Director: Scott Cooper
Starring: Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong & Stephen Graham
Rated: PG-13 (language, thematic material, smoking & some sexuality)
Runtime: 2 hours

​Bruce Springsteen is my idol.

So, there’s likely going to be bias on my part when it comes to a movie based on a portion of his life. I might like the movie more than some, but I’m also likely to be harsher on it if it doesn’t get things or the feeling right.

Director/writer Scott Cooper’s “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere,” based on Warren Zanes’ 2023 book Deliver Me from Nowhere, on the making of Springsteen’s stripped-down 1982 solo album Nebraska, impressed me in how it captured the struggle of an artist who might not know the ins-and-outs of why he wants his art to be the way it is but deep down feels it has to be that way.

As a longtime Springsteen fan, Nebraska frankly isn’t the album I’d have chosen to build a film around. I’d have preferred a film about the making of 1975’s Born to Run, the album that both saved and made Springsteen’s career, and happens to be my favorite album of all time. But I can understand why Nebraska is the album where a filmmaker can get to the core of what it means to be a true artist.

Some critics are writing “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” off as just another biopic of a famous person. The biopic genre, especially those about musicians, has become one of the most hated film genres among many, especially critics, over the last two decades.

But ‘Deliver Me from Nowhere’ isn’t your typical biopic. It’s more of a character study of a man who feels something strongly, fights for it and struggles to understand it – it just so happens to be one of the world’s most famous music makers and a true story.

Jeremy Allen White inhabits the role of Springsteen, which is something I never really doubted. White has shown, for multiple seasons on his terrific television series “The Bear,” that if there’s one thing he can completely knock out of the park as an actor, it’s the role of a tortured artist. White has captured Springsteen's mannerisms and performance style exquisitely in this film.

The casting of the main roles in ‘Deliver Me from Nowhere’ was terrific, with Academy Award-nominated and Emmy Award-winning Jeremy Strong as Springsteen’s loyal manager Jon Landau. A movie on the making of Born to Run would’ve done a good job at explaining the Springsteen/Landau relationship, but we’re asked just to believe it for this time period. White and Strong do a good job of bringing the two's' brotherhood to the screen, even without much to explain it in the script.

Stephen Graham, fresh off his Emmy Award-winning performance in the terrific Netflix miniseries “Adolescence,” was a terrific casting for the role of Springsteen’s father, Douglas, who dealt with demons throughout Springsteen’s childhood that the musician would fight himself as an adult, which were undiagnosed at the time, but have later become known to be depression.

White, Strong and Graham are all terrific at acting without words, letting their facial expressions and body language tell an audience all they need to know.

Any weaknesses within ‘Deliver Me from Nowhere’ come from Cooper not being able to bring forth the “why” as to why Springsteen feels the way he does about his work on Nebraska. But you get the feeling, watching the film, that Springsteen probably didn’t fully understand the “why” himself; it was just a feeling deep down in his soul. Something he felt and needed to get out into the world before it ate him up inside. Yes, it had something to do with his father, his upbringing, and a feeling of imposter syndrome, but maybe the script could’ve been a little clearer about this.

I can’t believe I’ve waited this long to see director Frank Capra’s 1934 classic “It Happened One Night.” I’ve long been a Capra fan with “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” and “It’s a Wonderful Life,” being among my all-time favorite classic films.

I think I might have been scared off of “It Happened One Night” because of its accolades. It’s one of only three films to ever sweep the major Academy Award categories, winning Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay (along with “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “The Silence of the Lambs”). It’s one of those things where, if you never watch it, you can’t argue with its place in history as an essential.

Well, now that I’ve seen it, I don’t have to worry about it not living up to its reputation, because it absolutely does.

“It Happened One Night” is a romantic comedy with elements of ‘30s screwball comedy thrown in, that tells the story of an heiress, Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert), who runs away from home after her rich father wants her recent wedding to an adventurous pilot annulled. While running away on a bus to New York City, where she’s to meet her husband, she comes across an out-of-work journalist, Peter Warne (Clark Gable), and this is where the typical, though likely not in 1934, rom-com storyline comes along. Are they going to fall in love? Or are they just using each other for their own personal gains?

The script, written by Robert Riskin, which he based on Samuel Hopkins Adams’ short story Night Bus in Cosmopolitan magazine, is a great mixture of humor, romance and adventure. Riskin’s script has some killer lines of dialogue, like when Ellie’s father asks Warne if he loves his daughter, “YES! But don’t hold that against me, I’m a little screwy myself!” Then, of course, there’s the classic hailing a car while hitchhiking scene, where Ellie shows a confident Peter how easy it can be when you have the right skills.  

Gable, who was loaned to Columbia Pictures from MGM for the project because he didn’t currently have anything in the works and was drawing a paycheck anyway, was born to play the role of Warne, a charming, wry, wisecracking working man, who plays off the pampered socialite of Colbert’s Ellie incredibly well. Gable and Colbert in “It Happened One Night” make for one of the great couples of any rom-com in cinema history.

Capra, one of my all-time favorite directors, had a run in the ‘30s that likely rivals any director in film history for “greatest director of a decade,” and “It Happened One Night” was the beginning of his hot streak that would also include “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” (1936), which would win him his second Best Director honor, “You Can’t Take It with You” (1938), which would win him his third Best Director honor” and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” (1939), which might actually be the best movie of his career.  

Director: Luca Guadagnino 
Starring: Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri & Andrew Garfield
Rated: R (language & some sexual content)
Runtime: 2 hours & 18 minutes

 
Luca Guadagnino has always seemed more interested in instigating than he has entertaining, whether that be via sexuality, cannibalism or even peaches - the filmmaker is intentional about forcing audiences to not only engage with his work but consider it, question it and debate it. “After the Hunt” might be his most pointedly provocative project thus far as it is a movie expressly made for the purposes of the conversations that will come afterward. The fact I'm spending enough time thinking about this movie to write a review aside, I’ve never felt so passionate about something that I would choose to die on any specific hill (spare me your own opinions). I say this (probably optimistically) because I like to imagine people come to their conclusions and form their points of view based on insight or experience that would garner them valid reason for feeling the way they do, so while it is easy to say I understand where everyone in “After the Hunt” is coming from the film more or less forces the viewer to pick a side, to draw their own conclusions and in light of the conclusions one draws, question what those positions say about you as a person. 
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As the common enemy of the evolution revolution - a cis, straight, white male - I found this film to almost be designed as something of a trap for those who fall into any of the above categories and/or relate to or simply like Michael Stuhlbarg's character the most. Guadagnino and screenwriter Nora Garrett are fans of nuance, sure, giving multiple facets to everyone included in this elitist, privileged club but more importantly, relaying reason to simultaneously believe and doubt each person involved for different reasons. The core question of what did or did not happen and whether a line was crossed or if there were several comes in second to Garrett's thesis though, which she shares with Ayo Edebiri's character, this regarding virtue ethics. The majority of those in positions of such privilege and power who purport to hold the moral high ground only do so for the appearance of being virtuous and not because their actions would remain the same regardless of the circumstances; a truth that holds strong no matter how much one might pad it with philosophical babble.

It isn't said to be dismissive, but more so to communicate awareness that the kind of high-minded debates and conversations that take place in the Yale Philosophy department where “After the Hunt” is largely set can get so far up their own asses they often times go from profound to weightless at the drop of a hat. That said, one of the film's most scathing aspects of its many investigations is when Stuhlbarg's Frederik - husband to Julia Roberts' Alma - interrogates (or intimidates) Edebiri's Maggie when she comes over to their house for dinner after having accused Alma's fellow professor, Hank (Andrew Garfield), of sexually assaulting her. The entire situation is obviously a sensitive one, but Garrett has layered each character with complications that muddy the waters further. Maggie is a Black, gay student accusing a white, male teacher. Hank is a known favorite of the students who clearly has some unspoken bond with Alma, but he's also made Maggie aware that he knows she plagiarized her most recent paper. No details of said accusation are ever stated aloud between two characters. Maggie's parents are notable, wealthy and apparently donate much of that wealth to the university every year. Alma is caught in the middle and, along with Hank, up for tenure. She doesn't want to ruffle feathers, yet she understands in the current climate that optics tend to matter more than substance. Most thorny is the fact Alma seems to surmise the truth of the matter as dialogue like, "Is she brilliant or does she just think you’re brilliant?" and “kowtowing to a mediocre student with rich parents,” are muttered one too many times to not usher viewers toward the line of thought that Maggie is, if not lying, at least embellishing in order to orchestrate a particular image and convey a specific tone. 

Ethan Hawke plays something of an insufferable academic in the 2015 film “Maggie’s Plan” where he has a line of dialogue that has stuck with me in the decade since seeing it (and is a movie I only saw once). As a professor of "ficto-critical anthropology" he tells his students to, "Avoid the word ‘like,’ stating that, "it’s a language condom." Substitute "interesting" for "like" in that quote and you have exactly what Stuhlbarg is zeroing in on when the Maggie of “After the Hunt” joins him and Alma for dinner. Frederik questions Maggie every time she uses the word "interesting," pushing for a deeper insight into her current thesis not because he has any real interest in the subject but solely for the reason of exposing that she is unable to keep up intellectually. Is this holding a standard or inflicting undeserved hurt, again - that's up to the viewer, but what these actions explicitly suggest is that Maggie's sole objective is to lock down a credible source to legitimize her story and Alma, given her relationship to both parties, is the prize. Guadagnino, and I assume Garrett as well, would say they want viewers to draw their own conclusions and maybe my skewed by nature instincts are what led me to my own answers, maybe it's my inherent prejudices against the coddled and the elite that cause it to feel like everyone in Maggie’s world is a little fed up with her bullshit, but it also feels like Guadagnino and Garrett are very conscious of the game they're configuring. 

The casting of Edebiri specifically, as a woman of color in a position where society has failed women and women of color time and time again, is especially calculated in what could be considered either genuinely provocative or completely tacky; a Julius Eastman musical selection during a particular scene could push one over the edge either way. The issue here is that provocation should have a point and it's not evident even after thoughtful consideration what exactly “After the Hunt” means to accomplish with all of the said nuance and calculation. Making this pill even harder to swallow is that Edebiri lacks the ethos, pathos and logos to convince viewers the case is more complicated than it appears - resulting in a think piece that reassures the exceptions rather than analyzing why the rules are largely ignored.

To this end, “After the Hunt” seeks to address a multitude of hot button, objectively offensive issues yet by the time we arrive at the half-hearted and largely confusing conclusion it simply feels as if the film is exploiting this “shallow cultural moment” all while preserving itself in the aesthetic of a west elm furnished home. The topics on which the film touch both simultaneously have zero interest in and are completely consumed with facade. The film is a story of people who believe they're the smartest person in any room they enter, who understand what their outward image indicates and craft it with purpose while pretending it all comes naturally. The film gives off the same energy. The visual assistance of a consistently rainy campus against Roberts' wardrobe of icy white fabrics and austere blonde hair through to the Woody Allen font is all so specific yet none of it feels especially fresh and none of it is as enticing or scandalous as it wants to be considered. Guadagnino utilizes multiple close-ups only of character's hands in the midst of conversations with what feels like no reason beyond seeing what justifications critics might associate the choice with later. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' score feels drenched in ‘Social Network’ throwaways whereas it would seem one scene in particular was written immediately after Garrett witnessed Cate Blanchett in “Tár.” That all sounds more harsh than it might be meant as Roberts is the anchor that pulls all of the films theoretical ideas around "what is right?" and all of Guadagnino's stylistic choices together, but despite the pedigree of the production and the high acumen of the conversations occurring it becomes more and more apparent that the film wishes to benefit from bringing light to difficult topics while undermining the kinds of cases that the #MeToo and cancel culture movements were built upon.

Roberts is still a movie star and “After the Hunt” features what is some of her best, most interesting work in some time and it is her line about the difference between restorative justice and vengeance that speaks to the film's relationship with its broad topic in a way that doesn't necessarily make everything it offers more comprehensive but at least seems to clarify a key point. Guadagnino and Garrett's intentions might be for audiences to make up their own minds about who these characters truly are and what course of action they might take were they in their shoes and to their credit, a large part of the tone would suggest the filmmaker and screenwriter are mocking each of the individuals, their hypocrisy, and their egos - “Everything about this feels like a fuckin’ cliche!” - yet the instinct to exact retribution on the victim, no matter who a viewer places in that role, rather than seek to line the films dry humor with an authenticity about how badly the slanders against these movements need to be repaired feels morally irresponsible - especially when it concludes as it does. This is an entirely different discussion that ventures not into critiquing the film that was made but rather how it should have been made, so we won't travel that road. It does feel vital to note, however, that virtue ethics is labeled as such because it resists the attempt to define virtues in terms of some other concept that is taken to be more fundamental a la rules or consequences. “After the Hunt” understands the shades of variation and knowingly highlights this philosophy to emphasize the ease with which people will compromise their character while doing the same the moment it made the decision to muffle its own voice. I understand the film wasn't made to make us feel comfortable, but it might have at least alluded to something a little bolder.    

​Director Justin Tipping’s “Him” is a neat, niche premise that is rendered nearly nonsensical by the time we reach an anticlimactic fourth quarter, which holds about as much tension as a Browns-Dolphins game. It’s a collection of metaphorical imagery too ornate to be ignored yet too shallow and/or not bold enough to explore its full implications. “Him” seeks to equate the NFL and its deep traditions, aristocratic owners, cultish fanbases and lesser-than leeches waiting in the wings with their microphones to get a handful of meaningless words from the chosen few on the field to, well ... an actual demonic cult. It's an idea ripe with possibilities that can't get past its own ego, rendering it ineffective in both the sports and horror genres. 

For one reason or another, I expected “The Conjuring: Last Rites” to be a far richer send-off than what it ultimately turns out to be. Probably because they billed this as the case that forced the Warrens into retirement, but it turns out that this is due more to Ed’s health issues than anything strikingly unique about the case itself. Granted, these films have never had much of a strong narrative backbone. Even James Wan’s installments were more “this happens, then this happens” with nothing propelling us forward beyond the promise of the formula. Wan’s films, at least, had a certain degree of care for the human drama within the case files of Ed and Lorraine Warren, though, transcending the genre's tropes to make it all feel as personal as possible. Michael Chaves did this to less effect in 2021’s “The Devil Made Me Do It” and does so to even less success here; his main objective this time around being to establish the Warren’s daughter, Judy (Mia Tomlinson), and her fiancé, Tony (Ben Hardy), as the new generation of “ghostbusters”. 

Kogonada has crafted a romantic drama of yesteryear with arguably two of the most photogenic people on the planet, and yet, it is confounding how episodic, somewhat charming, yet completely devoid of genuine emotion, the final picture actually is.
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“A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” romanticizes romance to the point that Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie are essentially blank canvases, people with nothing to lose and no discernible personality, whose relationship immediately feels like a foregone conclusion. The twist is that Seth Reiss' screenplay is willing to call out the sham love can often feel like when such romanticisms are expected without the necessary hard work having been put in to make it real. As a result, these characters are so persistent in their belief that they'll never be in a successful relationship, we not only believe them but kind of don't care whether they end up in one or not.

What I did latch onto here was Farrell's arc as a man who grew up being told how special he was, being set up to wholly believe in his ambition, only for it to give way to a massive hole in his life and an inescapable disappointment when said ambitions don't become reality, giving way to a lifetime of feeling like a failure. As if constantly being told “no one’s good enough for you” actually has the inverse effect on one’s beliefs both about themselves and the world.

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn & Benicio del Toro 
Rated: R (language, violence, sexual content & drug use)
Runtime: 2 hours & 41 minutes

 
There is a moment in Paul Thomas Anderson’s tenth feature film, “One Battle After Another,” where Leonardo DiCaprio’s retired revolutionary Bob Ferguson is on the run in search of his daughter, Chase Infiniti’s Willa Ferguson. Bob is having a difficult time finding an electrical outlet where he can charge his phone so that he might make a call, allowing him to obtain the necessary information concerning a rendezvous point where he will hopefully be reunited with Willa. Thanks to Benicio del Toro’s Sensei Sergio, Bob finally finds a working outlet and proclaims multiple times, “I have power!” It’s a simple sentiment that, in the context of the scene, is celebratory and speaking specifically to Bob getting one step closer to finding his child, but because DiCaprio chooses to repeat the words more than once they inherently bear a significance that gives way to consideration of what these words sound like on their own, without the context in which they’re spoken. Without context, it is easy to assume that a statement such as “I have power” is more a proclamation than something meant to express happiness, which is Anderson's point: the noise is a distraction from the intent. 
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“One Battle After Another,” based loosely on Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, is a movie all about how power works; about how much of civilization is built on the whims and desires of power-hungry men who both seek to shape the world in accordance with their own concepts of truth as well as eradicate any reminders of their own shame. This is true for characters on both sides of history in Anderson’s film, and the writer/director, despite making it clear who he believes are the good guys and who are the villains, does not let any one character off the hook. “One Battle After Another” could just as easily be seen as a cynical takedown of those in power as it can a hopeful rallying cry for change in a world gone awry but whatever lens one chooses to view it through, there’s no denying the big, broad, bombastic and most importantly - bizarrely beguiling - entertainment value Anderson is able to deliver alongside his countless ideas.

Scouring the layers and tremendous thought clearly implemented in both Anderson’s adaptation as well as his collaborative execution, what bubbles to the top is the complicated (to say the least) dynamic between Bob and his daughter. It’s not only that Infiniti’s Willa has hit her teen years, complete with independent thought and a more extensive understanding of how the world around her works, but mostly that these developments contradict Bob’s constant state of paranoia. Bob, who, in his own youth, was a revolutionary, is seen participating in the freeing of migrants from detention facilities and actively blowing up power grids for the underground organization known as the French 75. He has more or less checked out of society since going into hiding with Willa. Sixteen years have passed, and Bob freely admits to having fried his brain on drugs and booze as DiCaprio’s surprisingly tender (given the circumstances) performance seems to indicate Bob’s awareness that Willa is at her breaking point; no longer viewing him as a father who cares about her above anything but more as the sole reason she isn’t allowed to do anything. This moment in time is also easily viewed as a breaking point because the film sets in motion Sean Penn’s Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw tracking down Bob and Willa after he was both involved with and duped by Bob’s girlfriend and Willa’s mother, Perfidia Beverly Hills (a looming and luminous Teyana Taylor).

They say youth is wasted on the young, this idea that while young people are full of energy and ideals, they often lack the wisdom and perspective to use these traits effectively, while conversely, by the time wisdom and perspective set in, the energy to champion such ideals has been all but drained. Incorporating an extreme example, such as a group of revolutionaries, emphasizes the idea that this aphorism is not only true but also serves as a compelling reason why each generation seems to fail the next. Yes, Bob is a self-proclaimed bum who barely remembers the call signs of his cohorts much less his original motivations for placing his life on the course it’s taken, but he’s not a man without admirable priorities and Willa being at the top of that list - he was smitten with her from the beginning - has given him, if not doubts, at least reasons to consider said incentives as each obstacle he bumbles his way through in order to try and save her opens his eyes all the more to not only how much his mission failed, but how much worse it’s made life for what’s become his sole reason for living.

It is this level of introspection, combined with the broad genre spaces the film inhabits, while sprinkling in countless details that are uniquely funny and memorable, that makes “One Battle After Another” so accessible yet still wholly a Paul Thomas Anderson film. The character—and the details surrounding and within it—that symbolize and summarize this best is that of Penn’s Lockjaw. In broad strokes, he’s the villain of the piece yet when we get into his sexual quirks, sense of style (or lack thereof), and general posture we are served the specifics that make both the character and Penn’s performance monumental in their fields, while it is his aspirations of joining what is hilariously named the “Christmas Adventurer’s Club” made up of good sports like Tony Goldwyn, James Downey, Kevin Tighe, D.W. Moffett and John Hoogenakker that put this squarely in the realm of an Anderson film. The first half hour to 40 minutes of the film offers a foreword of sorts that is far more solemn than what remains in the final two hours, but it is the tone Anderson establishes in his introduction that paints both the sincerity and despair of DiCaprio's pre-Bob Pat and Perfidia's situation as contrasted by the shameless vulgarity on which Lockjaw operates and further, will prey upon them with. This is a difficult scale to balance, despite life often mirroring such drastic turns in spirit and attitude. Movies must oftentimes remain consistent across style, theme and temper to feel cohesive in their drive towards accomplishing an objective, but what makes each of Anderson's films so defiantly his own is how he lives in the unclean moments of life. 

In the third act of the film, there is a point at which Willa is being set up for execution. The viewer can infer what is happening, Willa is more than aware her clock is running out, and the bounty hunter (Eric Schweig), whom Lockjaw has requested deliver her to his merciless gang of mercenaries, understands he is leading a lamb to the slaughter. At the collision of these three entities, Anderson doesn't easily cut together a clean escape in which Willa and Schweig's Avanti combine forces to overcome the actual bad guys, no, he instead lets the camera rest on Willa's panicked face as she is initially left for dead by Avanti only to be given a window of time to escape because, unlike the mercenaries, his ethics haven't gone completely out the window due to his compensation. The audience experiences this scenario almost explicitly from Willa's vantage point - both physically and emotionally - meaning not only is there tension because of what is at stake, but because we must sit in moments of unease in the unknown. Such authenticity is often difficult to capture in a highly constructed and planned medium like film; yet, there are countless examples of these seemingly unpredictable, unclean moments throughout the film's entirety. From the sequence in which Sensei Sergio guides Bob through his "underground railroad situation" to Lockjaw's interrogation of Willa in an isolated convent, Anderson almost amplifies these moments in such a fashion so as to ensure this idea that there is some kind of divine plan that will ensure good always swings around in time to balance evil might only hold true if there are those who continue to show up out of love. One does not have to lead the revolution to enact change; presence is a kind of heroism all its own.

This, maybe oversimplified, conclusion makes it sound as if “One Battle After Another” can be boiled down to a single thesis statement which isn't necessarily true given the breadth of ideas the screenplay renders, but in this imagining of what revolution might look like in a present society as applied to the action genre while centering on a story about a father trying to get back to his daughter it is, once more, these themes that resonate most. Elevating said storytelling is the specificity and idiosyncrasies of the details in the world and characters Anderson employs, along with, of course, the previously noted style in which the film is captured. Aside from the portion of the conversation that could detail Anderson shooting on and having his film projected in VistaVision 35MM film, there is just something about kids skateboarding across rooftops, doing tricks while flares light up the sky behind them as World War III begins in the streets below all set to a Jonny Greenwood score that speaks to audiences on a deeper, more primal level. Like the story, the look is specific but timeless, it is energetic without being overwhelming - it too is unclean. 

This thread also applies to the performances, although my single complaint with the film is that a collaboration between Anderson and Regina Hall might have yielded more. Hall, known for her comedic chops, is almost completely mute here, and though her performance as a surrogate mother to the lost and confused Willa is heartfelt, one cannot help but hope this is only the beginning of a long relationship between filmmaker and actor. Otherwise, from DiCaprio's Lebowski-like aloofness (and wardrobe) that gives way to some of the funniest stuff the movie star has done to Infiniti's more grounded debut through to every single one of the smaller, supporting players - Wood Harris, Alana Haim, Shayna McHayle, Paul Grimstad, James Raterman, and countless others - each somehow find ways to stand out in remarkable fashion. Sensei Sergio's arrival in the movie signals a shift in energy altogether that allows the film to go from the aforementioned perspective of superiority and cynicism that sees Lockjaw and his ICE-like organization invent reasons to invade small towns like the fictional Baktan Cross (“Activate Eddie Van Halen!") to that of a more hopeful, optimistic perspective that shows people helping people out of nothing more than the humility that fascists would call humiliating. If it is Bob and Willa's relationship that dominates the emotional heft of the narrative, it is the equally enthralling dynamic between Penn and del Toro's supporting performances of two men who have no idea the other exists that highlights the competing ideologies of how this reality, not so far removed from our own, can manage to feel both critical and cathartic.