a major departure from his Past Lives self, and here he plays a character that is difficult to sympathize with, or at least, he lacks the tools to bring him the proper sympathy.
The scene stealer, however, is Steve Zahn as Detective Skip. He’s funny and sly. He brings to the role the perfect blend of goofiness and pseudo-confident masculinity. Other actors are somehow forgettable, as the script doesn’t allow particular moments to shine, and the characters’ growth is inhibited by the attempts to tie in different storylines and revolve them around the central anticipated crime.
The film tries so hard to belong to the world that it is displaying. It is more or less a spectacle of these characters and how they navigate a worn-out world. Small-town motels and family dynamics share the spotlight with the main plot, competing for the center stage.
I found The Velvet Saddle Motel the true hero of the story. It’s the place where people cheat, murder, conspire, and attempt suicide. With its pink neon sign and seedy vibes, The Velvet Saddle brings out the best and the worst in our heroes and villains, especially in a world where there’s neither of these simple classifications. Writer-director Shane Atkinson ties an invisible thread between all major and minor plotlines and despite The Velvet Saddle not being that impressive of a Chekhov’s Gun, it carries some weight that adds to the presence of the film location.
Thisis an overall enjoyable feat, heavily influenced by the Coens and Noah Hawley’s American desert-town-world in Fargo (the series) where the good and the bad seem to blur, creating a large portion of grey that has nothing to do with either. Atkinson doesn’t try to condemn or commend any of the characters. He allows them a breather amidst the insanity and the ridiculous turn of events.
LaRoy, Texas doesn’t leave audiences hungry but also doesn’t satisfy the senses like other black comedy/noir dramas do. There’s still a lot that could’ve been cut through, a lot that stalled and lingered especially when it comes to dialogue -Atkins’s weakest link- but if anyone is in the mood for a film with a bowl of popcorn and a cold drink.
Synopsis: Tashi, a former tennis prodigy turned coach is married to a champion on a losing streak. Her strategy for her husband’s redemption takes a surprising turn when he must face off against his former best friend and Tashi’s former boyfriend.
“LOVE ALL”
Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers is sweaty, sizzling, and so sexy. It pumps and throbs with desire and power –through the lens of professional tennis. The opening shots establish we aren’t just watching a spectator sport, we are watching the spectator; Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) and what she’s seeing is intercourse. We are voyeurs and Luca Guadagnino trains our eye to the hyper-erotic. Challengers is the love triangle film of the year and possibly one of best films about carnal and professional drive, ever.
Utilizing a non-linear narrative, Challengers feeds the audience all they need to know about what motivates the characters, but also leaves certain aspects unexplained. The first shot is the ‘now’ (2019) the country club challenger match in New Rochelle sponsored by some random tire shop – where the three protagonists metaphorically come together to consummate their decades long love affair, not only with tennis, but with each other. Love and hate co-exist between all of them, for the sport and for each other. Justin Kuritzkes’ clever Ménage à trois drama uses the tennis court as the space for them to expend their galvanizing chemistry.
In the lead up to the grimy match we see Tashi Duncan push her now burned out former Grand Slam winning husband Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) through a punishing training regime. He has been injured (scars and calluses show that professional tennis is brutal) and his confidence is gone. He doesn’t particularly want to play any longer and is being beaten by people who are not even on the seeded table. He’s sliding down the ATP rankings. Despite Tashi, who is both his manager and trainer, telling him to “crush that little bitch,” Art is having trouble dealing with the pressure to always come out on top.
Flashback to a young Art Donaldson and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) playing the junior doubles at the US Open. The best friends are in sync and playing with, and for, each other. That is until they see rising star Tashi and her intense balletic match with a bad-tempered opponent. For the first time, they become rivals trying to one up the other in a battle for Tashi’s attention. The boarding school rich kids see what tennis is for an up and comer like Tashi. It’s not just sponsorship or riding the high of serotonin and endorphin release – it’s a relationship and commitment to a life-changing beast.
Tashi becomes a siren luring the two into a world where she is the locus for their repressed desires. She sizes them both up in seconds and pits them against each other by being the acceptable heterosexual avatar for Patrick’s bisexuality. She tells them tennis is about connecting and good tennis is about almost being in love with your opponent on the court (the Goldilocks dose of noradrenaline). Despite her comparative youth, there is nothing innocent about Tashi. She is already power playing. She is already in control. Tennis is life – because everything is about sizing up your opponent and using whatever means you can to unbalance them and force errors. Advantage, Tashi.
A visit to their shabby hotel room has Patrick and Art admitting their own sexual awakenings as boarding school roomies happened at the age of twelve where Patrick taught Art how to beat off. Art is embarrassed by the story, Patrick is proud. Tashi is immediately clued in as to how Patrick feels about Art. An almost threesome happens where Tashi makes out with them both simultaneously and then leans back when she has ensured Patrick and Art are passionately kissing each other. She has them hooked. Whoever wins the match the following day gets Tashi’s number and attention. Despite saying she’s not a “home wrecker” — she is.
Initially, Patrick comes out on top. But in Tashi’s eyes he’s not a tennis player. His arrogance, swagger, and dilettantism (plus enormous downstairs package) make him an excellent lover. But his lack of understanding the true rules of the game means he’s excited about the wrong things. He went pro too early and isn’t winning. He jokes about Tashi and Art slumming it at Stanford playing college tennis. He’s turned on when Art begins to make active plays for Tashi (you’ll never forget Patrick chomping on Art’s churro).
An argument ensues in which Art has managed to psych out his opponent even if Patrick finds it amusing. Tashi knows that she is beautiful – she has her own devoted fan club. Every match she plays is an event. Patrick chafes at her suggestions that he could be better. “I’m your equal, your peer,” he screams. But deep down he knows he’s not. It’s all bravado. He storms out of her room wearing her “I Told Ya” t-shirt. Later that afternoon, Tashi suffers a career ending accident on court. Art is the one to pick her up because he has been waiting in the wings to openly worship her. Patrick is the one who is forever expelled from their lives.
Tashi’s immense intelligence and acumen becomes affixed on building Art into a world class player. She’s savvy, she knows that now she can’t play; she can train and create a champion. But her simmering resentment for looking after her “little white boys” is barely concealed. Tashi and Art are a power couple – sponsorship darlings, but Justin Kuritzkes’ script reveals their competing obsessions. Art loves Tashi. Tashi loves tennis. She says she’d murder to have an injury recovery like his. “I’d kill an old lady or a child,” with her mother (Nada Despotovich) and her daughter, Lily (A.J. Lister) chattering and ignored in the background. You have to wonder how much of a joke it is.
Josh O’Connor’s down and out Patrick in the present is the essence of hubristic failure. He’s broke, he’s hungry, he’s a bed hopping player but he’s just using sex to ensure he doesn’t have to live in his car. When he realizes he has the opportunity to have a rematch with Art – the man he thinks stole his life, he truly starts playing the “game” again – both on and off the court. Tashi plays it too. The only person who seems to be mostly in the dark is Art until he sees on the court through his secret language with Patrick what has been happening behind his back.
Guadagnino’s direction along with Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s cinematography and Marco Costa’s editing creates a masterpiece of erotic cinema. Zendaya is stunning but even with her lithe and beautiful body she’s not the main event; she’s the conduit. The main event is the mostly clothed “fucking” on the tennis court between Art and Patrick. The sex is there, and it is queer as hell. All the other sex in the film has been a tease – ended up in coitus interruptus or never shown reaching a climax.
Challengers is a masterpiece of hyperbole. It’s hilarious, deliberately over the top, and forces people to get into its deliciously perverse groove. The soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is employed to amp up the crowd, but also to camp up the film. Sticky short shorts, wet designer tennis shirts being discarded to reveal the male form, banana eating in one bite. Slow motion, tennis ball camera, Josh O’Connor in ruffled beast mode, psychosexual tension in spades and the final “money” shot bring Challengers to its orgasmic ending. Love is a blood sport and Guadagnino’s titillating tennis is game-set-match. Juicy, sticky, and horny as hell – Challengers is dynamite.
On this episode, our own Shadan Larki joins JD and Brendan to discuss Alex Garland’s latest film Civil War! It’s been a very polarizing film, ironically, as it very purposefully avoids politics as a way to express the problems of polarization. We get into all of that and much more in this discussion.
Review: Civil War (4:00) Director: Alex Garland Writers: Alex Garland Stars: Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny
Writer Will Bjarnar interviews Louise Woehrle, director of A Binding Truth. Will also reviewed the film here.
Will Bjarnar: How did you first come across Jimmie and De’s story?
Louise Woehrle: I was in New York screening my previous film, Stalag Luft III—One Man’s Story. My two cousins from Charlotte attended. My cousin Katie, who is married to De, one of the main subjects of the film, asked me what my next project might be. I said I really didn’t know but that I had a few ideas. She said, “What about the Jimmie Lee and De story?” I knew very little about their story at the time. I met Jimmie at Katie’s daughter’s wedding, and De told me how he and Jimmie got together and about the Charlotte Observer series about Jimmie back in 2013.
WB: Both men are incredibly forthcoming in the documentary; their openness and comfort, both with this subject and each other, is refreshing. Was that the case from the moment you approached them with the project? How collaborative was the process?
LW: That’s an interesting question because I really didn’t approach them. It was my cousin Katie’s suggestion that we consider the idea. When we met to discuss the potential of doing a documentary, Jimmie and De were very open to it. They were forthcoming during the interview process, which led to their providing me with archival documents, photos, etc. They also introduced me to Gary Schwab, the journalist at the Charlotte Observer who did the original story. Gary was a goldmine of information and a consultant on the project. What impressed me was they were both willing to show up fully for this story and that was a gift. Establishing a relationship with each of them was wonderful and it did not take long for them to drop in and forget the cameras were there.
WB: When it comes to preparation and storytelling, respectively, what was your “order of operations,” if you will, with this particular project?
LW: I like how you ask this question because there is a process for me when starting a project. In this case, I read the series of articles about Jimmie and De’s story in the Charlotte Observer from 2013 and 2014 to get a lay of the land, so to speak. I brought Gary Schwab in early as a consultant to pick his brain because he had written those articles for the Charlotte Observer. Simultaneously, I needed to raise money for the project, and thankfully, my executive producer from Minnesota, Jay Strommen, was all in and said he would front the start-up capital to get the project going. A friend of De’s in Charlotte, Jock Tonissen, wanted to help, so he arranged a luncheon to get local funders interested. Next, I set up a way for people to donate through a nonprofit, FilmNorth, in St. Paul, MN, which I have utilized as a fiscal sponsor for several projects. I live in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. After I initially interviewed Jimmie and De and filmed them in a few locals in Charlotte, we edited what I call a sizzle reel to show a brief overview of Jimmie and De’s story. Thankfully, we received a lot of support from the Charlotte community, and a fundraising campaign was initiated by businessman Chuck Hood. I needed to hire a production team and lucked out when I found my Director of Photography, Scott Gardner, based in Charlotte. I also found advisors in the Black film production community as advisors. A Black lens on the project was very important to me, and I was fortunate to connect with Lewis Erskine (Freedom Riders, The Birth of Cool), a highly regarded editor in New York, who came on board as one of our advisors before he passed away. Lewis was a great loss to the documentary community.
WB: I found it interesting how though the documentary’s central focus is on Jimmie and De’s discovery, it also goes into great detail about the challenges Jimmie faced as a Black athlete in 1960’s North Carolina. How much of a priority was it to weave these two narratives together while still primarily attending to your main subject matter?
LW: It was very important to weave the 1960s story of segregation, racism, and civil rights into the film because it gives important context to Jimmie’s story and the struggles that were happening for Blacks during that time. We can’t fully know who we are if we don’t know our history. That’s definitely a theme in our film.
WB: I read that there is a longer cut of the film than the one viewers are likely seeing now, one that you fittingly showed in Charlotte? I’m curious, what was removed from that longer cut and why?
LW: We cut scenes and interviews that did not necessarily move the story forward, but were certainly solid sequences. It’s tough cutting scenes and surgically removing parts of scenes to economize the story, but in doing so, it did make the film better. One scene we cut was between Jimmie and his good friend and fellow teammate Neb Hayden, the star quarterback on the Myers Park team. It showed them walking on the Myers Park High School campus, talking about the good old days, and laughing. I loved that sequence. An interview section we cut was a Pastor, who is White, talking about racism and how White people need to look into their own hearts and minds and address this issue. As much as I loved what he said so eloquently, De said it in the film, which was the right choice. We didn’t need it said twice.
WB: You’ve made a number of films over the better part of 20 years, and many seem to have this throughline of found family or found community. How does A Binding Truth fit into that thematic focus, as well as differ?
LW: Wow, you do your homework. Thanks for that. My mission statement has been the same for over 20 years: Telling stories that help us see ourselves and others in new ways, promote healing, and connect us as human beings. No film exemplifies that better than A Binding Truth. The common thread is our humanity and willingness to look at ourselves first and discover what we can do to shift or see things in a new light. Jimmie and De exemplify this and have personally witnessed that they and the film are serving as a catalyst for meaningful conversation about race and the truth of Slavery that leads to understanding, new awareness, healing, and moving the needle forward.
WB: This story is obviously rooted in the South, but your film cuts no corners when it comes to noting that this is also very much America’s story. Was that a clear point of emphasis from start, or did that come more from Jimmie and De’s testimonies throughout your interview process?
LW: This is a good question. Although racism is everywhere, I initially looked at this story as a Southern Story, but the more immersed I became in the journey of both men’s stories, I realized that everything that happened in the South also happened in the North with discrimination, redlining, lynchings, Black Veterans coming back from war not able to get a loan to purchase a home, and the list goes on and on. I know for me, learning more about Slavery from De and Jimmie and our historians shed a brighter light on white privilege and the foundation of white supremacy and racism.
WB: I wrote in my review that the film is academic but still intimate, not a delicate balance many documentaries of this nature are able to strike. How important is that tone to you from a filmmaking perspective, the ability to teach audiences something while also making them feel something?
LW: Thank you so much for acknowledging the delicate balance between feeling something, while learning. I take your comment and question as a great compliment as a filmmaker. This is key for me as a storyteller. I have always trusted the intelligence of my audience. I know that I learn best when there is a story involved. When we feel something, we are more open to the truth, which was my hope for this film – to tell the truth from Jimmie and De’s perspective and others who show up in our story. It’s authenticity that rings true, so learning is a byproduct. Storytelling is a powerful tool for learning and understanding ourselves and others better.
WB: Do you know what your next project is, and if so, can you tell us anything about it?
LW: I have not started my next project yet because I’m still so involved in the roll-out of this film, developing a workshop with Bob Johnson, Learning From the Future and Viewers’ Guide, written by Queens University of Charlotte that will serve schools, churches, organizations, and whoever wants to set the table for meaningful conversation about race and the truth of our Slave history in America. I’m also in the process of creating awareness about my previous documentary, Stalag Luft III – One Man’s Story, the story of my Uncle who flew in the Mighty Eighth during WWII, was shot down, and spent two long years as a prisoner of war in Stalag Luft, III. His personal first-person story parallels the series “Masters of the Air” on Apple TV, and is gaining more interest because of the series.
On this episode, JD tells the story of how he ended up revisiting the recent Planet of the Apes trilogy, which led to a discuss about how it’s still one of the best trilogies of the modern era!
Director: Guy Ritchie Writers: Guy Ritchie, Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson, Arash Amel Stars: Henry Cavill, Eiza González, Alan Ritchson
Synopsis: In 1940, a covert combat organization for Britain’s military that changes the course of World War II through its unconventional and entirely ‘ungentlemanly’ fighting techniques against the Nazis.
Guy Ritchie’s new film centers on a swath of righteous, bloodthirsty Brits — all played by ridiculously handsome Hollywood B-and-C-listers, some of whom are, indeed, British — and has a great deal of gore to offer, but is ultimately a comedy. Everyone talks fast and comes armed with clips full of bullets and quips to spare. They dress well, fitting in where they almost certainly should stand out, and kill loads of enemies with relative ease and minimal harm suffered, if any at all. By the end, they’ve achieved their goals, strutting into the night as heroes, often with explosive clouds of fire ballooning into the sky behind them, bodies at their feet, glory in their grasp.
I easily could have qualified that description with a cursory “stop me if you’ve heard this before” disclaimer, but that would rid us all of the fun realization that, in many ways, this project summary could serve as a half-decent sketch for most of Ritchie’s previous projects. The director of 15 feature films, six of which have been released in the last five years, never seems to rest; perhaps because another identifying feature of his body of work is the ease with which they go down, like a shot of zero-proof whiskey. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, the film the top of review was actually teasing, is no exception to most of Ritchie’s rules; the only thing that differentiates it from his typical work, save for 2023’s Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant, is that this story is (at least partly) true. Well, that, and the lack of Hugh Grant popping up wearing curious glasses and smoking a pipe.
Based on Damian Lewis’s astonishingly-long-titled book, “Churchill’s Secret Warriors: The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of WWII”, the similarly-wordy The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare sees Ritchie operating squarely in his bag of tricks, for better and for worse. It sets out to do little beyond entertain — a good starting point for humorous action flicks heading to the big screen these days — and if we’re meant to judge a film based on that trait alone, it’s a resounding success. It charts the efforts of Gus March-Phillipps (Henry Cavill) and his bruising brotherhood of bonafide killing machines (Alan Ritschson, Henry Golding, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, and Alex Pettyfer), who set out to disrupt Nazi occupation in Europe through unorthodox methods of combat.
They all do quite a bit of shooting, stabbing, and exploding; espionage is the name of their game, with Marjorie Stewart and Mr. Heron (Eiza González and Babs Olusanmokun, respectively) taking on the bulk of informant responsibilities. Blood is shed, tricks are played, and dialogue is exchanged at alarming speeds. I mean, really, what more could you want from a globetrotting kill-fest starring a few of Hollywood’s lesser-seen hunks, all led by Zack Snyder’s Superman, who happens to be sporting a mustache Hercule Poirot would be proud to pin on his vision board?
But beyond that basic setup, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’s substance is limited, if it exists somewhere in this 120-minute blow-em-up at all. It’s not quite a rip-off Inglourious Basterds, but if that must be the obvious comparison, suffice it to say that a Quentin Tarantino caper, this is not. Ritchie is perfectly capable of setting off visual fireworks in the form of gunfire, but he’s always lacked when it comes to stakes. Not that anyone necessarily needs stakes to latch onto when the primary purpose of this group’s mission is to take out Hitler’s henchmen by any means necessary; yet there’s a startling lack of ingenuity to this brand of excitement. Most audiences will buy tickets based on what the trailer promises: Guns, bombs, more guns, and a few more bombs. The question is whether or not they’ll be able to recall any specific moment from the film in which that weaponry was used, let alone recite a single line any of its characters uttered.
Which is not to say that Ritchie’s recent past projects have set out to do otherwise. If you’ll indulge me in a bit of time travel, we’ll start by revisiting his live-action Aladdin remake from 2019, a ghastly rendition of Disney’s animated classic that only gets remembered nowadays for Will Smith’s turn as the otherwise-iconic genie, something we’d all like to forget. Then, in 2020, Ritchie offered up The Gentlemen, a starry and often funny crime romp about the potential sale of a cannabis empire that sets off a wave of blackmail and revenge schemes in England’s criminal underworld. (Netflix recently released a spin-off series based on the film, helmed by Ritchie, though I’m curious to know the percentage of its viewers that know it was a movie first.) The following year brought Wrath of Man, a Jason Statham-starring entry that fit squarely in Ritchie’s long line of “guy seeks revenge” films. When you boil it all down, it is basically The Beekeeper without the bees.
And in 2023, the director’s prolific efforts reached their peak with two releases in the same calendar year. The first: Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, an SEO nightmare starring Statham as a spy who has to put together a team to steal something called “The Handle” — think a low-budget version of “The Entity” from Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning — from a very rich Hugh Grant. Next came Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant, an ultra-serious war drama starring Jake Gyllenhaal about a master sergeant in the U.S. Army and his Afghan interpreter, as they fight the odds to survive. The Covenant represented a departure of sorts from Ritchie’s typical points of interest, a heavy, emotional drama with human interest in mind and a hook centered around authenticity, not farcical violence nor humor.
It was refreshing to see Ritchie take on a narrative that carried weight of its own, the sort of tale you’d expect to see from the mind of someone not behind The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. Perhaps the success of that stray project, as we can fairly call it now, somewhat unfairly detracts from the experience when it comes to this one, but the problem with The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is that, at this point, a film of this nature doesn’t feel as much like a return to form for Ritchie as it does a retreat into safer territory.
What was once a fresh brand now feels inorganic and recycled, as though each of his films have gone through a find-and-replace process just painstaking enough to ensure that no self-plagiarism has been committed. In other words: Six of one, half a dozen of the other, a phrase just long enough to be the title of Ritchie’s next film. Maybe that one will bother to have the drawing board erased before going back to it.
This week on the InSession Film Podcast, we feature a movie draft where we discuss and select the movies of A24! We also talk about Damien Chazelle’s new film and the trailer for Ha Ha Land aka Joker: Folie à Deux.
Check out this week’s show and let us know what you think in the comment section. Thanks for listening and for supporting the InSession Film Podcast!
– Joker: Folie à Deux Trailer (7:15) We begin the show by discussing a little CinemaCon and the first trailer released for Joker: Folie à Deux. The conversation around the film has, of course, been normal and not at all weird. So, we wanted to dip our toes into those waters and give our thoughts on the trailer and how it’s mimicking its predecessor. We also spend a few minutes on the irony of Damien Chazelle’s new film for Paramount.
– A24 Draft (47:53) A24 has been around for a little more than a decade now, and has some incredible films under their umbrella, including two wins for Best Picture. It would have been to difficult to do a consensus ranking, so instead we opted for a draft! As we always do, there are 10 rounds and plenty of discussion to be had on all the great films that ended up being drafted. Be sure to listen and let us know which A24 draft you prefer. Are you Team JD or Team Brendan on this one?
If you want to help support us, there are several ways you can help us and we’d absolutely appreciate it. Every penny goes directly back into supporting the show and we are truly honored and grateful. Thanks for your support and for listening to the InSession Film Podcast!
Synopsis: After raising an unnervingly talented spider in secret, 12-year-old Charlotte must face the facts about her pet and fight for her family’s survival when the once-charming creature rapidly transforms into a giant, flesh-eating monster.
Kiah Roache-Turner’s Sting had all the makings of a great spider horror flick, especially considering there hasn’t been a memorable one since the release of Ellory Elkayem’s Eight Legged Freaks. Of course, Frank Marshall’s Arachnophobia pioneered the subgenre, with its deft blend of spine-tingling scares and gut-busting laughs, which Sting seems to take heavy inspiration from, especially through the figure of Frank (Jermaine Fowler), the exterminator.
Frank receives a call from Helga (Noni Hazlehurst), who complains about a strange noise in her apartment, which the exterminator investigates with a rather frightening glare. Roache-Turner does a great job establishing the nature of the threat, with quick camera swishes that exacerbate the tension as Helga can’t comprehend what’s happening beyond her apartment’s walls. It’s also the film’s only legitimately terrifying scene, as it perfectly establishes how big the spider will eventually get and attack everyone inside the apartment complex as a massive snowstorm forces them to stay put.
The movie then cuts back to four days earlier, when a small meteorite (you need to suspend your disbelief for a bit) crashes into the apartment complex, where an alien egg hatches and a spider emerges. As Charlotte (Alyla Browne) explores the apartment through the ventilation shaft, she sees a rather strange but fascinating spider and decides to catch (and raise) it, unbeknownst to her mother (Penelope Mitchell) and stepfather (Ryan Corr). Of course, those who’ve seen Joe Dante’s Gremlins know what will happen, as the spider (named Sting, though anyone expecting The Police will be disappointed) asks Charlotte to feed her through a special whistle.
Sting eventually grows in size, which puzzles the apartment’s anthropologist (Danny Kim), and what’s obviously going to happen happens: it starts killing people, and it’s now up to Charlotte to stop what she’s started. However, this is Roache-Turner’s cardinal mistake, none of the kills are shown on screen, despite the film’s R-rating. What is an R-rating good for if you don’t give the people what they want (bloody kills that accompany its staggering practical effects)?
No, the R-rating is only here because a few characters say the F-word more times than the PG-13 rating allows; otherwise, it probably would be a movie that most families can enjoy. The presentation is seemingly done akin to Roch Demers’ Tales for All, a series of (allegedly, I’ll never define them as such) family-friendly movies in Quebec that began in the mid-’80s, often involving otherworldly aspects that have traumatized a generation of children as they suffered either emotional (Cléo’s death in The Dog Who Stopped the War is the most famous example of this) or physiological distress (all copies of The Peanut Butter Solution should be burned to ensure future generations don’t develop PTSD at the age of 5).
You have a child protagonist involved in a larger-than-life situation where their own problems cause the people around them to be in danger, again similar to the Tales of All films. In that respect, Sting definitely has elements of family-friendly fare going for it, but its R-rating absolutely feels unjustified, almost as if it’s afraid to show any physical violence at kids when the Tales for All series (and its deviations) were far more violent and weren’t afraid to terrify child audiences to endless nightmares (no, really, Quebec’s family film industry needs to be studied).
So there’s no excuse for Sting to go full R-rating, even if Roache-Turner’s approach can be considered family-friendly. As a result, none of the kills feel effective, no matter the fun, practical effects, and dynamic cinematography on display. You can only go so far if one decision completely sinks the film’s pace and action, and Roache-Turner seems to forget that most (if not all) audiences are here for the spiders and to see people being gratuitously murdered by them. The rest is completely irrelevant, but would be welcomed if the character relationships are treated with care and emotional investment.
Unfortunately, none of the family dynamics work here. They’re all haphazardly written and check a box full of clichés without a single thought beyond appropriating their relationships above clichés. The performances aren’t entirely terrible, but there isn’t a single moment where the audience wants to latch onto the characters and feel for them as Sting begins to (predictably) kill the people inside the apartment. And when none of the kills or action scenes are in any way memorable, it’s a one-two punch of boredom as one wonders exactly when this ordeal will end. The movie’s ending does leave the door open for Sting 2, which isn’t something I’d be entirely against because the problems in this film are easily fixable, and it starts with fully leaning into your R-rating beyond foul language. Once that’s fixed, it may be easier to latch onto the characters since their story will complement the on-screen gore. Until then, Sting will remain one of the most disappointing movies of the year, one whose potential is immediately wasted by the time it’s clear the movie will be nothing more than a slightly edgier PG-13 horror flick with one-note protagonists populating its paper-thin and predictable story.
Synopsis: In the near future, emotions have become a threat. Gabrielle decides to purify her DNA in a machine that will immerse her in her past lives and rid her of any strong feelings. But when she meets Louis, she feels a powerful connection to him as if she has known him forever.
The opening moments of Bertrand Bonello’s reality-rooted time hopper, The Beast, focus entirely on a woman named Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) acting against a green screen while clutching a kitchen knife. As Bonello’s own voice guides her through a scene in which she’s being hunted by some sort of, well, beast, or “bête”, her off-screen director details what will surround her once it’s all generated by computers in post. Not only is it the first moment, in a film chock-full of them, in which fear of artificiality is front and center for its characters, but it tees up a series of cinematic comments on what it means to emote, not matter your surroundings, and imagines what life might be like if we were able to rid ourselves of the trauma those feelings inflict.
Startlingly prescient and wholly original, The Beast — which Bonello loosely adapted from Henry James’ 1903 novella, “The Beast in the Jungle” — could feasibly be reduced to a drama about star-crossed lovers, but its complications make it a significantly more curious piece to gnaw on. Indeed, Gabrielle and Louis (George MacKay, having quite the year) appear to have known each other for some time, but the early revelation that they seem to have been in one another’s orbit for centuries, across timelines and in different forms of themselves, elucidates the notion that not only are these beautiful, curious figures entangled in more ways than one, but that their lives will never not be entwined.
Whether that’s for worse or for better isn’t much of a question by the time Bonello’s latest mindfuck concludes on a perfect, volatile note, but the other questions it posits linger with a level of intensity most auteurs would kill to achieve. It’s not just about fear and love, but the fear of love; it’s a depiction of the terrors of possibility, and the inevitably of terror, a masterful one at that.
Following its opening sequence, The Beast travels through time, charting the history of Gabrielle and Louis’ eternal connection from Paris in 1910, where Gabrielle, a concert pianist, meets and falls for Louis, a doll manufacturer, at a party; in 2014, where Gabrielle is an isolated model/actress subletting a beautiful glass house in Los Angeles as Louis, now an Elliot Rodger-esque serial killing incel, hunts her every move, plotting her murder like Rodger did the many women he preyed upon during his real-life reign of terror; and in 2044, where Gabrielle is undergoing something called “DNA purification” by floating in a pool of thick, black goo that will undoubtedly draw deserving comparisons to the sinking floor in Under the Skinor the Harkonnen bathtubs in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune films. It’s through this process that Gabrielle and others are able (even beckoned) to purge themselves of emotions they may have felt in past lives.
That this invention has been made available to people in a future dominated by artificial intelligence is hardly a hushed comment on its prevalence in society today, from the world of technology to its ever-looming threat over filmmaking and cultural imports at large. Nor will it be lost on the viewer that, in Bonello’s imagined future, A.I. has turned the world into a series of taupe-walled hallways and glass doors, minimalistic features that some might find soothing in a therapist’s office, but many others will deem hollow, thus feeling hollow themselves. This procedure’s mission, after all, is to rid our past selves of any potentially-painful substance so that one’s present self can live on with emotionless abandon, not torn between worlds, lives, or loves.
You needn’t be surprised when things don’t exactly go as planned; it’s almost as though Bonello aims to comment on the unrealistic desires of a humanoid-run world. (Gee, I wonder.) But in dissecting these shared concerns about the direction our lives seem to be tumbling in, not once does The Beast neglect the things those unfamiliar with Bonello’s trademark extremism will itch to latch onto. The sequences he dedicates to unavoidable romantic longing, the danger of heartbreak be damned, could ostensibly warrant their own subheading, something like Past Lives; the film’s darkest moments, focusing on menacing obsession and the perils of unseen threats, befit a name along the lines of Fatal Attraction.
Seydoux and MacKay are more than game, and though Bonello’s staging makes for some remarkably tactile moments of dread — including a harrowing recreation of The Great Flood of Paris in 1910 — it’s their faces that do some of the film’s best work when it comes to reducing its highbrow escapades to a human level. Whereas Seydoux was a calculated and cunning messenger woman for the Bene Gesserit in Dune: Part Two, here she strives to swim against the current of calculation toward the sort of imbalance that is required in the real world. MacKay’s turn here is a bit more chameleonic, fitting for an actor who convincingly transformed into a tattooed, closeted street thug in this year’s exceptional Femme; though he’s some form of the Louis that Gabrielle knew, knows, and will come to know over the course The Beast’s entire 146-minute runtime, MacKay seems to have a knack for shedding his skin when necessary, inhabiting the soul of every assignment, never more apparent than it is here.
The Beast itself is also chameleonic in its invocation of its obvious influences, ranging from David Lynch to other time-bending science fiction films with similar ideas on their minds. But Bonello isn’t nearly as interested in what might happen in the future than he is curious to unravel how our past and present are already dictating its course. We are constantly making choices, he argues, whether it’s to embrace risk or run from it, to break a heart or to have ours broken, et cetera. As André Aciman wrote, “to feel nothing, so as not to feel anything—what a waste.” After all, who are we to rid reality of its authenticity? Something to chew on, perhaps.
This week on Women InSession, we debate all of the good and bad regarding Charlton Heston! He may not be the greatest of actors, but there’s no denying the spectacle and successes he saw over his career. He’s been in some very memorable films and given audiences some iconic moments. At the same time, however; he also became controversial off-screen in ways that’s hard to ignore. So, yeah, we talk about all of that and more.
Panel: Kristin Battestella, Zita Short
On that note, check out this week’s show and let us know what you think in the comment section. Thanks for listening and for supporting the InSession Film Podcast!
This week on Chasing the Gold, Shadan is joined by our very own Cameron Ritter to discuss the Best Director category, which he will be covering this year for our awards content!
On that note, check out this week’s show and let us know what you think in the comment section. Thanks for listening and for supporting the InSession Film Podcast!
Director: Alex Garland Writer: Alex Garland Stars: Nick Offerman, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons
Synopsis: A journey across a dystopian future America, following a team of military-embedded journalists as they race against time to reach DC before rebel factions descend upon the White House.
I cannot think of a more dangerous film to enter our lives at this very moment. Civil War is jaw-dropping, downright incendiary, and brutally obtuse in its stubborn frankness. Yet, the gloriously mercurial writer and director Alex Garland paints a picture of modern-day dystopian America in peril and the midst of a civil war. Initially, we thought we had the movie figured out, but after leaving your local Cineplex, you won’t be pondering which side you would choose to be on.
Instead, you’ll find yourself asking, “Which side of patriotic fervor won?”
Civil War follows a group of wartime correspondents in New York. After a brilliant opening sequence, Lee (Kirsten Dunst) saves the life of a junior photojournalist, Jessie (Priscilla’sCailee Spaeny), when a bomb detonates in the heart of Brooklyn during a protest. Jessie tracks Lee back to her hotel and confesses how much she admires her, though Lee looks at Jessie, pondering whether she should shield the young woman from experiencing the struggles and horrors of the job.
Yet, Lee’s partner in crime, Joel (Mr. & Mrs. Smith’s Wagner Moura), a reporter (and man whore), invites Jessie along the next morning on their perilous journey, opting to take the long route to Washington, D.C., traveling from New York City to Pittsburgh to avoid dangerous outbreaks of war where survival is unlikely. Think Zombie meets Red Dawn, but with characters who should know better and none of Jesse Eisenberg’s feverish wordplay or a legendary Bill Murray cameo.
Joined by Lee’s mentor and seasoned newspaperman, Sammy (Dune’s Stephen McKinley Henderson), their mission is to obtain a photograph and quote from the current President (Origin’s Nick Offerman), who has been sequestered in a bunker in the White House. That’s, of course, if rebel fighters, rogue government forces, survivalists, civilian militias, or the plainly tormented and shell-shocked don’t kill them first.
These are the press member characters, depicted by a wonderful cast, who choose not to pick a side, just document to hold those accountable and for everyone to see. Dunst, who is always an underappreciated performer, is stellar in the role—the film’s conscience and steadily set the tone.
Moura is electric in his role, playing the classic roguish, swashbuckling, and wisecracking man of action who lives for the moment. And in this case, he gets more than he expects. In the case of Spaeny, like W.W. Beauchamp, she gets much more than she bargained for, seeing the real thing up close and personal.
Garland’s Civil War is a truly visceral experience that shows how to play both sides of the fence by allowing the viewer to tap into the film’s meticulous ambiguity, allowing the viewer to interpret which side you gravitate towards. Is the President a version of Donald Trump because he wears a red tie and he’s a White man in power? Are the good guys the ones fighting and brutally and ruthlessly killing soldiers in camo? Then why are the prisoners of war being executed with a ferocious machine gun by people wearing the same clothes?
As the film builds toward the big final showdown, can we say the rebels known as the “WF” are the good guys storming the White House? Did we forget the Capital Building Riots on January 6, 2021, where “proud” MAGA members stormed Washington? Even the much-talked-about and will go down as legendary Jesse Plemons cameo does not clear anything up for anyone, even if his character clearly is someone who is working to rid what he considers the world of non-White American inhabitants.
That’s what makes the film experience of the Civil Warso provocative, inflammatory, and dangerous. Anyone left in a dark room watching Garland’s film can be left on their own devices to come to their own conclusions. His tenacious, riveting, and staggering vision isn’t the American dream.
Director: Benjamin Brewer Writer: Michael Nilon Stars: Nicolas Cage, Jaeden Martell, Maxwell Jenkins
Synopsis: A father and his twin teenage sons fight to survive in a remote farmhouse at the end of the end of the world.
“I don’t want to rebuild it. I want to build something new.”
Benjamin Brewer and Michael Nilon’s Arcadian is a thrilling dive into the creature feature genre. An apocalyptic event has occurred leaving most of humanity near extinction and living a liminal existence between the safety of daylight and the terrors of night.
Brewer immediately throws the audience into the action as Paul (Nicolas Cage) runs through a collapsed city to get to his twin sons. Fifteen years later, Paul is dealing with Thomas (Maxwell Jenkins) and Joseph (Jaeden Martell) as teenagers. The brothers are at odds due to their distinct personalities. Thomas is wild and action oriented while Joseph is thoughtful, clinical, and scientific. Arcadian implies that Paul himself might have been partially responsible for the virus mutation which overtook humanity and created vicious insectoid monsters.
Now living on a remote property in what could be Ireland or could be any forested area substituting for bucolic and beautiful but also threatening environment; Paul is at odds with the collective farm run by Mr. and Mrs. Rose (Joe Dixon and Samantha Coughlan). Despite the apocalypse they are creating their own version of Arcadia. They grow flowers, harvest the land, and shepherd livestock behind a fortified gate with a gunman controlling it. They live an almost ne plus ultra life of self-sufficiency. It is little wonder that Thomas is beguiled not only by this seemingly idyllic Rose farm, but also their daughter Charlotte (Sadie Soverall).
Joseph is more precise and practical about trying to keep his family unit alive. He is the inventor and quiet genius. Thomas and Joseph are Paul’s sons, battling at times like Cain and Abel. They are also Paul’s flock and like a good shepherd he will not let a lamb stray.
There are biblical and mythological references galore in the film but what really works is the unrelenting tautness of the film. Snatched moments of time between teenage lovers can have dire consequences for the survival of both of them. In fact, it can have dire consequences for all the people still alive. Especially for Paul and Joseph.
Having similarities to other post-apocalyptic narratives, in particular 28 Days Later by Danny Boyle, and A Quiet Place, makes the plot of Arcadian appear somewhat overly familiar. However, Brewer ensures the audience is absolutely invested in the fate of Paul, Thomas, Joseph, and Charlotte. The bonds that cannot be broken between father and sons, brothers and lovers, parents and their children are tested during a time of monstrous extremity.
Brewer uses his skill as a VFX specialist to create hideous creatures who exist to sting and destroy. Part survival thriller and part eco-horror, Arcadian blends its genres seamlessly to create an edge of the seat experience. Frank Mobilio’s camera work is at times almost cinéma verité and at others discomfitingly abstract; along with Kristi Shimek’s editing it provides Arcadian with a rich and haunting texture. Where we cannot see because of the engulfing darkness the incredible sound design ensures we understand the impending threat.
The script by Michael Nilion, a regular collaborator with Cage, is layered and intelligent. It avoids exposition dumps to create the air of uncertainty around the events. It isn’t so much a case of what you see is what you get, but a case of what you see and what you don’t see is all you need.
The film’s tempo of pressure and brief respite follows the logic of the day and night world the characters inhabit. Everything becomes a race to get home, wherever that may be, and to be safe before the sun goes down and the creatures appear. Once we finally do see the creatures beyond mere glimpses and shadows, they are as abject and horrific as you can imagine unnaturally evolved insectoids being. They also work as hive creatures which means they are intelligent and organized in a way that the remaining humans have forgotten. Paul and Joseph act as a reminder that you can never let your guard down against pathogenic nature when it sets out to destroy.
Arcadian has recognizable influences, but the way Brewer has decided to concentrate on what humanity means at the end of the world through the lens clambering dread makes the film a heart pounding experience. Humanity is vestigial not only because there are few survivors, but because extending support to others is something that people who live in the Rose compound refuse to do. With little left to stay alive — limited medicine, food being scarce, the Eden or Arcadia of the Rose farm speaks to the foolishness of a collective which protects only those they arbitrarily deem worthy. Even at the end of the world, a class system remains in place.
Jaeden Martell is extraordinary and considering his supernal career thus far it is a testament to the direction and the script which channel his immense talent. Maxwell Jenkins is the perfect foil to Martell. The other face of a coin that needs to remain whole to ensure the survival of those he loves. Thomas’ blossoming romance with Charlotte is lovely, melancholy, and eventually extremely kick ass.
It is a maxim now that if you give Nic Cage the right material he can go into God Mode in seconds. Arcadian plays directly into his strengths as an actor. He doesn’t have to say much but every word he says is essential. When it comes to action, Cage does not skip a beat. At its heart, Arcadian is a story about family. The legacy they leave and the inspiration they pass on. Coming of age is tough enough under normal circumstances but doing so when you are facing extinction as a species is next level. Arcadian is moody, ominous, and ferocious but it is also about reconciliation and hope. To survive, and be worthy of survival, recollecting the good in humanity is key. Tense, visceral, and explosive – Arcadian is the real deal for creature features.
There’s a thrill to being a kid and playing cops and robbers. It’s black and white, good and bad, law and chaos. The game rarely has subtlety on the surface. Sure, many kids do add nuance. Sometimes, your cop has a chip on his shoulder. Sometimes, your robber is doing it because of a noble reason. It’s a game played because it’s fun to be on a team with a clear goal in mind. It’s, more often than not, boys pretending to be men, working together. Men that are the pinnacle. That even if the robbers rob for greed, they still get one over on “the man” and even if the cops don’t go by the book, they still get justice in the end. It’s often we see men in these roles on film. Men that fit the archetypes we’ve come to know. There’s no better writer and director better than Michael Mann when it comes to the crime genre.
As a director and screenwriter, Michael Mann has forever changed the nature of the crime movie. There are others who go their own way, but it’s obvious the tremendous impact Mann has had on the genre over the last 40 years. What the imitators never quite latch onto is the intrinsic and subtle masculinity to Mann’s men. It’s not full of toxicity, overconfidence, ignorance, or sexual dominance. It’s not about comparing the size of… case files with fellow officers, making empty threats to mobsters, or exhibiting hostility because they don’t understand how to express their feelings. Their masculinity is confident, compassionate, protective, and vulnerable. Michael Mann’s cops and robbers are elevated beyond their archetypes because of this ethos and it’s never more present than in his magnum opus, Heat.
So much of Heat relies on the incredible characters within, buttressed by immaculate robber Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) and ultra-capable cop Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino). Yet, this original vision couldn’t have happened as well as it did if Michael Mann hadn’t cut his teeth on two adaptations first. With Thief, based on the novel “The Home Invaders” by Frank Hohimer; Mann films his version of the noble safecracker who dreams of a simple life to live after one more big score. For Manhunter, based on the novel “Red Dragon” by Thomas Harris; Mann films an investigator who can’t let more innocence be tainted by another psychopath. The two sides of the spinning coin that is Heat were informed by Mann’s work on the men in these two films. He found his role models within these masculine ideals.
In Thief, there is a real man behind the swagger. Frank (James Caan) picks his jobs carefully. He limits risk to himself and his crew because he has a plan. He spent the majority of his life in prison and he isn’t going back, but he has no skills, except what was taught to him by his mentor, Okla (Willie Nelson). In four short years of freedom, Frank has amassed a modest fiefdom to launder the money from his heists. He rules over a used car lot and a small bar, coming and going from each as he makes sure his true line of work runs smoothly. Of course, peace can never last and Frank’s little fiefdom soon abuts a mighty kingdom, the kingdom of Leo (Robert Prosky), the biggest fence in Chicago. Leo offers the quickest path toward Frank’s way out; big scores, high yield investments, access to worlds he couldn’t even come near working his quick, small jobs. Like all greedy people who want to exploit someone more skilled than they are, Leo doesn’t pay Frank what he owes. Leo keeps Frank, yokes him, and tells him he’s going to do more, steal more, give up more. Frank soon finds a way to toss said yoke from his shoulders and become his own boss again, though it leaves him alone and drenched in blood.
It seems simple when it’s put this way, but the nuance Michael Mann brings out of the character, aided of course by James Caan’s superior performance, elevates Thief beyond its surface. Frank’s dream is simple: make enough money to support a family comfortably and live out the rest of his days as a private citizen. He carries around in his wallet a sort of innocent and childish collage he’s made of houses, women, children, and Okla, the man who let him dream. It’s private, but he eventually lets Jessie (Tuesday Weld) in on the plan. It takes some convincing as Frank unintentionally stands Jessie up for their date when he goes to retrieve money taken from him by Leo’s associates.
In a move that seems too aggressive and a notch against Frank, he pulls Jessie out of the bar she’s in and into his car. They shout at each other, Jessie more than Frank, but there’s a beat when Frank turns and his anger becomes bemusement. Not antagonistic, natural and vulnerable care, which softens Jessie quite a bit. The two of them end up in a late night coffee shop, but there’s still animosity coming from Jessie, so Frank lays it all out for her. He pours out his soul as the two of them get to know each other. Suddenly his scars, his limp, it all makes sense in the broader picture of why Frank is so guarded and so untrusting of most other people. Though, he always has in the back of his mind Okla’s sage advice, “Lie to no one. If there’s somebody close to you, you’ll ruin it with a lie.” In the emotional peak of the scene, as Jessie tries to give Frank one more out telling him she can’t have children, he shouts that they’ll adopt. Frank is all in. He is more than ready to “get on with this big romance.”
It’s so rare to find masculine vulnerability like this on film. So many men on screen who are tough don’t ever delve this deeply into themselves to try and make someone else understand them. So often they fail in the fundamentals of humanity in order to maintain a persona and to erase this kind of vulnerability. A character like Frank proves he can be a swaggering, confident, masculine man, but one who understands that in order for someone else to want to be with him, he has to let them in, let them see the real him.
It’s in a scene that follows that we see the right kind of masculine anger. When Jessie and Frank sit down with the adoption agent, Mrs. Knowles (Marge Kotlisky), she backs Frank into a corner because she doesn’t understand that the first line of his resume means he was a prisoner for the long stretch of years listed there. When he finally lets her in on it, the conversation immediately shuts down. His shouts and anger aren’t at the woman, but at the system she represents. It’s a system that will never allow a person like him, even with his stable income from legitimate businesses and his loving relationship, to adopt a child the legal way. In this tirade he plays his last card. He tells everyone in the office that he was a child in this system, he was “state raised.” Frank knows what these children face and what’s waiting for them on the outside. He can change a kid’s life, but because of who he’s been, he isn’t allowed to.
It’s this frustration that pulls Frank closer to Jessie. The two of them, in a scene without dialogue, sit in front of the fire, Frank cuddling into Jessie. She comforts him in his hour of need and makes him feel safe. This need for comfort isn’t weakness or a character flaw, but a self awareness that many men lack because of the toxicity of our society’s flawed masculine ideal. Frank is still adept, strong, smart, and just the right amount of aggressive. He doesn’t become soft because of Jessie, he allows himself to be open to a person who accepts him, which gives him strength in the conflict to come. That’s when Frank takes care of his budding family in the only way he knows how.
In Manhunter, a man is consumed by the thing he does best. Will Graham’s (William Peterson) talent for diving deeply into the minds of psychopaths chips away at his own being, leaving his mind disturbed by the scenarios he replays. Will is a former cop dragged back into profiling by his friend and former boss FBI agent, Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina). Will walks the recent crime scenes of a serial killer the media has dubbed the Tooth Fairy, but who the FBI finds out prefers the moniker Red Dragon (Tom Noonan). Will thinks of things the investigating officers didn’t because he has the pattern between both cases of horrendous murder. He pieces it slowly, but there’s something that nags at him, an opinion he doesn’t want, but needs, and he goes to the one man, the man who tried to disembowel him, Dr. Hannibal Lecktor (Brian Cox). Will opens a door with Lecktor that eventually leads to the Red Dragon, but it claims the life of a tabloid reporter, compromises his family’s safety, and makes him question his own judgment along the way. Stumbling on the key piece of evidence, Will and the full force of a police apparatus at his back charge in and stop Red Dragon from further mayhem, saving the latest would be victim from further harm.
It’s a classic police thriller. Cops win, bad guys lose. Yet, Will isn’t the typical cop and I’m not just referring to his potential. He has a strange empathy toward psychopaths that allows him to get inside their methods and motivations. Though, Will isn’t territorial about his investigations even if he insists on visiting crime scenes alone. So many cops in film are brash, “I know everything, you know nothing,” types. They claim ownership of things pertaining to the cathey work, they shut people out, try and get to something first, but Will isn’t like that. Will wants, above everything, above all the pettiness of jurisdiction and field authority, to stop a murderer from murdering by all the means at his disposal. Will has an ego, but he knows when it’s necessary to deploy it and when it must be tamped down to achieve his goal.
In this sense, he also knows that in order to find a demon he has to go to the devil for help. Will isn’t just nervous because he put Lecktor away, but because unlike the other criminals he’s helped to capture, Lecktor got close to Will. Lecktor stabbed into and then dragged his blade across Will’s abdomen. He didn’t just want to kill Will, he wanted Will to feel what it was like to die knowing how helpless he is. Yet, Will knows that Lecktor is the only person who could get into the head of the Red Dragon better than he can. He sits and he takes the needling, Lecktor’s attempts to psychologically get under his skin. It isn’t until Will runs out of the building that he lets his panic attack fully envelop him. Even in the panic, though, Will finds that Lecktor is more than a mere useful tool.
In a strange scene that’s far more comfortable in a teenage rom com, Will and Lecktor share a late night heart to heart. Lecktor in full comfort is laying on his bed with his feet propped on the concrete wall of his cell, his left arm draped over his forehead, bracing the receiver to his ear with his bicep and his right resting on his abdomen. Will is in a hotel room, smoking a cigarette, barefoot and, while he starts the conversation with animosity, he settles into it as he gets more interested. He drapes one of his legs over the arm of the chair he sits in and drinks in what Lecktor is philosophizing. It plays as two people who are intimate with each other. Even as the wheels in Will’s mind turn because Lecktor has, as he always does, told Will exactly what he needs to hear in the moment, Will still has an appreciative look as he pulls the phone away from his ear. It’s a scene that doesn’t need to take place as it does, but it conveys the intimacy of these two men. That in spite of their animosity, they crave understanding. They want for the other to see them the way they need to be seen. This is a hard thing for two men to do because of what is expected of men and how outsiders might view this kind of male intimacy.
It’s a scene that lends itself perfectly to the one in which Will and Kevin (David Seaman), his stepson, have a heart to heart. After boorish tabloid reporter, Freddie Lounds (Stephen Lang), publishes photos and an exposé detailing Will’s first visit to Lecktor, as well as deep background on Will, Kevin seems distant toward Will. Unlike many dads in his shoes, Will decides to meet the awkwardness between the two of them head on. He takes Kevin shopping and he lays it out for him. Kevin’s very understanding and they hug. This is very hard for Will or any father to do because fathers are a monolith in our society. They have to be strength incarnate, a bulwark against all forces coming for their family. Yet, dads have struggles, too. The more they speak to others about those times when they lack strength to go it alone, the better. Will understands that when he married Molly (Kim Greist) he took on more than a responsibility to protect, but also to seek comfort in people who love him. He doesn’t lay his burdens on them, but he doesn’t retreat into himself either. He has balance with them and he owes them a palatable version of the truth he sees everyday.
The lessons Michael Mann learned in adapting these previous works helped him shape his singular epic, Heat. There are several comparable aspects between Mann’s original work and his two adaptations. Like Frank in Thief, Neil McCauley falls for a woman, head over heels. Like Will in Manhunter, Vincent Hanna has entered a relationship where he’s a stepfather. Neil gets involved with a businessman, Van Zant (William Fichtner), who tries to get one over on him. Vincent comforts a grieving mother (Hazelle Goodman) at a crime scene much like Will comforts Reba (Jessica Lange) after he saves her from the Red Dragon. Though, it’s the divergence that makes Heat a watchable, and an endlessly rewatchable, film. The two men at the centers of Heat are older for a start.
Neil doesn’t have the starry eyed optimism of Frank. He’s a romantic for sure, but he has a darker pragmatism at his core. Unlike Frank, Neil begins by lying to Eady (Amy Brenneman) and if he hadn’t been backed into a corner, he would have continued lying to her. Though, unlike Chris (Val Kilmer), who feels like an adversary when it comes to his wife Charlene (Ashley Judd), not letting her go even if they’d both be better off, Neil offers Eady a way out as he goes into crisis mode. It’s an extension of his one rule. He wants Eady to take an out so he doesn’t have to see her face if he takes his. His one rule, his mantra, is that he walks away. No matter how he feels, no matter what he leaves behind, Neil walks away if he sees no way of having it all. It’s a form of masculine protection and is much better than if he did stay, forcing Eady to make hard choices she shouldn’t have to make.
Vincent too has made a strict code for himself. He doesn’t have the need, like Will, to share much with his wife, Justine (Diane Venora). He even goes so far as to say bottling up the horrors he encounters on the job is a way to “keep [his] edge.” The fact that Vincent can’t rely on Justine for support drives the two of them apart. They lash out at each other and hurt each other emotionally. It’s obvious they need each other from the way that they get under each other’s skin. It takes a near tragedy for Vincent to talk, really talk, with Justine. It’s not much, but it’s the hint of the man Vincent used to be and the man he wants to get back to. When he gets a fateful page on his beeper, he hesitates. Not in the way that people hesitate when they want to pretend like it’s the other person’s choice if they stay. He really and truly hesitates as he thinks about what Justine’s going through and the terror he experienced when he found Lauren (Natalie Portman) in his bathtub. In those seconds he’s thinking about how much he needs Justine as much as she needs him. When he does go he becomes the man Will has put behind him. He says to Justine that he doesn’t know if it could get better between them because, “It’s like you said. All I am is what I’m going after.” It could be interpreted that after he catches Neil, Justine is what he’s going after. It could be interpreted that without saying as much Vincent is asking for that second chance after all.
Heat sets itself apart from Mann’s early adaptations because it’s also an ambitious labyrinth of plot. Threaded through the thieves’ lives are the repercussions of the opening heist. We aren’t sure how he will fit into the story when he shows up, but the evil Waingro (Kevin Gage), takes full advantage of his chaotic disposition. He disrupts Team Neil’s dynamic during the first heist, throws more work at Vincent as he rapes and murders sex workers, and ultimately teams up with Van Zant to disrupt what is supposed to be Team Neil’s final score. Much like Waingro, we aren’t sure how Donald Breedan (Dennis Haysbert) fits into the tapestry until the last possible moment. Breedan especially is a tragic figure as a man released from prison, but put into an impenetrable box on the outside as the system fails him. He has no recourse against the cruel and corrupt restaurant manager (Bud Cort) who dangles parole violations in front of him to get him to work more for less. He does all he can to be lawful on the outside, but it doesn’t matter how much he wants to be better because he realizes, inside or outside, he’s not his own man. The heist is his last chance to take back his freedom. Heat is filled with dozens of characters, mostly men, who all have a certain amount of untapped depth to them.
That depth comes to a head when Vincent and Neil sit down for a cup of coffee in a very crowded coffee shop. It’s the film’s way of letting out the breath that it’s been holding. It’s a way of bringing the two halves of the story together in order to understand how it must end. Action films, crime films, films of law against chaos are predicated on the idea that their stories are good vs. evil. Heat is the challenge to that assumption. Heat also challenges the assumption that civility has no place amongst men, that one or either has to perform a subterfuge for them to go back and do what they do. These two opposites, foes, antagonists, don’t use this time to spit, rage, belittle, berate, or posture at one another. What they do is they simply talk. They pontificate on their situation, families, loves, and drives. They become two humans at a coffee shop who know each other, but have no real idea about what makes the other who he is. They even come away with the conclusion that it will be difficult, if it comes down to it, to put each other down. They see each other’s humanity and it doesn’t make either one weaker in his conviction, but it helps to renew their convictions that Vincent is going to uphold the law and Neil will break it. They are an unstoppable force and an immovable object, but each of them knows in the back of their minds that they could slip and they could lose. The scene is a master stroke not only in breaking the formula, but in breaking down the ideas of cops and robbers and how men at odds with each other can interact.
Heat, while having incredible action set pieces, is so much more indelible because of its characters. Even as they are slotted into archetypes, the characters often zig rather than zag. Their threads come together to tighten the plot into a supremely well thought out machine. The film’s reputation and moniker as a movie for men is a false nomenclature. People can see how this film is different in the subtleties of the masculine energy. Its intricacy and depth brings people in even amongst the mayhem and violence, which it doesn’t revel in, but sees as a part of this life. The men in Heat are so much more than “guy’s guys,” and Heat is much more than a men’s movie in spite of it nearly exclusively starring men.
Michael Mann makes films about men. His men are masculine in a way that isn’t driven solely by testosterone. These men eschew many of the extremes of the societal constructs of what it means to be a man. They have brains and they have hearts and they use them in equal measure. They aren’t paragons or pinnacles of what men should be, but they’re close. They’re on the precipice of what we all would rather have than any experience of toxic masculinity. They represent the ideals of justice and a sort of creed when it comes to lawlessness. The duality of cops and robbers serves as a perfect breeding ground to explore masculine identity. The earlier films of Michael Mann, Thief and Manhunter, are clear lines to the foundations of Heat and the evolution of masculinity in the crime genre.
Director: Larry Fessenden Writer: Larry Fessenden Stars: Alex Hurt, Marshall Bell, Michael Buscemi
Synopsis: A Fine Arts painter is convinced that he is a werewolf wreaking havoc on a small American town under the full moon.
Larry Fessenden is a very clever man. He is a cinematic horror poet who, like many of his friends and collaborators, insists that the “monster” is rarely the problem – it is the people who are.
Talbot Grove in upstate New York is about to be turned into an environmental nightmare by corrupt developer Jack Hammond (Marshall Bell). Charley Barrett’s (Alex Hurt) father worked with Jack Hammond creating some more than dubious deals. After the death of his father (played in photographs by William Hurt, Alex Hurt’s real-life father) an alcoholic and control freak, Charley begins to sort through his papers. He discovers that all was not copacetic and begins to drown himself in alcohol and withdraws to spend solitary time painting.
Charley was also in love with, and engaged to, Hammond’s daughter, Sharon (Addison Timlin) while he was working as a contracting boss for Hammond. But during his desperate self-annihilating, booze-soaked nightmare something happened. Charley got bitten by a werewolf and the consequences are reverberating through the whole community.
Blackout cleverly references the original Universal Monster pictures starring Lon Chaney, Jr. but instead of the Romani people being the scapegoat for what is considered the other, it is Mexican and Latino workers who are being exploited by Hammond’s company. Hammond thinks he owns the town and the land, and to some extent he does. He employs most of the people in the region and sets workers against each other. He sows division for profit.
Charley, of course, being a werewolf, experiences the same memory blackouts that Larry Talbot did. As he is an artist, he uses his unconscious memories to draw what he believes he has done. Fessenden is working on a very limited budget, so he employs artwork (provided by John Mitchell) and animation (regular animator James Siewert) to signal the werewolf phase over the three-night period.
Larry Fessenden is working with some of his long-term collaborators both in front of and behind the camera. James Le Gros, Jenn Wexler, Jeremy Holm, Joe Swanberg, and Barbara Crampton, for example. Fessenden’s horror films including Wendigo, Deranged (a blink and you’ll miss it cameo from Alex Breaux is included) and Habit always recognize the mythology around a Monster. Fessenden reconfigures that mythology into metaphors for division, loneliness, and the consuming nature of humans. It is often noted that Frankenstein’s creature is the most tragic of the Universal Monsters; however Fessenden understands that the Wolf Man is the loneliest of all.
Creating an eco-thriller and a discussion of contemporary American politics and capitalism out of a genre film is pure Fessenden genius. Larry has always had a connection to place and space in the American rural, urban, or industrial landscape. Whether it be from his early roles in Kelly Reichardt films, to working with Ted Geoghegan, Ti West, and titans like Martin Scorsese and Jim Jarmusch:; Larry Fessenden cares about how Americans connect psychologically, and in actuality, to an environment and who it ostensibly belongs to.
Few directors working within the budget that Fessenden does can create such powerful real-world fables around existing material. Despite being a chameleon actor, he is a horror auteur who gets to a specific heart residing inside what the audience considers the monstrous.
Once again, Larry Fessenden has given audiences a brilliant insight into contemporary America through the lens of monstrosity. Blackout is a melancholy, funny, gore-soaked, and, at times, hopeless film about the tragic werewolf and the impulses he cannot control. A letter Charley leaves for Sharon provides the thesis to Blackout. “I think about the misery and terror I spread when I have no control. And I think about what people do when they have control. The combat. They miss the sweetness of life. I’m not sure what I’ll miss. I’ll miss you.” Fessenden proves that there are things American people can and should be doing to prevent tragedies that are bloodier and more scarring than the claws of a werewolf.
On this episode, JD and Brendan discuss the debut horror film from Arkasha Stevenson in The First Omen! Many of us expected another trite studio horror film, but what a great surprise this ended up being. It’s ambitious, striking and thematically rich. This was a really fun conversation.
Review: The First Omen (4:00) Director: Arkasha Stevenson Writers: Tim Smith, Arkasha Stevenson, Keith Thomas Stars: Nell Tiger Free, Sônia Braga, Ralph Ineson, Nicole Sorace
Director: Wade Allain-Marcus Writer: Chuck Hayward Stars: Simone Joy Jones, Patricia “Ms. Pat” Williams, Jermaine Fowler, June Squibb
Synopsis: Tanya finds her summer plans canceled when her mom jets off for a last-minute retreat and the elderly babysitter who arrives at her door unexpectedly passes away.
If you told me, even a few years ago, that I would be thinking about Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead, I am not sure that I would have believed you. Here’s the thing. The original is not a good movie. Like, at all. Yes, I watched it repeatedly. Look. It was 1991. I was a 12-year-old boy and Christina Applegate was the star. If you are not of a certain age, you might not know what a chokehold Kelly Bundy had on all of us. But even without rewatching it, I know that this is not one I need to see again. That original film, and its remake of the same name is really the story of missed opportunities.
If you have a group of children who are able to run wild without any parental supervision and said supervision has literally died, the jokes, very dark ones, should write themselves. Sadly, this is not the case. A trio of writers (Chuck Hayward, Neil Landau, Tara Ison) mainly miss the point here. If it makes you feel better, the writers of the original made similar mistakes. The original focused on star power and the remake focuses more on message material than the dark humor.
Honestly, it feels like they know it, too. The credits do not roll until after the babysitter is dead and the body is disposed of. Side note, at least one of these kids has the makings of a serial killer. But I digress. It seems like the script needed to get the babysitter dying out of the way so they could get to the nice, basically charming story that they wanted to tell. If that is the case, why remake this? I’m not saying it needs protecting, but it is hard to believe that they are selling tickets (or streaming dollars) based on a moderately known film from the early 90’s.
Luckily, it is not all bad news. The cast is actually pretty fantastic. They seem to know just how much time to spend with each child in the family. Older sister Tanya (Simone Joy-Jones) is nearly pitch perfect, when the meandering script allows for it. She has easy chemistry, especially with her younger brother, Kenny (Donielle T. Hansley Jr.), and her love interest (whom she meets while on her one and only rideshare job), Bryan (Miles Fowler).
She, and the film, struggle when the focus is changed to her employment at a fashion company. Yes, this is a direct nod to the original film, but the script knows it is dated. They attempt to dance around this, but the sad fact is, they cast Nicole Ritchie. The role of the “bosslady” Rose really needs some frostiness and some energy, and she provides neither. Her performance vacillates from the “cool mom” from Mean Girls to a teenager trying to seem adult. This, again, stomps all over the performance from Joy-Jones.
The aforementioned lessons that the script espouses are positive. Given that the main cast is Black, they cleverly detail that in no way should these children report that their White babysitter (June Squibb, who is having a great time even if no one else seems to be) is dead in their house. There are also discussions of what “real work” is between brother and sister and this all hits home very well.
The one thing that really does work here is the romance. Teen romances are tough. We could go over a bunch of examples, but really who has time? Joy-Jones and Fowler need a pure romantic film, and immediately. From the second they are on screen together, you are absolutely rooting for them to work out. All the other machinations of the plot merely get in the way of this, and it’s a real shame.
Speaking of the laborious plot, there are just one too many connections for the viewer to swallow. Just as in the original, there are mean co-workers for Tanya to deal with, but they make a pretty sad attempt to make them more human, which is wholly unnecessary. There is nothing wrong with an antagonist at work, we do not really need an extensive reason as to why they are mean. And one of the “villains” has a connection with another character. They don’t hide this, but it makes the ending of the film lose whatever punch it might have packed.
Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead is a mostly forgettable movie about a relatively charming family unit. It really is too bad that it is hampered by odes to the original, a convoluted plot, and at least on actor who has been woefully miscast. Please, no more. The dishes are done, man.
