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F This Movie! — TV & Film
F This Movie!

Movie love for movie lovers.

Latest Episodes:

Highs & Lows: David Gordon Green Apr 14, 2025
by Patrick BromleyA truly wild career.
What a fascinating filmography David Gordon Green has. The Arkansas-born writer/director has had several major movements to his career: beginning as one of the most personal and promising indie filmmakers of his generation -- at one point he seemed the heir apparent to Terrence Malick -- Green attempted to bring his sensibilities to mainstream comedies in the late 2000s before abandoning those unique touches completely for traditional studio fare and then pivoting again to horror in 2018. He hasn't given up making smaller, more personal films, taking a kind of "one for you, one for me" approach with titles like Prince Avalanche and Manglehorn sprinkled throughout his resume, but nothing about the directions his career has taken could have been predicted from his early work. Here are some of the high and low points of David Gordon Green's incredibly varied filmography.
Low: The Sitter (2011)David Gordon Green's transition to bigger-budget studio comedies was a mixed bag, with 2011's The Sitter the weakest among them. Jonah Hill takes his leading man status out for a test drive as a minor variation on his Superbad character, a college dropout tasked with babysitting a group of kids; hijinks of increasingly questionable legality ensue. If this sounds like the R-rated Adventures in Babysitting, that's a bingo. I don't have a huge problem with that -- even Green's better comedies were made up mostly of nostalgic influences -- but none of this is funny or inspired. It goes through the dirty motions of all the post-Apatow studio comedies, overestimating our affection for kids swearing and/or Jonah Hill swearing at kids or putting them in danger. Bad behavior is not, in and of itself, funny.
High: Pineapple Express (2008)Ha ha. Get it? High? Green's pivot to comedy originally seemed revelatory and exciting, mostly because he hadn't done anything like it to that point. Seth Rogen and a pre-cancellation James Franco at his most affable star as a two stoner buds (Get it? Buds?) who have to go into hiding when they witness a murder. What seems on the surface to be an excuse for a lot of weed humor -- never my favorite strain of comedy -- becomes, by the end, an excuse for David Gordon Green to riff on the violent buddy action movies of the 1980s (complete with title song performed by Huey Lewis and the News!). This is the best of his studio comedies because is allows him to translate Rogen and Evan Goldberg's script while retaining his oddball own sensibilities. Green also deserves credit for casting his regular collaborator Danny McBride in a major role, as he proves to be the movie's secret weapon.
Low: Halloween Kills (2021)The middle chapter in DGG's new trilogy of Halloween movies is easily the weakest of the three and a truly bad horror film. Green (along with co-writers Scott Teems and Danny McBride) can't totally be blamed; what was originally intended to be two movies got stretched into a trilogy Hobbit-style after the success of Halloween (2018), meaning Kills exists mostly as placeholding filler. As a slasher with the highest body count of the franchise, it's watchable. It is, however, a deeply stupid and at times profoundly shitty movie that does dirty by nearly every single one of its characters and chooses mean-spiritedness over developing a compelling story, a consistent tone, or point of view. If not for another movie further down this list, I would make a case for this as David Gordon Green's worst movie.
High: Halloween Ends (2022)I know this will be a polarizing choice. That's because this is a polarizing movie, one that hardly anyone who had seen the previous two Halloween entries could have seen coming. Michael Meyers and Laurie Strode take a backseat to newcomer Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), a nice but nerdy guy who becomes the town pariah after tragedy strikes and eventually turns toward the dark side. Yes, DGG is basically remaking Christine but with Michael Myers instead of a possessed car, and the results are infinitely more interesting than the two Halloween movies that preceded this one. If anything, it's the need to tie everything back to Myers and Laurie Strode that hobbles this one creatively, offering a showdown that disappointed diehard fans because Green barely seems to care about paying it off. He seems energized by the Corey stuff, and it injects the third entry with the kind of offbeat eccentricity that characterized his early work. This was a real grower for me.
Low: Our Brand is Crisis (2015)This isn't a bad movie, just one that doesn't exist. David Gordon Green is too idiosyncratic a filmmaker to make a movie that doesn't exist. A narrative feature based on Rachel Boynton's 2005 documentary of the same name, Our Brand is Crisis casts Sandra Bullock as a political consultant hired aboard a team of strategists to elect a Bolivian politician (Joaquim de Almeida) president of his home country. This movie's biggest crime is that it feels in almost every way like traditional studio fare, as if Green was using it as an audition for more mainstream work. All of his interesting edges are sanded off and the result feels like would-be awards bait with just the right amounts of indie cynicism and Hollywood redemption. Again, it's not all that bad, but it's generically for-hire and lacks the personality of even his lesser movies.
High: Joe (2013)Going back to his indie roots following his string of studio comedies, David Gordon Green helped rescue Nicolas Cage from the DTV wilderness (for a time, anyway) and gave the actor one of his best post-Oscar roles to date. He plays the titular character, the mysterious head of a crew responsible for poisoning trees in Texas, who strikes up a friendship with a young man working for him (Tye Sheridan). When Joe sees the young man being abused by his deadbeat father, he steps in and their intertwined fates are more or less sealed. Joe proved to be a return to form for Green, getting him back to the kind of small-scale and offbeat character study that made his name in the first place. Despite a sense of inevitability that hangs over the proceedings, Joe is hard to pin down, hard to predict. It's among Green's best movies.
Low: The Exorcist: Believer (2023)Green's worst movie, on the other hand, finds him re-teaming with the folks at Blumhouse and trying to have the same success with a legacy sequel to The Exorcist that he had with Halloween. The first of a planned trilogy of new Exorcist movies for Blumhouse, Believer introduces new characters experiencing demonic possession while also tying in both Ellen Burstyn and, yes, even (spoilers) Linda Blair, a formula that had sort of worked for him previously but which proves disastrous here. Even at their worst, his Halloween films were watchably stupid and kinetic when it came to staging the violence. DGG doesn't seem to be the least bit interested in exorcisms or The Exorcist and the whole thing is a total slog, poorly written and indifferently directed with only a good performance by Leslie Odom Jr. to keep it afloat. The finished film was such a misfire and the word of mouth so toxic that Green walked away (or was asked to walk away) from the two sequels and the reins of the franchise were handed over to Mike Flanagan, for whom this sort of thing seems a better fit.
High: All the Real Girls (2003)After more than two decades of making movies, I still think this is David Gordon Green's best movie. The story of a romance between an experienced small-town Southerner (Paul Schneider) and his best friend's younger sister (Zooey Deschanel), All the Real Girls draws on the same lyrical sense of place and time that defined George Washington but adds stronger characterization and more of a narrative spine...sort of. Narrative isn't really at the forefront of this one, which is much more about how things feel than about what happens. Green explores first love, heartbreak, bruised ego, and the way that some men can't get out of their own way (this would pair well with Chasing Amy for reasons) when they feel like they've been wronged. It's beautiful and about as honest as something like Exorcist: Believer is dishonest. The movie also deserves credit for giving early roles to Schneider, Shea Whigham, Danny McBride (in his acting debut), and Deschanel giving her first movie star turn. All the Real Girls promised that David Gordon Green was supposed to be one of the greats.

Highs & Lows: David Gordon Green Apr 14, 2025
by Patrick BromleyA truly wild career.
What a fascinating filmography David Gordon Green has. The Arkansas-born writer/director has had several major movements to his career: beginning as one of the most personal and promising indie filmmakers of his generation -- at one point he seemed the heir apparent to Terrence Malick -- Green attempted to bring his sensibilities to mainstream comedies in the late 2000s before abandoning those unique touches completely for traditional studio fare and then pivoting again to horror in 2018. He hasn't given up making smaller, more personal films, taking a kind of "one for you, one for me" approach with titles like Prince Avalanche and Manglehorn sprinkled throughout his resume, but nothing about the directions his career has taken could have been predicted from his early work. Here are some of the high and low points of David Gordon Green's incredibly varied filmography.
Low: The Sitter (2011)David Gordon Green's transition to bigger-budget studio comedies was a mixed bag, with 2011's The Sitter the weakest among them. Jonah Hill takes his leading man status out for a test drive as a minor variation on his Superbad character, a college dropout tasked with babysitting a group of kids; hijinks of increasingly questionable legality ensue. If this sounds like the R-rated Adventures in Babysitting, that's a bingo. I don't have a huge problem with that -- even Green's better comedies were made up mostly of nostalgic influences -- but none of this is funny or inspired. It goes through the dirty motions of all the post-Apatow studio comedies, overestimating our affection for kids swearing and/or Jonah Hill swearing at kids or putting them in danger. Bad behavior is not, in and of itself, funny.
High: Pineapple Express (2008)Ha ha. Get it? High? Green's pivot to comedy originally seemed revelatory and exciting, mostly because he hadn't done anything like it to that point. Seth Rogen and a pre-cancellation James Franco at his most affable star as a two stoner buds (Get it? Buds?) who have to go into hiding when they witness a murder. What seems on the surface to be an excuse for a lot of weed humor -- never my favorite strain of comedy -- becomes, by the end, an excuse for David Gordon Green to riff on the violent buddy action movies of the 1980s (complete with title song performed by Huey Lewis and the News!). This is the best of his studio comedies because is allows him to translate Rogen and Evan Goldberg's script while retaining his oddball own sensibilities. Green also deserves credit for casting his regular collaborator Danny McBride in a major role, as he proves to be the movie's secret weapon.
Low: Halloween Kills (2021)The middle chapter in DGG's new trilogy of Halloween movies is easily the weakest of the three and a truly bad horror film. Green (along with co-writers Scott Teems and Danny McBride) can't totally be blamed; what was originally intended to be two movies got stretched into a trilogy Hobbit-style after the success of Halloween (2018), meaning Kills exists mostly as placeholding filler. As a slasher with the highest body count of the franchise, it's watchable. It is, however, a deeply stupid and at times profoundly shitty movie that does dirty by nearly every single one of its characters and chooses mean-spiritedness over developing a compelling story, a consistent tone, or point of view. If not for another movie further down this list, I would make a case for this as David Gordon Green's worst movie.
High: Halloween Ends (2022)I know this will be a polarizing choice. That's because this is a polarizing movie, one that hardly anyone who had seen the previous two Halloween entries could have seen coming. Michael Meyers and Laurie Strode take a backseat to newcomer Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), a nice but nerdy guy who becomes the town pariah after tragedy strikes and eventually turns toward the dark side. Yes, DGG is basically remaking Christine but with Michael Myers instead of a possessed car, and the results are infinitely more interesting than the two Halloween movies that preceded this one. If anything, it's the need to tie everything back to Myers and Laurie Strode that hobbles this one creatively, offering a showdown that disappointed diehard fans because Green barely seems to care about paying it off. He seems energized by the Corey stuff, and it injects the third entry with the kind of offbeat eccentricity that characterized his early work. This was a real grower for me.
Low: Our Brand is Crisis (2015)This isn't a bad movie, just one that doesn't exist. David Gordon Green is too idiosyncratic a filmmaker to make a movie that doesn't exist. A narrative feature based on Rachel Boynton's 2005 documentary of the same name, Our Brand is Crisis casts Sandra Bullock as a political consultant hired aboard a team of strategists to elect a Bolivian politician (Joaquim de Almeida) president of his home country. This movie's biggest crime is that it feels in almost every way like traditional studio fare, as if Green was using it as an audition for more mainstream work. All of his interesting edges are sanded off and the result feels like would-be awards bait with just the right amounts of indie cynicism and Hollywood redemption. Again, it's not all that bad, but it's generically for-hire and lacks the personality of even his lesser movies.
High: Joe (2013)Going back to his indie roots following his string of studio comedies, David Gordon Green helped rescue Nicolas Cage from the DTV wilderness (for a time, anyway) and gave the actor one of his best post-Oscar roles to date. He plays the titular character, the mysterious head of a crew responsible for poisoning trees in Texas, who strikes up a friendship with a young man working for him (Tye Sheridan). When Joe sees the young man being abused by his deadbeat father, he steps in and their intertwined fates are more or less sealed. Joe proved to be a return to form for Green, getting him back to the kind of small-scale and offbeat character study that made his name in the first place. Despite a sense of inevitability that hangs over the proceedings, Joe is hard to pin down, hard to predict. It's among Green's best movies.
Low: The Exorcist: Believer (2023)Green's worst movie, on the other hand, finds him re-teaming with the folks at Blumhouse and trying to have the same success with a legacy sequel to The Exorcist that he had with Halloween. The first of a planned trilogy of new Exorcist movies for Blumhouse, Believer introduces new characters experiencing demonic possession while also tying in both Ellen Burstyn and, yes, even (spoilers) Linda Blair, a formula that had sort of worked for him previously but which proves disastrous here. Even at their worst, his Halloween films were watchably stupid and kinetic when it came to staging the violence. DGG doesn't seem to be the least bit interested in exorcisms or The Exorcist and the whole thing is a total slog, poorly written and indifferently directed with only a good performance by Leslie Odom Jr. to keep it afloat. The finished film was such a misfire and the word of mouth so toxic that Green walked away (or was asked to walk away) from the two sequels and the reins of the franchise were handed over to Mike Flanagan, for whom this sort of thing seems a better fit.
High: All the Real Girls (2003)After more than two decades of making movies, I still think this is David Gordon Green's best movie. The story of a romance between an experienced small-town Southerner (Paul Schneider) and his best friend's younger sister (Zooey Deschanel), All the Real Girls draws on the same lyrical sense of place and time that defined George Washington but adds stronger characterization and more of a narrative spine...sort of. Narrative isn't really at the forefront of this one, which is much more about how things feel than about what happens. Green explores first love, heartbreak, bruised ego, and the way that some men can't get out of their own way (this would pair well with Chasing Amy for reasons) when they feel like they've been wronged. It's beautiful and about as honest as something like Exorcist: Believer is dishonest. The movie also deserves credit for giving early roles to Schneider, Shea Whigham, Danny McBride (in his acting debut), and Deschanel giving her first movie star turn. All the Real Girls promised that David Gordon Green was supposed to be one of the greats.

Weekend Open Thread Apr 12, 2025

Reviews: DROP and THE UNINVITED Apr 11, 2025
by Rob DiCristino
Can’t stop. Won’t stop. Movies!
Drop (Dir. Christopher Landon)
If the Blumhouse school of horror has any principal architects, one of them has to be Christopher Landon, whose multi-hyphenate work on the Paranormal Activity and Happy Death Day franchises — coupled with the charming Freaky and this year’s Heart Eyes — has come to exemplify the look and feel of modern mainstream horror. Rather than churning out slavish love letters to the splatter-core maestros of the past, Landon seems genuinely interested in crafting genre thrillers for audiences who spend as much time on Tik Tok as they do on Scream Factory box sets. That’s certainly no sleight against Landon, who understands that every new generation of genre fans deserves their own Halloweens and Texas Chainsaws. His latest is Drop, a high-concept but surprisingly low-fi thriller that combines iPhone aesthetics with Hitchcockian plotting for a final product that focuses so acutely on the strength of its atmosphere and performances that you won’t notice until after the credits roll that not one second of it makes a single, solitary lick of sense.Still reeling from the dissolution of her abusive marriage, Violet (The White Lotus’ Meghann Fahy) has decided to take a risk on handsome photographer Henry (Brandon Sklenar, a charming screen presence who nonetheless recalls a Dollar Tree Josh Hartnett). Their first date is set for an upscale Chicago restaurant, and while Henry’s flags are so green they border on incriminating, Violet can’t focus on anything but her son, Toby (Jacob Robinson), whom she’s left at home for the first time since his father’s death. The distractions get worse when she begins receiving mysterious AirDrops — sorry, “DigiDrops” — from an unknown sender nearby. What begin as innocuous memes quickly become threats against Toby and his aunt (Violett Beane), threats demanding that Violet keep her mouth shut and follow the sender’s orders. Now, she must suss out their identity before it’s too late: Is it the boozy piano player (Ed Weeks)? The fifty-something on his own disastrous first date (Reed Strickland)? Someone else? One way or another, the clock is ticking.Writers Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach, who also penned Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare, find a satisfying enough balance between familiar genre elements and inventive inversions to make the plot against Violet — one that is, again, thoroughly incoherent once revealed — feel engrossing and immediate as you’re watching it unfold. Aided by genre mainstay Bear McCreary’s bawdy score and smart work by editor Ben Baudhin, Landon presents a stylish palette that reaches for Fincher and De Palma without ever overstepping its bounds. The director is clearly learning valuable lessons with each new feature, here trusting his tiny cast — most of all Fahy, who shines — to convey with their performances what less-confident directors would jury-rig with dialogue and editing. If anything, the time spent establishing such a precise narrative landscape in the restaurant actually robs Drop of some steam when it inevitably shifts away, but not even a forgettable final act can discount the work of a filmmaker who may soon be considered among the best in his class.
Drop hits U.S. theaters on Friday, April 11th.
The Uninvited (Dir. Nadia Conners)There’s something about a fancy party that lends itself to traditional narrative structure: We start with the hosts, establish their dynamics and set some stakes, and then gradually introduce the guests as complications for them to work through. There’s even an ebb and flow to those complications that recall the “rising action” graphics in old Syd Field screenwriting books. Think of the last party you went to — I mean, it’s hard for me because I’ve gone to so many because I am very cool and popular — and consider how the energy shifts every few hours: First is the mix of nerves and excitement as the guests shake off their pre-party selves. Next — usually after the first round or two of libations — comes The Grouping, the part where everyone picks the room or circle they’ll occupy for the night. Third is the sweet spot, the part where everyone’s just drunk enough to be in a good mood but not so much so that they start making mistakes. If you’re lucky, your party climaxes in this spot and shifts into a hazy denouement of decompression and kissing.Rose (Elizabeth Reaser) is not so lucky in The Uninvited, the narrative debut of documentarian Nadia Conners. Her fancy Hollywood Hills party is part of a larger scheme by her talent agent husband (Conners’ real-life spouse Walton Goggins as Sammy) to honor his biggest client (Rufus Sewell as Gerald) and draw interest in what he hopes will be a profitable new independent venture. Their marriage is already fraying — Rose gave up a fulfilling career on the stage to raise their young son (Roland Rubio) and hasn’t forgiven Sammy or, we suspect, herself — and the pressures of throwing a shindig of this size are exacerbated by the unexpected arrival of Helen (Louis Smith), an elderly woman who confuses their mansion for her own home. As Rose searches for a living relative to retrieve Helen, Sammy schmoozes with Hollywood A-listers like Delia (Eva De Dominici) — basically Rose minus twenty years — and Lucien (Pedro Pascal), a charming lush whose on-and-off-stage romance with Rose complicates an already-stressful situation even more.It’s no surprise that Rose’s roots are in the theater, as the small-scale, dialogue-heavy Uninvited plays like a stage production brought to the screen. Free of the slapstick setpieces that are usually injected into these single-location indies for no other reason than to make their trailers more exciting, the film relies instead on a pair of thoughtful and incisive performances from veterans Reaser and Goggins, both of whom give unexpected texture to archetypes we’ve seen countless times before. Sammy is the callow, cocaine-addled star-fucker who’s long-since sold out to the highest bidder, sure, but Goggins gives him a thick coating of insecurity that leads us to believe there’s still some hope for his soul. Reaser is the clear author avatar, though, a forty-something actress resigned to domesticity once Hollywood no longer found her sufficiently fuckable. As Helen slowly reveals a backstory not dissimilar to her own, Rose comes to terms with that fate, giving The Uninvited a poignancy that other Hollywood satires fail to conjure.
The Uninvited hits limited U.S. theaters on Friday, April 11th.

Reviews: DROP and THE UNINVITED Apr 11, 2025
by Rob DiCristino
Can’t stop. Won’t stop. Movies!
Drop (Dir. Christopher Landon)
If the Blumhouse school of horror has any principal architects, one of them has to be Christopher Landon, whose multi-hyphenate work on the Paranormal Activity and Happy Death Day franchises — coupled with the charming Freaky and this year’s Heart Eyes — has come to exemplify the look and feel of modern mainstream horror. Rather than churning out slavish love letters to the splatter-core maestros of the past, Landon seems genuinely interested in crafting genre thrillers for audiences who spend as much time on Tik Tok as they do on Scream Factory box sets. That’s certainly no sleight against Landon, who understands that every new generation of genre fans deserves their own Halloweens and Texas Chainsaws. His latest is Drop, a high-concept but surprisingly low-fi thriller that combines iPhone aesthetics with Hitchcockian plotting for a final product that focuses so acutely on the strength of its atmosphere and performances that you won’t notice until after the credits roll that not one second of it makes a single, solitary lick of sense.Still reeling from the dissolution of her abusive marriage, Violet (The White Lotus’ Meghann Fahy) has decided to take a risk on handsome photographer Henry (Brandon Sklenar, a charming screen presence who nonetheless recalls a Dollar Tree Josh Hartnett). Their first date is set for an upscale Chicago restaurant, and while Henry’s flags are so green they border on incriminating, Violet can’t focus on anything but her son, Toby (Jacob Robinson), whom she’s left at home for the first time since his father’s death. The distractions get worse when she begins receiving mysterious AirDrops — sorry, “DigiDrops” — from an unknown sender nearby. What begin as innocuous memes quickly become threats against Toby and his aunt (Violett Beane), threats demanding that Violet keep her mouth shut and follow the sender’s orders. Now, she must suss out their identity before it’s too late: Is it the boozy piano player (Ed Weeks)? The fifty-something on his own disastrous first date (Reed Strickland)? Someone else? One way or another, the clock is ticking.Writers Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach, who also penned Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare, find a satisfying enough balance between familiar genre elements and inventive inversions to make the plot against Violet — one that is, again, thoroughly incoherent once revealed — feel engrossing and immediate as you’re watching it unfold. Aided by genre mainstay Bear McCreary’s bawdy score and smart work by editor Ben Baudhin, Landon presents a stylish palette that reaches for Fincher and De Palma without ever overstepping its bounds. The director is clearly learning valuable lessons with each new feature, here trusting his tiny cast — most of all Fahy, who shines — to convey with their performances what less-confident directors would jury-rig with dialogue and editing. If anything, the time spent establishing such a precise narrative landscape in the restaurant actually robs Drop of some steam when it inevitably shifts away, but not even a forgettable final act can discount the work of a filmmaker who may soon be considered among the best in his class.
Drop hits U.S. theaters on Friday, April 11th.
The Uninvited (Dir. Nadia Conners)There’s something about a fancy party that lends itself to traditional narrative structure: We start with the hosts, establish their dynamics and set some stakes, and then gradually introduce the guests as complications for them to work through. There’s even an ebb and flow to those complications that recall the “rising action” graphics in old Syd Field screenwriting books. Think of the last party you went to — I mean, it’s hard for me because I’ve gone to so many because I am very cool and popular — and consider how the energy shifts every few hours: First is the mix of nerves and excitement as the guests shake off their pre-party selves. Next — usually after the first round or two of libations — comes The Grouping, the part where everyone picks the room or circle they’ll occupy for the night. Third is the sweet spot, the part where everyone’s just drunk enough to be in a good mood but not so much so that they start making mistakes. If you’re lucky, your party climaxes in this spot and shifts into a hazy denouement of decompression and kissing.Rose (Elizabeth Reaser) is not so lucky in The Uninvited, the narrative debut of documentarian Nadia Conners. Her fancy Hollywood Hills party is part of a larger scheme by her talent agent husband (Conners’ real-life spouse Walton Goggins as Sammy) to honor his biggest client (Rufus Sewell as Gerald) and draw interest in what he hopes will be a profitable new independent venture. Their marriage is already fraying — Rose gave up a fulfilling career on the stage to raise their young son (Roland Rubio) and hasn’t forgiven Sammy or, we suspect, herself — and the pressures of throwing a shindig of this size are exacerbated by the unexpected arrival of Helen (Louis Smith), an elderly woman who confuses their mansion for her own home. As Rose searches for a living relative to retrieve Helen, Sammy schmoozes with Hollywood A-listers like Delia (Eva De Dominici) — basically Rose minus twenty years — and Lucien (Pedro Pascal), a charming lush whose on-and-off-stage romance with Rose complicates an already-stressful situation even more.It’s no surprise that Rose’s roots are in the theater, as the small-scale, dialogue-heavy Uninvited plays like a stage production brought to the screen. Free of the slapstick setpieces that are usually injected into these single-location indies for no other reason than to make their trailers more exciting, the film relies instead on a pair of thoughtful and incisive performances from veterans Reaser and Goggins, both of whom give unexpected texture to archetypes we’ve seen countless times before. Sammy is the callow, cocaine-addled star-fucker who’s long-since sold out to the highest bidder, sure, but Goggins gives him a thick coating of insecurity that leads us to believe there’s still some hope for his soul. Reaser is the clear author avatar, though, a forty-something actress resigned to domesticity once Hollywood no longer found her sufficiently fuckable. As Helen slowly reveals a backstory not dissimilar to her own, Rose comes to terms with that fate, giving The Uninvited a poignancy that other Hollywood satires fail to conjure.
The Uninvited hits limited U.S. theaters on Friday, April 11th.

Reserved Seating: JOHNNY GUITAR Apr 10, 2025
The review duo who talk turkey about Vienna...and Johnny Guitar...and Turkey!

FTM 767: VAL KILMER TRIBUTE Apr 09, 2025
Patrick and JB pay their respects to one of the greats with six underrated movies to check out.
Download this episode here.
Subscribe to F This Movie! on Apple Podcasts.
Also discussed this episode: Black Bag (2025), Y2K (2024), Bloody Axe Wound (2024), The Last Tycoon (1976), Top Secret! (1984)

Reviews: SACRAMENTO & EEPHUS Apr 08, 2025
by Rob DiCristino

More movies!
Sacramento (Dir. Michael Angarano)
Remember the last scene of Superbad? Michael Cera and Jonah Hill running into Emma Stone and Martha Macisaac at the mall? Remember how Stone has that big bruise on her face and everyone babbles about getting new comforters before pairing off? Great scene. My favorite bit comes right at the end, when Cera and Hill realize that they’re about to go their separate ways for a while and that their codependent adolescence is finally coming to a close: “Well, Give me a call, I guess.” “I have your information.” So good. That’s the crux of the whole movie, really, a disarmingly profound statement about a young male friendship that’s being forced to mature and evolve into something sturdier and more permanent, something governed less by whimsy and ego and more by empathy and vulnerability. Superbad is a stone-cold classic, and while raunchy comedies like Booksmart and Bottoms have carried its foul-mouthed torch over the last decade-plus, it wasn’t until I saw Cera in Michael Angarano’s Sacramento that I finally felt like I was seeing its true spiritual sequel.Now approaching forty, Cera plays Glenn, an expectant dad whose chronic anxiety is making life very difficult for his pregnant wife, Rosie (Kristen Stewart, all belly and bangs). Rosie is already Going Through It as trimester three comes in for a landing, and if Glenn’s going to keep snapping dinner plates in half just because the new crib creaks a bit, then she’s going to find herself taking care of two babies before very long. Luckily, Glenn’s best friend is Ricky (Michael Angarano, who also co-writes and directs), a poster child for arrested development whose refusal to cope with his father’s death drives him to abduct Glenn for an impromptu road trip to Sacramento. Rosie’s all too happy to be free of Glenn for the weekend — Stewart’s whispered commiseration with her unborn child would make a great movie on its own — but when Ricky reveals that they’re actually going to Sacramento to see Tallie (Angarano’s real-life spouse, Maya Erskine) and the child they conceived during a fling, both men realize that they can’t keep their feelings bottled-up forever.At a breezy eighty-nine minutes with credits, Sacramento isn’t quite a complex masterwork about the destructive frailty of masculinity. It’s the kind of navel-gazing festival fare that critics tend to refer to as “slight” or “a trifle.” But that doesn’t make Angarano and Cera’s work here any less affecting, especially as their dynamic evolves from standard “odd couple on a road trip” stuff through some more serious twists that might be better left unspoiled. Angarano resists overplaying his hand in his sophomore feature effort, avoiding the pitfalls of ego that force audiences to spend too much time with protagonists who aren’t as charming as their writer/director/actor thinks they are — Looking at you, Zach Braff and Joseph Gordon-Levitt — and keeping Rickey flittering around the margins while Glenn takes the lion’s share of the character development. We’ve seen Cera play this nervous wreck a thousand times, of course, but he seems to be counting on that: It’s as if he’s talking directly to the Superbad crowd, giving us permission to take those same uncertain steps into middle age. And hell, if he can do it, then so can we.
Sacramento hits U.S. theaters on Friday, April 11th.
Eephus (Dir. Carson Lund)Earlier this week, I was sitting in the pickup line at my son’s elementary school thinking about all the ways that his first baseball practice — which was scheduled for later that afternoon — was going to mess with our carefully-choreographed school night routine: We’d have to rush through his homework. Dinner would be later than usual. “Did I put those history flash cards in his folder? Wait, does he even have clean baseball pants? I’m so tired.” And I was. But then we got to the field, had the boys warm up, and started shagging fly balls. Then we did some baserunning. Then we worked on an infield drill: We lined the boys up at shortstop and, one at a time, a coach would feed them a grounder that they’d scoop up and throw to me at first. Some of the boys could field, others could throw. Only some could do both. I made a list in my head as I caught each ball, and after a few minutes it occurred to me that I wasn’t thinking about the flash cards or the laundry or what was in the fridge for dinner anymore. I was only thinking one thing: “I fucking love baseball.”One can only imagine that co-writer/director Carson Lund and the rest of the Eephus folks feel the same way. Playing out over a lazy afternoon at Soldier’s Field, a New England baseball park that has seen better days, Eephus is the story of two ‘90s rec league teams facing off one last time before that park is paved over to make way for a new school. None of these guys has their fastball anymore; Most of them never had one to begin with, if we’re being honest. There are no Shohei Ohtanis on this field. No Bryce Harpers. These are accountants and truck drivers and mechanics and college students. Most are middle-aged. They’re paunchy and bow-legged and a little buzzed on dugout beers. But that’s fine, because not one of them is here to get drafted. Why, then? Why blow an entire Saturday on a game that doesn’t count, for which they’re not being paid, and that no one will watch? Well, it’s different for each of them: For some, it relieves the stress of the work week. For others, it recaptures the glory days of their youth. For the rest, it’s simply a way to mark the long, slow passage of time.Named for the eephus pitch, a high-arching, low-velocity curve meant to throw off a hitter’s timing, Eephus is a hangout movie made for baseball lovers, nine innings of America’s Pastime played at an eephus pace. What does that mean? Slow! Baseball is slow! It’s deliberate! It’s even a little tedious! I admit it! And while most great baseball movies try to cut through that tedium with narratives built around the romance of the perfect game, the glory of the home run, or the sabermetric wizardry of a championship team, Eephus celebrates the thousand-yard stare of a bored left fielder, the aching knees of an overweight catcher, and the petty argumentation of a contested strike zone. It celebrates the old-timer keeping a meticulous box score behind the plate (Cliff Blake) and the poetic musings of the snack cart guy (Red Sox broadcasting legend Joe Castiglione). On and off the field, every one of them rages against the dying of the light — literally and figuratively — trying to make every pitch, every at-bat, and every inning last forever. For that and so much more, Eephus earns a place among the best baseball movies of all time.
Eephus comes to VOD on Tuesday, April 15th.

Reviews: SACRAMENTO & EEPHUS Apr 08, 2025
by Rob DiCristino

More movies!
Sacramento (Dir. Michael Angarano)
Remember the last scene of Superbad? Michael Cera and Jonah Hill running into Emma Stone and Martha Macisaac at the mall? Remember how Stone has that big bruise on her face and everyone babbles about getting new comforters before pairing off? Great scene. My favorite bit comes right at the end, when Cera and Hill realize that they’re about to go their separate ways for a while and that their codependent adolescence is finally coming to a close: “Well, Give me a call, I guess.” “I have your information.” So good. That’s the crux of the whole movie, really, a disarmingly profound statement about a young male friendship that’s being forced to mature and evolve into something sturdier and more permanent, something governed less by whimsy and ego and more by empathy and vulnerability. Superbad is a stone-cold classic, and while raunchy comedies like Booksmart and Bottoms have carried its foul-mouthed torch over the last decade-plus, it wasn’t until I saw Cera in Michael Angarano’s Sacramento that I finally felt like I was seeing its true spiritual sequel.Now approaching forty, Cera plays Glenn, an expectant dad whose chronic anxiety is making life very difficult for his pregnant wife, Rosie (Kristen Stewart, all belly and bangs). Rosie is already Going Through It as trimester three comes in for a landing, and if Glenn’s going to keep snapping dinner plates in half just because the new crib creaks a bit, then she’s going to find herself taking care of two babies before very long. Luckily, Glenn’s best friend is Ricky (Michael Angarano, who also co-writes and directs), a poster child for arrested development whose refusal to cope with his father’s death drives him to abduct Glenn for an impromptu road trip to Sacramento. Rosie’s all too happy to be free of Glenn for the weekend — Stewart’s whispered commiseration with her unborn child would make a great movie on its own — but when Ricky reveals that they’re actually going to Sacramento to see Tallie (Angarano’s real-life spouse, Maya Erskine) and the child they conceived during a fling, both men realize that they can’t keep their feelings bottled-up forever.At a breezy eighty-nine minutes with credits, Sacramento isn’t quite a complex masterwork about the destructive frailty of masculinity. It’s the kind of navel-gazing festival fare that critics tend to refer to as “slight” or “a trifle.” But that doesn’t make Angarano and Cera’s work here any less affecting, especially as their dynamic evolves from standard “odd couple on a road trip” stuff through some more serious twists that might be better left unspoiled. Angarano resists overplaying his hand in his sophomore feature effort, avoiding the pitfalls of ego that force audiences to spend too much time with protagonists who aren’t as charming as their writer/director/actor thinks they are — Looking at you, Zach Braff and Joseph Gordon-Levitt — and keeping Rickey flittering around the margins while Glenn takes the lion’s share of the character development. We’ve seen Cera play this nervous wreck a thousand times, of course, but he seems to be counting on that: It’s as if he’s talking directly to the Superbad crowd, giving us permission to take those same uncertain steps into middle age. And hell, if he can do it, then so can we.
Sacramento hits U.S. theaters on Friday, April 11th.
Eephus (Dir. Carson Lund)Earlier this week, I was sitting in the pickup line at my son’s elementary school thinking about all the ways that his first baseball practice — which was scheduled for later that afternoon — was going to mess with our carefully-choreographed school night routine: We’d have to rush through his homework. Dinner would be later than usual. “Did I put those history flash cards in his folder? Wait, does he even have clean baseball pants? I’m so tired.” And I was. But then we got to the field, had the boys warm up, and started shagging fly balls. Then we did some baserunning. Then we worked on an infield drill: We lined the boys up at shortstop and, one at a time, a coach would feed them a grounder that they’d scoop up and throw to me at first. Some of the boys could field, others could throw. Only some could do both. I made a list in my head as I caught each ball, and after a few minutes it occurred to me that I wasn’t thinking about the flash cards or the laundry or what was in the fridge for dinner anymore. I was only thinking one thing: “I fucking love baseball.”One can only imagine that co-writer/director Carson Lund and the rest of the Eephus folks feel the same way. Playing out over a lazy afternoon at Soldier’s Field, a New England baseball park that has seen better days, Eephus is the story of two ‘90s rec league teams facing off one last time before that park is paved over to make way for a new school. None of these guys has their fastball anymore; Most of them never had one to begin with, if we’re being honest. There are no Shohei Ohtanis on this field. No Bryce Harpers. These are accountants and truck drivers and mechanics and college students. Most are middle-aged. They’re paunchy and bow-legged and a little buzzed on dugout beers. But that’s fine, because not one of them is here to get drafted. Why, then? Why blow an entire Saturday on a game that doesn’t count, for which they’re not being paid, and that no one will watch? Well, it’s different for each of them: For some, it relieves the stress of the work week. For others, it recaptures the glory days of their youth. For the rest, it’s simply a way to mark the long, slow passage of time.Named for the eephus pitch, a high-arching, low-velocity curve meant to throw off a hitter’s timing, Eephus is a hangout movie made for baseball lovers, nine innings of America’s Pastime played at an eephus pace. What does that mean? Slow! Baseball is slow! It’s deliberate! It’s even a little tedious! I admit it! And while most great baseball movies try to cut through that tedium with narratives built around the romance of the perfect game, the glory of the home run, or the sabermetric wizardry of a championship team, Eephus celebrates the thousand-yard stare of a bored left fielder, the aching knees of an overweight catcher, and the petty argumentation of a contested strike zone. It celebrates the old-timer keeping a meticulous box score behind the plate (Cliff Blake) and the poetic musings of the snack cart guy (Red Sox broadcasting legend Joe Castiglione). On and off the field, every one of them rages against the dying of the light — literally and figuratively — trying to make every pitch, every at-bat, and every inning last forever. For that and so much more, Eephus earns a place among the best baseball movies of all time.
Eephus comes to VOD on Tuesday, April 15th.

Johnny Showtime: THE CHOSEN: THE LAST SUPPER, PART ONE Apr 08, 2025
by JB
Apparently, I was unaware of the global phenomenon.
I slowly became aware of The Chosen films when my local theater starting playing more Fathom Events trailers before their main features. I thought the actor cast as Jesus looked interesting. I was feeling nostalgic about my Catholic upbringing. I bought my ticket and took a chance.Although more recent installments have received theatrical distribution, The Chosen films started life as the most successful crowdfunded television series in history. The brainchild of filmmaker Dallas Jenkins, who co-writes and directs each installment, the series began on streaming app VidAngel in 2019. Seasons Three and Four were the first to receive theatrical release, and were later available on Amazon Prime, Netflix, YouTube, and even Facebook. Seasons Five, Six, and Seven will all receive theatrical playdates before streaming exclusively on Amazon Prime. More than 280 million people have watched all or part of the series thus far. How did this ever manage to fly under my radar? (Angels must fly very low.)
THE PLOT IN BRIEF: Jesus (Jonathan Roumie) returns to Jerusalem with his apostles, where he is hailed as the Messiah. The Pharisees are frightened by this, as they see that any upending of their order could lead to their removal by the Romans. The Pharisees, led by Caiaphas (Richard Fancy), decide to have Jesus killed. Because Jesus preaches love, forgiveness, and humanity, the Pharisees find it very hard to pin any crime on him, which the Romans could then use as excuse for executing him to keep the peace. Jesus conveniently gives them a reason to arrest him when, enraged by the local custom of using the temple as a marketplace during Passover, Jesus runs amok, overturning lender’s tables, freeing livestock, whipping vendors, and setting fire to stalls.
I will freely admit that I went to this film to scoff. It was better than it had any right to be. Way to go, Jesus!I was impressed by how elegant and handsome this production looked; the sets and costumes are elaborate and endless. I was impressed by how committed the actors were to their roles and actually played them realistically, not merely following previous Biblical Epic acting tropes. I was impressed by how joyful and unpretentious this production was. The film began with a special prologue where the cast of the film all vied to see who could be most “over the top” in pronouncing “The Ten Commandments of Seeing a Film.” It was very funny and well-written. Way to go, Chosen!
MY “COME TO JESUS” MOMENT: Jonathan Roumie is very good as Jesus. I was able to suspend my disbelief. This guy COULD be the Son of God. My favorite scene in the film occurs when Jesus happens upon a large family enjoying a meal and celebrating a son’s recent engagement. The family begins to dance, and a cousin invites Jesus to join them in their celebration. I believe this is the first time I have ever seen Jesus Christ dance in a film, though he later admits to the cousin that he isn’t very good at it. The scene ends with Jesus blessing the young couple and wishing them happiness. It’s very sweet. I mean, occasions such as this had to happen, right? Bill Murray does it, why not Jesus?Jesus MUST have danced: there are so many recorded wedding celebrations. He MUST have had a sense of humor: how can a man whose story captivated the entire world NOT? I wish Matthew, Mark, Luke, and/or John had included more of these incidents in their gospels.
AN ANNOYING AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PAUSE: One of the first columns I ever wrote for F This Movie! concerned Easter favorite The Ten Commandments, which ABC dutifully trots out each spring for its annual showing. What I particularly liked about The Chosen is that it doesn’t pretend to know how folks talked back then; it didn’t invent a kind of rarified, semi-Shakesperian, ahistoric puddle of thees and thous. It just let its famous characters speak. The screenwriters behind The Ten Commandments possessed tin ears for dialogue. Here are some samples: "A chariot? Here in Goshen?" (my typical response to our Uber pulling up); "Beauty is but a curse to our women;" "Blood makes poor mortar;" and of course, the unforgettable “Moses, you stubborn, splendid, adorable fool.”
I was a little taken aback when, after about twenty minutes, I recognized Richard Fancy, who plays Pharisee Caiaphas, from his previous turn as Elaine’s erstwhile boss Mr. Lippman on Seinfeld. Here he sports an impressive white beard and much gruff gravitas. He was so good in the role that I was able to leave my Seinfeld memories behind.The two gentlemen sitting to my left, ignoring the pre-show admonition to remain quiet, engaged in a loud and lively theological debate during the film, until one of them fell asleep and starting snoring loudly. When the film was over and the lights came up, the snoring guy wished me “a blessed day,” which I thought was nice. When the theater staff arrived to clean the theater, the two guys explained that they were going to stay to see it again, and was that alright?
I wondered if they were going to continue to debate the film and sleep. I wondered how long it was going to take me to get home. I wondered when I returned home, if my wife would dance with me?

Johnny Showtime: THE CHOSEN: THE LAST SUPPER, PART ONE Apr 08, 2025
by JB
Apparently, I was unaware of the global phenomenon.
I slowly became aware of The Chosen films when my local theater starting playing more Fathom Events trailers before their main features. I thought the actor cast as Jesus looked interesting. I was feeling nostalgic about my Catholic upbringing. I bought my ticket and took a chance.Although more recent installments have received theatrical distribution, The Chosen films started life as the most successful crowdfunded television series in history. The brainchild of filmmaker Dallas Jenkins, who co-writes and directs each installment, the series began on streaming app VidAngel in 2019. Seasons Three and Four were the first to receive theatrical release, and were later available on Amazon Prime, Netflix, YouTube, and even Facebook. Seasons Five, Six, and Seven will all receive theatrical playdates before streaming exclusively on Amazon Prime. More than 280 million people have watched all or part of the series thus far. How did this ever manage to fly under my radar? (Angels must fly very low.)
THE PLOT IN BRIEF: Jesus (Jonathan Roumie) returns to Jerusalem with his apostles, where he is hailed as the Messiah. The Pharisees are frightened by this, as they see that any upending of their order could lead to their removal by the Romans. The Pharisees, led by Caiaphas (Richard Fancy), decide to have Jesus killed. Because Jesus preaches love, forgiveness, and humanity, the Pharisees find it very hard to pin any crime on him, which the Romans could then use as excuse for executing him to keep the peace. Jesus conveniently gives them a reason to arrest him when, enraged by the local custom of using the temple as a marketplace during Passover, Jesus runs amok, overturning lender’s tables, freeing livestock, whipping vendors, and setting fire to stalls.
I will freely admit that I went to this film to scoff. It was better than it had any right to be. Way to go, Jesus!I was impressed by how elegant and handsome this production looked; the sets and costumes are elaborate and endless. I was impressed by how committed the actors were to their roles and actually played them realistically, not merely following previous Biblical Epic acting tropes. I was impressed by how joyful and unpretentious this production was. The film began with a special prologue where the cast of the film all vied to see who could be most “over the top” in pronouncing “The Ten Commandments of Seeing a Film.” It was very funny and well-written. Way to go, Chosen!
MY “COME TO JESUS” MOMENT: Jonathan Roumie is very good as Jesus. I was able to suspend my disbelief. This guy COULD be the Son of God. My favorite scene in the film occurs when Jesus happens upon a large family enjoying a meal and celebrating a son’s recent engagement. The family begins to dance, and a cousin invites Jesus to join them in their celebration. I believe this is the first time I have ever seen Jesus Christ dance in a film, though he later admits to the cousin that he isn’t very good at it. The scene ends with Jesus blessing the young couple and wishing them happiness. It’s very sweet. I mean, occasions such as this had to happen, right? Bill Murray does it, why not Jesus?Jesus MUST have danced: there are so many recorded wedding celebrations. He MUST have had a sense of humor: how can a man whose story captivated the entire world NOT? I wish Matthew, Mark, Luke, and/or John had included more of these incidents in their gospels.
AN ANNOYING AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PAUSE: One of the first columns I ever wrote for F This Movie! concerned Easter favorite The Ten Commandments, which ABC dutifully trots out each spring for its annual showing. What I particularly liked about The Chosen is that it doesn’t pretend to know how folks talked back then; it didn’t invent a kind of rarified, semi-Shakesperian, ahistoric puddle of thees and thous. It just let its famous characters speak. The screenwriters behind The Ten Commandments possessed tin ears for dialogue. Here are some samples: "A chariot? Here in Goshen?" (my typical response to our Uber pulling up); "Beauty is but a curse to our women;" "Blood makes poor mortar;" and of course, the unforgettable “Moses, you stubborn, splendid, adorable fool.”
I was a little taken aback when, after about twenty minutes, I recognized Richard Fancy, who plays Pharisee Caiaphas, from his previous turn as Elaine’s erstwhile boss Mr. Lippman on Seinfeld. Here he sports an impressive white beard and much gruff gravitas. He was so good in the role that I was able to leave my Seinfeld memories behind.The two gentlemen sitting to my left, ignoring the pre-show admonition to remain quiet, engaged in a loud and lively theological debate during the film, until one of them fell asleep and starting snoring loudly. When the film was over and the lights came up, the snoring guy wished me “a blessed day,” which I thought was nice. When the theater staff arrived to clean the theater, the two guys explained that they were going to stay to see it again, and was that alright?
I wondered if they were going to continue to debate the film and sleep. I wondered how long it was going to take me to get home. I wondered when I returned home, if my wife would dance with me?

Friday Night Double Features Vol. 52 Apr 07, 2025
by Adam Riske and Patrick Bromley10 new double features to watch if A Minecraft Movie is sold out.
Double Feature 1:
Adam: #1: Evil Dead II (1987)
Patrick: #2: Opera (1987)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: Zombie, Hostel, Eyeball
Patrick: Theme: Eyeball Trauma Night
Patrick: More theaters should celebrate this theme! But I guess that’s what makes us special at the Cinemarink. Eye stuff is one of the only things that can still really get me in a horror movie (making my love of Lucio Fulci even more baffling), so maybe I’m digging my own grave here. We should hand out protective safety glasses to the first 100 customers.
Adam: When I first saw this theme, I thought there would be no way I could make it through this double feature (eye stuff makes me squeamish too) but I dunno, the eye stuff in Evil Dead II isn’t bad so I really only have to worry about Opera. If you tell me when to close my eyes (SEE what EYE did there), I think I’ll be fine.
Patrick: Plus side: eyes are really just threatened in Opera and not really damaged. Minus side: no monkeys with razorblades.
Double Feature 2:
Patrick: #1: A Rage in Harlem (1991)
Adam: #2: Eve of Destruction (1991)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: Renaissance Man, Waiting to Exhale, The Preacher’s Wife
Adam: Theme: '90s Gregory Hines
Adam: I was originally going to book A Rage in Harlem with Harlem Nights, but I lost enthusiasm when I realized I would name the theme “Harlem Night” while one of the movies is basically sharing the same title. Then I toyed with a whole Tales from the Crypt: Harlem Night idea but that got really sweaty as a theme, so I pivoted to a ‘90s Gregory Hines celebration. I love Gregory Hines. He’s has one of the most effortless and charismatic screen presences. I perk up whenever he’s in a movie. This will be a good night for me especially because I’ve never seen either A Rage in Harlem or Eve of Destruction.
Patrick: Gregory Hines is incredible. He wasn’t someone I ever thought about growing up and it wasn’t until I saw him in a couple of movies that I realized he’s such a natural bright spot. I’m using this as an excuse to see A Rage in Harlem but I’m a fan of Eve of Destruction, so good call on the second movie.
Double Feature 3:Adam: #1: Rules of Engagement (2000)
Patrick: #2: Reindeer Games (2000)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: Dr. T & the Women, The Legend of Bagger Vance, Mission to Mars
Patrick: Theme: ‘70s Legends in 2000
Patrick: It made me happy to go back through the movies of 2000 and see that so many great directors of the 1970s were still making movies 30 years later, even if many of them had seemingly lost their fastball. I don’t think that’s true of Friedkin or Frankenheimer, though, who were still making very entertaining movies even if neither could be considered among their best. The trailer block is a lot iffier.
Adam: I keep meaning to watch Rules of Engagement and pairing it with old favorite Reindeer Games sounds like a fun night at the movies. I say old favorite because Reindeer Games finds me every couple of years. I never am seeking it out but there’s always a reason I end up watching it. It’s kind of a miracle. I like your theme. Friedkin and Frankenheimer definitely still had their fastball in 2000.
Double Feature 4:
Patrick: #1: All the Real Girls (2003)
Adam: #2: (500) Days of Summer (2009)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: High Fidelity (2000), The Break-Up (2006), Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)
Adam: Theme: Breaking Up is Hard to Do
Adam: There was a time when I really liked breakup movies because they were a form of movies as therapy for me after a few bad breakups. Then I stopped caring and went on with my life and the thought of a breakup movie being a balm for me seems like a young man’s idea. That’s not to say these movies are ones I’d want to leave in the past. I like all the ones featured here to varying degrees. I picked All the Real Girls and (500) Days of Summer because I want Zooey Deschanel to break all our hearts that night. It will be like being dumped by her twice.
Patrick: I love this. I don’t think I’ve seen (500) Days of Summer since the theater, but there was stuff in there I remember liking. Am I wrong about that? I love that Zooey D is in both. I had such a crush on her for like a few weeks until she became totally overexposed and kind of insufferable. Thanks, New Girl and She & Him.
Adam: I don’t think you’re wrong about liking some of (500) Days of Summer. I haven’t seen it in a while, but I never understood the backlash really.
Double Feature 5:Adam: #1: Jetsons: The Movie (1990)
Patrick: #2: Sudden Death (1995)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: Hocus Pocus, Dick, Little Giants, I’ll Be Home for Christmas
Patrick: Theme: Music by John Debney
Patrick: I can’t say as I’m super familiar with the work of composer John Debney. Even though I’ve seen all these movies – some more than once – his music never much stood out to me. Dedicating a night to his work will force me to pay attention to the music more than I normally might, which I’m hoping is a cool way to watch some of these movies. Also, I made sure to include the trailer for I’ll Be Home for Christmas because I want to be a good friend.
Adam: What a great night! I’m pissed at Van Damme right now in light of the recent news about him, but I knew he was a dicey personality already just like Seagal. I just didn’t know he was as bad as Seagal. Anyways, all those '80s/'90s action stars are so questionable that all I can do is throw my hands in the air. That being said, pairing Sudden Death (my favorite Van Damme) with Jetsons: The Movie is wild, and I would definitely go to this even if I felt a little bad about it. Thanks for programming the I’ll Be Home for Christmas trailer! I like Debney as a composer. His score for Hocus Pocus is especially good.
Double Feature 6:
Patrick: #1: A Life Less Ordinary (1997)
Adam: #2: Carnival of Souls (1962)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Ghoulies, Beetlejuice
Adam: Theme: Boyles & Ghouls
Adam: I couldn’t resist the pun and since I had Tales from the Crypt on the brain because of Double Feature 2, here was a natural place for it. I’ve tried half-heartedly to watch A Life Less Ordinary but I’m looking forward to watching it again while I’m paying attention especially since you’re a big fan of it. I paired it with Carnival of Souls (1962) because a) ghouls and b) it’s one of my favorite horror movies.
Patrick: I don’t want to call a double feature your masterpiece, but this might be your masterpiece. Not only is it a great double, but the theme is so clever and funny and so YOU. You might hate A Life Less Ordinary, in which case I’m sorry and I’m happy that you have Carnival of Souls waiting for you.
Double Feature 7:Adam: #1: The Guilt Trip (2012)
Patrick: #2: Star 80 (1983)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: Newsies, The Pacifier, Charade
Patrick: Theme: Directed by Choreographers
Patrick: This one is going to create even worse whiplash than the John Debney double. It bums me out that once upon a time choreographers like Stanley Donen and Bob Fosse could become real filmmakers and nowadays they’re just hired to make disposable romcoms and stuff. The Guilt Trip is a sneaky good movie, one I probably wouldn’t have given a chance to if not for your recommendation, so thanks for that. I swear I’m not trying to punish everyone by programming Star 80 after it. I just wanted everyone to see a really good movie.
Adam: Omg. I’ve been meaning to rewatch The Guilt Trip since I saw it in theaters but I dunno if I can make it through Star 80 to be totally honest. I’m intimidated by that movie because of its subject matter. I’ll join you at this double (because you said it’s really good) but I might need a crisis blanket. This will be the most stressful viewing of The Guilt Trip imaginable knowing what awaits us.
Double Feature 8:
Patrick: #1: Posse (1975)
Adam: #2: Bite the Bullet (1975)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: Rooster Cogburn, Breakheart Pass, Rancho Deluxe
Adam: Theme: Yee Haw ‘75!
Adam: I thought about doing a double of Westerns directed by actors but it was too close to your choreographer double feature, so I pivoted to 1975 Westerns. I’ve never heard of most of these movies before now, but I’m looking forward to checking out a Kirk Douglas-Bruce Dern Western followed by a Gene Hackman one.
Patrick: This is a great theme! I’ve seen all of these except for Breakheart Pass and they’re all degrees of good. Posse rules and is such a ‘70s western, and I’m excited to see Gene Hackman on our movie screen again. I can’t believe we were still getting this many theatrical westerns in 1975. When did that stop and why?
Double Feature 9:Adam: #1: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
Patrick: #2: Jason X (2001)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: Desert Passage, Saw X, Star Trek: Nemesis
Patrick: Theme: Part 10s
Patrick: It was hard to devote a night to Part 10s in a franchise and not go all horror, because that tends to be the genre in which the series last the longest. I like the idea of following up one of the least-goofy Roger Moore Bond movies with what is the goofiest of the Friday the 13th franchise. It’s a real Freaky Friday situation. Criss-cross!
Adam: I love it! I’ve never seen The Spy Who Loved Me but it’s the one of the Moores I want to see the most since I heard it’s good. Remind me, is that the one where James Bond kills a henchman by beating them against a tree while they’re in a sleeping bag?
Double Feature 10:
Patrick: #1: Minority Report (2002)
Adam: #2: Phone Booth (2002)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: Tigerland, American Outlaws, Hart's War, The Recruit
Adam: Theme: Prove It, Colin Farrell
Adam: Remember when we were all unsure about Colin Farrell and feeling like he was being forced on us? Ancient history and ridiculous in hindsight but it would be fun to revisit that time capsule. I liked him back in 2002 in Minority Report (and previously in Tigerland) but Phone Booth was where I really got it, and he completely clicked for me.
Patrick: The name of this double made me LOL because I was definitely feeling that back in the early 2000s. I resented how he was being forced on us. Now he’s the best, always doing good work in interesting projects and just seeming like a really good guy. I hope that holds true going forward. Both would be cool to revisit together. I think it took me longer to “get” Colin Farrell and it didn’t happen until around Miami Vice and In Bruges especially.

Friday Night Double Features Vol. 52 Apr 07, 2025
by Adam Riske and Patrick Bromley10 new double features to watch if A Minecraft Movie is sold out.
Double Feature 1:
Adam: #1: Evil Dead II (1987)
Patrick: #2: Opera (1987)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: Zombie, Hostel, Eyeball
Patrick: Theme: Eyeball Trauma Night
Patrick: More theaters should celebrate this theme! But I guess that’s what makes us special at the Cinemarink. Eye stuff is one of the only things that can still really get me in a horror movie (making my love of Lucio Fulci even more baffling), so maybe I’m digging my own grave here. We should hand out protective safety glasses to the first 100 customers.
Adam: When I first saw this theme, I thought there would be no way I could make it through this double feature (eye stuff makes me squeamish too) but I dunno, the eye stuff in Evil Dead II isn’t bad so I really only have to worry about Opera. If you tell me when to close my eyes (SEE what EYE did there), I think I’ll be fine.
Patrick: Plus side: eyes are really just threatened in Opera and not really damaged. Minus side: no monkeys with razorblades.
Double Feature 2:
Patrick: #1: A Rage in Harlem (1991)
Adam: #2: Eve of Destruction (1991)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: Renaissance Man, Waiting to Exhale, The Preacher’s Wife
Adam: Theme: '90s Gregory Hines
Adam: I was originally going to book A Rage in Harlem with Harlem Nights, but I lost enthusiasm when I realized I would name the theme “Harlem Night” while one of the movies is basically sharing the same title. Then I toyed with a whole Tales from the Crypt: Harlem Night idea but that got really sweaty as a theme, so I pivoted to a ‘90s Gregory Hines celebration. I love Gregory Hines. He’s has one of the most effortless and charismatic screen presences. I perk up whenever he’s in a movie. This will be a good night for me especially because I’ve never seen either A Rage in Harlem or Eve of Destruction.
Patrick: Gregory Hines is incredible. He wasn’t someone I ever thought about growing up and it wasn’t until I saw him in a couple of movies that I realized he’s such a natural bright spot. I’m using this as an excuse to see A Rage in Harlem but I’m a fan of Eve of Destruction, so good call on the second movie.
Double Feature 3:Adam: #1: Rules of Engagement (2000)
Patrick: #2: Reindeer Games (2000)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: Dr. T & the Women, The Legend of Bagger Vance, Mission to Mars
Patrick: Theme: ‘70s Legends in 2000
Patrick: It made me happy to go back through the movies of 2000 and see that so many great directors of the 1970s were still making movies 30 years later, even if many of them had seemingly lost their fastball. I don’t think that’s true of Friedkin or Frankenheimer, though, who were still making very entertaining movies even if neither could be considered among their best. The trailer block is a lot iffier.
Adam: I keep meaning to watch Rules of Engagement and pairing it with old favorite Reindeer Games sounds like a fun night at the movies. I say old favorite because Reindeer Games finds me every couple of years. I never am seeking it out but there’s always a reason I end up watching it. It’s kind of a miracle. I like your theme. Friedkin and Frankenheimer definitely still had their fastball in 2000.
Double Feature 4:
Patrick: #1: All the Real Girls (2003)
Adam: #2: (500) Days of Summer (2009)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: High Fidelity (2000), The Break-Up (2006), Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)
Adam: Theme: Breaking Up is Hard to Do
Adam: There was a time when I really liked breakup movies because they were a form of movies as therapy for me after a few bad breakups. Then I stopped caring and went on with my life and the thought of a breakup movie being a balm for me seems like a young man’s idea. That’s not to say these movies are ones I’d want to leave in the past. I like all the ones featured here to varying degrees. I picked All the Real Girls and (500) Days of Summer because I want Zooey Deschanel to break all our hearts that night. It will be like being dumped by her twice.
Patrick: I love this. I don’t think I’ve seen (500) Days of Summer since the theater, but there was stuff in there I remember liking. Am I wrong about that? I love that Zooey D is in both. I had such a crush on her for like a few weeks until she became totally overexposed and kind of insufferable. Thanks, New Girl and She & Him.
Adam: I don’t think you’re wrong about liking some of (500) Days of Summer. I haven’t seen it in a while, but I never understood the backlash really.
Double Feature 5:Adam: #1: Jetsons: The Movie (1990)
Patrick: #2: Sudden Death (1995)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: Hocus Pocus, Dick, Little Giants, I’ll Be Home for Christmas
Patrick: Theme: Music by John Debney
Patrick: I can’t say as I’m super familiar with the work of composer John Debney. Even though I’ve seen all these movies – some more than once – his music never much stood out to me. Dedicating a night to his work will force me to pay attention to the music more than I normally might, which I’m hoping is a cool way to watch some of these movies. Also, I made sure to include the trailer for I’ll Be Home for Christmas because I want to be a good friend.
Adam: What a great night! I’m pissed at Van Damme right now in light of the recent news about him, but I knew he was a dicey personality already just like Seagal. I just didn’t know he was as bad as Seagal. Anyways, all those '80s/'90s action stars are so questionable that all I can do is throw my hands in the air. That being said, pairing Sudden Death (my favorite Van Damme) with Jetsons: The Movie is wild, and I would definitely go to this even if I felt a little bad about it. Thanks for programming the I’ll Be Home for Christmas trailer! I like Debney as a composer. His score for Hocus Pocus is especially good.
Double Feature 6:
Patrick: #1: A Life Less Ordinary (1997)
Adam: #2: Carnival of Souls (1962)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Ghoulies, Beetlejuice
Adam: Theme: Boyles & Ghouls
Adam: I couldn’t resist the pun and since I had Tales from the Crypt on the brain because of Double Feature 2, here was a natural place for it. I’ve tried half-heartedly to watch A Life Less Ordinary but I’m looking forward to watching it again while I’m paying attention especially since you’re a big fan of it. I paired it with Carnival of Souls (1962) because a) ghouls and b) it’s one of my favorite horror movies.
Patrick: I don’t want to call a double feature your masterpiece, but this might be your masterpiece. Not only is it a great double, but the theme is so clever and funny and so YOU. You might hate A Life Less Ordinary, in which case I’m sorry and I’m happy that you have Carnival of Souls waiting for you.
Double Feature 7:Adam: #1: The Guilt Trip (2012)
Patrick: #2: Star 80 (1983)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: Newsies, The Pacifier, Charade
Patrick: Theme: Directed by Choreographers
Patrick: This one is going to create even worse whiplash than the John Debney double. It bums me out that once upon a time choreographers like Stanley Donen and Bob Fosse could become real filmmakers and nowadays they’re just hired to make disposable romcoms and stuff. The Guilt Trip is a sneaky good movie, one I probably wouldn’t have given a chance to if not for your recommendation, so thanks for that. I swear I’m not trying to punish everyone by programming Star 80 after it. I just wanted everyone to see a really good movie.
Adam: Omg. I’ve been meaning to rewatch The Guilt Trip since I saw it in theaters but I dunno if I can make it through Star 80 to be totally honest. I’m intimidated by that movie because of its subject matter. I’ll join you at this double (because you said it’s really good) but I might need a crisis blanket. This will be the most stressful viewing of The Guilt Trip imaginable knowing what awaits us.
Double Feature 8:
Patrick: #1: Posse (1975)
Adam: #2: Bite the Bullet (1975)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: Rooster Cogburn, Breakheart Pass, Rancho Deluxe
Adam: Theme: Yee Haw ‘75!
Adam: I thought about doing a double of Westerns directed by actors but it was too close to your choreographer double feature, so I pivoted to 1975 Westerns. I’ve never heard of most of these movies before now, but I’m looking forward to checking out a Kirk Douglas-Bruce Dern Western followed by a Gene Hackman one.
Patrick: This is a great theme! I’ve seen all of these except for Breakheart Pass and they’re all degrees of good. Posse rules and is such a ‘70s western, and I’m excited to see Gene Hackman on our movie screen again. I can’t believe we were still getting this many theatrical westerns in 1975. When did that stop and why?
Double Feature 9:Adam: #1: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
Patrick: #2: Jason X (2001)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: Desert Passage, Saw X, Star Trek: Nemesis
Patrick: Theme: Part 10s
Patrick: It was hard to devote a night to Part 10s in a franchise and not go all horror, because that tends to be the genre in which the series last the longest. I like the idea of following up one of the least-goofy Roger Moore Bond movies with what is the goofiest of the Friday the 13th franchise. It’s a real Freaky Friday situation. Criss-cross!
Adam: I love it! I’ve never seen The Spy Who Loved Me but it’s the one of the Moores I want to see the most since I heard it’s good. Remind me, is that the one where James Bond kills a henchman by beating them against a tree while they’re in a sleeping bag?
Double Feature 10:
Patrick: #1: Minority Report (2002)
Adam: #2: Phone Booth (2002)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: Tigerland, American Outlaws, Hart's War, The Recruit
Adam: Theme: Prove It, Colin Farrell
Adam: Remember when we were all unsure about Colin Farrell and feeling like he was being forced on us? Ancient history and ridiculous in hindsight but it would be fun to revisit that time capsule. I liked him back in 2002 in Minority Report (and previously in Tigerland) but Phone Booth was where I really got it, and he completely clicked for me.
Patrick: The name of this double made me LOL because I was definitely feeling that back in the early 2000s. I resented how he was being forced on us. Now he’s the best, always doing good work in interesting projects and just seeming like a really good guy. I hope that holds true going forward. Both would be cool to revisit together. I think it took me longer to “get” Colin Farrell and it didn’t happen until around Miami Vice and In Bruges especially.

Weekend Open Thread Apr 05, 2025

Reviews: FREAKY TALES & THE FRIEND Apr 04, 2025
by Rob DiCristino
A pair of movies for your movie holes.
Freaky Tales (Dirs. Anna Bowden and Ryan Fleck)
Writer/director team Anna Bowden and Ryan Fleck return from the MCU trenches with Freaky Tales, a self-proclaimed “multi-track mixtape” — Aren’t all mixtapes multi-track? Eh, let’s not get sidelined so early — threading together four stories set in Fleck’s hometown of Oakland, California circa 1987. United by a supernatural energy that has some connection to Psytropics, a “mindfulness seminar” founded by Oakland NBA legend “Sleepy” Floyd (Jay Ellis), each chapter blends graphic novel storytelling with grindhouse sensibilities for a charming romp that will remind you — to a distracting and often suspicious degree — of similar movies you already love. It’s a little bit Creepshow, a little bit Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, a little bit Sin City, a little bit Trick ‘r Treat, a little bit The Warriors, and yes, a little bit Pulp Fiction, too. So while it’s heartening to see Bowden and Fleck emerge from under the weight of Captain Marvel, it’s hard not to wonder if the former indie dynamos aren’t trying just a bit too hard to prove they’ve still got their cinematic street cred.Those streets are on full display, at least, as Freaky Tales goes to great lengths to celebrate the weird and wonderful eccentricities of Oakland, a city that certainly deserves a bit of celebration after recently losing its third major sports franchise in five years. Chapter One follows Lucid and Tina (Jack Champion and Ji-young Yoo), a pair of teenage punks defending their local venue — a meticulous recreation of Oakland’s storied 924 Gilman Street — from a roving band of Nazi skinheads. Chapter Two follows Entice and Barbie (Normani and Dominique Thorne), a female hip-hop duo who are set to go toe-to-toe with rapper Too $hort (who narrates the film and is played on screen by DeMario Symba Driver) for a shot at big-time fame. Next up is Clint (Pedro Pascal), a debt collector for a crooked cop known only as The Guy (Ben Mendelsohn), whose plans to walk the straight and narrow are interrupted by a ghost from his past. The last chapter finds Floyd on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the thieves who broke into his home and murdered his girlfriend.
Freaky Tales is an entertaining blend of genre elements, and that’ll probably be good enough for the VOD audience most likely to use it as a time-waster some Friday night in the near future. It’s clear that the Captain Marvel directors are overjoyed to be making something so personal again, and their sincerity goes a long way toward making what is ultimately an overstuffed, unoriginal pastiche a bit more endurable. But while the film stays true to its “multi-track mixtape” premise with an array of pop culture references and Oakland-specific lore, it’s all thrown at us with an aggressiveness that starts to feel resentful after a while, especially the scene in which our Big Celebrity Cameo spends five minutes scolding another character for his lack of movie knowledge. It seems a bit odd that Bowden and Fleck should take such a hostile posture on the sanctity of Real Art when they’re the ones who just made Captain fucking Marvel, but Freaky Tales is a big enough step in a positive direction that we’re compelled — if not convinced— to forgive their pretension.
Freaky Tales hits U.S. theaters on Friday, April 4th.
The Friend (Dirs. David Siegel and Scott McGehee)“What will happen to the dog?” is a question that, frankly, I don’t often consider. I’m not a dog person. Dogs don’t bring me any special joy or feelings of companionship. They don’t fill me with wonder or glee. I find them messy and smelly, and I’m totally confounded by people who share their beds with them. This will make me sound like a monster, but I don’t even get particularly upset when dogs die in movies. I don’t wish them harm, mind you, and I’ve enjoyed their company on occasion, but they’re just not for me. They’re not for Iris (Naomi Watts) either, but when her best friend and colleague (Bill Murray as acclaimed novelist Walter) commits suicide, she has to consider what will happen to Apollo, his 150 lb Great Dane. It seems Walter requested that Apollo be left to Iris — not his daughter (Sarah Pidgeon) or any of his ex-wives, for whatever reason — who must now make room for him in her rent-controlled New York apartment. So begins The Friend, a trite and maudlin adaptation of what I can only assume is the trite and maudlin 2018 novel by Sigrid Nunez.And this isn’t just the indifference to dogs talking. On top of sporting a title so bad that it almost loops back around to being audacious, The Friend is the worst kind of stale treacle, an alleged “meditation on writing, living in New York, and grief” that hopes you’ll be so enchanted by Apollo’s droopy eyes — which, to be clear, are adorable; I’m not completely soulless — that you won’t notice its failure to actually say anything of substance about any of those topics. What begins as a woman-about-town story quickly shifts to a relationship story before taking a pit stop into magical realism until getting bored enough with that to go all-in on a “white woman lounges in a shoreside villa getting drunk on lazy platitudes about life delivered in abysmal voice-over narration” story as the credits roll. Iris and Apollo go from frenemies to soulmates, of course, and she eventually recognizes the bond created by their shared grief, but that journey must take place in the space between the frames because I’ll be damned if there are any character arcs to be found on screen.And, look. The Friend has every right to exist. We used to get three of these things in theaters every month, after all, and I’m happy for the dog lovers out there who just want to let their freak flag fly. Go ahead! Laugh! Cry! Get hair all over your clothes! Put more mainstream weepies like these in theaters against some Glen Powell action programmers and we won’t have to endure Snow White, Captain America: Brave New World, and all the other top-heavy box office catastrophes that have Deadline foretelling the death of cinema as we know it. Let actors act! Naomi Watts is a legend who never seems to get her due, so I’m glad enough to see her working that I don’t mind that it’s mostly against a co-star who — despite delivering one of the best animal performances I’ve ever seen — doesn’t give her much to work with in return. And hell, it’s always safer to have eyes on Bill Murray than not, so let him futz around this thing for two scenes and put him on the poster. It’s just a little hollow, a little presumptuous, and a little manipulative, is all. You dog people deserve better.
The Friend hits U.S. theaters on Friday, April 4th.

Reviews: FREAKY TALES & THE FRIEND Apr 04, 2025
by Rob DiCristino
A pair of movies for your movie holes.
Freaky Tales (Dirs. Anna Bowden and Ryan Fleck)
Writer/director team Anna Bowden and Ryan Fleck return from the MCU trenches with Freaky Tales, a self-proclaimed “multi-track mixtape” — Aren’t all mixtapes multi-track? Eh, let’s not get sidelined so early — threading together four stories set in Fleck’s hometown of Oakland, California circa 1987. United by a supernatural energy that has some connection to Psytropics, a “mindfulness seminar” founded by Oakland NBA legend “Sleepy” Floyd (Jay Ellis), each chapter blends graphic novel storytelling with grindhouse sensibilities for a charming romp that will remind you — to a distracting and often suspicious degree — of similar movies you already love. It’s a little bit Creepshow, a little bit Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, a little bit Sin City, a little bit Trick ‘r Treat, a little bit The Warriors, and yes, a little bit Pulp Fiction, too. So while it’s heartening to see Bowden and Fleck emerge from under the weight of Captain Marvel, it’s hard not to wonder if the former indie dynamos aren’t trying just a bit too hard to prove they’ve still got their cinematic street cred.Those streets are on full display, at least, as Freaky Tales goes to great lengths to celebrate the weird and wonderful eccentricities of Oakland, a city that certainly deserves a bit of celebration after recently losing its third major sports franchise in five years. Chapter One follows Lucid and Tina (Jack Champion and Ji-young Yoo), a pair of teenage punks defending their local venue — a meticulous recreation of Oakland’s storied 924 Gilman Street — from a roving band of Nazi skinheads. Chapter Two follows Entice and Barbie (Normani and Dominique Thorne), a female hip-hop duo who are set to go toe-to-toe with rapper Too $hort (who narrates the film and is played on screen by DeMario Symba Driver) for a shot at big-time fame. Next up is Clint (Pedro Pascal), a debt collector for a crooked cop known only as The Guy (Ben Mendelsohn), whose plans to walk the straight and narrow are interrupted by a ghost from his past. The last chapter finds Floyd on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the thieves who broke into his home and murdered his girlfriend.
Freaky Tales is an entertaining blend of genre elements, and that’ll probably be good enough for the VOD audience most likely to use it as a time-waster some Friday night in the near future. It’s clear that the Captain Marvel directors are overjoyed to be making something so personal again, and their sincerity goes a long way toward making what is ultimately an overstuffed, unoriginal pastiche a bit more endurable. But while the film stays true to its “multi-track mixtape” premise with an array of pop culture references and Oakland-specific lore, it’s all thrown at us with an aggressiveness that starts to feel resentful after a while, especially the scene in which our Big Celebrity Cameo spends five minutes scolding another character for his lack of movie knowledge. It seems a bit odd that Bowden and Fleck should take such a hostile posture on the sanctity of Real Art when they’re the ones who just made Captain fucking Marvel, but Freaky Tales is a big enough step in a positive direction that we’re compelled — if not convinced— to forgive their pretension.
Freaky Tales hits U.S. theaters on Friday, April 4th.
The Friend (Dirs. David Siegel and Scott McGehee)“What will happen to the dog?” is a question that, frankly, I don’t often consider. I’m not a dog person. Dogs don’t bring me any special joy or feelings of companionship. They don’t fill me with wonder or glee. I find them messy and smelly, and I’m totally confounded by people who share their beds with them. This will make me sound like a monster, but I don’t even get particularly upset when dogs die in movies. I don’t wish them harm, mind you, and I’ve enjoyed their company on occasion, but they’re just not for me. They’re not for Iris (Naomi Watts) either, but when her best friend and colleague (Bill Murray as acclaimed novelist Walter) commits suicide, she has to consider what will happen to Apollo, his 150 lb Great Dane. It seems Walter requested that Apollo be left to Iris — not his daughter (Sarah Pidgeon) or any of his ex-wives, for whatever reason — who must now make room for him in her rent-controlled New York apartment. So begins The Friend, a trite and maudlin adaptation of what I can only assume is the trite and maudlin 2018 novel by Sigrid Nunez.And this isn’t just the indifference to dogs talking. On top of sporting a title so bad that it almost loops back around to being audacious, The Friend is the worst kind of stale treacle, an alleged “meditation on writing, living in New York, and grief” that hopes you’ll be so enchanted by Apollo’s droopy eyes — which, to be clear, are adorable; I’m not completely soulless — that you won’t notice its failure to actually say anything of substance about any of those topics. What begins as a woman-about-town story quickly shifts to a relationship story before taking a pit stop into magical realism until getting bored enough with that to go all-in on a “white woman lounges in a shoreside villa getting drunk on lazy platitudes about life delivered in abysmal voice-over narration” story as the credits roll. Iris and Apollo go from frenemies to soulmates, of course, and she eventually recognizes the bond created by their shared grief, but that journey must take place in the space between the frames because I’ll be damned if there are any character arcs to be found on screen.And, look. The Friend has every right to exist. We used to get three of these things in theaters every month, after all, and I’m happy for the dog lovers out there who just want to let their freak flag fly. Go ahead! Laugh! Cry! Get hair all over your clothes! Put more mainstream weepies like these in theaters against some Glen Powell action programmers and we won’t have to endure Snow White, Captain America: Brave New World, and all the other top-heavy box office catastrophes that have Deadline foretelling the death of cinema as we know it. Let actors act! Naomi Watts is a legend who never seems to get her due, so I’m glad enough to see her working that I don’t mind that it’s mostly against a co-star who — despite delivering one of the best animal performances I’ve ever seen — doesn’t give her much to work with in return. And hell, it’s always safer to have eyes on Bill Murray than not, so let him futz around this thing for two scenes and put him on the poster. It’s just a little hollow, a little presumptuous, and a little manipulative, is all. You dog people deserve better.
The Friend hits U.S. theaters on Friday, April 4th.

Reserved Seating: THE CONFORMIST Apr 03, 2025
The review duo who review movies to feel normal.

Heavy Action: OUT FOR JUSTICE Apr 02, 2025
by Patrick Bromley
Still my favorite Steven Seagal movie.
It's hard to talk about Steven Seagal the Person these days given the current state of global affairs, what with him being Putin-loving human trash faced with multiple accusations of sexual harassment. I'm not going to touch any of that in talking about Steven Seagal the Movie Star -- particularly in the early '90s, with both Seagal and the kinds of movies in which he specialized were in their prime. It's within this landscape that the actor and martial artist dropped Out for Justice into our laps in 1991, right between Marked for Death in '90 and Under Siege in '92. It was the best possible time for Steven Seagal fans.
Seagal plays the hilariously-named Gino Felino, a real FUHGEDDABOUTIT Brooklyn Italian working as a detective for the NYPD. Gino's partner Bobby (Gino Acovone) is gunned down in front of his family by Richie Madano (William Forsythe), a former childhood friend turned criminal on a crazy rampage of drugs and murder. Determined to bring Richie down, Gino is given free reign by his shockingly hands-off captain (Jerry Orbach) to go rogue and stop the killer crackhead by any means necessary. Gino is out for payback. Out for revenge. OUT FOR JUSTICE.
Say what you want about Steven Seagal -- and there is so, so much that can be said -- but the guy had an incredible run at the start of his big screen career. In the four-year span between 1988 and 1992, Seagal made five movies, all of them total bangers. He cultivated an onscreen persona almost immediately with his lightning fast moves, his whisper-quiet delivery, and a mysterious backstory for both his characters and for himself. He was a hard guy to pin down at the start. What makes Out for Justice stand out in his early filmography is that Seagal's performance carries none of the baggage of his personal biography or mythology. It's just that: an actual performance. I'm not saying it's a good performance, exactly, but he does manage to create an actual character in Gino Felino. He does his Brooklyn accent (the first of many accents he would eventually adopt over the course of his career, most of them some kind of Russian-adjacent nonsense), he gets to speak Italian, he has marital troubles, he shows his softer side by rescuing and adopting an adorable puppy. Out for Justice also features my favorite moment of Seagal ever captured on screen, when a sex worker propositions him and asks "Do you wanna fuck?" and his response is just to let out a high pitched but very sincere laugh. It's the lightest and most human he ever allows himself to be in any movie and the closest he ever gets to the likes of John McClane.
A big reason for his early success is that Seagal was working with talented directors -- journeyman filmmakers like Andrew Davis and Dwight H. Little who knew how to put a movie together and always found interesting ways to elevate what might otherwise be a totally standard actioner. In the case of Out for Justice, Seagal worked with John Flynn, the director responsible for Rolling Thunder, The Outfit, Defiance, and Best Seller. He's a guy who knows how movies work is what I'm saying, and he brings to the Seagal vehicle a no-nonsense understanding of revenge movie dynamics: find the guy that did you wrong and make him pay. The screenplay by R. Lance Hill (credited here on his last feature as David Lee Henry) is repetitive, yes, and often amounts to Seagal showing up places and yelling out "Anyone here seen Richie?" before getting into a fight. Flynn and his editors -- more on that in a minute -- have whittled the story down to its barest essentials and streamline the action into something raw and propulsive. The director also works overtime to give Out for Justice a real sense of place; even though much of the movie was actually shot in Los Angeles, there's a real New York feel to the locations and the photography that serve the material well. This is the most street-level gritty of all Seagal's films.Another reason Out for Justice stands out is the villain turn by William Forsythe as crackhead Richie, a guy made totally terrifying because he has nothing left to lose. Like an early iteration of Heath Ledger's Joker, Richie has no plan, no agenda beyond being an agent of chaos and death. He knows his days are numbered thanks to either drugs or the target on his back so he's determined to go out in a blaze of fucked up glory -- less a criminal mastermind than a meth-addled bull in a city-wide china shop. This character, a real original kind of villain in 1991, is brought to sweaty, insane life by an insane, sweaty William Forsythe, who could also be seen on screen playing a sweaty, insane biker the same year in the sublime actioner Stone Cold. Forsythe is so over the top and compelling, in fact, that Seagal reportedly requested his scenes be cut back so as not to be upstaged by the villain. Warner Bros., who already wanted the film cut down for length and pacing, was all to happy to comply and edited the film down from being a mafia epic to a more traditional Seagal actioner. While I certainly wonder what Could Have Been when it comes to Flynn's original vision, I'm a fan of the finished film and don't lament what was lost.While I tend to love viewing and writing about Heavy Action titles as extensions of their stars -- the action hero as auteur -- what I like about Out for Justice is how much it diverges from Steven Seagal's usual onscreen persona. Almost every single one of his other movies already fits that formula, telling us something about the star with their characterizations of him a mysterious and mystical pony-tail'd badass (for more on this phenomenon, I point you in the direction of previous guest Outlaw Vern's amazing book on Seagal's filmography Seagology). This one and a small handful of others -- among them Pistol Whipped, arguably the best of his large DTV library -- afford Seagal the opportunity to give a performance instead of simply posturing. Don't get me wrong: he still does a lot of posturing in the movie both on and off camera (he was reportedly so full of himself on set that stunt coordinator Gene LeBell choked him out on a dare and Seagal shit his pants), but at least in Out for Justice he's posturing as someone other than "Steven Seagal Stand-In." It makes a difference.So, yes, Out for Justice remains my favorite of Steven Seagal's films. It's got the best villain (even beating out titans like Screwface in Marked for Death and Strannix in Under Siege). It's got a gritty street vibe. It's got a Gina Gershon to burn. It's got brutal violence and the kickass pool hall fight. It's one of the great action movies from the Best Year for Action Movies Ever, and demonstrates (as do all his early films) that Seagal should have continued teaming with talented filmmakers and maybe his legacy would be a little different today, professionally speaking at least. Instead, he peaked with Under Siege and then hired himself to direct On Deadly Ground, marking the beginning of the end for him as a real-deal theatrical star. It didn't help matters that the kind of action movie for which guys like Seagal and JCVD had become known was starting to go out of fashion by the mid-'90s, just a few years after Out for Justice hit theaters. The budgets would get bigger, the stars would get bigger, the set pieces would get bigger. There was no more room for scrappy little no-nonsense actioners like this one. We didn't know how good we had it.

Heavy Action: OUT FOR JUSTICE Apr 02, 2025
by Patrick Bromley
Still my favorite Steven Seagal movie.
It's hard to talk about Steven Seagal the Person these days given the current state of global affairs, what with him being Putin-loving human trash faced with multiple accusations of sexual harassment. I'm not going to touch any of that in talking about Steven Seagal the Movie Star -- particularly in the early '90s, with both Seagal and the kinds of movies in which he specialized were in their prime. It's within this landscape that the actor and martial artist dropped Out for Justice into our laps in 1991, right between Marked for Death in '90 and Under Siege in '92. It was the best possible time for Steven Seagal fans.
Seagal plays the hilariously-named Gino Felino, a real FUHGEDDABOUTIT Brooklyn Italian working as a detective for the NYPD. Gino's partner Bobby (Gino Acovone) is gunned down in front of his family by Richie Madano (William Forsythe), a former childhood friend turned criminal on a crazy rampage of drugs and murder. Determined to bring Richie down, Gino is given free reign by his shockingly hands-off captain (Jerry Orbach) to go rogue and stop the killer crackhead by any means necessary. Gino is out for payback. Out for revenge. OUT FOR JUSTICE.
Say what you want about Steven Seagal -- and there is so, so much that can be said -- but the guy had an incredible run at the start of his big screen career. In the four-year span between 1988 and 1992, Seagal made five movies, all of them total bangers. He cultivated an onscreen persona almost immediately with his lightning fast moves, his whisper-quiet delivery, and a mysterious backstory for both his characters and for himself. He was a hard guy to pin down at the start. What makes Out for Justice stand out in his early filmography is that Seagal's performance carries none of the baggage of his personal biography or mythology. It's just that: an actual performance. I'm not saying it's a good performance, exactly, but he does manage to create an actual character in Gino Felino. He does his Brooklyn accent (the first of many accents he would eventually adopt over the course of his career, most of them some kind of Russian-adjacent nonsense), he gets to speak Italian, he has marital troubles, he shows his softer side by rescuing and adopting an adorable puppy. Out for Justice also features my favorite moment of Seagal ever captured on screen, when a sex worker propositions him and asks "Do you wanna fuck?" and his response is just to let out a high pitched but very sincere laugh. It's the lightest and most human he ever allows himself to be in any movie and the closest he ever gets to the likes of John McClane.
A big reason for his early success is that Seagal was working with talented directors -- journeyman filmmakers like Andrew Davis and Dwight H. Little who knew how to put a movie together and always found interesting ways to elevate what might otherwise be a totally standard actioner. In the case of Out for Justice, Seagal worked with John Flynn, the director responsible for Rolling Thunder, The Outfit, Defiance, and Best Seller. He's a guy who knows how movies work is what I'm saying, and he brings to the Seagal vehicle a no-nonsense understanding of revenge movie dynamics: find the guy that did you wrong and make him pay. The screenplay by R. Lance Hill (credited here on his last feature as David Lee Henry) is repetitive, yes, and often amounts to Seagal showing up places and yelling out "Anyone here seen Richie?" before getting into a fight. Flynn and his editors -- more on that in a minute -- have whittled the story down to its barest essentials and streamline the action into something raw and propulsive. The director also works overtime to give Out for Justice a real sense of place; even though much of the movie was actually shot in Los Angeles, there's a real New York feel to the locations and the photography that serve the material well. This is the most street-level gritty of all Seagal's films.Another reason Out for Justice stands out is the villain turn by William Forsythe as crackhead Richie, a guy made totally terrifying because he has nothing left to lose. Like an early iteration of Heath Ledger's Joker, Richie has no plan, no agenda beyond being an agent of chaos and death. He knows his days are numbered thanks to either drugs or the target on his back so he's determined to go out in a blaze of fucked up glory -- less a criminal mastermind than a meth-addled bull in a city-wide china shop. This character, a real original kind of villain in 1991, is brought to sweaty, insane life by an insane, sweaty William Forsythe, who could also be seen on screen playing a sweaty, insane biker the same year in the sublime actioner Stone Cold. Forsythe is so over the top and compelling, in fact, that Seagal reportedly requested his scenes be cut back so as not to be upstaged by the villain. Warner Bros., who already wanted the film cut down for length and pacing, was all to happy to comply and edited the film down from being a mafia epic to a more traditional Seagal actioner. While I certainly wonder what Could Have Been when it comes to Flynn's original vision, I'm a fan of the finished film and don't lament what was lost.While I tend to love viewing and writing about Heavy Action titles as extensions of their stars -- the action hero as auteur -- what I like about Out for Justice is how much it diverges from Steven Seagal's usual onscreen persona. Almost every single one of his other movies already fits that formula, telling us something about the star with their characterizations of him a mysterious and mystical pony-tail'd badass (for more on this phenomenon, I point you in the direction of previous guest Outlaw Vern's amazing book on Seagal's filmography Seagology). This one and a small handful of others -- among them Pistol Whipped, arguably the best of his large DTV library -- afford Seagal the opportunity to give a performance instead of simply posturing. Don't get me wrong: he still does a lot of posturing in the movie both on and off camera (he was reportedly so full of himself on set that stunt coordinator Gene LeBell choked him out on a dare and Seagal shit his pants), but at least in Out for Justice he's posturing as someone other than "Steven Seagal Stand-In." It makes a difference.So, yes, Out for Justice remains my favorite of Steven Seagal's films. It's got the best villain (even beating out titans like Screwface in Marked for Death and Strannix in Under Siege). It's got a gritty street vibe. It's got a Gina Gershon to burn. It's got brutal violence and the kickass pool hall fight. It's one of the great action movies from the Best Year for Action Movies Ever, and demonstrates (as do all his early films) that Seagal should have continued teaming with talented filmmakers and maybe his legacy would be a little different today, professionally speaking at least. Instead, he peaked with Under Siege and then hired himself to direct On Deadly Ground, marking the beginning of the end for him as a real-deal theatrical star. It didn't help matters that the kind of action movie for which guys like Seagal and JCVD had become known was starting to go out of fashion by the mid-'90s, just a few years after Out for Justice hit theaters. The budgets would get bigger, the stars would get bigger, the set pieces would get bigger. There was no more room for scrappy little no-nonsense actioners like this one. We didn't know how good we had it.

FTM 766: MAGNOLIA Apr 02, 2025
Patrick and Rob may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with Patrick and Rob.
Download this episode here.
Listen to F This Movie! on Apple Podcasts.
Also discussed this episode: Star Trek: Section 31 (2025), Kraven the Hunter (2025), Holland (2025), Den of Thieves 2: Pantera (2025), The Fabelmans (2022), Black Bag (2025), The Rule of Jenny Pen (2025)

Johnny Showtime: THE ALTO KNIGHTS Apr 01, 2025
by JB
Last week I was reminded of something our very own Mike Pomaro once said about superhero movies...
At the height of the Marvel boom, Pomaro remarked that if someone had told his younger, comic book-loving self that when he got older there would be a Marvel or DC movie released to movie theaters practically every other week, and that there would be so many of them that he would lose interest in them, HE WOULD NOT HAVE BELIEVED THAT.
I feel similarly about the new Barry Levinson film, The Alto Knights (which for some damn reason, I keep calling The Alito Nights, as if it details the risqué journey of self-discovery and physical pleasure of a certain Supreme Court judge.) If someone had once told me that there would come a time that a new Robert De Niro gangster picture would open in theaters... and I would have zero interest in seeing it? My Scorsese-loving heart would have laughed that person out of the room.
But I dutifully went, perhaps so my beloved readers wouldn’t have to, and I have returned to say that The Alto Knights is a pleasant but bland meal composed entirely of leftovers.THE PLOT IN BRIEF: Vito Genevese (Robert De Niro) is a recent immigrant in turn-of- the-century Little Italy. He befriends Frank Costello (Also De Niro) and the two embark on a criminal career. They join the local Alto Knights Social Club, a front for gangsters. Rather than face a murder charge, Vito escapes to Italy before World War II, leaving Frank in charge of his criminal empire. Fifteen years later, Vito returns and wants back what is his. That does not go well.
I have searched my brain for why the filmmakers would cast De Niro in both lead roles and use make-up, prosthetics, and camera trickery to convince the audience that he is two separate people. De Niro’s Vito wears glasses and has a higher-pitched voice; at times, it almost seems that De Niro is doing a vocal impression of frequent costar Joe Pesci. Still, it’s simply not convincing. Perhaps the producers paid De Niro so much money to star in their film that they wanted him to be EVERYWHERE YOU LOOKED, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what this adds to the film. It’s just a stunt. At least the extensive de-aging technology in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman served a purpose. Here, the stunt casting seems to exist to get people curious enough to watch Alto Knights on a streaming service late one night.
And speaking of Scorsese, would you like to see what a Scorsese movie would be like if he didn’t direct it? Now’s your chance. The Alto Knights was directed by Barry Levinson, who directed Bugsy. It was written by Nicolas Pileggi, who wrote Goodfellas. It was produced by Irwin Winkler, who produced Raging Bull. It features Robert De Niro, who starred in both Goodfellas and Raging Bull. What’s missing? Any sense of urgency or unique point of view. There is not one memorable scene or line of dialogue. Not one.In fact, Levinson and Pileggi seem hard-pressed to even show scenes of crimes. We know what Scorsese’s gangsters do: they hijack trucks, they deal drugs, they rob airports, they distribute stolen goods, and they shoot people in the head. Except for one scene depicting a garroting in silhouette, Levinson’s gangsters basically sit around and yell at each other. A lot.
You would think that this type of thing would be right up director Barry Levinson’s alley. Unfortunately, he's been in career decline for years now, mostly producing made-for-TV true crime pictures: 2021's Dopesick, an expose of the controversial Sackler family pharmaceutical empire; 2018’s Paterno, with Al Pacino as controversial basketball coach Joe Paterno; 2017’s The Wizard of Lies, with De Niro as controversial investment banker Bernie Madoff; 2013’s Phil Spector, with Pacino as the controversial record producer accused of murder; and 2010’s You Don’t Know Jack, with Pacino as controversial doctor Jack Kevorkian.
When exactly did Levinson, the director of Diner, Tin Men, and Rain Man become Mister "Ripped-From-Today’s-Headlines”?HIGHLIGHTS: I did like the scene where Senator C. Estes Kefauver appears on the television quiz show What’s My Line?, and the filmmakers digitally substitute their actor for the real Kefauver. I think that might just say more about my love of What’s My Line? reruns on the Buzzer* cable channel.
Also, to be fair, I very much enjoyed the performances of the two female leads. I had never seen Will and Grace’s Debra Messing in a drama before. Katherine Narducci is a force of nature. Though they are both cast as “the wives,” I thought both were excellent and wish their parts had been expanded. You may remember Narducci from The Sopranos; she played Chef Artie Bucco’s wife, Charmaine. She was also Joe Pesci’s wife in The Irishman. Clearly, she has been typecast as “mobster’s wife.”
This film has no clear reason to exist. I keep returning to my earlier metaphor of The Alto Knights as a plate of leftovers. This film has nothing in it that earlier gangster films have not done better. Indeed, the entire enterprise seems designed to simply remind us of other films that we have enjoyed more. Go watch one of those!
Like leftovers, The Alto Knights might be pleasant. It might be moderately tasty. But there’s nothing here you look forward to—and you've definitely seen it before.
*"Buzzer: It's 3AM Somewhere!"
"Buzzer: An Old Man's Best Friend."
"Buzzer: Is it Time for My Shows Yet?"
"Buzzer: Because You're Too Tired for Colors."
"Buzzer: When You're Missing Betty White."

Johnny Showtime: THE ALTO KNIGHTS Apr 01, 2025
by JB
Last week I was reminded of something our very own Mike Pomaro once said about superhero movies...
At the height of the Marvel boom, Pomaro remarked that if someone had told his younger, comic book-loving self that when he got older there would be a Marvel or DC movie released to movie theaters practically every other week, and that there would be so many of them that he would lose interest in them, HE WOULD NOT HAVE BELIEVED THAT.
I feel similarly about the new Barry Levinson film, The Alto Knights (which for some damn reason, I keep calling The Alito Nights, as if it details the risqué journey of self-discovery and physical pleasure of a certain Supreme Court judge.) If someone had once told me that there would come a time that a new Robert De Niro gangster picture would open in theaters... and I would have zero interest in seeing it? My Scorsese-loving heart would have laughed that person out of the room.
But I dutifully went, perhaps so my beloved readers wouldn’t have to, and I have returned to say that The Alto Knights is a pleasant but bland meal composed entirely of leftovers.THE PLOT IN BRIEF: Vito Genevese (Robert De Niro) is a recent immigrant in turn-of- the-century Little Italy. He befriends Frank Costello (Also De Niro) and the two embark on a criminal career. They join the local Alto Knights Social Club, a front for gangsters. Rather than face a murder charge, Vito escapes to Italy before World War II, leaving Frank in charge of his criminal empire. Fifteen years later, Vito returns and wants back what is his. That does not go well.
I have searched my brain for why the filmmakers would cast De Niro in both lead roles and use make-up, prosthetics, and camera trickery to convince the audience that he is two separate people. De Niro’s Vito wears glasses and has a higher-pitched voice; at times, it almost seems that De Niro is doing a vocal impression of frequent costar Joe Pesci. Still, it’s simply not convincing. Perhaps the producers paid De Niro so much money to star in their film that they wanted him to be EVERYWHERE YOU LOOKED, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what this adds to the film. It’s just a stunt. At least the extensive de-aging technology in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman served a purpose. Here, the stunt casting seems to exist to get people curious enough to watch Alto Knights on a streaming service late one night.
And speaking of Scorsese, would you like to see what a Scorsese movie would be like if he didn’t direct it? Now’s your chance. The Alto Knights was directed by Barry Levinson, who directed Bugsy. It was written by Nicolas Pileggi, who wrote Goodfellas. It was produced by Irwin Winkler, who produced Raging Bull. It features Robert De Niro, who starred in both Goodfellas and Raging Bull. What’s missing? Any sense of urgency or unique point of view. There is not one memorable scene or line of dialogue. Not one.In fact, Levinson and Pileggi seem hard-pressed to even show scenes of crimes. We know what Scorsese’s gangsters do: they hijack trucks, they deal drugs, they rob airports, they distribute stolen goods, and they shoot people in the head. Except for one scene depicting a garroting in silhouette, Levinson’s gangsters basically sit around and yell at each other. A lot.
You would think that this type of thing would be right up director Barry Levinson’s alley. Unfortunately, he's been in career decline for years now, mostly producing made-for-TV true crime pictures: 2021's Dopesick, an expose of the controversial Sackler family pharmaceutical empire; 2018’s Paterno, with Al Pacino as controversial basketball coach Joe Paterno; 2017’s The Wizard of Lies, with De Niro as controversial investment banker Bernie Madoff; 2013’s Phil Spector, with Pacino as the controversial record producer accused of murder; and 2010’s You Don’t Know Jack, with Pacino as controversial doctor Jack Kevorkian.
When exactly did Levinson, the director of Diner, Tin Men, and Rain Man become Mister "Ripped-From-Today’s-Headlines”?HIGHLIGHTS: I did like the scene where Senator C. Estes Kefauver appears on the television quiz show What’s My Line?, and the filmmakers digitally substitute their actor for the real Kefauver. I think that might just say more about my love of What’s My Line? reruns on the Buzzer* cable channel.
Also, to be fair, I very much enjoyed the performances of the two female leads. I had never seen Will and Grace’s Debra Messing in a drama before. Katherine Narducci is a force of nature. Though they are both cast as “the wives,” I thought both were excellent and wish their parts had been expanded. You may remember Narducci from The Sopranos; she played Chef Artie Bucco’s wife, Charmaine. She was also Joe Pesci’s wife in The Irishman. Clearly, she has been typecast as “mobster’s wife.”
This film has no clear reason to exist. I keep returning to my earlier metaphor of The Alto Knights as a plate of leftovers. This film has nothing in it that earlier gangster films have not done better. Indeed, the entire enterprise seems designed to simply remind us of other films that we have enjoyed more. Go watch one of those!
Like leftovers, The Alto Knights might be pleasant. It might be moderately tasty. But there’s nothing here you look forward to—and you've definitely seen it before.
*"Buzzer: It's 3AM Somewhere!"
"Buzzer: An Old Man's Best Friend."
"Buzzer: Is it Time for My Shows Yet?"
"Buzzer: Because You're Too Tired for Colors."
"Buzzer: When You're Missing Betty White."

2K Replay: SKY HIGH Mar 31, 2025
by Adam Riske
Nominated for “Best Actress” (Kelly Preston) at the Stiges - Catalonian International Film Festival. She lost to Lee Yeong-ae in Lady Vengeance.
• Best Scene/Moment: Any scene with Kurt Russell. He’s always great but he’s especially great in Sky High.
• Best Song: The cover of Tears for Fears’s “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Christian Burns.• Best Merch: A “Sky High (2005) Walt Disney Pictures Screen Used Pacifier Ray Gun” for $10,000.00. This is a prop used in the movie to turn adults into babies. The price seems steep but if you’re really motivated to turn adults into babies and you have leftover Christmas money then it might be worth picking up.
• Director Grade: Sky High was directed by Mike Mitchell.
Great Movies: N/A
Good Movies: Sky High
OK Movies: Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo
Bad Movies: Surviving Christmas, The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
Unseen By Me: Shrek Forever After, Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, Trolls, Kung Fu Panda 4Overall Grade: C
• Double It with This 2005 Movie: Herbie: Fully Loaded
• Year 2005 Movies to Trailer Before Them: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Ice Princess, The Pacifier• Never Talk to Strangers or Sky High? Sky High
• Mall Movie? I’ll say borderline no. It’s usually 50/50 with Disney Live Action movies if they’re mall movie material, but Sky High feels like something they had expectations for which would mean it wouldn’t start out at the mall unlike something they’re dumping.
• Only in 2005: Testing out if Michael Angarano could be a thing. Too bad Shia LaBeouf was already out there to fill that space.
• Scene Stealer (tie): Bruce Campbell and Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
• I Miss: Kelly Preston.
• I Don’t Miss: The glut of young adult savior movies that came out on the coattails of the Harry Potter franchise.
• 2005 Crush (tie): Kelly Preston and Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
• 2025 Crush (tie): Lynda Carter and Mary Elizabeth Winstead.• What I Thought in 2005: I remember being slightly embarrassed going to see Sky High alone in theaters because I was in my early twenties and I was there mainly because of Bruce Campbell having a small role. I walked away thinking the movie was cute and better than it needed to be.
• What I Think in 2025: I feel similar now to what I did back in 2005 about Sky High, which is a testament to the quality of the movie because I’m so done with both YA movies and superhero films at this point. The young cast is strong (especially Winstead, who’s giving one of her best performances) and the movie’s zippy fun. This is exactly why I can’t cancel my Disney Plus subscription -- because every once in a while, I’ll want to revisit something like Sky High or Miracle or Holes and I’m reminded how well-done Disney live-action movies usually were back in the late '80s to mid-2000s.

2K Replay: SKY HIGH Mar 31, 2025
by Adam Riske
Nominated for “Best Actress” (Kelly Preston) at the Stiges - Catalonian International Film Festival. She lost to Lee Yeong-ae in Lady Vengeance.
• Best Scene/Moment: Any scene with Kurt Russell. He’s always great but he’s especially great in Sky High.
• Best Song: The cover of Tears for Fears’s “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Christian Burns.• Best Merch: A “Sky High (2005) Walt Disney Pictures Screen Used Pacifier Ray Gun” for $10,000.00. This is a prop used in the movie to turn adults into babies. The price seems steep but if you’re really motivated to turn adults into babies and you have leftover Christmas money then it might be worth picking up.
• Director Grade: Sky High was directed by Mike Mitchell.
Great Movies: N/A
Good Movies: Sky High
OK Movies: Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo
Bad Movies: Surviving Christmas, The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
Unseen By Me: Shrek Forever After, Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, Trolls, Kung Fu Panda 4Overall Grade: C
• Double It with This 2005 Movie: Herbie: Fully Loaded
• Year 2005 Movies to Trailer Before Them: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Ice Princess, The Pacifier• Never Talk to Strangers or Sky High? Sky High
• Mall Movie? I’ll say borderline no. It’s usually 50/50 with Disney Live Action movies if they’re mall movie material, but Sky High feels like something they had expectations for which would mean it wouldn’t start out at the mall unlike something they’re dumping.
• Only in 2005: Testing out if Michael Angarano could be a thing. Too bad Shia LaBeouf was already out there to fill that space.
• Scene Stealer (tie): Bruce Campbell and Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
• I Miss: Kelly Preston.
• I Don’t Miss: The glut of young adult savior movies that came out on the coattails of the Harry Potter franchise.
• 2005 Crush (tie): Kelly Preston and Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
• 2025 Crush (tie): Lynda Carter and Mary Elizabeth Winstead.• What I Thought in 2005: I remember being slightly embarrassed going to see Sky High alone in theaters because I was in my early twenties and I was there mainly because of Bruce Campbell having a small role. I walked away thinking the movie was cute and better than it needed to be.
• What I Think in 2025: I feel similar now to what I did back in 2005 about Sky High, which is a testament to the quality of the movie because I’m so done with both YA movies and superhero films at this point. The young cast is strong (especially Winstead, who’s giving one of her best performances) and the movie’s zippy fun. This is exactly why I can’t cancel my Disney Plus subscription -- because every once in a while, I’ll want to revisit something like Sky High or Miracle or Holes and I’m reminded how well-done Disney live-action movies usually were back in the late '80s to mid-2000s.

Weekend Open Thread Mar 29, 2025

Review: A WORKING MAN Mar 28, 2025
by Rob DiCristino
Meat and potatoes.
To properly understand my thoughts on David Ayer’s new thriller A Working Man, you first need to know something about me: I’m very careful about what I eat. I exercise six days a week and spend what some would consider far too much time and money making simple, nutrient-forward meals out of whole ingredients — “colorful and consistent” is the saying in the fitness community — in order to reap the most satiating rewards out of that work. I avoid soda and fast food whenever possible. I’ve learned to love fat free Greek yogurt the way I used to love ice cream. When the time comes to enjoy a libation, I’ve replaced sugary cocktails with a few fingers of bourbon on the rocks. I use an app to track my macronutrient balance each day — shout-out to MacroFactor — and I find genuine, borderline-autistic satisfaction in meeting the goals it lays out for me. You might say this all sounds obsessive or unhealthy, and that’s okay! We all get to decide for ourselves what makes us happiest, and I’m happiest when I’m feeling disciplined, organized, and fulfilled.But sometimes I just want a big, greasy cheeseburger, you know? Sometimes I want French fries and a milkshake. Have you ever had a Reese’s Peanut Butter Blizzard from Dairy Queen? Have you heard the Good Word about chicken parmesan? Carbs and sugar and fat are delicious, and the only way I can maintain my otherwise-disciplined lifestyle is by occasionally going hog-wild on a bag of Doritos or a cheesesteak calzone. Now, at long last, what in the holy hell does any of this have to do with Jason Statham’s new action picture? Well, my cinematic diet works largely the same way: I try to favor quality over quantity, filling in historical blind spots and torturing myself with three-hour Bulgarian war epics on Criterion at the expense of keeping up with each and every new release. Completist though I may be, I still haven’t seen Borderlands or Marry Me. I’ve slept on Unfrosted and the Mean Girls remake. And I’m not a snob, mind you. I’m just efficient. But every now and then — every once in a while — I just need a goddamn cheeseburger.
That’s where David Ayer’s A Working Man comes in. Based on the pulpy novel Levon’s Trade and co-written by Ayer and Sylvester Stallone (who originally optioned it as a television project for his own Balboa Productions), it follows retired Royal Marine Levon Cade (Statham) as he tries to build a new life as a construction foreman in Chicago. Stripped of custody of his daughter (Isla Gie) due to unresolved PTSD — he allegedly played a role in the death of his wife, a thread the film gets bored with and abandons before it can be resolved — Cade finds comfort as a member of his employers’ extended family: The Garcias (Michael Peña and Noemi Gonzalez) and their teenage daughter, Jenny (Arianna Rivas), treat him like a brother; they accept his rough edges and don’t ask too many questions about his conspicuous talents with bladed weapons. But when a human trafficking ring led by Dimi (Maximillian Osinski) abducts Jenny during a night out with her friends, Cade is forced to harness the violence and rage he thought he’d finally left behind.You’ve seen A Working Man a thousand times, so there’s no sense in explaining much more of the plot than that. It’s Taken with Death Wish sprinkles; it’s Walking Tall dressed up as John Wick. Like Ayer and Statham’s last team-up — 2024’s undeniably watchable The Beekeeper — it’s a hearty stew of classic revenge actioner tropes delivered with such speed and ferocity that we’re never able to stop long enough to consider if anything we’re seeing makes the tiniest lick of sense. While contemporaries like Tom Cruise try to stave off the ravages of age with death-defying stunts and unsightly plastic surgery — Who was that guy in the Super Bowl commercial, and what has he done with Tom Cruise? — Jason Statham continues his leisurely ride down that same lane he’s been in since the Guy Ritchie days, the one built around his trademark combination of playful smirks and concussive haymakers. We know exactly who Statham is on screen. A Working Man knows we know. We know A Working Man knows we know. And knowledge, as we know, is power.
Okay, maybe “knowledge” isn’t the word to use when talking about A Working Man, a movie with so many rocks in its brain that it’s eventually forced to take a few out and juggle them to keep its momentum going. David Ayer may not have improved on his craft in twenty years at the helm, but there’s a confidence to this film’s bleach-out lighting schemes and attention-deficient editing that suggests he may have finally accepted his true role as a Redbox auteur. As with its conflicted protagonist, A Working Man thrives when it leans into B-movie absurdity, when it sends Statham to a biker bar patrolled by the delightful capo Dutch (Chidi Ajufo) and his S&M gang, puts him in a firefight with a mute, bug-eyed vampire (Max Croes) with a machine gun, or stages a final confrontation with Jenny’s would-be buyer, a foppish millionaire inexplicably dressed as Burgess Meredith’s Penguin from the ‘60s Batman show. This is all to say nothing of a blind David Harbour and a pair of mook siblings dressed in the loudest pajama couture I’ve ever seen on film.A Working Man does reach for substance on occasion: Cade and Dutch bond over their military service, which gives their bare-knuckle finale an unexpected bit of texture and — dare I say it? — grace. Arianna Rivas gives a winning performance as a kidnapee who refuses to succumb to genre cliche, enough so that Statham should have thrown her a shotgun and let her take more of her own vengeance in hand. There’s interesting stuff all over A Working Man, honestly, but it knows far better than to examine anything with too much specificity. We don’t come to this film for depth or complexity. We don’t need to know why head mafioso Symon (Andrej Kaminsky) abandons his revenge plot so suddenly — Maybe someone told him the movie was over? — or why the moon hanging over the third act is a big as the fucking Amblin logo. This is not for A Working Man to say. A Working Man is simple. Humble. Direct. It’s for your belly, not your brain. It’s a cheeseburger and French fries. Should you eat it every day? Maybe not, but it does hit the spot every now and then.
A Working Man hits U.S. theaters today.

Review: A WORKING MAN Mar 28, 2025
by Rob DiCristino
Meat and potatoes.
To properly understand my thoughts on David Ayer’s new thriller A Working Man, you first need to know something about me: I’m very careful about what I eat. I exercise six days a week and spend what some would consider far too much time and money making simple, nutrient-forward meals out of whole ingredients — “colorful and consistent” is the saying in the fitness community — in order to reap the most satiating rewards out of that work. I avoid soda and fast food whenever possible. I’ve learned to love fat free Greek yogurt the way I used to love ice cream. When the time comes to enjoy a libation, I’ve replaced sugary cocktails with a few fingers of bourbon on the rocks. I use an app to track my macronutrient balance each day — shout-out to MacroFactor — and I find genuine, borderline-autistic satisfaction in meeting the goals it lays out for me. You might say this all sounds obsessive or unhealthy, and that’s okay! We all get to decide for ourselves what makes us happiest, and I’m happiest when I’m feeling disciplined, organized, and fulfilled.But sometimes I just want a big, greasy cheeseburger, you know? Sometimes I want French fries and a milkshake. Have you ever had a Reese’s Peanut Butter Blizzard from Dairy Queen? Have you heard the Good Word about chicken parmesan? Carbs and sugar and fat are delicious, and the only way I can maintain my otherwise-disciplined lifestyle is by occasionally going hog-wild on a bag of Doritos or a cheesesteak calzone. Now, at long last, what in the holy hell does any of this have to do with Jason Statham’s new action picture? Well, my cinematic diet works largely the same way: I try to favor quality over quantity, filling in historical blind spots and torturing myself with three-hour Bulgarian war epics on Criterion at the expense of keeping up with each and every new release. Completist though I may be, I still haven’t seen Borderlands or Marry Me. I’ve slept on Unfrosted and the Mean Girls remake. And I’m not a snob, mind you. I’m just efficient. But every now and then — every once in a while — I just need a goddamn cheeseburger.
That’s where David Ayer’s A Working Man comes in. Based on the pulpy novel Levon’s Trade and co-written by Ayer and Sylvester Stallone (who originally optioned it as a television project for his own Balboa Productions), it follows retired Royal Marine Levon Cade (Statham) as he tries to build a new life as a construction foreman in Chicago. Stripped of custody of his daughter (Isla Gie) due to unresolved PTSD — he allegedly played a role in the death of his wife, a thread the film gets bored with and abandons before it can be resolved — Cade finds comfort as a member of his employers’ extended family: The Garcias (Michael Peña and Noemi Gonzalez) and their teenage daughter, Jenny (Arianna Rivas), treat him like a brother; they accept his rough edges and don’t ask too many questions about his conspicuous talents with bladed weapons. But when a human trafficking ring led by Dimi (Maximillian Osinski) abducts Jenny during a night out with her friends, Cade is forced to harness the violence and rage he thought he’d finally left behind.You’ve seen A Working Man a thousand times, so there’s no sense in explaining much more of the plot than that. It’s Taken with Death Wish sprinkles; it’s Walking Tall dressed up as John Wick. Like Ayer and Statham’s last team-up — 2024’s undeniably watchable The Beekeeper — it’s a hearty stew of classic revenge actioner tropes delivered with such speed and ferocity that we’re never able to stop long enough to consider if anything we’re seeing makes the tiniest lick of sense. While contemporaries like Tom Cruise try to stave off the ravages of age with death-defying stunts and unsightly plastic surgery — Who was that guy in the Super Bowl commercial, and what has he done with Tom Cruise? — Jason Statham continues his leisurely ride down that same lane he’s been in since the Guy Ritchie days, the one built around his trademark combination of playful smirks and concussive haymakers. We know exactly who Statham is on screen. A Working Man knows we know. We know A Working Man knows we know. And knowledge, as we know, is power.
Okay, maybe “knowledge” isn’t the word to use when talking about A Working Man, a movie with so many rocks in its brain that it’s eventually forced to take a few out and juggle them to keep its momentum going. David Ayer may not have improved on his craft in twenty years at the helm, but there’s a confidence to this film’s bleach-out lighting schemes and attention-deficient editing that suggests he may have finally accepted his true role as a Redbox auteur. As with its conflicted protagonist, A Working Man thrives when it leans into B-movie absurdity, when it sends Statham to a biker bar patrolled by the delightful capo Dutch (Chidi Ajufo) and his S&M gang, puts him in a firefight with a mute, bug-eyed vampire (Max Croes) with a machine gun, or stages a final confrontation with Jenny’s would-be buyer, a foppish millionaire inexplicably dressed as Burgess Meredith’s Penguin from the ‘60s Batman show. This is all to say nothing of a blind David Harbour and a pair of mook siblings dressed in the loudest pajama couture I’ve ever seen on film.A Working Man does reach for substance on occasion: Cade and Dutch bond over their military service, which gives their bare-knuckle finale an unexpected bit of texture and — dare I say it? — grace. Arianna Rivas gives a winning performance as a kidnapee who refuses to succumb to genre cliche, enough so that Statham should have thrown her a shotgun and let her take more of her own vengeance in hand. There’s interesting stuff all over A Working Man, honestly, but it knows far better than to examine anything with too much specificity. We don’t come to this film for depth or complexity. We don’t need to know why head mafioso Symon (Andrej Kaminsky) abandons his revenge plot so suddenly — Maybe someone told him the movie was over? — or why the moon hanging over the third act is a big as the fucking Amblin logo. This is not for A Working Man to say. A Working Man is simple. Humble. Direct. It’s for your belly, not your brain. It’s a cheeseburger and French fries. Should you eat it every day? Maybe not, but it does hit the spot every now and then.
A Working Man hits U.S. theaters today.

Reserved Seating: Roger Dodgers Mar 27, 2025
The review duo (w/ special guest Patrick!) who chat about three movies Roger Ebert panned: Always, Double Impact, and Murder at 1600.

FTM 765: ALIEN RESURRECTION Mar 26, 2025
The annual SFFFU show moves to March as Patrick and Adam Riske talk Alien Ripley and Human Alien.
Download this episode here.
Listen to F This Movie! on Apple Podcasts.
Also discussed this episode: Eight Men Out (1988), Beavis & Butt-Head Do America (1996), Fun With Dick and Jane (2005), Green Street Hooligans (2005), Jackie Chan's First Strike (1996), Millers in Marriage (2025), High Rollers (2025), Novocaine (2025), The Monkey (2025), Sommersby (1993), The Day the Earth Blew Up (2025), Den of Thieves 2: Pantera (2025),

Johnny Deadline: Looney Tunes, Physical Media, and CATS DON'T DANCE Mar 25, 2025
by JB
Some interesting follow-ups to last week’s column on The Day the Earth Blew Up!
If you are sad because the MAX streaming service removed some beloved Looney Tunes cartoons last week, here comes the latest Warner Archive sale to entice you back to the Land of Physical Media. For ten days, concluding on March 31, Warner Brothers is offering more than 500 Blu-Ray titles, 4 for $49. That means you could invest in the four Warner’s Looney Tunes Collector’s Choice collections, and pay $49 plus shipping for about 80 beloved shorts, by the calculator on my phone, that’s about $1.63 per short and you will own them forever*. Follow this link to the sale.While you are shopping, please accept these recommendations? They are all JB approved and guaranteed**.
The Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races, Robert Altman’s final film, A Prairie Home Companion, all three film versions of A Star Is Born, Annie, Get Your Gun, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, Bad Day at Black Rock, Crossfire, the Frederic March version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Fearless, The Fearless Vampire Killers, Christopher Guest’s For Your Consideration, Game Night, Guys & Dolls, The Hidden, Elvis in It Happened at the World’s Fair, The Last of Shelia, The Man with Two Brains, Mister Roberts, My Favorite Year, Mystery of the Wax Museum, Out of the Past, Pump Up the Volume, Quick Change, Blake Edward’s SOB, Seven Days in May, Straight Time, and Tex Avery’s Screwball Classics, Volumes 1,2, &3
ALL of these can be yours for just $392 plus shipping!
I have also read that Ketchup Entertainment, the fledging distributor that took a chance with The Day the Earth Blew Up, must be happy with its relative success because they are in negotiations to buy from Warner the cartoon previously shelved as a tax write-off, Coyote Vs. Acme. This is great news. Everyone who has seen it says it’s a quality piece of work and a hoot and a half. I know that I really want to see it. I will now regard The Day the Earth Blew Up as the tasty appetizer served before the heartier main course of Coyote Vs. Acme.Coyote Vs. Acme is not the first Warner Brother’s animated film to experience production problems. Thirteen long years ago, I wrote about Cat’s Don’t Dance, a delightful feature-length cartoon that few people have heard of, which went through development hell, and was unceremoniously dumped by Warner Brothers in the spring of 1997.
“Cat’s Don’t Dance started out in 1993 as a vehicle for Michael Jackson and the Looney Tunes. Jackson would appear in the film live, with the beloved Looney Tunes characters animated. When Jackson dropped out, Warner Bros. instead used the Looney Tunes gang, along with a live-action Michael Jordan, in the 1996 movie Space Jam. With new characters and a now fully-animated protagonist, Cats Don’t Dance was finally released in 1997 as the first and only production of Turner Feature Animation-- right before Ted Turner merged his media empire with Warner Brothers. The film’s release suffered in the corporate transition. Cats Don’t Dance wound up costing more than $35 million; it made back less than $4 million at the box office. The loud and unwatchable Space Jam, by comparison, grossed more than $250 million.This is a shame because Cats Don’t Dance is THE undiscovered animated gem of the last two decades. Gene Kelly consulted with the animators on the choreography, making this the last film on which Kelly ever worked. Cats Don’t Dance was the first non-Disney film to win the Annie Award for Best Animated Feature, years before the AMPAS made that an official Oscar category.
THE PLOT IN BRIEF: In 1939, Danny the Cat arrives in Hollywood from Kokomo, Indiana. His plan? According to his “To-Do List,” he is going to become a big movie star. He gives himself a week. After snagging a part in a Noah’s Ark-inspired musical extravaganza, Danny learns the hard Hollywood truth: child star Darla Dimple holds such sway at the studio and her hatred of animals is so great that animals are not allowed to sing and dance. At Mammoth Pictures, animals are little more than extras. Danny will not accept that reality and sets out to prove to studio head L.B. Mammoth that animals have much more to offer. Along the way, he gathers together a literal menagerie of talented friends.
There are so many reasons to love this film:
-Cats Don’t Dance has enough visual invention for three conventional films. Recently on an F This Movie podcast, I wondered what had ever happened to ancillary bits of “business” in narrative movies. Everywhere you look in the frame in Cats Don’t Dance, there is something going on: visual gags, running jokes (my favorite involves an unoffended pig), and amazing period detail. The pace of this film is frenetic, and I would almost say you have to see it twice just to take in all the gags.
-Randy Newman’s great songs. This was only Newman’s third children’s film after Toy Story and James and the Giant Peach, but what I love about his lyrics for Cats Don’t Dance is that they retain so much of the flavor that made him an unlikely pop star in the Seventies. The idiosyncratic, misanthropic writer of “Short People” is here in all his glory. Here are some lyrics from a big musical number about Noah’s Ark:
NOW THE PEOPLE THEY WERE SO BAD THAT THE LORD MADE THE RAIN COME DOWN
AND HE WASHED AWAY THEIR BAD CITIES, AND HE WASHED AWAY THEIR BAD TOWNS, AND ALL OF THE PEOPLE DROWNED.
WITH THE ANIMALS, IT WAS DIFFERENT THOUGH SOME OF THEM DROWNED TOO
-One of the great villains in animation history. Darla Dimple and her manservant Max are really something to see. Darla is a sociopathic Shirley Temple manque and Max is an outsized, bastard hybrid of Erich Von Stroheim in Sunset Boulevard and Boris Karloff in the original Frankenstein. She is a lot like Cruella Deville, in that both are obsessed with MURDERING ANIMALS. Given that most animated films delight in the hijinks of anthropomorphic furry friends, this must be considered the greatest crime in the animated world. (Compare this to the lame villains in Space Jam -- they just want to beat MJ in BASKETBALL.)
Also, manservant Max is so much bigger than the diminutive Darla that it leads to some of the film’s best gags based on scale. As my astute son pointed out during a recent viewing, so much of the film’s visual motifs are based on the gaping disparity between large and small. This is a film that plays with a very big canvas.-Check out this voice cast! Although most people probably remember Scott Bakula from Quantum Leap, he voices Danny here and does all his own singing. Jasmine Guy is suitably sweet as the female lead, though her singing is handled by Natalie Cole. The rest of the voice cast is a deep bench of beloved character actors, many of whom had never voiced an animated character before: John Rhys-Davies, George Kennedy, Kathy Najimy, Hal Holbrook, Don Knotts, and David Johansen. Director Mark Dindal even contributes as the formidable voice of Max.
This is the kind of film that children need to see: smart, but sweet. This is the kind of film that F-Head children need to see: full of sly references to classic Hollywood. Cats Don’t Dance also explodes with a kind of joy that is sorely lacking in most contemporary children’s films. Cats Don’t Dance (like the equally delightful Ratatouille) insists that you should never let other people define you. That is a message that our children need to hear again and again and again.”
THE ICING ON THE CAKE? Cats Don’t Dance is available on Blu-Ray as part of the current Warner Archive 4 for $49 sale! How’s that for burying the lede?
*Or at least until an electro-magnetic pulse renders all media players inoperable.
**No guarantee actually given or implied

Johnny Deadline: Looney Tunes, Physical Media, and CATS DON'T DANCE Mar 25, 2025
by JB
Some interesting follow-ups to last week’s column on The Day the Earth Blew Up!
If you are sad because the MAX streaming service removed some beloved Looney Tunes cartoons last week, here comes the latest Warner Archive sale to entice you back to the Land of Physical Media. For ten days, concluding on March 31, Warner Brothers is offering more than 500 Blu-Ray titles, 4 for $49. That means you could invest in the four Warner’s Looney Tunes Collector’s Choice collections, and pay $49 plus shipping for about 80 beloved shorts, by the calculator on my phone, that’s about $1.63 per short and you will own them forever*. Follow this link to the sale.While you are shopping, please accept these recommendations? They are all JB approved and guaranteed**.
The Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races, Robert Altman’s final film, A Prairie Home Companion, all three film versions of A Star Is Born, Annie, Get Your Gun, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, Bad Day at Black Rock, Crossfire, the Frederic March version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Fearless, The Fearless Vampire Killers, Christopher Guest’s For Your Consideration, Game Night, Guys & Dolls, The Hidden, Elvis in It Happened at the World’s Fair, The Last of Shelia, The Man with Two Brains, Mister Roberts, My Favorite Year, Mystery of the Wax Museum, Out of the Past, Pump Up the Volume, Quick Change, Blake Edward’s SOB, Seven Days in May, Straight Time, and Tex Avery’s Screwball Classics, Volumes 1,2, &3
ALL of these can be yours for just $392 plus shipping!
I have also read that Ketchup Entertainment, the fledging distributor that took a chance with The Day the Earth Blew Up, must be happy with its relative success because they are in negotiations to buy from Warner the cartoon previously shelved as a tax write-off, Coyote Vs. Acme. This is great news. Everyone who has seen it says it’s a quality piece of work and a hoot and a half. I know that I really want to see it. I will now regard The Day the Earth Blew Up as the tasty appetizer served before the heartier main course of Coyote Vs. Acme.Coyote Vs. Acme is not the first Warner Brother’s animated film to experience production problems. Thirteen long years ago, I wrote about Cat’s Don’t Dance, a delightful feature-length cartoon that few people have heard of, which went through development hell, and was unceremoniously dumped by Warner Brothers in the spring of 1997.
“Cat’s Don’t Dance started out in 1993 as a vehicle for Michael Jackson and the Looney Tunes. Jackson would appear in the film live, with the beloved Looney Tunes characters animated. When Jackson dropped out, Warner Bros. instead used the Looney Tunes gang, along with a live-action Michael Jordan, in the 1996 movie Space Jam. With new characters and a now fully-animated protagonist, Cats Don’t Dance was finally released in 1997 as the first and only production of Turner Feature Animation-- right before Ted Turner merged his media empire with Warner Brothers. The film’s release suffered in the corporate transition. Cats Don’t Dance wound up costing more than $35 million; it made back less than $4 million at the box office. The loud and unwatchable Space Jam, by comparison, grossed more than $250 million.This is a shame because Cats Don’t Dance is THE undiscovered animated gem of the last two decades. Gene Kelly consulted with the animators on the choreography, making this the last film on which Kelly ever worked. Cats Don’t Dance was the first non-Disney film to win the Annie Award for Best Animated Feature, years before the AMPAS made that an official Oscar category.
THE PLOT IN BRIEF: In 1939, Danny the Cat arrives in Hollywood from Kokomo, Indiana. His plan? According to his “To-Do List,” he is going to become a big movie star. He gives himself a week. After snagging a part in a Noah’s Ark-inspired musical extravaganza, Danny learns the hard Hollywood truth: child star Darla Dimple holds such sway at the studio and her hatred of animals is so great that animals are not allowed to sing and dance. At Mammoth Pictures, animals are little more than extras. Danny will not accept that reality and sets out to prove to studio head L.B. Mammoth that animals have much more to offer. Along the way, he gathers together a literal menagerie of talented friends.
There are so many reasons to love this film:
-Cats Don’t Dance has enough visual invention for three conventional films. Recently on an F This Movie podcast, I wondered what had ever happened to ancillary bits of “business” in narrative movies. Everywhere you look in the frame in Cats Don’t Dance, there is something going on: visual gags, running jokes (my favorite involves an unoffended pig), and amazing period detail. The pace of this film is frenetic, and I would almost say you have to see it twice just to take in all the gags.
-Randy Newman’s great songs. This was only Newman’s third children’s film after Toy Story and James and the Giant Peach, but what I love about his lyrics for Cats Don’t Dance is that they retain so much of the flavor that made him an unlikely pop star in the Seventies. The idiosyncratic, misanthropic writer of “Short People” is here in all his glory. Here are some lyrics from a big musical number about Noah’s Ark:
NOW THE PEOPLE THEY WERE SO BAD THAT THE LORD MADE THE RAIN COME DOWN
AND HE WASHED AWAY THEIR BAD CITIES, AND HE WASHED AWAY THEIR BAD TOWNS, AND ALL OF THE PEOPLE DROWNED.
WITH THE ANIMALS, IT WAS DIFFERENT THOUGH SOME OF THEM DROWNED TOO
-One of the great villains in animation history. Darla Dimple and her manservant Max are really something to see. Darla is a sociopathic Shirley Temple manque and Max is an outsized, bastard hybrid of Erich Von Stroheim in Sunset Boulevard and Boris Karloff in the original Frankenstein. She is a lot like Cruella Deville, in that both are obsessed with MURDERING ANIMALS. Given that most animated films delight in the hijinks of anthropomorphic furry friends, this must be considered the greatest crime in the animated world. (Compare this to the lame villains in Space Jam -- they just want to beat MJ in BASKETBALL.)
Also, manservant Max is so much bigger than the diminutive Darla that it leads to some of the film’s best gags based on scale. As my astute son pointed out during a recent viewing, so much of the film’s visual motifs are based on the gaping disparity between large and small. This is a film that plays with a very big canvas.-Check out this voice cast! Although most people probably remember Scott Bakula from Quantum Leap, he voices Danny here and does all his own singing. Jasmine Guy is suitably sweet as the female lead, though her singing is handled by Natalie Cole. The rest of the voice cast is a deep bench of beloved character actors, many of whom had never voiced an animated character before: John Rhys-Davies, George Kennedy, Kathy Najimy, Hal Holbrook, Don Knotts, and David Johansen. Director Mark Dindal even contributes as the formidable voice of Max.
This is the kind of film that children need to see: smart, but sweet. This is the kind of film that F-Head children need to see: full of sly references to classic Hollywood. Cats Don’t Dance also explodes with a kind of joy that is sorely lacking in most contemporary children’s films. Cats Don’t Dance (like the equally delightful Ratatouille) insists that you should never let other people define you. That is a message that our children need to hear again and again and again.”
THE ICING ON THE CAKE? Cats Don’t Dance is available on Blu-Ray as part of the current Warner Archive 4 for $49 sale! How’s that for burying the lede?
*Or at least until an electro-magnetic pulse renders all media players inoperable.
**No guarantee actually given or implied

2K Replay: FEVER PITCH (2005) Mar 24, 2025
by Adam Riske
Nominated for “Best International Actress” (Drew Barrymore) at the Irish Film and Television Awards. She lost to Gillian Anderson in The Mighty Celt.
• Best Scene/Moment (tie): The scene where Jimmy Fallon gets his season tickets in the mail and starts splitting them up with his friends (real ones will get it…. just beautiful sheets of tickets to baseball games) and the ending when Drew Barrymore runs onto the field at Fenway Park to get to Jimmy Fallon before he sells away his Red Sox tickets. It should have been one of those AFI 100 Cheers moments. I love when she tells him that if he loves her enough to sell his tickets that she loves him enough not to let him. How can you not be romantic about baseball?
• Best Song: “Who Killed Tangerine?” by Tears for Fears.• Best Merch: A “2004 Fever Pitch Set Used Film Slate…” for $500.00. This would be fun to have around. You could find ways to work clacking this slate into your life like “Time for work (clack)” etc. Just don’t kiss the slate. Josh did that in The Blair Witch Project, and they were all screwed shortly thereafter.
• Director Grade: Fever Pitch (2005) was directed by Peter & Bobby Farrelly.
Great Movies: Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin
Good Movies: There’s Something About Mary, Fever Pitch (2005), Champions
OK Movies: Me, Myself & Irene, Shallow Hal, Hall Pass
Bad Movies: Stuck on You, The Heartbreak Kid (2007), Movie 43, Dumb and Dumber To, Green Book
Unseen By Me: Osmosis Jones, The Three Stooges, The Greatest Beer Run Ever, Ricky Stanicky, Dear Santa
Overall Grade: B
• Double It with This 2005 Movie: The Bad News Bears (2005)
• Year 2005 Movies to Trailer Before Them: Kicking & Screaming, The Longest Yard (2005), The Ringer
• Never Talk to Strangers or Fever Pitch (2005)? Fever Pitch (2005)• Mall Movie? It’s borderline but I’ll say it wouldn’t initially play at the mall. However, it might make it there a couple of weeks into its release.
• Only in 2005: I went to Boston. It wasn’t because of this movie; it was for work, but it was just a month after Fever Pitch (2005) came out and I remember wanting to see the movie in Boston to see if it played even better there. I didn’t have time so instead I took a cab to Fenway Park (when there was no game) just to walk around outside the stadium and Yawkey Way. It was really cool.
• Scene Stealer: Fenway Park. It looks beautiful and I want to go there to see a game one day.
• I Miss: Baseball movies released theatrically.
• I Don’t Miss: Jimmy Fallon in movies. I’m just not a fan. He’s alright in Fever Pitch (2005) but still irks me at times. Drew Barrymore is so good at romantic comedy that she can make virtually any on-screen love interest somewhat likable.
• 2005 Crush (tie): Drew Barrymore and KaDee Strickland.
• 2025 Crush (tie): Drew Barrymore and KaDee Strickland.• What I Thought in 2005: I didn’t want to see Fever Pitch (2005) at first but an A grade in Entertainment Weekly (dating myself there with that reference) convinced me to give it a try and I ended up loving it. It was one of my favorite movies of 2005 at the time and made me very excited for the 2005 MLB season, which as it turned out was pretty freaking great since my Chicago White Sox won the World Series that year.
• What I Think in 2025: Aside from some weird extras work and music intro/outros, I’m still won over by Fever Pitch (2005). It’s up there with my favorite baseball movies and it gets a lot right about fandom. The chemistry between Barrymore and Fallon is really good, too, and I like the specificity of the setting in and around Boston. It feels lived in. Fever Pitch (2005) is such a pleasant watch and still one of my favorite movies of 2005.

2K Replay: FEVER PITCH (2005) Mar 24, 2025
by Adam Riske
Nominated for “Best International Actress” (Drew Barrymore) at the Irish Film and Television Awards. She lost to Gillian Anderson in The Mighty Celt.
• Best Scene/Moment (tie): The scene where Jimmy Fallon gets his season tickets in the mail and starts splitting them up with his friends (real ones will get it…. just beautiful sheets of tickets to baseball games) and the ending when Drew Barrymore runs onto the field at Fenway Park to get to Jimmy Fallon before he sells away his Red Sox tickets. It should have been one of those AFI 100 Cheers moments. I love when she tells him that if he loves her enough to sell his tickets that she loves him enough not to let him. How can you not be romantic about baseball?
• Best Song: “Who Killed Tangerine?” by Tears for Fears.• Best Merch: A “2004 Fever Pitch Set Used Film Slate…” for $500.00. This would be fun to have around. You could find ways to work clacking this slate into your life like “Time for work (clack)” etc. Just don’t kiss the slate. Josh did that in The Blair Witch Project, and they were all screwed shortly thereafter.
• Director Grade: Fever Pitch (2005) was directed by Peter & Bobby Farrelly.
Great Movies: Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin
Good Movies: There’s Something About Mary, Fever Pitch (2005), Champions
OK Movies: Me, Myself & Irene, Shallow Hal, Hall Pass
Bad Movies: Stuck on You, The Heartbreak Kid (2007), Movie 43, Dumb and Dumber To, Green Book
Unseen By Me: Osmosis Jones, The Three Stooges, The Greatest Beer Run Ever, Ricky Stanicky, Dear Santa
Overall Grade: B
• Double It with This 2005 Movie: The Bad News Bears (2005)
• Year 2005 Movies to Trailer Before Them: Kicking & Screaming, The Longest Yard (2005), The Ringer
• Never Talk to Strangers or Fever Pitch (2005)? Fever Pitch (2005)• Mall Movie? It’s borderline but I’ll say it wouldn’t initially play at the mall. However, it might make it there a couple of weeks into its release.
• Only in 2005: I went to Boston. It wasn’t because of this movie; it was for work, but it was just a month after Fever Pitch (2005) came out and I remember wanting to see the movie in Boston to see if it played even better there. I didn’t have time so instead I took a cab to Fenway Park (when there was no game) just to walk around outside the stadium and Yawkey Way. It was really cool.
• Scene Stealer: Fenway Park. It looks beautiful and I want to go there to see a game one day.
• I Miss: Baseball movies released theatrically.
• I Don’t Miss: Jimmy Fallon in movies. I’m just not a fan. He’s alright in Fever Pitch (2005) but still irks me at times. Drew Barrymore is so good at romantic comedy that she can make virtually any on-screen love interest somewhat likable.
• 2005 Crush (tie): Drew Barrymore and KaDee Strickland.
• 2025 Crush (tie): Drew Barrymore and KaDee Strickland.• What I Thought in 2005: I didn’t want to see Fever Pitch (2005) at first but an A grade in Entertainment Weekly (dating myself there with that reference) convinced me to give it a try and I ended up loving it. It was one of my favorite movies of 2005 at the time and made me very excited for the 2005 MLB season, which as it turned out was pretty freaking great since my Chicago White Sox won the World Series that year.
• What I Think in 2025: Aside from some weird extras work and music intro/outros, I’m still won over by Fever Pitch (2005). It’s up there with my favorite baseball movies and it gets a lot right about fandom. The chemistry between Barrymore and Fallon is really good, too, and I like the specificity of the setting in and around Boston. It feels lived in. Fever Pitch (2005) is such a pleasant watch and still one of my favorite movies of 2005.

Weekend Open Thread Mar 22, 2025

24 Hours of Movies: Mol Movies! Mar 21, 2025
by Patrick BromleyA marathon of movies for an actor who never got her due.
Once upon a time, model and actress Gretchen Mol was supposed to be the next big thing. Vanity Fair put her on the cover of their magazine, declaring her the "It Girl of the '90s" despite not yet having done much to earn the title. That cover kind of fucked her career in a couple of ways: first, it made audiences resentful that this gorgeous blonde ingenue was being foisted on them pre-packaged as the "It Girl" when they had never heard of her. Second, it created completely unrealistic expectations around her career and every one of her performances; instead of being able to slowly build a body of work the way most actors do, she was expected to arrive fully formed and prove her "It Girl" status with every movie, a task to which no actor could live up.
Instead of shrinking away from the challenge, though, Mol has spent the last 25 years building up an impressive filmography, always doing good work even when she found herself typecast almost from the outset. Her perseverance and talent deserves to be recognized with this 24-hour marathon of her movies!
Thank you to Adam Riske for the pun title.
10 am - Rounders (1998, dir. John Dahl)Kicking things off with Gretchen Mol's first high-profile role in John Dahl's gambling drama because it was right around the time that magazine covers were calling her Hollywood's new "It Girl." She's fine in a thankless role -- the placeholder of "disapproving girlfriend" -- that would prove to be a sign of things to come for much of her career. I like Rounders quite a bit despite disliking a lot of gambling movies (I can't handle watching people get out out of control or self-destruct), probably because this one at least has spoilers a sort-of happy ending. I'm glad Mol didn't get too locked in with Miramax early on knowing what we know about Harvey Weinstein and actresses (though there were persistent rumors that she slept with him for a career, because fuck everyone), but doing a high-profile drama at the studio's height certainly helped give her some cred. In a better and more just world, she could have had the same career as, say, Gwyneth Paltrow. Also, don't splash the pot.
Noon - Music from Another Room (1998, dir. Charlie Peters)Our second film is a truly insane romantic comedy from Gretchen Mol's first real year of movie stardom when she was still trying to figure out what kind of actor she wanted to be and what kinds of movies she wanted to make. A little boy helps deliver a baby girl in graphic (verbal) detail and immediately nnounces he's going to marry her; jump ahead 25 years as he grows up to be Jude Law and she grows up to be Mol. Law ingratiates himself with her family (including blind sister Jennifer Tilley, asshole brother Jeremy Piven, and sarcastic sister Martha Plimpton) and proceeds to act out in stalkery ways that would get him canceled in 2025 but which in 1998 were mean to be interpreted as "hopelessly romantic" and "quirky." This movie is too quirky by half, up to and including the title, a tortured metaphor for what it feels like to be in love. Mol isn't given a character so much as she is positioned as the ideal woman, an indicator early in her career that something was amiss. Despite a good cast, this went straight to video in 1998 possibly because Jude Law and Gretchen Mol were not yet big enough names to open a movie theatrically.
2 pm - Get Carter (2000, dir. Stephen Kay)Gretchen Mol has nothing more than an uncredited cameo in Stephen Kay's remake of the classic British gangster thriller Get Carter, but because I like this movie I'll take her participation as an excuse to program it here. Sylvester Stallone steps into the role originated by Michael Caine (who also appears here), playing a Vegas mob enforcer who returns home to Seattle when his brother is killed. Mol briefly appears as a gangster's girlfriend, just one of many welcome faces in a cast that includes Miranda Richardson, John C. McGinley, Rachael Leigh Cook, Mickey Rourke, and Rhona Mitra. I know it's blasphemy to like this movie when the original is is so beloved (believe it or not, I've still never seen it), but I've always dug it as part action movie, part gritty character piece. The energy will help break up the day.
4 pm - Attraction (2000, dir. Russell DeGrazier)Here's a movie I hadn't thought about for 25 years until doing research for this marathon despite the fact that Erika and I definitely saw it at our local AMC theater when it was one of the only theaters in the country showing it for like a one-week engagement back in 2000. At the time, that was reason enough to go see it -- plus the fact that it starred Mol as the ex-girlfriend of a pretty boy radio host (Matthew Settle) who's stalking her until he starts a relationship with her best friend, played by Samantha Mathis in a series of unfortunate wigs. Tom Everett Scott also has a supporting role as the pretty boy's buddy. On paper it should work just because of three-fourths of its cast, but this four-way relationship thriller is fairly soggy and underserving of its stars. It's also another movie in which Mol plays a kind of idealized woman, a role in which she was typecast early on and was asked to repeat far too often.
6 pm - Laggies (2014, dir. Lynn Shelton)Programming this one for no other reason than because it stars both Mol and Keira Knightley, another actor deserving of her own 24-hour marathon. That it's maybe my least favorite Lynn Shelton movie (at least on first viewing; it's been years) is of little consequence.
8 pm - 3:10 to Yuma (2007, dir. James Mangold)She may have only a supporting role in director James Mangold's excellent remake of 3:10 to Yuma, but Mol's participation means we get to program a western in the Primetime slot so that's what I'm doing. She's given another thankless wife role in an ensemble full of men who have better parts, including Russell Crowe as a charismatic outlaw and Christian Bale as the rancher hired to bring him to justice. I've never been much of a Bale guy, but he's fine at being stoic and decent; much more exciting is Russell Crowe's fantastic turn in the Glenn Ford role as the worst son of a bitch who ever lived who also happens to be totally charming and likable. It's clear that Mangold is a filmmaker who's good in just about any genre, but between this and Logan is seems like he's particularly well-suited for westerns. Mol has an old-fashioned quality to her, part Grace Kelly and part Myrna Loy, that puts her right at home in movies like this.
10:30 pm - The Shape of Things (2003, dir. Neil Labute)Mol reunites with her London cast mates for the film adaptation of the Neil Labute play they originated on stage. Paul Rudd plays a schulb who begins "bettering" himself when he gets a girlfriend played by the great Rachel Weisz. While I think I've outgrown Labute's brand of snotty misanthropy, there's still a lot I like in The Shape of Things. It's hard to totally dislike a movie scored entirely to Elvis Costello songs. Mol's role is, per usual, a little thankless -- Weisz gets the really good stuff -- but her casting makes her an interesting counterpart, a kind of anti-Weisz. What begins as yet another "idealized woman" role (she's a friend of Rudd's character who's engaged to mega-douche Fred Weller) gradually gives way to something more flawed and interesting as the story progresses. Not all of the movie works, but at least Gretchen Mol gets to turn some of her usual typecasting on its head.
12:30 am - The Thirteenth Floor (1999, dir. Josef Rosnak)This is about the weirdest movie I could find in Gretchen Mol's filmography when it came to programming the overnight. It's also the only movie in the lineup I've never seen all the way through! It's about unlikely leading man Craig Bierko entering a VR simulation to solve the murder of his boss; Mol is, of course, his love interest. Released in 1999 in the shadow of other reality benders like The Matrix and Dark City, The Thirteenth Floor is the least remembered and the least regarded of the three, but I'm excited to finally check it out as part of this marathon because, like another movie later in this lineup, it takes advantage of Gretchen Mol's timeless qualities by casting her as both present day and period versions of her character. Also it's a remake of Fassbinder's World on a Wire, another movie I've never seen. How did I not know this?
2:30 am - The Notorious Bettie Page (2008, dir. Mary Harron)Because Gretchen Mol didn't make much horror (there's a supporting role in 2021's False Positive, but I don't feel like watching that again), we're going to instead make our overnight horny instead of weird. Mol has her best role and her best performance to date in this biopic of Pinup Queen Bettie Page for director Mary Harron and writers Harron and Guinevere Turner, the team behind American Psycho. Bettie Page isn't nearly as subversive as that movie, but it's never trying to be; instead, it wants to give a life and interiority to a woman who has existed for so many years as a two-dimensional image. Mol inhabits not just Page's persona but her bare skin with incredible confidence and comfort, making us understand what it was that made her so special. It's a great performance, one that could have really changed the course of Mol's career if it had come along in the late '90s. By the time it came out in 2008, however, not enough people were paying attention anymore and Mol didn't get the credit she deserves for her work in this one.
4 am - Forever Mine (1999, dir. Paul Schrader)Continuing our horny overnight, we pivot to Paul Schrader's throwback romance that was unceremoniously dumped to cable and DVD when the financiers filed for bankruptcy before it could receive a theatrical release. Mol is stunning as the wife of a shady businessman (Ray Liotta) who falls in love with the Most Intense Pool Boy Ever (Joseph Fiennes) while on vacation at a beach resort. Things take a dark turn when Liotta discovers the affair and the movie jumps ahead several years so that Fiennes can adopt a ridiculous disguise and plan an elaborate revenge. I get why this was written off in the late '90s/early 2000s -- the second half gets kind of silly -- but I like Schrader's homage to '60s melodrama because of how non-Schrader it feels. I especially like Moll's performance because it turns a character written as something as an object (yet again) into someone who's conflicted and human. This is more a vibes movie than anything else, but I dig the vibes.
6 am - The Ten (2007, dir. David Wain)Wake up with something funny! I remember feeling a little disappointed by The Ten when we saw it in theaters in 2007 but that's because it was David Wain and his The State cast mates' follow-up to Wet Hot American Summer, one of the funniest and best comedies of the 2000s. Revisiting the movie in 2025, it's much funnier than I gave it credit for being, even if it's a big mess of a sketch movie consisting of ten vignettes (as host Paul Rudd will continually remind us), each representing one of the Ten Commandments. Mol plays an American tourist who has an affair with Jesus Christ (Justin Theroux) during a holiday in Mexico. She pops up again later in the movie in other sketches as the wife of A.D. Miles, and even gets to sing in the film's triumphant closing musical number. There's no better way to shake off the cobwebs of 20 hours of consecutive movies than with a mainline injection of silliness and absurdity. We can watch it as a goof!
8 am - Millers in Marriage (2025, dir. Edward Burns)Let's close things out with one of Mol's most recent films and the one that made me realize that I missed seeing her in movies. She fits right into writer/director Edward Burns' best ensemble in years, playing a former alternative rock star who gave up music to raise a family, married an alcoholic manager (Patrick Wilson), and now is considering an affair with the journalist (Benjamin Bratt) interviewing her for a retrospective piece. That's just one of the subplots of Millers in Marriage, another of the writer/director's treatises on family dynamics and romantic relationships that also stars Minnie Driver, Campbell Scott, Julianna Margulies, and Morena Baccarin. I know she's been doing interesting TV work for a number of years (I've never watched Boardwalk Empire), but it's nice to see someone like Burns writing Mol an actual adult role in a whole movie about and for adults. Let's hope it's the start of a new act for her career.

24 Hours of Movies: Mol Movies! Mar 21, 2025
by Patrick BromleyA marathon of movies for an actor who never got her due.
Once upon a time, model and actress Gretchen Mol was supposed to be the next big thing. Vanity Fair put her on the cover of their magazine, declaring her the "It Girl of the '90s" despite not yet having done much to earn the title. That cover kind of fucked her career in a couple of ways: first, it made audiences resentful that this gorgeous blonde ingenue was being foisted on them pre-packaged as the "It Girl" when they had never heard of her. Second, it created completely unrealistic expectations around her career and every one of her performances; instead of being able to slowly build a body of work the way most actors do, she was expected to arrive fully formed and prove her "It Girl" status with every movie, a task to which no actor could live up.
Instead of shrinking away from the challenge, though, Mol has spent the last 25 years building up an impressive filmography, always doing good work even when she found herself typecast almost from the outset. Her perseverance and talent deserves to be recognized with this 24-hour marathon of her movies!
Thank you to Adam Riske for the pun title.
10 am - Rounders (1998, dir. John Dahl)Kicking things off with Gretchen Mol's first high-profile role in John Dahl's gambling drama because it was right around the time that magazine covers were calling her Hollywood's new "It Girl." She's fine in a thankless role -- the placeholder of "disapproving girlfriend" -- that would prove to be a sign of things to come for much of her career. I like Rounders quite a bit despite disliking a lot of gambling movies (I can't handle watching people get out out of control or self-destruct), probably because this one at least has spoilers a sort-of happy ending. I'm glad Mol didn't get too locked in with Miramax early on knowing what we know about Harvey Weinstein and actresses (though there were persistent rumors that she slept with him for a career, because fuck everyone), but doing a high-profile drama at the studio's height certainly helped give her some cred. In a better and more just world, she could have had the same career as, say, Gwyneth Paltrow. Also, don't splash the pot.
Noon - Music from Another Room (1998, dir. Charlie Peters)Our second film is a truly insane romantic comedy from Gretchen Mol's first real year of movie stardom when she was still trying to figure out what kind of actor she wanted to be and what kinds of movies she wanted to make. A little boy helps deliver a baby girl in graphic (verbal) detail and immediately nnounces he's going to marry her; jump ahead 25 years as he grows up to be Jude Law and she grows up to be Mol. Law ingratiates himself with her family (including blind sister Jennifer Tilley, asshole brother Jeremy Piven, and sarcastic sister Martha Plimpton) and proceeds to act out in stalkery ways that would get him canceled in 2025 but which in 1998 were mean to be interpreted as "hopelessly romantic" and "quirky." This movie is too quirky by half, up to and including the title, a tortured metaphor for what it feels like to be in love. Mol isn't given a character so much as she is positioned as the ideal woman, an indicator early in her career that something was amiss. Despite a good cast, this went straight to video in 1998 possibly because Jude Law and Gretchen Mol were not yet big enough names to open a movie theatrically.
2 pm - Get Carter (2000, dir. Stephen Kay)Gretchen Mol has nothing more than an uncredited cameo in Stephen Kay's remake of the classic British gangster thriller Get Carter, but because I like this movie I'll take her participation as an excuse to program it here. Sylvester Stallone steps into the role originated by Michael Caine (who also appears here), playing a Vegas mob enforcer who returns home to Seattle when his brother is killed. Mol briefly appears as a gangster's girlfriend, just one of many welcome faces in a cast that includes Miranda Richardson, John C. McGinley, Rachael Leigh Cook, Mickey Rourke, and Rhona Mitra. I know it's blasphemy to like this movie when the original is is so beloved (believe it or not, I've still never seen it), but I've always dug it as part action movie, part gritty character piece. The energy will help break up the day.
4 pm - Attraction (2000, dir. Russell DeGrazier)Here's a movie I hadn't thought about for 25 years until doing research for this marathon despite the fact that Erika and I definitely saw it at our local AMC theater when it was one of the only theaters in the country showing it for like a one-week engagement back in 2000. At the time, that was reason enough to go see it -- plus the fact that it starred Mol as the ex-girlfriend of a pretty boy radio host (Matthew Settle) who's stalking her until he starts a relationship with her best friend, played by Samantha Mathis in a series of unfortunate wigs. Tom Everett Scott also has a supporting role as the pretty boy's buddy. On paper it should work just because of three-fourths of its cast, but this four-way relationship thriller is fairly soggy and underserving of its stars. It's also another movie in which Mol plays a kind of idealized woman, a role in which she was typecast early on and was asked to repeat far too often.
6 pm - Laggies (2014, dir. Lynn Shelton)Programming this one for no other reason than because it stars both Mol and Keira Knightley, another actor deserving of her own 24-hour marathon. That it's maybe my least favorite Lynn Shelton movie (at least on first viewing; it's been years) is of little consequence.
8 pm - 3:10 to Yuma (2007, dir. James Mangold)She may have only a supporting role in director James Mangold's excellent remake of 3:10 to Yuma, but Mol's participation means we get to program a western in the Primetime slot so that's what I'm doing. She's given another thankless wife role in an ensemble full of men who have better parts, including Russell Crowe as a charismatic outlaw and Christian Bale as the rancher hired to bring him to justice. I've never been much of a Bale guy, but he's fine at being stoic and decent; much more exciting is Russell Crowe's fantastic turn in the Glenn Ford role as the worst son of a bitch who ever lived who also happens to be totally charming and likable. It's clear that Mangold is a filmmaker who's good in just about any genre, but between this and Logan is seems like he's particularly well-suited for westerns. Mol has an old-fashioned quality to her, part Grace Kelly and part Myrna Loy, that puts her right at home in movies like this.
10:30 pm - The Shape of Things (2003, dir. Neil Labute)Mol reunites with her London cast mates for the film adaptation of the Neil Labute play they originated on stage. Paul Rudd plays a schulb who begins "bettering" himself when he gets a girlfriend played by the great Rachel Weisz. While I think I've outgrown Labute's brand of snotty misanthropy, there's still a lot I like in The Shape of Things. It's hard to totally dislike a movie scored entirely to Elvis Costello songs. Mol's role is, per usual, a little thankless -- Weisz gets the really good stuff -- but her casting makes her an interesting counterpart, a kind of anti-Weisz. What begins as yet another "idealized woman" role (she's a friend of Rudd's character who's engaged to mega-douche Fred Weller) gradually gives way to something more flawed and interesting as the story progresses. Not all of the movie works, but at least Gretchen Mol gets to turn some of her usual typecasting on its head.
12:30 am - The Thirteenth Floor (1999, dir. Josef Rosnak)This is about the weirdest movie I could find in Gretchen Mol's filmography when it came to programming the overnight. It's also the only movie in the lineup I've never seen all the way through! It's about unlikely leading man Craig Bierko entering a VR simulation to solve the murder of his boss; Mol is, of course, his love interest. Released in 1999 in the shadow of other reality benders like The Matrix and Dark City, The Thirteenth Floor is the least remembered and the least regarded of the three, but I'm excited to finally check it out as part of this marathon because, like another movie later in this lineup, it takes advantage of Gretchen Mol's timeless qualities by casting her as both present day and period versions of her character. Also it's a remake of Fassbinder's World on a Wire, another movie I've never seen. How did I not know this?
2:30 am - The Notorious Bettie Page (2008, dir. Mary Harron)Because Gretchen Mol didn't make much horror (there's a supporting role in 2021's False Positive, but I don't feel like watching that again), we're going to instead make our overnight horny instead of weird. Mol has her best role and her best performance to date in this biopic of Pinup Queen Bettie Page for director Mary Harron and writers Harron and Guinevere Turner, the team behind American Psycho. Bettie Page isn't nearly as subversive as that movie, but it's never trying to be; instead, it wants to give a life and interiority to a woman who has existed for so many years as a two-dimensional image. Mol inhabits not just Page's persona but her bare skin with incredible confidence and comfort, making us understand what it was that made her so special. It's a great performance, one that could have really changed the course of Mol's career if it had come along in the late '90s. By the time it came out in 2008, however, not enough people were paying attention anymore and Mol didn't get the credit she deserves for her work in this one.
4 am - Forever Mine (1999, dir. Paul Schrader)Continuing our horny overnight, we pivot to Paul Schrader's throwback romance that was unceremoniously dumped to cable and DVD when the financiers filed for bankruptcy before it could receive a theatrical release. Mol is stunning as the wife of a shady businessman (Ray Liotta) who falls in love with the Most Intense Pool Boy Ever (Joseph Fiennes) while on vacation at a beach resort. Things take a dark turn when Liotta discovers the affair and the movie jumps ahead several years so that Fiennes can adopt a ridiculous disguise and plan an elaborate revenge. I get why this was written off in the late '90s/early 2000s -- the second half gets kind of silly -- but I like Schrader's homage to '60s melodrama because of how non-Schrader it feels. I especially like Moll's performance because it turns a character written as something as an object (yet again) into someone who's conflicted and human. This is more a vibes movie than anything else, but I dig the vibes.
6 am - The Ten (2007, dir. David Wain)Wake up with something funny! I remember feeling a little disappointed by The Ten when we saw it in theaters in 2007 but that's because it was David Wain and his The State cast mates' follow-up to Wet Hot American Summer, one of the funniest and best comedies of the 2000s. Revisiting the movie in 2025, it's much funnier than I gave it credit for being, even if it's a big mess of a sketch movie consisting of ten vignettes (as host Paul Rudd will continually remind us), each representing one of the Ten Commandments. Mol plays an American tourist who has an affair with Jesus Christ (Justin Theroux) during a holiday in Mexico. She pops up again later in the movie in other sketches as the wife of A.D. Miles, and even gets to sing in the film's triumphant closing musical number. There's no better way to shake off the cobwebs of 20 hours of consecutive movies than with a mainline injection of silliness and absurdity. We can watch it as a goof!
8 am - Millers in Marriage (2025, dir. Edward Burns)Let's close things out with one of Mol's most recent films and the one that made me realize that I missed seeing her in movies. She fits right into writer/director Edward Burns' best ensemble in years, playing a former alternative rock star who gave up music to raise a family, married an alcoholic manager (Patrick Wilson), and now is considering an affair with the journalist (Benjamin Bratt) interviewing her for a retrospective piece. That's just one of the subplots of Millers in Marriage, another of the writer/director's treatises on family dynamics and romantic relationships that also stars Minnie Driver, Campbell Scott, Julianna Margulies, and Morena Baccarin. I know she's been doing interesting TV work for a number of years (I've never watched Boardwalk Empire), but it's nice to see someone like Burns writing Mol an actual adult role in a whole movie about and for adults. Let's hope it's the start of a new act for her career.

Review: SNOW WHITE Mar 20, 2025
by Rob DiCristino
Heigh-F*cking-Ho
“Once upon a time, there lived a lovely little Princess named Snow White,” reads an ornate storybook page in the opening frames of Disney’s 1937 animated masterpiece, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. “Her vain and wicked Stepmother the Queen feared that some day Snow White’s beauty would surpass her own,” it continues. “So she dressed the little Princess in rags and forced her to work as a Scullery Maid.” You know what’s great about that opening? It’s concise. It’s clear. It’s focused. We’ve identified our major characters, their motivations, and the potential for conflict between them. “Start as close to the end as possible,” said Kurt Vonnegut, and it turns out “Once Upon a Time” is a fairly handy tool for doing just that! It allows us to cut through extraneous details like, “How did Snow White get her name?” or “What was the socio-political situation in the kingdom preceding the reign of the evil stepmother?” In other words, the stuff no one cares about, the stuff that mucks up a movie’s gears at the precise moment it needs to be firing on all cylinders.
Well, Marc Webb’s Snow White is full of that stuff, so buckle up! We begin with young Snow White (Emilia Faucher) getting a crash course on noblesse oblige from her royal parents (Hadley Fraser and Lorena Andrea), both of whom are treasured by the common folk for their generosity and grace. After the Queen’s untimely death, the good King inexplicably marries a ruthless witch (Gal Gadot as the Wicked Stepmother) who quickly murders him, snatches the kingdom for herself, and sends Snow White (played as an adult by Rachel Zegler) to the aforementioned scullery. Snow White toils away with her scrub brushes until a handsome rogue named Jonathan (Andrew Burnap, grasping at Carey Elwes in The Princess Bride but never coming close) reminds her how awful the Stepmother’s reign has been for the people. We assumed she already knew this — again, she’s spent her adolescence in a scullery! A SCULLERY! — but it’s apparently enough motivation for her to break free, unite the kingdom, and return it to its former glory.You’ll notice that this only vaguely resembles the plot of Disney’s animated film — or, for that matter, the Brothers Grimm’s original tale — and that we haven’t even gotten to the seven dwarves yet. That’s probably because Erin Cressida Wilson’s (Secretary) screenplay does everything it can to sideline Snow White’s paternalistic elements in favor of a more modern and adventurous approach, an inspiring story of a hero rising from the ashes to lead her people to salvation. While this is a positive change in theory — animated Snow White does, after all, spend most of her film extolling the virtues of happy housework to seven childlike goofballs before a handsome man shows up in the last act to take her to wife — what actually results is a disjointed, atonal, and, worst of all, catastrophically dull film that fails to make any coherent argument about the benefits of compassionate governance or true love’s power to overcome the yoke of oppression and hate. It’s Snow White without any of the magic, an inert and toothless failure to live up to its lofty thematic aspirations.
But who cares about the plot? Kids don’t pay attention to the story mechanics, Rob! What about the songs? The dwarves? The apple? The mirror? Dopey, Sneezy, Doc? Well, they’re all fucking boring, too, folks! That’s the whole problem! Rachel Zegler is a compelling enough screen presence with a lovely voice, sure, but for all her protestations in the press to the contrary, there is absolutely no texture to this new Snow White: She’s established as a doe-eyed idealist and remains one throughout, stopping occasionally to lament “the way things used to be” but never justifying her failure to act against her Stepmother. Her “I Want” song tells us she can be a brave leader, so why isn’t she? She recognizes the injustices, so why doesn’t she stop them? This is most maddening during a duet with Jonathan (“Princess Problems”), a song that should illustrate the ideological differences between the would-be lovers and inspire them both to grow, but instead it just repeats a fact on which they both already agree: The Stepmother is mean and everyone should live in peace. We know!“He’s ranting about the story again,” you say. Well, what else is there to talk about? Gal Gadot continues her run as Hollywood’s worst movie star, but at least this time she’s bringing her dead-eyed stiffness to a role that actually benefits from it. She’s fine! All the controversy surrounding the film’s portrayal of dwarves — note their conspicuous absence from the title — clearly scared the feckless cowards at Disney into shaving off much of their screen time, with the lion’s share of antics going instead to Jonathan’s band of Merry Men. Animated in a style that splits the difference between photo-realistic human beings and Shrek characters, the dwarves are a total flop; their big moments amount to the “Heigh-Ho” sequence, a lesson on whistling for Dopey (Andrew Barth Feldman), and a laughable scene in which Doc (Jeremy Swift) — who explicitly claims no medical knowledge — mends an arrow hole in Jonathan’s shoulder well enough that he’s able to trip the light fantastic when Snow White inexplicably declares, “It’s time to dance!” only seconds later.Look, there’s no sense in going on. The fact is that these remakes are reliable money-makers, and there’s no reason to believe they’ll slow down anytime soon (the trailer for Marcel the Shell director Dean Fleischer Camp’s Lilo & Stitch remake played just before my screening). But history is sure to remember this as a period of artistic bankruptcy from the Mouse House, a period in which an undisciplined corporate entity was more willing to trade on a hundred years of goodwill than it was to invest in original stories from the very creative voices those years have fostered. It’s not even that these remakes sour the legacy of classic films, either — I’m hardly a Disney purist and have no objection to revisionist takes on these stories. It’s just that they’re all just so goddamn boring, so bereft of charm or inspiration. They’re movies greenlit by middle managers who insist they be copied on emails just to prove their authority, who make redundant comments in meetings just so everyone can hear their voice. Sure, these movies are helping keep theaters alive through lean times, but what kind of life are they really providing?
Snow White hits U.S. theaters on Friday, March 21st.

Review: SNOW WHITE Mar 20, 2025
by Rob DiCristino
Heigh-F*cking-Ho
“Once upon a time, there lived a lovely little Princess named Snow White,” reads an ornate storybook page in the opening frames of Disney’s 1937 animated masterpiece, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. “Her vain and wicked Stepmother the Queen feared that some day Snow White’s beauty would surpass her own,” it continues. “So she dressed the little Princess in rags and forced her to work as a Scullery Maid.” You know what’s great about that opening? It’s concise. It’s clear. It’s focused. We’ve identified our major characters, their motivations, and the potential for conflict between them. “Start as close to the end as possible,” said Kurt Vonnegut, and it turns out “Once Upon a Time” is a fairly handy tool for doing just that! It allows us to cut through extraneous details like, “How did Snow White get her name?” or “What was the socio-political situation in the kingdom preceding the reign of the evil stepmother?” In other words, the stuff no one cares about, the stuff that mucks up a movie’s gears at the precise moment it needs to be firing on all cylinders.
Well, Marc Webb’s Snow White is full of that stuff, so buckle up! We begin with young Snow White (Emilia Faucher) getting a crash course on noblesse oblige from her royal parents (Hadley Fraser and Lorena Andrea), both of whom are treasured by the common folk for their generosity and grace. After the Queen’s untimely death, the good King inexplicably marries a ruthless witch (Gal Gadot as the Wicked Stepmother) who quickly murders him, snatches the kingdom for herself, and sends Snow White (played as an adult by Rachel Zegler) to the aforementioned scullery. Snow White toils away with her scrub brushes until a handsome rogue named Jonathan (Andrew Burnap, grasping at Carey Elwes in The Princess Bride but never coming close) reminds her how awful the Stepmother’s reign has been for the people. We assumed she already knew this — again, she’s spent her adolescence in a scullery! A SCULLERY! — but it’s apparently enough motivation for her to break free, unite the kingdom, and return it to its former glory.You’ll notice that this only vaguely resembles the plot of Disney’s animated film — or, for that matter, the Brothers Grimm’s original tale — and that we haven’t even gotten to the seven dwarves yet. That’s probably because Erin Cressida Wilson’s (Secretary) screenplay does everything it can to sideline Snow White’s paternalistic elements in favor of a more modern and adventurous approach, an inspiring story of a hero rising from the ashes to lead her people to salvation. While this is a positive change in theory — animated Snow White does, after all, spend most of her film extolling the virtues of happy housework to seven childlike goofballs before a handsome man shows up in the last act to take her to wife — what actually results is a disjointed, atonal, and, worst of all, catastrophically dull film that fails to make any coherent argument about the benefits of compassionate governance or true love’s power to overcome the yoke of oppression and hate. It’s Snow White without any of the magic, an inert and toothless failure to live up to its lofty thematic aspirations.
But who cares about the plot? Kids don’t pay attention to the story mechanics, Rob! What about the songs? The dwarves? The apple? The mirror? Dopey, Sneezy, Doc? Well, they’re all fucking boring, too, folks! That’s the whole problem! Rachel Zegler is a compelling enough screen presence with a lovely voice, sure, but for all her protestations in the press to the contrary, there is absolutely no texture to this new Snow White: She’s established as a doe-eyed idealist and remains one throughout, stopping occasionally to lament “the way things used to be” but never justifying her failure to act against her Stepmother. Her “I Want” song tells us she can be a brave leader, so why isn’t she? She recognizes the injustices, so why doesn’t she stop them? This is most maddening during a duet with Jonathan (“Princess Problems”), a song that should illustrate the ideological differences between the would-be lovers and inspire them both to grow, but instead it just repeats a fact on which they both already agree: The Stepmother is mean and everyone should live in peace. We know!“He’s ranting about the story again,” you say. Well, what else is there to talk about? Gal Gadot continues her run as Hollywood’s worst movie star, but at least this time she’s bringing her dead-eyed stiffness to a role that actually benefits from it. She’s fine! All the controversy surrounding the film’s portrayal of dwarves — note their conspicuous absence from the title — clearly scared the feckless cowards at Disney into shaving off much of their screen time, with the lion’s share of antics going instead to Jonathan’s band of Merry Men. Animated in a style that splits the difference between photo-realistic human beings and Shrek characters, the dwarves are a total flop; their big moments amount to the “Heigh-Ho” sequence, a lesson on whistling for Dopey (Andrew Barth Feldman), and a laughable scene in which Doc (Jeremy Swift) — who explicitly claims no medical knowledge — mends an arrow hole in Jonathan’s shoulder well enough that he’s able to trip the light fantastic when Snow White inexplicably declares, “It’s time to dance!” only seconds later.Look, there’s no sense in going on. The fact is that these remakes are reliable money-makers, and there’s no reason to believe they’ll slow down anytime soon (the trailer for Marcel the Shell director Dean Fleischer Camp’s Lilo & Stitch remake played just before my screening). But history is sure to remember this as a period of artistic bankruptcy from the Mouse House, a period in which an undisciplined corporate entity was more willing to trade on a hundred years of goodwill than it was to invest in original stories from the very creative voices those years have fostered. It’s not even that these remakes sour the legacy of classic films, either — I’m hardly a Disney purist and have no objection to revisionist takes on these stories. It’s just that they’re all just so goddamn boring, so bereft of charm or inspiration. They’re movies greenlit by middle managers who insist they be copied on emails just to prove their authority, who make redundant comments in meetings just so everyone can hear their voice. Sure, these movies are helping keep theaters alive through lean times, but what kind of life are they really providing?
Snow White hits U.S. theaters on Friday, March 21st.

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