Week Ending 1/16/26

Adventures in Babysitting was on regular rotation in my house growing up and I remembered all the familiar faces watching it thirty-plus years later except one. Seeing Bradley Whitford when that door opened was a jump scare. I always thought Billy Madison was my first time seeing him. Good to know he's had "smarmy douchebag" on lock since the beginning.

This aged quite well besides the homophobia (like usual) and urban fear-mongering. And despite being pretty dark at times (generally with tongue mostly in cheek), it carries a pretty great message for teens balancing love, lust, and respect. Add some great humanizing of stereotypical figures usually relegated to villainy (John Ford Noonan's one-handed Pruitt, Vincent Phillip D'Onofrio as the hulking mechanic, and, especially, Calvin Levels' carjacker) and it truly has the heart of a PG inside a PG-13 package.

I remembered getting more Brenda, but that might just be having Ari Graynor from Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist fresher on my mind. I don't think I ever watched through the credits to see them give Ron Canada one last whimper. And I really wish Chris Columbus gave us a parting shot of the kitchen floor after Elisabeth Shue's Chris quickly wipes off the counters before the Andersons walk through the door. Just blame Brad.

8/10

I spent most of Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman's The Alabama Solution trying to figure out if Margo Martindale based her portrayal of Mags Bennett in "Justified" on Kay Ivey or if Kay Ivey simply idolizes Mags Bennett. When the current governor of Alabama asks for one hundred million dollars of the state's education budget to be used to fund three new mega prisons proven to solve none of their carceral problems, I realized Kay Ivey might just be the literal Devil.

This is an impressive, powerful documentary born from hubris. If the state didn't hold annual BBQs as publicity stunts to shield inquiries into prison conditions (which the Supreme Court says can be denied due to "security concerns" anyway), Kaufman and Jarecki wouldn't have known a story existed. And if the state's prisons weren't at 200% capacity with a 33% workforce, the inmates don't acquire the illegal cell phones capturing this horrifically damning footage.

Robert Earl Council's hope that a strike will get their story out to people with the desire and power to intervene is amplified by the film's reach—and its additional evidence corroborating what he, Melvin Ray, Raoul Poole, and others already know. Add realities that can only be ignored by a system choosing to ignore them and the reason conservatives don't yell "states' rights" when Trump invades cities with impunity is plainly explained. "States' rights" is merely a dogwhistle for "we should decide the legality of slavery ourselves."

I want to believe there's still a chance America can right itself, but the archival soundbites from radio and TV hosts flippantly commenting on prisoners abused by the system before they even arrive in prison (15 years for robbery in the third degree of an empty building?! More body bags than parolees leaving the ADOC facilities?!) has me wondering if empathy truly is dead.

8/10

I kept forgetting what The Choral was throughout its progressions towards an inevitable farewell because it often feels like the sort of story that will eventually find a happy ending. Its amateur choral searching for inspiration and purpose at a moment of horror like World War I reaching the night of their performance only to discover hope will prevail. But that is fairy tale thinking and director Nicholas Hytner and screenwriter Alan Bennett have too much respect for the history to stray far from the harsh reality of fate.

So, whenever things do flirt with leaning into the fact that half the principal cast are teens with sex, fun, and adventure on their minds, it can seem a bit tonally incongruous with the overall theme of inevitability. I do believe it's with purpose, though. To remind audiences that life isn't fair and circumstances don't change as a result of artistic endeavors. Such artistic endeavors simply allow for such tragedies to go down easier … and this truth should always matter more than ego. Because, in many ways, the music is exactly what these boys are dying for.

The teen sex comedy antics can't help but feel weird nonetheless considering the subject matter. And the era being one where women are expected to oblige men makes many of the exchanges difficult to watch since we're supposed to read many of them as contextually endearing. But a lot of what occurs is worthwhile. Especially the futility of the young tricking themselves into patriotism and the old reconciling the awful truth behind that "heroic" desire to serve. The film exists in Elgar's purgatory as his angel and devil stand off-stage. If the characters' prevalent depressive air is any indication, the wait won't be long.

6/10

Never one to back down from a challenge, Kristen Stewart's feature directorial debut is about as bold as one can get. Not only is the subject matter behind Lidia Yuknavitch's memoir heavy, but the visual language used to portray the pain and self-destructive patterns resulting from it via PTSD-triggered flashes of memory provides a dense, sensorial experience not for the faint of heart. The film's MVP is therefore very much editor Olivia Neergaard-Holm.

Stewart isn't just the one orchestrating things behind the camera either. She's also the screenwriter behind an extremely complex script that's heavily balanced upon voiceover (especially for a first act wherein Lidia is purposefully silent on-scene until given the opportunity for release before heading to college). The whole almost feels like a non-fiction essay at times—a collage of images tied together by emotion more than plot.

Imogen Poots is fearless as Lidia. Michael Epp is terrifying as her father. And how fantastic is Jim Belushi as Ken Kesey? His ability to inject levity without undermining how formidable he was in helping Lidia process her nightmare is a necessary bridge between a chaotic first half with occasional calm and a calm second with chaos a constant threat. The result is impressive, but definitely not for everyone. It's so dense and heavy that minutes feel like hours. Not because it's boring, but that it's so overwhelming.

Great to see Andy Mingo's name as a producer. I backed Josh Leake and his still-unrealized Lullaby adaptation (Chuck Palahniuk) on Kickstarter in 2016 wherein attaching Stewart was supposed to fast-track production. It did not. We're still hoping it comes to fruition, but maybe it's the reason Stewart found Yuknavitch (Mingo is her husband and played by Charlie Carrick in the movie). So, we did get something. The film industry is weird that way.

7/10

As a fan of the bonkers Lowlife from 2017, I was sold on Night Patrol the moment I saw director Ryan Prows' name. That he brought back three of four co-writers on the former to craft the equally bonkers latter only helps the cause when dropping us into a Los Angeles gang war. It's not the Crips versus the Bloods, though ... even if we meet one of each via a Shakespearean romance at the start. No, the moment RJ Cyler's Wazi's Romeo is forced to watch Zuri Reed's Primo's Juliet get murdered by a cop, we know who the real bad guys are.

While the city's Black population is being oppressed by a white supremacist police force, Prows and company quickly inject a more supernatural flavor to the whole courtesy of demon talk and weird coincidences. We're initially supposed to laugh off the conspiracies—especially upon hearing the Bloods (Freddie Gibbs' Bornelius, Flying Lotus' Three Deuce, and YG's Tripp) earnestly talking about lizard people. We're supposed to think everyone is way too quick to embrace the most insane explanation for plain old LAPD abuses of power.

But then you see one of the task force members led by CM Punk's Deputy stick his finger inside the wound of a defenseless victim before sucking the blood off with relish. Couple that with a Zulu ring Wazi stole from his witchcraft-devotee mother (Nicki Micheaux's Ayanda) somehow warding off a Night Patrol pursuer who had him dead to rights and you start realizing the jokes were so outlandish by necessity. When the truth is crazy, the crazy must be rendered absurd. That's the only way the former is accepted as being grounded.

It helps that Wazi is a skeptic who demands the sort of proof we as audience members do too. The same goes for keeping top-billed stars Carr (Jermaine Fowler) and Hawkins (Justin Long) in the dark, although that duo's ignorance is less about us than the plot. They are the pawns Prows and company utilize to make their convoluted mythology work. LAPD partners who both seek a promotion into the Night Patrol for personal reasons aligned to their respective pasts. One and a reformed Black Crip. The other a "good" white cop.

What I really enjoyed beyond the over-the-top gore and humor is the way in which this character complexity is handled. Carr and Hawkins each seek to play both sides and bridge the gap between race, culture, and the societal divide. The truth of the matter is, however, that they chose a third side to do so and law enforcement has zero legs to stand on—especially today with ICE and DHS dissolving any trust we might have had in local departments. Regardless of intentions, the badge inherently makes Carr a traitor and Hawkins a murderer.

Prows can lean into this fact because those two characters aren't the leads insofar as the script's message is concerned. Night Patrol starts at the end with Wazi before rewinding to the beginning with him too. He's the protagonist. The one truly caught between worlds when it comes to trusting anyone. His mom won't stop with the Zulu stuff. His brother (Carr) won't stop spouting copaganda. And the one person he can trust is from a rival gang and believes in aliens. Wazi is correct in wanting to just leave LA behind.

It's a wild ride watching Wazi try to save his own skin. Carr wants to scoop him up to testify about a murder and the Night Patrol want to kill him for witnessing it. Hawkins is trying to infiltrate the latter by helping them but doesn't want to betray the former in the process—he doesn't really have a choice. So, it's up to Wazi to make up his own mind. To see the impossible things he sees and choose whether Bornelius' guns or Ayanda's magic will protect him more. Watching a vampire stand-up after getting his head blown off is the push he needs.

The special effects are great. The Bloods are hilarious and made more so by Cyler constantly growing frustrated with their idiocy. And I really liked Long as an empathetic hard-ass haunted by demons. His serious roles usually end up devolving into comedy, so this one staying pretty consistent is nice (even if the plot's unraveling turns him into a robotic runner that made me laugh anyway). That's the benefit of a script going off the rails instead. Real people caught in deranged situations are inherently deranged by proximity already.

7/10

Who besides George Orwell is better to use as your window onto what our world has become? Everything he wrote about was a metaphor for what he had seen throughout history, but also a premonition of how those atrocities were paving the way for worse. And, as evidenced by the letters and diaries Raoul Peck uses as narration for his cinematic collage, few were positioned better than Orwell's radicalized critic of political power to fully understand those ramifications.

Less a biography of the writer than a dismantling of the strongman rhetoric and ignorant masses willing to lap it up behind our current global technocracy-mediacracy-oligarchy hybridized police state, Orwell: 2+2=5 plays like an apology for not heeding the author's warnings. Peck has Damian Lewis say the words, plays the visualization of them via an adaptation of Orwell's 1984 or Animal Farm, and then juxtaposes both with a horrific example from reality.

It was a great choice to use Ralph Steadman's illustrations for a majority of the Animal Farm visualizations and I loved the moments where Peck compiles a long collection of news hosts and pundits regurgitating the same talking point that was obviously fed to them from on high. There's no surprise that he also found Ken Loach's works perfectly epitomized the economic and class disparities driving today's partisanship and tribalistic hate.

While not as strong as I Am Not Your Negro (few are), I do think Orwell: 2+2=5 excels as a well-researched and executed essay that drives Peck's themes and point home. Will it change minds? Probably not. I'm too cynical to believe those who need it will watch, let alone have the humility to absorb it and recognize their place within. But it does reinforce what the rest of us know by confirming that our refusal to ignore the truth is the best weapon we have.

8/10

We've seen it before. The runt of the litter whose father would rather dispose of him than risk the potential disgrace of his failure must prove his worth by surviving the most unsurvivable version of their clan's coming-of-age tradition. But this time the runt is a Yautja, the task is killing an indestructible alien beast, and the former's guide through the latter's harsh terrain is a Weyland-Yuntani synthetic. Dan Trachtenberg isn't breathing new life into the Predator franchise. He's wielding what makes it great to breathe new life into a familiar genre trope.

Elle Fanning is great as the excitable torso Thia, desperate to make a friend out of a creature she has studied extensively—and thus becomes all the more fascinated with from the ways in which he bucks the usual trends of his species. Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi is a formidable protagonist under all the CGI as Dek, his pragmatic one-track ego allowing for some great humor both at his own and others' expense once his dry sense of humor is found. And who doesn't love a violently rowdy adolescent showing off to her new BFF in "Bud"?

The plot progressions in Patrick Aison's script are exactly what you would expect (especially in context with the Alien and Predator mythology), but every betrayal, rescue, and vengeful pursuit is orchestrated to perfection on an emotional and entertainment level. Loved the tag team fight of Thia's torso and legs against enemy synthetics. Loved Dek's utilization of every antagonistic environmental flavor on the planet Genna to his advantage. And it's one case where the tease of a sequel is actually a welcome development. I would like more.

8/10

Not only do they cast Tommy Flanagan as a Russian heavy and not give him any lines so his Scottish accent doesn't come through, but they name his character "Scarface" to differentiate him from "Skinhead" via his real-life scars. Between his casting and Emily Mortimer doing a fake Russian accent, it becomes surprising when actual Russians like Ravil Isyanov (albeit in a very small, early Hollywood role) appear on-screen.

The Saint is a goofy film that never quite leans all the way into its "funny Mission: Impossible" schtick to set itself apart from feeling like a rehash. That's probably why it was more or less dismissed as a failed attempt to profit off Tom Cruise's success a year earlier. That both television-to-movie pivots featured an actor from Top Gun is fun, though. Where was Anthony Edwards to complete the trifecta? A missed opportunity.

Val Kilmer and Elisabeth Shue are super cute together. The soundtrack is great (Sneaker Pimps, Everything But the Girl, The Smashing Pumpkins doing The Cars). Rade Serbedzija has never not entertained. And Phillip Noyce proves some movies really weren't made for critics considering it's a consistent 60% positive on all fan-forward metrics while Rotten Tomatoes shows a 30%.

6/10

An intensely matter-of-fact account of misogyny, the complicated relationships between mothers and daughters, and the cyclical nature of damaging historical patterns spanning four generations of life on the same farmland at the border of what became and inevitably stopped being East and West Germany. So melancholic in its narration and events that these girls' only hope for escape from the violence and abuse is to fantasize about suicide or flying away.

I couldn't quite vibe with the pacing or structure due to never quite knowing who was talking (either Erika had the least screen-time by far or I was more confused than I thought because I only really remember Alma, Angelika, and Lenka's storylines). But my God was this a gorgeous work of sensory cinema. The sound design is impeccable and I loved the cinematography constantly breaking the fourth wall so that we float above the scene as spirits for the characters to gaze directly into our eyes. Mascha Schilinski has created a wealth of unforgettable moments, both beautiful and disturbing alike.

And I definitely laughed out loud at the aftermath of the nailed slipper prank. Objectively hilarious.

7/10