Not nearly as funny or scary as it thinks it is, HELL OF A SUMMER is a disappointing writing/directing debut by Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk. Trying to slash a bloody fine line between a comedy & an homage to the early Friday the 13th films (you know, the ones before Jason ended up in space or battling Freddy Krueger), it manages to deliver middling results on both sides of the knife. Wolfhard (It, Ghostbusters: Afterlife) is a charming, winning actor and he's fun as Chris, a naive camp counselor at Camp Pineway. He's come back with his best friend Bobby (Bryk) to kickoff the summer. The oldest Camp Counselor is Jason, whose mother drops him off, assailing him that $150 a week does not constitute a real job. Fred Hechinger (Kraven the Hunter) is the best part of the movie as a man child still living in the past and pining for a girl. Any girl really. He's funny as the old man in the room ( "I'm only 24!!" ) and plays terrified with hilarious results. D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai (Reservation Dogs) is well cast as Mike, whose relationship with the pampered, wanna be influencer Demi (Pardis Saremi) seems inevitable. Matthew Finlan steals every scene he's in as Ezra, the theater kid in the counselor room that seems to have strolled in from a better, funnier movie. His comic timing demands more screen time. There are moments that Wolfhard & Bryk nail. Bryk is perfectly cast as the self doubting hero/80's style jock and he's likable as hell. The camp atmosphere seems like a perfect fit, but they never really establish the layout of the camp, rendering their later escapes nonsensical as you never have any sense of where they are at. The tone shifts are wild and some of the editing around the killings is bizarre. At one point, it seems like they had to release some of the cast at the end of the day, so they just killed a bunch of them in fast succession. Most of the 80's fun in the slasher genre was the slow tracking shots of the jocks, nerds or cheerleaders doing going about their business as Jason or the killer d'jour lurked in the shadows. Music builds, something jumps out and we all laugh and scream. They never get the rhythm right here, especially in the killer reveal and a lackluster conclusion. Save one gruesome axe to the head, it's never really very scary. Left with a few decent laughs and a pile of of dead opportunities, HELL OF A SUMMER can't slash more than a paper cut on its way to a C-. Apparently, Camp Pineway is where originality comes to die. R-rated trailer below.

The funniest, goriest, blood drenched Stephen King adaption in memory, THE MONKEY proves that Writer/Director Osgood Perkins is one really twisted, fascinating filmmaker. Last year, his hit "Longlegs" proved to be an original, thrilling take on a serial killer drama, filled with dread & laughs. He's upped the humor quotient this time around, pounding home laugh-out-loud, horrific moments of violent, in-your-face horror. I loved every crazy, over the top moment of it. We meet young twins Hal and Bill, played as two very different kids by Christian Convery (Cocaine Bear). Hal is innocent, kind and picked on. Bill is a crude, mean, minutes older sibling, torturing Hal with constant verbal abuse. Their Dad (Adam Scott delivering a hilarious cameo in the opening scene) has failed to get rid of a wind up, drum playing monkey. This evil little toy ( "never call it a toy!!" ) is impossible to get rid of, no matter how hard you try. Every time the key in its back is wound up and he hits the drum, somebody dies. And I'm not talking a quiet heart attack. Perkins has way too much funny, perverse flair as a filmmaker to offer up routine deaths. Bodies explode, intestines are pulled out and cast across a room, heads are destroyed by close-range shotgun blasts, baby carriages catch on fire.... Not since the first two, original "Omen" films have inventive deaths been this entertaining in the horror genre. At one point, a character suffers three freak accidents in the span of about ten seconds and I have to admit, I laughed my ass off, they were so perfectly staged. Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black) is a huge asset as the boys Mom, Lois. Her attitude toward marriage and death is one for the ages. In any other film, she'd be a lunatic fringe parent. In Perkins world, she's brilliantly the normal core, the comforting center of the boy's life. But no one lives too long when that Monkey gets wound. A meal at Benihana has never been this lethal. At one of my favorite points in the film, there are so many crazy, gory deaths that Perkins just jump cuts from one character warning what might happen to another funeral. The entire audience erupted in a huge laugh, Perkins timing is flawless. The kids manage to get rid of the monkey for 25 years and the film flashes forward to a now grown up Hal, working in a tiny grocery store and hiding from the world so that no one close to him gets killed. Now played by Theo James, (Divergent) Hal seems to have lost contact with his brother (good riddance) AND the monkey. He's planning for his one week a month with his out of wedlock son Petey (Colin O'Brien). Lucky for us, absolutely mad brother Bill and that damn monkey come back into play. Like the King short story on which it's based, every corner is filled with unique supporting characters. But Perkins has taken these bit characters and added many levels of twisted to them, creating a parade of odd folks that serve as fodder for laughs or the monkey's bloodlust. Perkins casts himself in a small part as the boys Uncle Chip. He looks like Bruce Campbell as Elvis, all bad hairpieces and sideburns that have taken over his face. His comforting talk on the staircase to young Hal is a comic highlight. Elijah Wood (Lord of the Rings) is at his quirky best as Petey's step dad. He's the BEST dad, and he'll tell you all about it. Nicco Del Rio also delivers as the worst Catholic Priest ever to take the pulpit. You'd think with as many funerals as he has to do in this tiny Maine town, he might be good at it. Hilariously, he's not. The final half hour spins out into absolute madness, most of which works well if you give into Osgood's brilliantly bonkers vibe. Just watch out when that monkey gets wound too tight and starts beating the shit out of that drum. That's a whole lot of dying at once. Edo Van Breemen's music score and Perkins choice of period songs combine for a perfect duet of blood soaked tunes that add to the atmosphere. King's Constant Readers know how much he uses songs and lyrics within his novels. Those same fans will also find plenty of Easter eggs tied to King's other works. The boy's babysitter has a fascinating name, for example. With "Longlegs", Perkins proved he could deliver a unique, mainstream horror hit. With THE MONKEY , he proves that his first time out wasn't a fluke. He's got talent, creativity and gallons of blood to spill. Somebody wind him up again, I can't wait to see what he does next. THE MONKEY gets a B+, in perfect tune with my sick sense of humor. Or as the boys Mom tells them in a comforting tone, " Everybody dies. Some of us peacefully and in our sleep, and some of us... horribly. And that's life." Mom knows best. Here's the R rated, red band trailer in all its gory glory.

Intelligent, slick and fun, Steven Soderbergh's new spy thriller BLACK BAG is a shiny blend of Jason Bourne intrigue and an Agatha Christie whodunit. David Koepp (Jurassic Park, War of the Worlds, Mission Impossible) delivers his best script in years, a taut & hilarious, triple crossing tale of secrets told by an amazing cast. Michael Fassbender (Prometheus, Inglorious Basterds) stars as the fastidious, always truthful agent George Woodhouse. The man loves gourmet cooking and hates liars. He is obsessively disciplined and fiercely protective of his wife and fellow agent Kathryn St. Jean. Kathryn, perfectly cast in the lithe form of Cate Blanchett (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Blue Jasmine) has come under suspicion as a possible traitor. She's the most obvious suspect when it comes to the theft of Severus, one of those spy thriller plot devices that's more important as an object that for what it actually does. Everyone wants Severus back and George has decided that one of five people have stolen it. Unfortunately, one of those people is his wife and the evidence continues to point to her. George invites the four other possible traitors to dinner at he and Kathryn's stunning home in London. Spy work must really pay well, the flat is jaw dropping and the perfect setting for what follows. Rege-Jean Page is Colonel James Stokes, George's trusted confidant and one hell of an operative. By the way, after this role, Rege-Jean leaps into a tie for me as the next James Bond alongside Aaron Taylor-Johnson. The dude is smooth and there were several scenes in the film that felt 100% OO7, he oozes the right devious charm to be Ian Fleming's agent. Of course it's easy to think Bond when Stokes's partner for the dinner is the agency psychologist Dr. Zoe Vaughn, played by Naomie Harris, the best Moneypenny ever in the Bond films, with all due respect to the OG, Lois Maxwell. Dr. Vaughn seems to be observing everything at the dinner with the same intensity as George. Across the table is young agent Clarisa Dubose (Marisa Abela) who is in love with the brash, blunt, crude older agent Freddie Smalls, entertainingly played by Tom Burke (Furiosa, Mank). George has spiced up the curry with a few dashes of truth serum, leading to the most explosive dinner scene since "August: Osage County". Koepp and Soderbergh craft a smart through-line between comedy, tension and intrigue as the meal spills plenty of truth telling. In the days that follow, each of these characters interact across London and the Globe. Watching over them all is the service's top man, Arthur Stieglitz, played with relish by Pierce Brosnan. Pierce is in top form as a grumpy power player whose agents may be better than him at his game. He's terrific and as far from Bond here as you can get. The film was also edited and photographed by Soderbergh, using pseudonyms in the credits for those roles. It looks fantastic. He fills every frame with exotic European locations, bars, back alleys and those benches in public squares where the most secret details of all are quietly exchanged. David Holmes (Ocean's Eleven, Out of Sight) crafts a throwback music score that feels like a Lalo Schifrin score lifted out of a seventies thriller. It's modern and propulsive without ever being intrusive. Great work & atmosphere from Holmes. When I mentioned Bourne in the opening paragraph, note that I'm referring to the complicated, enjoyable intrigue that always elevated the Bourne films, especially Paul Greengrass' films. I'm not referring to action. There's very little real action in BLACK BAG, but there are two films worth of suspense, mystery and great dialogue inside. The cast is great across the board, with Fassbender and Blanchett setting a standard that everyone meets. When Soderbergh throws in another dinner sequence at George & Kathryn's to close the film and reveal all, I felt like Hercule Poirot or Benoit Blanc were about to walk through the door and reveal all. As one of our most prolific American directors, Soderbergh continues to deliver high quality films across the full spectrum of genres. BLACK BAG twists and turns it's clever way to an A. "I dont like liars....."

Back in 2006, I spent an afternoon with Liza Minnelli in New York City as part of the Anchor Bay launch team for their new "Eloise" animated DVD film. We walked with her to Carnegie Hall for an event around the debut and shared some time in the green room. Liza was quiet, boisterous, reserved, engaging and a presence to be reckoned with at all times. She walked with a cane and had a personal assistant never far from reach, but when she talked with you, she was mesmerizing and locked in. When she told stories of how Eloise was based on her as a child, having the run of the Plaza hotel, she lit up, and the voltage was blinding. Liza was a lot, in all the right ways. I feel privileged to have had that afternoon as a very minor part of her entourage. Watching the new documentary LIZA: A TRULY TERRIFIC ABSOLUTELY TRUE STORY, I learned a lot more about her beginnings, her team and a career that seemed to explode when she starred in "Cabaret" in 1972. There's a whole lot of story to tell before the seventies and the doc lovingly details a lot of it, clearly a friendly fire capture of a global icon and her mother, the global icon who proceeded her. Director Bruce David Klein comes across as a life long fan and admirer of Minnelli. As such, you wont find a lot of dirt here. But you will discover Liza in both good humor and full transparency on the personal challenges she faced. It's quite a life. Liza provides a new, unfiltered on camera interview for the documentary, sharing her memories that stretch from her youth to the present, always accompanied by archival footage, scenes from her films or home movies, many previously unreleased, showing her most intimate moments with her friends. There are shocking moments I didn't recall, like her mother Judy Garland clearly trying to embarrass her on a London stage when Liza's new star threatened to take the spotlight off Judy. It's raw and shocking. It's fascinating watching Liza go from a youth where she adored her mother, to latter years when she grows tired of interviewers constantly talking about Garland. There are countless on-camera interviews and videos of the tight group of friends that become Liza's surrogate family. Michael Feinstein, Mia Farrow, Darren Criss, Joel Grey, George Hamilton and John Kander provide new interviews and some of their stories are legendary. Ben Vereen (who doesn't age) delivers some powerful moments. The film almost ignores Liza's parade of husbands, several of them notoriously gay, although she assures the camera she had no idea. Not knowing Peter Allen was gay stretches credibility, but this was an era in which Liberace had women throwing themselves at him and Paul Lynde was just everyone's acerbic Uncle figure. What's more important is the clear love and caring that comes through in most of those relationships, regardless of their complications. With the exception of David Gest that is, whose "you may now kiss the Bride moment" might be the most revolting, awkward wedding kiss in human history. Farrow's reaction to it made me laugh out loud. Some of Liza's films like "New York, New York" get some screen time, but I wished the film would have dug deeper into her film career. "The Sterile Cuckoo" and "Arthur" aren't even mentioned save a couple seconds of screen captures. The film is long on family and the family she created around her, but short on any career highlights outside of concerts and the theater, which are well detailed. I had no idea that Minnelli had stepped in to replace Gwen Verdon during the original Broadway run of Kander & Ebb's "Chicago". The impact of that six-month understudy of the role, with Liza already a huge star at the time, changed the Broadway landscape. As she discusses why she did it, her sense of loyalty and commitment really come through. Minnelli's impact on the seventies as film & fashion icon is well told. If you're a Liza fan or love celebrity documentaries that take you back to another era, you'll likely really enjoy this film. My favorite scenes were decades old interviews or back stage moments with Liza at her least guarded. It was rare for any celebrity in the 1980's to come out and admit they had a drug or alcohol problem. Liza was one of the first and those scenes are powerful today. She was a trailblazer in talking about addiction and recovery. Mia Farrow shares a story of her then husband, Frank Sinatra's comment after seeing Liza on stage. 'Everything doesn't have to be the National Anthem". LOL You know exactly what he meant, the moment he said it. No one delivers an eleven o'clock song like Liza and there's an abundance of evidence here to prove that point. LIZA: A TRULY TERRIFIC ABSOLUTELY TRUE STORY belts its way to a B.

After sitting through Bong Joon Ho's follow up to his brilliant "Parasite", I think he's mis-titled his newest work. It should be called MICKEY 17 Audience 0. In past films like "Snowpiercer", "The Host" and his most recent Best Picture winner, the aforementioned "Parasite", Ho has always displayed a bold visual style, infused with humor and intelligent satire. This feels more like a Three Stooges version of Ho. The first hour is slow, at times dull as we meet Mickey, a none-too bright wanna be entrepreneur, whose idea for an All Macaroon store has gone belly up. He and his partner Timo (Steven Yeun) funded the venture through a loan shark who'd rather carve his delinquent loan partners into chunks then extend the late fees. Robert Pattinson (The Batman, Tenet) is very good as Mickey, who's got more heart than brains. Pattinson manages to create a character that's dumb as a box of rocks, but likeable as hell. At first, anyway. Mickey and Timo decide that the only way to escape their predicament is to jump on an immediate space flight to a distant colony, lead by bombastic, failed politician and cult leader, Kenneth Marshall. The usually reliable Mark Ruffalo gets so caught up in what he sees (and likely Ho sees) as a clever, slapstick takeoff of Donald Trump that he becomes a cartoon. It's one note, only occasionally funny and the even greater waste of talent is found in the brilliant Toni Collette (Hereditary) wasted as Yifa, Marshall's wife who's constantly pulling him aside to whisper instructions in his ear. To say Collette's role is underwritten is an understatement. Mickey is so stupid that he signs up for the mission as an "expendable". He couldn't bother to read the fine print, so he's cloned again and again and again (which isn't nearly as interesting as the movie thinks it is) suffering all sorts of deaths. It's a shockingly aimless screenplay by Ho, maybe unable to break free of the novel by Edward Ashton that the script is based on. Halfway through its two+ hours, I kept waiting for a Bong Joon Ho movie to break out. It never does. There are bright spots, including Naomi Ackie (Blink Twice) as Nasha, a security officer on the ship who falls in love with Mickey 17 in all his wide eyed, dopey innocence. She's in for a surprise when Mickey 17 and Mickey 18 end up both living at the same time, thanks to a benevolent alien species. The final hour spirals off into what I think Ho perceived as a jaw dropping, large scale, science fiction "spectacle" on the snowy surface of their new planet. Unfortunately, any true satire has been beat over our heads so many times by this point, it becomes a repetitive, predictable slog to the film's sappy ending that doesn't land. Kudos to Pattinson for playing a wide variety of clones and many different versions of himself. He does his absolute best with what's given him, which isn't much. A huge disappointment from a terrific writer/director, this one looks ready to tank hard at the box office this weekend. With a $118 million budget, Warner Bros. must already be crammed into every seat of a board room looking for a way to write this turkey off the books. MICKEY 17 , Audience 0 gets a C-.

The first major motion picture to address the holocaust, 1961's JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBERG is a powerful, riveting history lesson that still packs an emotional wallop. Landing in theaters just 14 years after the trials depicted, the wounds of WWII and the horrors of the concentration camps were still raw. A masterclass of fine filmmakers and actors came together to reenact the trials of the German judges who followed Hitler's laws and helped send millions to their death. But like all great films, it's not quite as cut and dry as that. Maximilian Schell won a Best Actor Oscar as German lawyer Hans Rolfe, tasked with asking the most difficult questions. If Hitler's laws, as despicable as they were, were German law, when is the role of the judge to enforce the law and where does that line become blurry? I was shocked in scenes within the trial in which actual footage of the concentration camps shown in Nuremberg are featured on screen. The horrors filmed by the Allied Forces are more powerful than the goriest of CGI or special effects. They are real, making them some of the most gut wrenching things I've ever seen. Like the judges in the American tribunal overseeing the trial, it was impossible for me to weigh anything evenly after witnessing the absolute gutless, heartless tragedies inflicted upon children, women and men for no reason beyond their heritage. Spencer Tracy (It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner) stars as Chief Judge Dan Haywood, a judge from a small American city hand picked (but not the first choice) to oversee the post war tribunal. The political and global ramifications of the trial are monumental. The world is watching and politicians are dancing a fine line between justice and diplomacy. Some things never change. Richard Widmark (Against All Odds, Coma, Twilight's Last Gleaming) is excellent as Colonel Lawson, the prosecuting attorney for the United States. Widmark played many military men during his film career and you can see why. He's got both power and passion taking the Nazis to trial on a world stage. Burt Lancaster is Dr. Ernst Janning, a respected professor and policymaker whose past work seems the polar opposite of a Hitler acolyte. Lancaster (Airport, The Train) doesn't speak a word in the trial for the first 2 hours and 15 minutes of the film, but when he does, it's a powerful turning point. A parade of great actors play their roles well, many taking little or no salary because of their convictions toward the importance of the film in 1961. Judy Garland returned to the screen for the first time in the seven years since "A Star Is Born" as a young woman who suffered by a judgement that put her under the knives of concentration camp doctors. Montgomery Clift (Giant) is powerful as a key witness berated by Rolfe on the witness stand. The legendary Marlene Dietrich stars as the widow of a Nazi Commanding Office executed during the war. Her scenes with Tracy are powerful, as his personal feelings for the widow clash with the bottomless evil of the Nazi regime for which her husband proudly served. In reality, Dietrich had been an outspoken critic of Hitler in her homeland since he first arrived on scene. She said this was one of her most difficult roles as the woman is so opposite of her personal stance. A very young William Shatner (29 at the time of filming) is very good as Haywood's appointment military assistant for the trial. It's great to see him commanding the screen in a supporting role and holding his own against the likes of Tracy and Lancaster. The film is a consolidation of several trials and the names of the characters have been changed within the superb screenplay by Abby Mann, who based the film on his highly regarded TV movie version of the story. Mann had a hand in some of the best Television dramas of the sixties and seventies. Old school Directors don't get more legendary than Stanley Kramer (Inherit the Wind, The Defiant Ones, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner) and he delivers one of his best dramas, pulling us through the three hour running time effortlessly. If there are two parts of the film that maybe haven't held up quite as well over the decades, they would be the music score by Ernest Gold (Exodus) and some of the photography by Ernest Laszlo. Laszlo did fantastic work on some of his later films like "Airport", "Logan's Run" and certainly "Fantastic Voyage", so maybe some of the soap opera like fast zoom ins on characters were a hiccup of the moment. Very minor quibbles with a superb film. Spencer Tracy's final, 11 minute speech to the courtroom was filmed in one take with multiple cameras. It's a stunning sequence and Tracy carries it on his shoulders brilliantly. This should be mandatory viewing as a double bill with Spielberg's "Schindler's List" for any holocaust deniers. Sadly these days, both films should probably be viewed by all of us once a decade, so we don't lose sight of the madness of war. The desperation of the Germans depicted here for how they let their choices get beyond them is palpable, as are the heart stopping horrors inflicted on the Jewish population and anyone that tried to support them. Real footage of a young child, racked by sobs during liberation by Allied forces, at a camp in which their siblings and parents were exterminated, is an image that will be hard for me to shake. As it should be. "This trial has shown that under the stress of a national crisis, men - even able and extraordinary men - can delude themselves into the commission of crimes and atrocities so vast and heinous as to stagger the imagination. No one who has sat through this trial can ever forget." JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBERG earns an A+, and has been voted as one of the Top Five Trial films of all time by every major source.

"Dead or alive, you're coming with me." I have vivid memories of seeing Paul Verhoeven's first big American film ROBOCOP in a packed theater on opening day, 1987. It was one of the most violent, over-the-top mainstream films to hit screens in the 80's. Packed with graphic carnage, mayhem and profanity, it carved a new path by being hilariously satirical at the same time. Verhoeven had no interest in taming his European in-your-face style for USA tastes. Brave audiences ate it up, ensuring the director's amazing decade ahead, including his next two blockbusters "Total Recall" and "Basic Instinct". As ROBOCOP opens, we see a prescient look at a TV news show that seems as much like Entertainment Tonight (I'm looking at you Leeza Gibbons!) as it does the nightly news. We learn that Detroit has pretty much gone to seed and the huge conglomerate OCP is going to level it and build a brand new, shiny city in its place. They've won a contract to privatize the police force and when their first giant robot attack machine goes horribly (hilariously) wrong in the board room, their old man in charge (Dan O'Herlihy from "Halloween III") looks for a brash,young, new idea. In a star making turn as that a-hole one man wrecking crew, Miguel Ferrer (Twin Peaks) plays Bob Martin, whose idea to create a half human/half robot police super cyborg takes point. He suddenly has his first subject when new OCP cop Alex Murphy is destroyed in a hail of gunfire by Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith) and his repulsive gang of murdering misfits. As Murphy, Peter Weller is perfectly cast. A deeply rooted family man with an old fashioned take on right & wrong, he's gunned down his first day on the job. Martin's competition for the old man's seat at the head of the table is Dick Jones, played with mustache twirling relish by Ronny Cox (Beverly Hills Cop). He conspires in the shadows waiting for Martin's project to fail, but damned if Murphy's resurrection as Robocop isn't a big hit. It's a blast watching Verhoeven play with our American patriotic sensibilities. He tees up Robocop's debut across the crumbling city of Detroit as a near replica of Christopher Reeve's first night in Metropolis from Richard Donner's brilliant "Superman" (1978). Of course in Verhoeven's version, the caped crusader isn't flying in to rescue kitties from trees. Robocop unleashes thousands of explosive rounds, blowing away giggling rapists chasing women in alleyways and armed robbers in mid-felony. It's bloody, graphic and hilarious when it isn't pushing the boundaries of mainstream movies. When our machine/patrolman suddenly begins to have flashes of his former life, his programming glitches. He begins to see Boddicker and his gang as they blew his former self, Murphy away. The remainder of the film then soars off into a satisfying blend of revenge flick and self discovery, along with a healthy dose of comeuppance for bad guys on both sides of the law. Weller is excellent, as is Cox. Those two could spar all day for my tastes. Nancy Allen (Dressed to Kill, Carrie, 1941) has one of her best serious roles as Anne, Murphy's old partner who suddenly realizes that OCPs new prototype looks a lot like her old partner. Again, we have to apply the Superman/Lois Lane rule here, as its the same leap of faith that she cant see Murphy even though everything below his eyes is exposed. I guess that metal visor is like Supe's glasses. Boddicker's gang is made up of some great, quirky actors, including Ray Wise (Twin Peaks), Felton Perry (Dirty Harry's partner in "Magnum Force") and the cackling Paul McCrane, whose death by toxic waste in the finale is one of Verhoeven's funniest action punch lines. The audience opening night laughed out loud and I did again, nearly 40 years later! Rob Bottin (Se7en, Total Recall) delivers excellent makeup effects, including a scene when RoboCop's helmet comes off that's so intricate and horrifying looking that he avoids the "Darth Vader taking his helmet off an looking like Humpty Dumpty" issue that plagued "Return of the Jedi". Bottin also designed the RoboCop suit, said to have cost up to $1 million. That's a LOT of 1987 ca$h. The final film was submitted to the ratings board 12 times before it was awarded an R. Verhoeven would test the MPAA board even more with "Basic Instinct" several years later. Long before "The Boys", ROBOCOP brought a grown up hero to blood soaked life, a Frankenstein with a badge that's coming for justice. It plays well today, spilling accurate predictions about urban decay, and the blurring of news & entertainment. That stupid "I'll buy that for a dollar!" sexy comedy everyone is watching on TV the entire movie was also pretty dead on, it just turned out to be TikTok on everyone's phones instead of the TV sets that fill every corner of Verhoeven's 1987 version of the future. Lower the lights, power up the sound and let Basil Poledouris's big orchestra pound you into submission. Ignore the sequels and the remakes and revisit Verhoeven's original blockbuster. ROBOCOP still gets an A. "Nice shootin, son. What's your name?"

I didn't have an enjoyable mashup of "Love Actually" and John Carpenter's "The Thing" on my Bingo card in 2025, but I enjoyed the hell out of Apple TV+'s THE GORGE, which somehow manages to check both those boxes. As the film opens, Anya Taylor-Joy (Furiosa, The Queen's Gambit) appears as Drasa, one of the globe's best snipers, taking out a shady target from very long range. We're then introduced to retired military operative Levi, lured to a new, year long, clandestine mission by the mysterious Bartholemew (Sigourney Weaver, perfectly cast). Miles Teller (Top Gun: Maverick, The Offer) is terrific as Levi, an enigmatic blend of loner and career soldier. He's basically drugged, flown many hours to an unknown location and leaps to a secluded, tiny base below that sits on the edge of a massive gorge. He's given a tour by the solitary soldier manning the mission, whose tour ends the same day that Levi's begins. Directly across from his watch tower is another one, manned by Drasa, who has just begun her own one-year, solitary tour of duty. They have both been told the same thing. No contact with the other side. Complete focus on what's in The Gorge is mandatory. They are not there to protect it from people getting in. They're there to protect the world from what might be trying to escape its deep, foggy depths. It's an intriguing premise, set up with suspense and humor by writer Zach Dean (The Tomorrow War) and Director Scott Derrickson (Doctor Strange, The Black Phone). Drasa and Miles's days are filled with the same routines, which include checking all the massive gun turrets and satellite dishes that line the border of the Gorge. There is some nice foreshadowing as we see the huge gattling guns and hanging land mines on the sides of the cliff. There sure is a LOT of firepower and technology making sure nothing gets out of those depths. Months pass. On Drasa's birthday, she begins communicating with Levi via writing on a tablet and holding her messages up so he can see them via his high tech binoculars. It's a hilarious, constant callback to Richard Curtis' "Love Actually" that works brilliantly. Suddenly this mysterious thriller becomes an endearing romance. The plot holds a lot of surprises so I'm not going to reveal anything here. Let's just say that her birthday party gets a little loud, waking up their neighbors far below, who begin climbing up the walls in massive numbers. It's a killer sequence, with "Predator" style gunfire, explosions and tension to spare. But the real action kicks in when Levi decides to zipline across to meet with his long distance gal across The Gorge. That zip line snaps and he plunges into whatever lies below. Without hesitation, Drasa slaps on as many guns as she can carry and a parachute and plunges to assist Levi. This entire sequence is designed and shot at such a breakneck pace that I just sat there smiling, looking forward to what ever came next. Within The Gorge, Dickerson and his design team cut loose with a wild blend of "The Thing" (a great tribute-if you know you know), "Fallout", "The Postman", "Captain America", "Oppenheimer", I could go on and on. All those pieces are pulled together into something pretty clever and surprising. It's a sense of discovery experiencing a "new world" that I haven't really felt since Alex Garland's under seen 2018 masterpiece 'Annihilation". While it doesn't hit those levels of creativity and gravitas, it carves out its own territory very effectively. Then we're back to an explosive, rip-roaring conclusion that sees our forbidden couple trying to escape the creatures below and the government spooks above. Teller and Taylor-Joy are both up for the task and deliver as individual characters and kick-ass action heroes. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (Gone Girl, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) deliver a moody, atmospheric score that has no trouble delivering heavy rock when the action demands. Bottom line; THE GORGE is an enjoyable blast that delivers a unique mix of romance, horror and action packed thrills, earning a very solid B+ from this Friday night viewer.

Is this what a Best Picture looks like in 2025? Like a neon draped, two-hour+ episode of "The Sopranos" smashed into an un-glamorized 'Pretty Woman" remake, ANORA is a frank, funny, jet black comedy. But Best Picture???? Mikey Madison won a Best Actress Oscar for her role as Anora or "Ani"as she prefers to be called, a New Jersey stripper with a heart of steel. The opening of the film shows Ani at work, offering her body to an endless parade of men in a stripclub, walking the most gullible/wealthy back to the VIP room for extra fun and $100 bills. Watching her head home to the tiny house under an elevated metro track in Jersey, it's clear that she sees her nights as a job and nothing more. That all changes when her ability to speak Russian introduces her to 21 year old Russian Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), the only son of a mega-wealthy Russian Oligarch. He invites her back to his house, a mansion that could be in the same neighborhood as Tony Soprano, but it makes Tony's house look like a box. Ivan is obsessed with sex, drugs and video games and showers Ani with money and rich surroundings. On a whim, they head off to Vegas with their tight group of friends for a week of debauchery. It appears he's at the Palms in their largest suite. I'd argue that a real Russian Oligarch would not be caught dead at The Palms, but I digress.... As the week comes to a close, Ivan proposes and he and Ani get married in a typical Sin City Wedding Chapel. And all hell breaks loose. When news of the marriage begins to hit the tabloids, noting the son of a Russian Billionaire's son has married "a prostitute", Ivan's watchers come calling. At this point in the film, Writer/Director Sean Baker drops the gear shift into Tarantino speed, ramping up the laughs and violence for nearly the entire rest of the film. He also casts some fantastic actors in hilarious parts. Karren Karaguilan damn near steals the movie as Toros, the man that Ivan's parents have chosen to watch over their son in America. Karaguilan is hilarious as he watches his world spin out of control and every effort to clean Ivan's mess up before his parents arrive from Russia goes very, very wrong. His day job is one of the best jokes in the film and I won't reveal it here. Yura Borisov plays my favorite character in the film, Igor. A sidekick hired for the day by Toros to help him track down Ani and Ivan, Borisov is the heart of the story. His reactions to the action and the dialogue flying out in all directions around him are perfectly subtle, setting up one of the best scenes near the conclusion. Paul Weissman is hilarious as Nick, Toro's brother and hapless right hand man. Suffering from a bad concussion for the last half of the film, he's a walking disaster that only gets worse when he adds pain narcotics to the mix. The film is a violent, profane circus and one hell of a wild ride. Where it succeeds for me is my complete inability to guess where it was going for much of its running time. Once this aspect falls away in a last act that feels badly in need of an editor, I began to feel trapped in a confined space with these lowlifes. I think you could cut out more than half of the desperate search for Ivan and improved the film greatly, but it just won the Oscar for best editing, so what the hell do I know? I know that Ani is a star making turn for Mikey Madison. She is so palpably Jersey tough in the role, that it's hard for me to believe that's not who she really is. Watching her acceptance speech at the Academy Awards was startling. I shouldn't have been that surprised as her small role in Tarantino's "Once Upon A Time in Hollywood" as one of Charles Manson's acolytes was impactful. She's a chameleon of the highest order and gives herself to the camera full tilt in every scene. Brandishing sex like a weapon, Baker delivers a relentless film that never blinks in its portrayal of mobsters, sex workers and the dangers of love. In the movies, when men fall in love with strippers, they're usually the ones taking the transactional moment too seriously. Baker's effectively turned that concept on its head. I did feel like Baker was trying to out-Tarantino QT in the last half, dropping the F-bomb 479 times in a little over two hours. (Yes, someone counted for us online.) I know these people exist, but do I really want to hang out with them this long? David Chase's "The Sopranos" always managed to find the perfect blend of explosive violence, sex, ugly motivation and human drama that gave the characters a point of connectivity. I never found that with anyone but Ani in the last half and brilliantly, Igor for the entire film. So back to my original question, is this dark Cinderella tale packed with graphic sex and drug use what a Best Picture looks like in 2025? According to the Academy voters, yes. While I admire ANORA 's force of nature, it wouldn't even make my Top 10 of 2024. It's intriguing and funny, but I'd never feel a desire to watch it again. That being said, I can't wait to see what Madison and Baker do next. I'll give it a B.

There is no denying a couple things about Writer/Director Brady Corbet's new epic THE BRUTALIST . 1. He's seen and been inspired by Paul Thomas Anderson's brilliant 2007 film, "There Will Be Blood" along with Leone's "Once Upon A Time in America". 2. He's created a beautiful, large scale production that looks like it cost north of $100 million. It's jaw dropping when you realize that the total budget of the film was actually $10 million. Think about that. The average Avengers film costs $350 million. "Red One" cost over $300 million. If there's an option to give me 35 "Brutalists" or one "Red One", please calculate my vote for the former. Like Anderson's "Blood" and its protagonist Daniel Plainview, Brady's main character Laszlo Toth is a complicated, dark and brilliant man. It's also a massive film in length, stretching to 3 hours and 34 minutes including its Overture and 15 minute intermission. There is something hugely pleasurable about a film on a big screen, opening with an overture as Daniel Blumberg's minimalist, moody score washes over you, preparing you for the film ahead. The first film shot with VistaVision cameras in five decades, the richness and clarity of the color palette pops throughout. The film opens with Laszlo walking through the bowels of a crowded, dank ship. After a minutes long tracking shot, Laszlo emerges on its deck, overjoyed to see the Statue of Liberty welcoming him to America, circa 1947. In what serves as a stunning visual reference to the film ahead, Lady Liberty is only seen from an upside down viewpoint. The immigrant path isn't straightforward, even from the film's first perspective. Laszlo is played by Adrien Brody (The Pianist, King Kong, Midnight in Paris) in a performance so intense, so FULL that he covers every spectrum of emotion. No one does palpable joy or intense depression more effectively than Brody and he carries the massive film on his back, on screen for nearly every one of its 214 minutes. Laszlo's wife Erszebet has been separated from him and they communicate via letters that we see via narration. It's clear the road to their reunion will be long and complicated. Laszlo takes a bus to Philadephia, reconnecting with his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola), who owns a tiny furniture store in the city along with his American wife. We begin to see Toth's creativity when he designs furniture for the shop, standing out in the front windows with a style more suited to the MOMA than a neighborhood furniture store. This leads to a job in the country when Harry Lee, the son of a wealthy industrialist contracts Attila and Laszlo to remodel his father's library. As Harry (Joe Alwyn from "The Favourite") leads them to a massive country Estate, Laszlo's work in America begins. Harry's father, Harrison Lee Van Buren, Sr. begins a complicated relationship with Laszlo that will drive the entire film. Guy Pearce (Memento, Prometheus) gives a career best, Oscar Nominated performance as Van Buren, railing at the walls but inspired by something about talented artists that fills an empty place that all his riches can't stuff. To watch a film about a driven, tortured man is one thing. Brady has constructed his story around two such men, neither of which has a desire to give an inch when it comes to their vision. What happens when those visions collide? The first half of the film is by far it's best, setting up each character in all their flaws and glory. Brady notches his story pieces in one by one and I'll give nothing else up about the plot after Van Buren and Toth meet. Brady's assembly of the story is as deliberate as any construct of Toth's. After a 15 minute intermission at the exact halfway point of the film (down to the second!) the second half brings the immediate arrival of Toth's wife Erszebet, played by the reliably entertaining and challenging Felicity Jones (Rogue One, Inferno). She is accompanied by her niece Szofia (Raffey Cassidy) who never speaks, but always observes. The film slows, in direct opposition to the additional story lines and asides that Corbet continues to pile on in the second half. It's not without its powerful moments. A visit by Toth and Van Buren to a stone quarry is perfectly structured and shot, its one of the best sequences in the film. But the nighttime scene that follows feels so unnecessary, so over the top that it feels like Brady was worried we weren't following just how tortured and toxic these two men's relationship was. The more that Toth spirals downward, the more the film grinds into repetitiveness and indulgence. After a shocking and inconclusive "ending", the film then tacks on an epilogue that takes place in 1980. It doesn't serve to reveal anything of consequence about Laszlo, now a silent, almost unrecognizable figure in a wheelchair. Some have hailed the epilogue as transitory and brilliant. To me, it could have been left on the editing floor without consequence. Anderson's "There Will Be Blood" is a favorite film of mine, sitting at number four in my Top Ten Films of All Time. I revisit it often, finding new depth and new vision every time I see it. While I appreciated the size and scale of Corbet's aspirations, Toth never connected with me in the same way that Plainview did. Both are unpleasant, selfish and dark creatures. But I'd rather drink a milkshake with Plainview than suffer a heroin hangover with Toth. THE BRUTALIST is without doubt, a modern epic and a showcase for Corbet's vision, the virtuoso acting talent of Brody and Pearce and the photography of Lol Crawley, but the unwieldy second half drags the film down to a respectful, but very solid B.

The new all-access documentary to the formation of one of the greatest rock bands of all time, BECOMING LED ZEPPELIN left my ears content and a smile on my face. How can you not smile when you have four dudes this pleasant, successful and transparent about their path to fame? See it in IMAX or with the best sound system you can find and turn up the bass. It's an avalanche of classic riffs and the perfect wails of Robert Plant. Damn, talk about taking you back. Current interviews with the three surviving members of the band open the film. Plant is the trailblazing lead singer. He's so self effacing about his early days that he's a pleasure to watch and Director Bernard MacMahon delivers the interviews as if they are conversations with a friend. You never see the questions, just the boys giving their remembrances of history. Often, they are seeing remastered, crisp video of events in the sixties and seventies for the first time since they happened, as they speak. The film is loaded with pristine digital versions of even the earliest of days. Jimmy Page is lead guitarist and the architect of the band's creation. He also wrote many of the early songs before Plant's creative songwriting kicked in on the second album. Base player John Paul Jones is perhaps the most quiet member of the band, sharing many stories from the perspective of someone whose thrilled to be there. His talent and contribution is palpable. Late and LEGENDARY drummer John Bonham plays a large part in the film, thanks to an interview heard here for the first time, that took place just before his death in 1980. He's hilarious, delivering a joyful perspective on his experience with the boys. The film's structure is superb. Entertaining graphics and film clips capture the band members from their childhoods, even delivering snippets of performances from their high school days. But what MacMahon really nails is the way delivers the music. You hear moments in the studio, the discovery of riffs, but when he actually presents a Led Zeppelin song, the first one is 45 minutes in, it's the WHOLE song, featured in beautifully clean digital versions of original film footage. You feel the entire musical flow and see the guys in all their power. Plant is almost ethereal, seemingly about 7 feet tall. He and Page wear historically great, massive hair that pulls you back to the sixties and seventies without hesitation. You also see the actual audience reactions and at first, they are wildly unpredictable. I loved Zeppelin's first big, live performance as Zeppelin at a festival with some families in attendance. Mom's faces turn sour and kids plug their ears as Page's incredible riffs tear through the speakers, Plant's full tilt voice assaulting their ears. It's hilarious. Watching their story unfold is entertaining as hell. Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones played on many of the greatest movie soundtracks of the 1960's! They're both featured in the best Bond title song of all time, "Goldfinger". Seeing them playing behind Shirley Bassey's jaw dropping performance of that track is an absolute blast. I had no idea that they recorded their second album, appropriately titled LED ZEPPELIN II during their US tour. Released in 1969, just 9 months after their debut album, it knocked the Beatles Abbey Road out of the top spot on the charts. "Whole Lotta Love" and "Livin', Lovin' Maid (She's Just a Woman)" still blow your mind. I loved watching the band talk about their influences and then watching how the American blues artists and even Tolkien influenced their songs. If you sat down with these guys at a bar with some pints, you couldn't coax a more insightful, enjoyable conversation out of them. Layered with their music and actual footage, it firmly establishes their place in rock history. My only complaint is that it ends too soon and for me, and a little abruptly, only detailing their story through the massive success of their second album. What about Led Zeppelin III and the classic "Immigrant Song"? Come on, what about their fourth album in 1971, featuring "Black Dog" and "Stairway to Heaven"? How about 1975's Physical Graffiti album and "Kashmir". There must be another movie's worth of tales about the 1970's all the way through their 1979 final studio album, "In Through the Out Door" during which they were so fractured that they didn't even all record in the studio at the same time. Here's hoping MacMahon releases a sequel, let's call it "Surviving Led Zeppelin" to cover all that fertile territory. As for BECOMING LED ZEPPELIN , it's a fascinating, educational joy to listen to and powerfully drives its beats all the way to an A.

Back in 1977, Director William Friedkin was looking for his next film to follow "The French Connection" and "The Exorcist". He found that film in SORCERER , one of his least appreciated and underrated films. Four men running from their lives end up in a tiny, poor South American town, hiding from an assortment of hit men, bankers and bad guys. The film opens in four cities around the world, starting in Paris, where banker Victor (Bruno Cremer) is faced with a crumbling empire built on fraud. Escaping a life of luxury, he heads for the jungle. Arab terrorist Kassem flees after executing a brutal bombing in Jerusalem and hit man Nico is played by Francisco Rabal, escaping a hit gone wrong. These four strangers find themselves recruited by an oil company to transport volatile cases of nitro nearly 300 miles in decrepit trucks through the Amazon to the site of a burning oil well. With nothing to lose, the four face death at every corner for a big payday that only half of them are expected to survive to collect. Friedkin continued his amazing work of the 70's here, tracking the trucks and our anti-heroes across some of the most brutal terrain ever captured on film. When the trucks must cross a raging jungle river by traveling a decaying suspension bridge made of vines, one of Friedkin's finest film sequences ensues, building incredible tension with little dialogue, raging sound from all directions and the unusual, haunting music score by Tangerine Dream, which they composed in its entirety without ever seeing the film. Audiences at the time were cold to the film, as were critics, perhaps confused by the title and expecting something very different after "The Exorcist", but time has been kind to this challenging and powerful film. Friedkin considers it his favorite film, Quentin Tarantino called it one of his favorite dozen films of all time in 2012 and audiences continue to discover it as a unpredictable, smart and tension filled version of Clouzot's original film classic, "Wages of Fear". The new Warner Bros high-def-Blu-Ray collector's edition is beautiful to watch, sounds terrific and looks brand new. The photography by Dick Bush is beautiful and really shines in this archival transfer. Fire up the sound, get as big a screen as you can and allow yourself to be immersed in SORCERER. It's a hidden gem from the seventies that deserves your attention. A tough, relentless and exciting A+ that earns Friedkin's second spot in my all-time Top 100 films.