Archive

Drama

The Odyssey – 1.5 stars

August 9, 2026
1 star, 2026, Action/Disaster, Drama, Historical, War
2 Comments

Cards on the table. My knowledge of The Odyssey is limited. So limited, when Christopher Nolan‘s film depicts the fall of Troy, I kept looking for Brad Pitt as Achilles.

So, I come to this picture with no interest in fealty to the source material. I’m open.

What’s good? Filmed with IMAX cameras, the movie is beautiful and grand in scope, and it did not feel overlong even though it is really quite long. Robert Pattinson also near steals the picture, such is his committed performance as the villain.

To the bad.

Didactic and pedestrian dialogue. Nolan explains everything. He cannot rely on a look, or a gesture, he must tell us all. And often when he does, what we are told is so painfully banal or high falutin’, it is cringeworthy. The “what you hear when the Sirens sing their song” voice over was so hilariously bad, I longed for the same ear wax utilized by Odysseus’ men to drown out their bewitching appeals. There is not one clever exchange, not one illuminating piece of dialogue. Rather, we get turgid exposition, conversation that basically exists to get you to the next thing.

Bad performances. Wikipedia tells me that Odysseus is renowned for his intellectual brilliance, guile, and versatility. Matt Damon, however, plays him as dimly solid and a bit of a lummox.

As his son, Tom Holland gives as bad a performance as I’ve seen in a major film. He’s a less chirpy Spiderman sporting Disney Channel-esque mien. Nolan’s script does him no favors, having Holland utter, on numerous occasions, the word “Dad.”

Not “my father.”

“Dad.”

Holland sounds like Richie Cunningham asking for his Pop’s advice before going to the see The Fonz.

As the wife of Odysseus, Anne Hathaway gives one of her patented over the top, histrionic performances, particularly noxious when it rams into Damon’s dullness or Holland’s puerility. She’s at a constant 13 when she should be at a 7, which will elicit an Oscar nod and my groans.

Discordant modernity. There has been spirited discussion about the propriety of casting Elliot Page, who is transgender, as one of Odysseus‘s warriors. I did not find the cast as distracting as the transgender actor playing the Philip Seymour Hoffman role in Netflix’s Ripley. But to then have that character speak gravely from Hades and say to Odysseus, “Hey, when you go back, and tell my story, feel free to add some ‘stuff’”

“Stuff.”

Also, they load Odysseus up with Page’s recrimination about not being let in on the whole horse gambit. As depicted, Page is the keeper of the horse, left to explain that it is a gift when the Trojans arrive. Page is not upset at being killed in the duty, only that no one told him he was tending a horse filled with soldiers. And if Page had known the horse was filled with Odysseus and his soldiers?

Knock, knock, knock.

“Hey, fellas? Everything alright in there?”

Modernity skews the story as well as the dialogue, at least, such as I understand it (note my prior reliance on Wikipedia). As I said, I am not going to kick the film for diverging from source material of which I am ignorant. Odysseus haunted by the sack of Troy? Okay, I’m listening. Even Athena (played by a wasted Zendaya here) was not on board with the excesses of the Greeks as they pillaged the city. Odysseus suffering from PTSD due to the war crimes he witnessed? Errr. Okay?

Odysseus then killing 25 men in dizzying acrobatics that smacks of John Wick? True to the story perhaps, but tonally moronic. Nolan wants it both ways. A classical Odysseus, who rips guts and gives no quarter and less shits, and a modern combatant, haunted by the depravity of his deeds.

Nolan also injects sophomoric Women’s Studies feminism for good measure. Hathaway spits at Holland about the unfairness of it all, kvetching that she’s been holding Ithaca together for years with nary a whisker on her chin. But near as the audience can tell, it appears she has been merely overseeing a very long, rambunctious dinner party. She does not demonstrate any ruling decisions other than withholding her hand in marriage to a replacement for Odysseus and hectoring Holland. And working on a very, very, very big blanket.

Nolan also gives us a nasty witch (Samantha Morton) who turns Odysseus’s hungry but unfailingly polite men into pigs when they ask, mind you, if they could eat from her kitchen. When Odysseus inquires as to the point of her cruelty, well, you know… it’s the patriarchy. But Morton also turned her sister into a bird, and when Odysseus pedantically inquires as to the crimes that resulted in that particular fate, Morton implies that her sister was just a bitch.

Repetition. There’s too much disembarking where Odysseus and his men clamber up a hill and then, in a Keystone Cops manner, scurry back to their ships. Which reminded me of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and “Run away, run away!”

Humorlessness. An odyssey is a long time. And when you are being chased by a Cyclops, or turned into a pig, or just floating around endlessly on a boat, there has to be some levity. Not here. The only person who smiles is Pattinson, and even that is mostly a malevolent leer.

Ultimately, I’m heartened this film was made, and that it is racking up kabillions. I fear the extinction of the historical epic, and Nolan has now given us three, along with Dunkirk and Oppenheimer.

Two out of three ain’t bad, even if the third is.

Bugonia – 1.5 stars

July 2, 2026
1 star, 2025, Drama, Sci-Fi
Leave a comment

Like all Yorgos Lanthimos films, Bugonia is adept, thought out, and at times, mesmerizing. Slowly but surely, the viewer is drawn into Lanthimos’ vibe in his story of a mentally ill conspiracy theorist (Jesse Plemons) convinced that the CEO of a corporate behemoth (Emma Stone) is, in fact, an alien deposited on Earth to kill us all. With his hapless, dim cousin (Aiden Delbis), Plemons kidnaps Stone to make her fess up and save humanity.

Unfortunately, Lanthimos quickly reverts to his sweet spot, rank sadism. Of his pictures, Poor Things is the only one I like. In re-making the Frankenstein story with an innocent (Stone, again), he allowed for joy and humor as she explored her boundless lust and curiosity while clashing with societal convention.

Here, like The Lobster and The Favourite, Lanthimos is artfully back to picking wings from flies. His mean-spirited abuse of his characters – in particular, Delbis, an Of Mice and Men Lenny-type – is capped off with a grandiose coda that expresses just how much he really does hate people.

Lanthimos’ conceit is that he is delivering something of import – be it commentary on environmental cataclysm, the perils of the internet, or corporate soullessness – but really, he’s just a nasty brute with a good eye. If it weren’t for the game efforts of Plemons and Stone, who can be captivating in their cat-and-mouse exchanges, this would have been a zero.

On Netflix.

Ice Station Zebra – 3 stars

February 12, 2026
3 stars, 60s, Action/Disaster, Drama
Leave a comment

A serviceable John Sturges (The Magnificent Seven) Cold War action/espionage thriller from 1968, currently on Tubi. The Soviets take photographs of our missile installations from space, but in attempting to retrieve the film, things go awry. The canister lands near a British scientific weather station in the Arctic, and the race is on for retrieval before the Soviets get there. The mission is led by nuclear submarine skipper Rock Hudson, who has MI6 spook Patrick McGoohan, friendly Soviet Ernest Borgnine, and Marine squad leader Jim Brown along for the ride.

I watched the flick when I was a little kid on TV. It was thrilling.

50 years later, it still holds up somewhat. It’s really worth catching for three particularities.

First, clearly of its time, a significant portion of this rather long picture (it has both an overture and an intermission) is devoted to the inner workings of a nuclear submarine, sometimes, pedantically so. But you have to remind yourself that in 1968, film audiences would have been thrilled with a long dissertation on the inner workings of a nuclear submarine.

Second, I never understood why McGoohan was not a massive star. He is a great villain, but he also has a charming smile and twinkle in the eye that communicates humor and a little menace.

I read up on him. He was swallowed up by television, which probably suppressed a budding film career. He was also extremely Catholic, and would not take any role in which he was required to kiss a woman other than his wife, thereby taking him off the James Bond list (and apparently, he was on it).  Modern audiences would know McGoohan as the villainous king who steals and chews scenes in Mel Gibson’s Braveheart.

Lastly, Jim Brown is still cool, even in a winter parka.

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere – 1.5 stars

February 11, 2026
1 star, 2025, Drama, Musical
Leave a comment

At the outset, we meet Bruce Springsteen (Jeremy Allen White) as a little boy, hearing his father (Stephen Graham) coming up the stairs, drunk, to spar with him. Bruce catches a slap, and we know it’s gonna’ be these two guys the whole picture, as the shy, depressed superstar makes his most personal, least commercial opus, Nebraska, while grappling with his troubled upbringing.  

I read Bruce’s autobiography and was impressed with its honesty, charity, and equanimity. There was little, however, about his abusive father. Maybe Bruce wasn’t ready to share. But the point is relevant because in the film, while his father seems to be a handful, he is not portrayed as such a monster so as to justify the depths of Bruce’s torment. In fact, when Bruce is writing Nebraska, he seems more influenced by Terence Malick’s Badlands than Daddy issues.

In the midst of his struggle, Bruce has a relationship with a single mother (Odessa Young). Their union is supposed to be simple, earthy, a local rocker and a “heart of gold” fan who sees through The Boss’ facade. Mind you, this is post The River. Bruce is massive. He’s been on the cover of Newsweek and Time.

No matter. The picture persists in the massive conceit of Bruce the regular guy. When Bruce drops his waitress gal off, because of course she’s a waitress (in a diner, no less), it is in a blue collar row house, oil storage tanks in the background. Her father comes out and says, in a hackneyed, suspicious New Jersey small townie way, “is that the … uh … guitar player fella’?” Dad then sneeringly brings up Uncle Dave, who also “played guitar” and presumably, was not much of a success.

Oof.

Worse, the relationship doesn’t add much if anything to the story. Given the woman didn’t exist, one would expect writer/director Scott Cooper (Hostiles) to do more with the character. But she is there solely to be dumped by the angsty Bruce and to utter pap like, “if you can’t be honest with yourself, I don’t know how I can expect you to be honest with me.”

Holy Moses.

The second half of the film goes straight into the ditch. Bruce is struggling to present Nebraska in his stripped down vision while fending off the mildest of pressure to release Born in the USA. In the doing, he engages some more with his father while struggling with depression. It’s a long slog, with Bruce upset his cassette tape sound cannot be replicated in the studio, a struggle treated as if we were watching Oppenheimer and his team of scientists making Fat Man. In these moments, the film has absolutely no sense of proportion and lapses into the ridiculous.

The Boss’ head is in his hands. A lot.

Another negative is the Jon Landau character (Jeremy Strong). As Springsteen’s manager, Landau is supposed to provide some obvious tension between the Boss’ failure to follow up The River with something more commercial than his sparse, acoustic passion project. But there really is no tension at all because Landau is first and foremost an acolyte, and an uber reverential one at that. If Bruce said he wanted to follow up The River with hand puppetry, from this Landau, we’d get: “Hey [deep soulful look into Bruce’s eyes, hand on shoulder]. I Iove you. You do you.” When Landau and his wife discuss the Nebraska demo, their conversation is the most elemental exchange you’ll hear in film, as if Cooper fears the audience is so stupid it must be painstakingly explained just what a departure this record is and just how “dark” it seems. When Bruce plays the hit Born in the USA, Landau says, “I think a Muse came down and kissed you on the mouth.”

Sweet Mother of Jesus.

Ultimately, Cooper cannot land on any one thing for very long, and it is just not very cinematically interesting to watch a film about a guy writing a personal solo record.

The resolutions at the end are brutally maudlin, shield your eyes syrupy.

“You need therapy man.”

“You did the best you could. You had your own battles to fight.”

This while Bruce, an adult who just finished a concert, is sitting on his father’s lap.

There is a positive. Jeremy Allen White is really quite good as Springsteen. One has to be really careful with such a mythic figure, and White does a very understated job while still capturing the persona. The script calls for him to be perpetually tortured but he pushes back with a refreshing natural humanity. This is no small thing given how humorless and dour the script portrays him.  

It’s not grotesquely terrible. But it’s pretty bad, hopelessly muddled and much duller and pedestrian than it had to be.

Jay Kelly – 5 stars

January 26, 2026
Comedy, Drama, 5 stars, 2025
Leave a comment

I was hoping this touching film would be properly rewarded at Oscar time, but it was ignored. The omission is even more galling given the Academy’s decision to nominate 10 films this year, including the dreck of F1 and Frankenstein. Getting an Oscar nomination is never a confirmation of merit. But with 10 nominees? Please. Noah Baumbach’s story of mega Hollywood star Jay Kelly (George Clooney) in midlife crisis is clever, entertaining, and tender, and Clooney gives his best performance since The Descendants. The picture deserved better.

After the death of a mentor, the man who “discovered” him, Clooney is approached by an old friend from acting school (Billy Crudup). In the hope of establishing more of a real connection with both his past and normality, Kelly invites Crudup for drinks to reminisce about the old times. Unfortunately, Clooney is a massive, unknowing target, and he becomes the repository for Crudup’s bitter regret, as well as a TikTok sensation when the two get into a fist fight in the parking lot. Clooney, however, is not deterred, and takes his retinue, led by longtime manager Adam Sandler and publicist Laura Dern, to chase his younger daughter through France on his way to a tribute ceremony in Italy. To be unencumbered is a freeing experience for Clooney, albeit one that is laughably abnormal. He is recognized, fawned over, and catered to by a staff of five, and soon, even he sees the absurdity in his efforts.

The trek is infused with real heart and pathos, and throughout, Clooney flashes back to his ascent to stardom. While he seeks to reconcile himself to failures with family and friends, including his father (an irascible Stacy Keach) and an older adult daughter, who is estranged and embittered and attributes all of her mental torments to her wanting father, ultimately, they are not there for his moment. Clooney is left to the expected support from his longtime manager and assistants, but Sandler himself is going through his own crisis, realizing the limits of friendship in his uneven relationship as the fixer of all things for megastars. Dern has had it, and bolts with a “save yourself, this man does not love us” warning for Sandler. Eventually, Clooney is alone.

There are wonderful exchanges, poignant moments but, thankfully, no real resolution. Baumbach studiously avoids the pat. This type of film would normally result in some kind of oath, or commitment, or suggest a rapprochement, a teachable moment. Here, it ends with Clooney at the festival given in his honor to credit him for his life‘s work on the screen, and his lesson is not quite clear. Yes, like all men and women, Clooney has made mistakes, but when you get to see the joy in the faces of the people who love his work, work that has accompanied and maybe even inspired many of the moments in their own lives, there is at least a rebuttal to the regret.

For some, this, I suspect, may be too much sentimental log rolling for Hollywood. I ate it up with a spoon and wanted more.

A lovely film, one of the best of the year, replete with fantastic, unheralded performances. Sandler is particularly good, vulnerable and piercing. Though he has impressed enough, however sporadically (Punch Drunk Love, The Meyerowitz Stories, Uncut Gems, Hustle) that I can no longer register surprise.

The Deep – 3.75 stars

January 26, 2026
3 stars, 70s, Crime/Mystery, Drama
Leave a comment

I signed up for Tubi because it has a lot of older movies that don’t get run on some of the other streaming services. This very competent Peter Yates (Bullitt) flick from 1977 beguiled me as a young teen for a couple of reasons. First, it was a Peter Benchley, post Jaws vehicle, with Robert Shaw as yet another boat captain, though this time his quarry is treasure, not a shark.

Second, well … I was 13 years old, Jacqueline Bisset, enough said.

My prurient childhood fascination aside, this is a pretty solid picture. Two tourists (Nick Nolte and Bisset) happen upon two collided shipwrecks while snorkeling. They cross a local drug lord (Louis Gossett) who also has an interest in what they’ve found (tens of thousands of vials of morphine from an old WWII medical ship) and must enlist a wily old diver and antiquity collector (Robert Shaw) to help them find treasure from the other vessel, deliver the drugs, and otherwise negotiate their way out of the mess.

Nolte exudes charisma as the thrill seeker captivated by the jewels of the sea. Shaw is Shaw, commanding and interesting even when he is probably phoning it in. Gossett is oozily charming as a lethal Haitian trafficker interested not in treasure, but in the drugs, until he learns of the treasure and gets greedy.

Bisset is every bit as alluring as she was when I was 13, and it turns out, now that I can focus, she can act. She is menaced throughout the picture and her terror is palpable.

The film gets balky when Gossett inexplicably harasses the trio even though they are working on his behalf, and the ending is the cheesiest finale in movie history. But otherwise, sexy and solid.

Nuremberg – 1 star

January 6, 2026
1 star, 2025, Drama, Historical
Leave a comment

If AI did not write this film, then we need more AI in film. 

I feel confident, however, AI had a hand in this empty, soulless picture, which feels like a Marvel flick but doesn’t even meet that low bar. The movie looks good, moves relatively well, and the actors are for the most part fine. But the script is predictable slop and the presentation so dumbed down, all things equal, it must have come from an algorithm. Writer/director James Vanderbilt has a few Screams and Spidermans under his belt, but, inexplicably, co-wrote Zodiac. So color me perplexed.

The picture also offers a glimpse as to what the future holds for historical films. Not a single bit of this recitation of the Nuremberg trial rings true. Sure, it technically comports with some of the facts, but the feel is all “now.” Viewers can glean just enough information to get a sense as to historical stakes (Nazis bad, Herman Göring bad but sneakily charming), but the picture never nears informative or elucidating.

The Nazis have lost the war, and in an over-long lead-up, we learn it is critical they be placed on trial through Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson (Michael Shannon), who spars over the wisdom and efficacy of such a trial with his wife via witty banter. When the trial becomes threatened, Jackson goes to the Vatican to enlist the Pope’s blessing, which he receives by blackmailing the Church as an arguable co-conspirator with Hitler, a complete fabrication. But a lie that serves an exchange in keeping with this simplistic rendition.

Pope cowed. Full steam ahead.

Russell Crowe plays Göring, the biggest fish in the dock. He must go to toe-to-toe with army psychologist Rami Malek, a cynical practitioner so full of himself his eyes bug out.

Okay. Cheap shot.

The men bond in verbal exchanges that are dull and unilluminating. One gets the sense Crowe got the role because he’s heavy and imposing, but he competently delivers the muck given him. As for Malek, his casting is a mystery. He should not receive any further film roles unless in Bohemian Rhapsody II or movies where he plays offbeat or weirdo. When Malek engages with Göring’s young daughter, as he passes letters between father and family, he almost takes on the mien of a molester. Peter Lorre as William Holden.

Malek gets deeper into Göring’s psyche while acting as Jackson’s mole and stoolie, which is incongruent, given all of Jackson’s testaments to fairness. Malek also intercedes on behalf of Göring‘s family when they are arrested. Depressed, he takes refuge in the arms of a buxom reporter and spills his guts. She prints a front page article betraying him and leading to his ouster from the Army.

Most of these plot points are either false or distorted. In reality, the Malek character was not cashiered; he was promoted and back in the U.S. by the time Göring took the witness stand.

In the film, Malek attends the trial and before so, he rushes in to see Jackson to offer his book of notes entitled, How to Get Herman Göring.

The big day arrives.

The Nazis and lawyers don their outfits for legal battle.

Göring does pushups in full regalia and walks out amongst cheers from other caged Nazis. Like in Gladiator.

Cue AI dialogue. 

“In seven hours, the whole world will be focused on this room. This is it. This is everything.”

“Let’s finish this war.”

“This is your day. You’re ready.”

“Bury him.”

“He’s got him.”

While watching this drivel with my family, we started a game. A character would say something. We would pause the movie and take a stab at what would be said in response. Our success rate was shockingly and depressingly high.

Example. The interpreter who works with Malek offers him a cigarette. When Malek notes the interpreter does not smoke, he explains he carries cigarettes to curry favor with officers. The interpreter then states wistfully that perhaps, at the end of the war, he will have a cigarette. Malek responds, “the war has ended.”  There is a silence.

The movie was paused. Bets were placed on whether the interpreter would have his cigarette at the moment of conviction of the Nazis.

EXT. PALACE OF JUSTICE – NIGHT

Howie stands outside. Silence save for the crickets. He pulls out the pack of cigarettes. Takes one out. Puts it in his mouth. Goes to light it. Hands shaking…From inside, we hear the gallows drop again. Another man down. Howie stands there. Pulls the cigarette from his mouth unlit and tosses it away.

There is a great deal of this hackneyed bullshit throughout the flick.

Thankfully, the dreck eventually ends. Malek, who writes a book about the experience, is portrayed as a haunted soul, desperately trying to warn the world that the good German is in all of us.  And then, he kills himself, just like Göring.

Sans the push-ups.

Streaming.

At Close Range – 2.5 stars

November 26, 2025
2 stars, 80s, Crime/Mystery, Drama
Leave a comment

James Foley’s (After Dark, My Sweet) film never really decides what it wants to be, a family drama or a crime picture. Foley eventually throws up his hands and cedes everything to the captivating Christopher Walken.

Not the worst of decisions. Walken plays a minor rural Pennsylvania crime kingpin. He skippers a crew that includes his two brothers and a few other hardened locals. They do heists, car thefts, drugs, and, if necessary, murder, a lethal but merry band of crooks.

Walken’s estranged son, Sean Penn, is a townie still living at home with his mother and grandmother. The women smoke, glare at the TV and otherwise exude the hopelessness of abandonment and near poverty. Penn, seeking something more, falls in at-first-sight love with Mary Stuart Masterson, who looks his way as he cruises at night around the town square. It is for her that he joins up with his father’s crew, to “get out while we’re young … ’cause tramps like us …” 

When Penn realizes murder is part of the gig, he splits from Walken, gets arrested working his own “baby” crew (which includes his brother Chris and a very young Crispin Glover and Kiefer Sutherland), and is incarcerated. There, the cops work on him to fink on his father.

Here, the film becomes ridiculous. Walken, paranoid Penn will flip on him, kills nearly every one of the kids working with Penn, even though Foley does not show them to be integral enough to his operation to be much of a threat. He also rapes Stuart Masterson, which makes even less sense if the plan is to bring Penn back into the fold. Penn comes out of jail, tries to make a run for it with his gal, fails, and in a rushed, abrupt ending, testifies against his father (for 30 seconds).

That’s that.  Lights up.

None of it makes much sense, but the thematic indecision is worsened by gross character underdevelopment. Walken is a charming sociopath, but how did he get here? No clue. We even have his ex-wife moping about, warily eying the establishment of a relationship between Walken and Penn. Foley, however, suffices to use her as a sad totem, so we don’t get any insight into Walken from her. Similarly, Penn needs a Daddy. Then, on a dime, he doesn’t. As he is near mute for most of the picture, we are left to guess as to what he has missed and the basis for his immediate and strong moral stand. Stuart Masterson is looking for something, but as she and Penn prepare to light out for the territories, leaving her house, she is clearly from money. So why is she hanging with these lowlifes? Unexplored.

The film has its strengths. Foley’s feel for rural Pennsylvania is strong. The fields and woods are spooky and forbidding at night. During the day, the crappy cars and houses, the dead-end bars, they all contribute to Penn’s lust for some way to get out. Foley shows just how big and cold this country can be, the kind of place that swallows you up and tells no tales or grinds you down little by little. The murder spree is indelible.

As noted, Walken is the picture, and in every scene, he is riveting. Penn, however, goes low to Walken’s high, and the effect is somnambulant. He’s in with Daddy, then immediately out, then annoyingly internal until his final nose-to-nose with Daddy, all to the conclusion that he needed a better Daddy.

The story is apparently based on a true criminal, Bruce Johnston Sr.

Another note – at the time of the picture, Penn was married to Madonna. She had a song for the picture which then became extended to the soundtrack. It is synthy, mid-80s fare, better suited to Vision Quest or even Risky Business. It has no business being near this gritty movie.  Sure, I joked about Springsteen above, but his music would have been pitch perfect to the film.

On Amazon Prime.

A House of Dynamite – 4.5 stars

October 31, 2025
2025, 4 stars, Action/Disaster, Drama, War
4 Comments

A timely watch, as I recently finished Nuclear War, A Scenario, an eye-opening, cautionary theoretical which envisions North Korea lobbing several nuclear warheads at the United States, thereby testing decades- old protocols from all major powers and igniting a nuclear Armageddon.

Here, Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty)  dramatizes the story via three timelines, all ending at the moment of decision as to response. Just as the attack is reported, after which we have 16 minutes before detonation, President Idris Elba, harkening back to George W. Bush reading to little kids when informed of the terror strikes of 9-11, is shooting hoops at a basketball camp run by Angel Reese.

And … there goes another minute.

Heart-pounding, riveting, and expertly paced, I was most reminded of Paul Greengrass’ United 93, a picture that elevated the professionals and non-professionals in a nightmare scenario, finding bravery, competence, and no matter the outcome of their particular hell that day, a rise to the occasion, with beautiful moments of humanity and humility. Bigelow’s characters are authentic, capable, and thus, all the more engrossing, and she does not neglect them in a film primarily about process and protocol. We learn but tidbits about who they are and what they do. With 16 minutes, there is not time enough, but Bigelow’s economical explication is superb.

On Netflix, one of the better flicks of the year.

*SPOILERS*

There is one major hole. In the book, the scenario had more than one missile coming and they were definitively from North Korea, which truly made the decision as to retaliate more salient. Were more coming? If so, now may well be the time to counterstrike to ensure they were interdicted, even if it meant destabilizing Russia and/or China and inviting a counterstrike based on their misapprehension.

Here, by using a single missile, and making the striking of Chicago a foregone conclusion, on reflection, the response, for which we are all obviously waiting on pins and needles, is not really in doubt.

You would wait on the single missile to hit, see if it detonated, and then wait to see if any more were launched. Nothing that you could do two minutes before the missile hit, you could not do after the missile hit. 

F1 – 1.5 stars

July 15, 2025
1 star, 2025, Action/Disaster, Drama
Leave a comment

A big, flashy, visually overwhelming nirvana for speed junkies. But when cars are not going vroom vroom around the cinematic coliseums of the Formula 1 race tour, the film is unoriginal, dull, sexless, and stupid. It is also badly acted (Brad Pitt excepted, as he doesn’t act so much as pose).

Pitt is a journeyman racer, much like Tom Cruise’s Cole Trickle in Days of Thunder, though Cruise was silly as an old “I can race anything with wheels” hand given his youth in that picture. Pitt is more plausible as a man who can race anything, be it in NASCAR, Lemans, Formula One, Baja, or, the Sahara, on a camel. But he’s still silly as a a man looking for something transcendent and elusive, like Kwai Chang Caine in Kung Fu. When Pitt’s old chum Javier Bardem arrives to offer him a spot on his flailing Formula One team, Pitt can’t say no even if it interrupts his quest.

The old timer Pitt joins the team and runs into a hotshot younger driver teammate (Damson Idris). Idris is resistant to the grizzled interloper. He makes his mark on social media more than on the track.

Pitt teaches him maturity, discipline and self-respect.

Pitt also runs into team car design guru Kerry Condon.

Condon teaches Pitt how to be a good teammate.

They also sleep together.

Pitt has not had very good on-screen chemistry with women since Thelma and Louise. The trend continues Here, he is a stoic, and in return, Condon musters all the heat of a flagging sterno cup. With a strongly established “older brother, younger sister” vibe, they have what can only be envisioned as some of the worst sex in history.

Just when you are nodding off, another race will start. You will perk up, because the spectacle is kinetic and exciting. But you can only watch so much racing. These people will have to start talking again, and when they do, it is drivel.

The plot then begins to echo that of a much better racing film – Talladega Nights. There is corporate skullduggery in the form of Tobias Menzies, who wants control of the entire racing team and schemes to depose and supplant Bardem. Like Ricky Bobby, Pitt must not enter the final race for Menzies’ machinations to succeed.

Pitt, of course, enters the final race and saves the day.

In a withering coup de grace, Pitt texts Menzies an emoji.

It is the finger.

Now, we have just spent an entire film trying to establish that Pitt is a simple, grounded, live-in-your camper, shut-out all of the noise enigma.

Yet, in declaration of his own worth and independence, he texts an emoji.

Yeesh.

The movie is terrible when characters talk, impressive when wheels are turning, a bit of a conundrum, because I can’t imagine it would transfer as well at home.

Use your best judgment. Knowing what I know now, I believe mine would have been to forgo the film and watch the vastly superior Rush.