ONLY THE LONELY: a review of "Spider-Man: Brand New Day"

 

"SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY"
Based upon the Marvel Comics series created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko
Screenplay Written by Chris McKenna & Erik Sommers
Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton
*** (three stars)
RATED PG 13
RUNING TIME: 2 hrs 25 min

It's still so strange to me when a movie that is often more than quite good ultimately becomes something that is not entirely successful.

At this stage in the elongated and ever continuing game for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), which has expanded over the course of 18 years, a variety of television series and now, with the return of our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, 38 feature films in total (and with no conceivable end in sight), it is safe to say that some viewers--including myself--are far beyond any stretch of superhero fatigue and are now teetering on the edge of just not caring anymore and getting off of the Marvel train. 

Perhaps what was once innovative, the building block aesthetic of erecting an ongoing narrative and interconnected storylines starring the entirety of the Marvel Comics canon, has now grown tiresome as now even witnessing a new installment requires the homework level duty of having seen and therefore remembering very little detail from the collection of previous films. That, in and of itself, is exhausting and frankly, dilutes the entre purpose of these films in the first pace: that aspiring to being artful and not disposable, to carry true emotion al weight and intent, these things just need to be fun! 

Maybe it is also the CGI of it all as well for, as I have expressed upon this site over and again, we live in an age where special effects are so commonplace that special effects ae simply not special anymore and for the viewer, it feels like computers making entertainment for other computers while actors stand around on green screen sets reacting to nothing (provided they are on set at all and not just providing voice work).

Most of all, there is the aspect of quality control for when films are racing to meet a pre-determined release date without having a proper script and story firmly hashed out, the film suffers overall which then erodes trust between the viewer and studio in question. 

For everything that the MCU has performed at the peak of its powers, especially during its first 10 year stretch, culminating with the Joe and Anthony Russo's twin epics "Avengers: Infinity War" (2018) and "Avengers: Endgame" (2019), not every installment proved to be absolutely essential--Alan Taylor's "Thor: The Dark World" (2013) and Peyton Reed's "Ant Man and the Wasp" (2018) being the weakest offenders, and I am just not a fan whatsoever of James Gunn's self-congratulatory "Guardians of the Galaxy" (2014/2017/20223) volumes at all.   

The MCU post-Thanos has been considerably scattershot with some high points--Jac Schaeffer's "WandaVision" (2021), and Michael Waldron's "Loki" (2021/2023) were undeniably stellar--and too many sub par efforts--Sam Raimi's "Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness" (2022), Taika Waititi's "Thor: Love and Thunder" (2022), Peyton Reed's "Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" (2023) and Nia DaCosta's "The Marvels" (2023)--churned through the assembly line.

These storytelling stumbles (plus outside controversies involving actor Jonathan Majors, who otherwise performed formidable work as the emerging yet now fully abandoned multiversal threat of Kang The Conqueror) ultimately did not serve their growing multiverse saga well and moreso, it made my interest in seeing new installments diminish as there are some that I have skipped entirely due to my lack of enthusiasm. 

Yet, Spider-Man has retained his hold onto me due to all three installments directed by Jon Watts, reaching its zenith with the magnificent, masterful multiverse themed "Spider-Man: No Way Home" (2021), a film that scaled and plumbed into powerfully deep emotional waters making it one of the MCU's tallest achievements. Nothing would keep me away from the next installment as so much precarious emotional territory was left on the line at the previous film's conclusion. 

And so, here we are with "Spider-Man: Brand New Day," directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, taking over for Watts and who previously helmed the strong "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" (2021). What has resulted is simultaneously a more than worthy successor but also the least successful Spider-Man entry in this MCU incarnation of the character. I am not even about to suggest that what we have is anything I was necessarily disappointed by or felt was "bad" in any way. On the contrary, there is much about the film that might even exist as the very best qualities of the MCU Spider-Man portrayal so far but it is indeed hindered by MCU issues that have now become problematic regarding their stacked film/television world building, making the entire experience hover a short distance above being an MCU placeholder. 

Picking up four years after the devastating conclusion of "Spider-Man: No Way Home," when Doctor Strange, at Peter Parker's (Tom Holland) behest, conjures a magic spell to make the entire world forget about the existence of Peter Parker as a means to save the multiverse as well as protection for best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) and true love MJ (Zendaya) from future dangers, we find Parker safeguarding New York City now anonymously as Spider-Man. 

While Spider-Man is beloved by the city, Peter Parker is firmly alone in the world, obsessively monitoring, working and battling one arch foe after another with his only significant interpersonal communication existing with NYPD Detective Jean DeWolff (Liza Colon-Zayas) and adversarial assistance from armed vigilante Frank Castle a.k.a. The Punisher (Jon Bernthal).  

A new, unseen threat arrives on the scene as several Department Of Damage Control (DODC) facilities have been attacked by a mysterious telepath with the ability of body/mind hopping from one person to another. Additionally, something strange is happening inside of Peter Parker's body as his arachnid side is metamorphosizing into new abilities as stronger sensory awareness and the ability to naturally produce webbing. 

With mounting danger and rising internal stresses, Peter Parker shoulders and struggles with his grief and loss combined with his sense of duty and purpose, especially as MJ again finds herself a target.

As with its predecessors, Destin Daniel Cretton's 'Spider-Man: Brand New Day" is a top fight production with the state of the art aesthetics that are now an MCU staple and expectation. What has changed is that Cretton has delivered a more traditional, street level Spider-Man, stripping him of the Tony Stark/Avengers accoutrements, ensuring the humanity of the character remains front and center. In doing so, we have a Spider-Man story that is moodier, darker, sadder and somber affair. No, we do not have anything resembling some sort of a dirge but there is a true emotional weight to the film that is as refreshing as it is poignant and palpable as we view Peter Parker, no longer in high school, but as a young adult navigating the world and clearly battling PTSD from past adventures, depression, isolation and powerful grief at lives lost and the friends as family he cannot reach out towards anymore because there have no memory of him.

As Peter Parker/Spider-Man, this fourth go-around for Tom Holland is easily his best work in the role thus far. He continues to capture the verbal/physical/emotional agility required of the character but again, he has done a wonderful job of internalizing everything this character has endured over the course of the continuing MCU story. Holland always allows us to remember every step of this character's journey as he has faced his triumphs certainly, but one tragedy after another undeniably, from the deaths of cherish family and the attainment and loss of treasured mentors, to the trauma of being snapped out of existence by Thanos only to return five years later, to this point where the people he loves the most and could lean on for emotional support never knew he existed. 

This is that key Marvel melancholy that sits at the soul of the character (and really, the entire Marvel canon) and is the crucial ingredient and his willingness to continue marching onwards despite the failures and the losses that ensures that we will follow him any and everywhere, including several sequences of startling poetry and painful intimacy between Peter Parker and MJ, another with the memory of Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) and a downright lovely moment between himself and Ned. Tom Holland nails every fragile note with skill, dexterity and humanity. His selfless sacrifice as Peter Parker carries this film and supplies new developments with significant gravity, making the film exist as an empathetic plea for the need of communication and community in an increasingly socially fragmented world. 

And still, "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" felt to be a tad slighter than previous installments. There are serious pacing issues, for instance. Yes, the action sequences are handsomely presented but they don't enthrall. One battle sequence between Spider-Man, The Punisher and one more (kind of, sort of) surprise guest star, that would have at one time dazzled my Marvel brain and then some, just felt to me more of the same old summer movie bombast. A character portrayed by Sadie Sink is of major Marvel significance yet it never truly felt to be wholly purposeful as she was seemingly placed into this story as a means of table setting for the next MCU projects to come. 

To that end, the film in totality felt to be a tad strained because as "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" builds upwards, it actually lessens. Earlier, I made the reference to some Marvel films existing as placeholders and while what Cretton's film accomplishes is more than that, it does however contain one too many elements that feel to be shoehorned into the story as mere set-ups for what will inevitably arrive in future films instead of natural foreshadowing. Again, there was nothing to the Sadie Sink character that felt to be organic and what her character eventually performs by the climax is akin to what we have already seen visually, emotionally and thematically in "Spider-Man: No Way Home," "WandaVision," Cate Shortland's "Black Widow" (2021) and especially, Jake Schreier's particularly strong "Thunderbolts*" (2025), essentially making "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" feel more than repetitive with its copy and paste developments and revelations. 

Table setting for all to come instead of ensuring that what we have presently is the absolute best that it can possibly be is what really kept Destin Daniel Cretton's "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" from web slinging itself over the top for me as it felt so tentative in its cinematic footsteps so as to not upset the MCU apple cart before the arrival of both Joe and Anthony Russo's "Avengers: Doomsday" and "Avengers: Secret Wars"--and possibly due to however much longer Tom Holland wishes to play this role. 

While in some ways, Cretton's film occupies a nearby arena to what I feel is the finest Spider-Man film to date, and that is Sam Raimi 's "Spider-Man 2" (2004), "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" suffers from an overstuffed aesthetic and derivative story beats where the grander moments underwhelm and the quieter moments are the ones that soar high above New York City.  

Frankly, our Spider-Man deserves a bit better. 

WHAT HAVE I WROUGHT?: a review of "The Odyssey"

 

"THE ODYSSEY"
Based upon Homer's Odyssey
Written for the Screen, Produced and Directed by Christopher Nolan
**** (four stars)
RATED R
RUNNING TIME: 2 hrs 49 min

Has Christopher Nolan been creating and recreating The Odyssey the entire time? Has his entire filmography essentially existed as all one long film?

It feels to be simultaneously impossible and extremely fitting that filmmaker Christopher Nolan would decided to take on nothing less than one of the oldest surviving works of literature ever written as his filmography has proven itself to being titanic in scope, depth, execution, purpose, intention and even critical and box office success. 

In our current precarious cinematic era where the likes of sequels, prequels, reboots, remakes and re-imaginings and anyone wearing a cape set to all manner of CGI bombast and bludgeoning rule the day at the near expense of any and every other film genre. A time when we really do not exactly have movie stars in the same way as years and decades past. Christopher Nolan has emerged as one of the few filmmakers who can open a film into theaters based solely upon his name. His commitment to the filmmaking process and the film going experience is unshakable and the purity of his fearsome commitment shining to blinding degrees with the release of each film, making each entry an event in and of itself...and that undeniably includes the ambitious, polarizing, noble misfire "Tenet" (2020). 

Now, we arrive at "The Odyssey," Nolan's adaptation and more importantly, his interpretation of Homer's epic poem--first composed around the 7th or 8th century--and what he has accomplished is a massive, downright Herculean production which takes the sandals, swords, Gods and monsters and miraculously delivers a resoundingly profound, poetic and haunting experience that is not only grounded in its humanity while more than overflowing with the spectacle, it serves as the culmination of his cinematic work to date as well as stretching and folding time itself (as is his wont) to ensure the history of the film remains strikingly present. I am not quite certain if this is Nolan's very best film as his quality control overall is exceedingly of high standard and I suppose if pressed, I might say that "The Dark Knight" (2008) may be my personal favorite film of his. That being said, Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" is a masterful, mountainous achievement, making for not only being one of the best films of 2026 but one of the best films of the 21st century. It is deeply staggering to behold. 

As with Homer's poem, Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" stars Matt Damon as Odysseus, King of Ithaca, confronting seemingly endless trials and tribulations during his arduous 10 year journey homeward after the 10 year Trojan War, fully initiated via the Trojan Horse, which covertly encased himself and his soldiers. 

Meanwhile back in Ithaca, and with Odysseus presumed perished during the war, his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway), Queen of Ithaca, strategically fends off a collective of unruly suitors--including the insidious Antinous (a serpentine Robert Pattinson)--vying for her hand in marriage in order to obtain access to the throne. Odysseus and Penelope's son Telemachus, Prince of Ithaca (Tom Holland), a baby upon Odysseus' departure and now aged 20, is determined to discover the whereabouts of his Father despite all news and hopes to the contrary, aside from Odysseus' faithful and blind swineherd Eumaeus (John Leguizamo).

Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" is a seismically staggering, sprawling, operatic experience which merges the war film, love stories, a coming of age tale and existential crisis masterfully. It is a muscular presentation fueled by a feverish adherence to the tactile experience of real sets, locations and props as opposed to the CGI green screen aesthetic that has now become so much the norm that special effects are so commonplace as to not be "special" anymore. Precisely like Phil Lord and Christopher Miller's outstanding "Project Hail Mary" from earlier this year, Nolan weaves movie magic so vividly and viscerally that you can nearly touch, smell and feel the weight and fabric of every perilous item and location just as the characters themselves. 

Enormous credit must be heaped upon frequent Nolan collaborator Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, Editor Jennifer Lame for expertly weaving together Nolan's traditional non-linear structure and good Lord (!!!), Composer Ludwig Goransson has created yet another innovative, astonishing score that serves completely as immersive soundscape and firmly announces him--again--as one of cinema's greatest young composers, who just one day may take that specific throne based upon his work for both Nolan and Ryan Coogler alone, and after we have all been enthralled for generations with the likes of John Williams, Hans Zimmer and the late Jerry Goldsmith. Goransson has more than proven himself as one who miraculously keeps topping himself, and his work of "The Odyssey" presents him in an especially imaginative and thunderous state. A remarkable achievement. 

Near the outset of this posting, I remarked that Christopher Nolan, for all of the considerable fire, brimstone, shock and awe, in fact created an experience that is surprisingly grounded and humane, as it could have very easily flown off into the Marvel-esque stratosphere. 

In its own way, it feels extremely in line with essentially Nolan's entire oeuvre, as "The Odyssey" stars yet another outer and inner journey of a tortured male figure. Nolan's Odysseus is not terribly far removed from his short term memory loss afflicted protagonist in "Memento" (2000), Al Pacino's sleeplessness plagued homicide detective in "Insomnia" (2002), the warring magicians in "The Prestige" (2006), the brooding, psychologically damaged Bruce Wayne in "The Dark Knight Trilogy" (2005/2008/2012), Leonardo DiCaprio's dream thief in "Inception" (2010), the outer space, time travelling astronaut of "Interstellar" (2014), and the inverted entropy voyaging CIA agent in the aforementioned "Tenet"," all of whom are wrestling with choices made and the often shattering consequences of their actions. 

Yet, even further for me, I felt "The Odyssey" was essentially the third act in Nolan's possible unofficial trilogy featuring "Dunkirk" (2017) and "Oppenheimer" (2023) existing as the first two acts, as all share themes and poetic visual cues and movements that feel to serve as echoes with each other--for me, a sequence featuring Odysseus and his soldiers all cramped together inside the Trojan Horse felt like a visual mirror to the sequence of submerged young soldiers facing bullets from above and drowning from below in "Dunkirk," for instance. 

Essentially, everything we view within "The Odyssey" stems from the consequences which erupt and befall Odysseus from the breaking of Zeus' law of caring for your neighbors, and feeding and housing the stranger as Gods were believed to walk among mortals in disguise. This tenet (ha ha), which ultimately serves as a stand in for "Do unto others...," upon being violated, unleashes the unthinkable which reverberates over time upending all that had existed before. 

In a strange way, I was deeply reminded of what is now the iconic nightmare world contained in "Episode 8" of David Lynch's "Twin Peaks: The Return" (2018), in which he posits that the first test of Oppenheimer's Trinity nuclear bomb test in 1945 White Sand, New Mexico, was an event so awesome in its destruction of the natural law that a fabric in time and space opened, creating a pathway for a greater evil to emerge. With regards to Christopher Nolan's interpretive reading within " The Odyssey," here is where I found the film for all of its massive scale, it remained an intimate experience that could be viewed and read on a dual level. 

Yes, we could take every moment presented at face value, interacting with the episodic structure and adventures within adventures literally. Or, on a deeper level, I feel that Nolan has delivered an ominous portrait of Odysseus wrestling with the PTSD from 10 years of war and his morality overall, over the ensuing 10 years before returning home, with the Gods and monsters themselves represented as more tangible figures than overtly existential, where claps of thunder and raging seas are the wrath of Zeus and Poseidon, respectively. 

Is the ethereal presence of the Goddess Athena (Zendaya), who occasionally appears at Odysseus' side during his journey actually present or is she a representation of Odysseus' conscience wrestling with choices made and consequences delivered --much like Nicolas Cage's tormented ambulance driver in Martin Scorsese's "Bringing Out The Dead" (1999)? 

Are the side quests and challenges with the Cyclops, a losing battle against the armor clad giants, a feverish nightmare section starring the witch Circe (an incredible Samantha Morton), the self-inflicted terror of hearing the Siren's Song and more all true tales of Odysseus' perilous travels back to Ithaca or are they traumatic hallucinogenic formations of the guilt and shame Odysseus is consumed by after the loss of all of his soldiers during a 7 year lotus flower induced haze? And to that end, is that haze one induced by the seductive nymph Calypso (Charlize Theron) or again, is she a psychological representation of Odysseus' penance as he is overcome with grief, loss, and self-mortification and the need to just forget?   

All of these qualities made "The Odyssey" a decidedly more emotionally wrenching experience than I had anticipated, for Odysseus' pain and pathos not only resides in his loss of morality but whether he can atone and repent, deserves to, or should even be allowed to, making us in the audience question whether the "home" he is desperately trying to reach is solely a physical space or additionally, some sense of spiritual deliverance, ascension or at least, a possible re-balance of the existential scales. 

Through Matt Damon's portrayal we are allowed to feel the weight of Odysseus' trauma and suffering as what is thought to being heroic is actually hubris at its most reckless, ruthless and disgraceful. This quality extends itself to the story in its entirety, just as depicted in "Dunkirk," the Trojan War is every war fought before and since. The towering persistence of women within a world ruled by the very men who overlook, covet, and desecrate them is urgently presented via Anne Hathaway's rigid tenacity and the aforementioned righteous fury of Samantha Morton. All of the obstacles and pitfalls showcase how our inhumanity begets more inhumanity. Empires are destined to one day fall, a striking statement to present in our current state of being in 21st century America, which is dying in real time, and like Troy and Ithaca, whatever remains and/or emerges afterwards will never quite resemble what existed before. 

All of these qualities and more makes Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" feel so distinctly present, not remote and by film's end, deeply poignant, evocative and powerfully unsettling even as we have been unquestionably awed by the experience. 

Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey," even deeper within its core, is a presentation of the ultimate story, which is indeed a story about stories and storytelling, how stories are created, the ways in which stories are passed around and passed down and therefore, how myths are formed, possibly as Nolan might be arguing, forged as the lies we tell ourselves to assuage our own significant moral failures and hopefully, as lessons we can teach ourselves to transcend those failures. Which certainly feels like the story Christopher Nolan has been expressing to us with such force and vision throughout the entirety of his career.   

While "The Odyssey" can be read as a sort of summing up, I am already anxious to see what new cinematic chapter Christopher Nolan will undoubtedly return with. But, this one is more than sensational in its satisfaction.

SAVAGE POSTSCRIPT:     

If there is one quibble that I had with the film it is again a Nolan trademark and that is his controversial sound design, which again is unbearably loud. While I did not see the film in the IMAX format (it is just sensory overload for me--I cannot endure it), I did take a set of earplugs for my screening, which indeed helped considerably with the volume but did muffle some key dialogue here and there. 

You have been gently warned.  

I PUT A SPELL ON YOU: a review of "Obsession"

 

"OBSESSION"
Written and Directed by Curry Barker
**** (four stars)
RATED R
RUNNING TIME: 1 hr 49 min

"U ask me if eye love U
It's automatic
'Cause every time U leave me
Eye die
That's automatic 2..."
-"Automatic"
music and lyrics by Prince 

Everyone who knows me personally, as well as for any of you who have followed this blogsite over the years, knows that my relationship with the horror film genre is tenuous at best...despite some films within the genre existing as beloved to me. 

Curry Barker's "Obsession" has rapidly sailed to the top of my favorite films of 2026, as well as an entry in the horror genre that is so successful in its entirety that I deeply appreciated how it transcended any genre trappings--while simultaneously upholding them--to deliver what I felt to be a profoundly clever social statement about interpersonal relationships for a generation born and raised in the social media age. 

In its own way, it felt to be more than fitting that this was the first film I watched after experiencing Olivia Wilde's excellent third feature "The Invite," as what Barker has helmed feels designed to inspire deep conversations and debates long after the end credits have scrolled regarding the nature of the film's title and its implications, as well as statements and allegiances towards the film's primary characters. Curry Barker's "Obsession" clearly has much more on its mind than cheap thrills and excessive gore. It does what the finest horror films accomplish...it haunts superbly.

Curry Barker's "Obsession" stars Michael Johnston as Baron Bailey a.k.a. "Bear," an introverted, socially awkward  twentysomething who lives alone with his cat Sandy in the house inherited from his deceased Grandmother and works as a music store employee alongside his small circle of friends including Ian (Cooper Tomlinson), Sarah (Megan Lawless) and Nikki Freeman (Inde Navarrette), on whom Bear has housed a longtime crush yet is terrified to tell her.

When Nikki announces her intention to at long last leave the music store as well as move away from town, Bear urgently feels the need to finally express his true feelings but again crumbles. Out of frustration with himself, Bear, while holding a novelty item called a "One Wish Willow" (purchased when he attempted to buy a necklace for Nikki), cracks open the trinket and voices a wish that Nikki would just love him more than anything else in the world.  

And as the saying always expresses, be careful what you wish for...

I have to say that if Curry Barker's Obsession" is a signal to where the horror film genre can travel, I just may find myself more willing than ever to take the plunge to view them more often! Just as Zach Cregger's "Weapons" (2025), Barker's film accentuates story and character far above mere shock value ensuring the story carries weight and the experience resonates and "Obsession" has deeply accomplished that feat with me.  Also like "Weapons," Barker takes an almost Grimm's Fairy tale conceit and expands and deepens the concept so that exists beyond anything resembling the standard slasher throwaway or unconscionable torture porn. 

While nowhere near as volcanic and orgiastic as Coralie Fargeat's extraordinary "The Substance" (2024), Curry Barker's "Obsession" is offering a cultural commentary, a societal warning set in our smartphone addicted, post social-distance era of the COVID-19 pandemic as our interpersonal connections became more fragmented and strained, our collective societal development arrested and fractured, and sense of empathy and accountability eroded. I really do not feel this is terribly far off to suggest that not only does this film sit in good company with the likes of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris' "Ruby Sparks" (2012) and Jordan Peele's "Get Out" (2015)--which it is clearly honoring throughout--but also alongside David Fincher's "The Social Network" (2010) and Spike Jonze's "Her" (2013), films where social isolation and loneliness fuel destructive outcomes. 

The crux of Curry Barker's "Obsession" firmly lies within the character of Nikki and how she is embodied through Inde Navarrette's ferocious, wrenching performance whose twists and turns are delivered with such alacrity and a knowing pain, distraught, wrath, and sensitivity that is transcends anything that could, be construed as exploitative and ensures the film sails far above any "girlfriend from Hell" pitfalls. In fact, if there was a film that "Obsession" recalled for me the very most it was  none other than David Lynch's "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me" (1992), the tormenting, brutal story of the final seven days of Laura Palmer's life as portrayed in a shattering swan dive of a performance by Sheryl Lee, who I remain shocked that she was never fully recognized for the fearlessness of her work in a torturous performance.

For all of the hallucinogenics and dream logic, Lynch's film boldly depicted a story of a young woman grappling with familial abuse, repeated sexual assault and the society who completely let her down as she was suffering. With "Obsession," Inde Navarrette creates a frightening Matryoshka doll of a performance in Nikki Freeman (note the irony of her surname), discovering and unleashing the layers of a young woman fully robbed of her agency and made an emotional and sexual prisoner to Bear in a situation not of her making in the least and caused solely by to Bear's inability to speak and own his own feelings initially and due to his level of selfishness and self-preservation at the expense of Nikki's independence entirely. 

Granted, I would like to think that we have all existed in this space at one point or another, especially during adolescence, when powerfully intense feelings for another person are birthed and at times remain unsaid for fear of losing that particular object of desire. Honestly, who has not themselves uttered a wish just as Bear, for hoping that the one you love would reciprocate your feelings? The problem, and the ensuring tragedy, arrives once Bear with full knowledge continues the charade for his own benefit despite curious warnings from friends, his own doubts and fears and even with Nikki completely coming unglued in front of him. 

For that matter, much should be regarded for Michael Johnston's strong performance as Bear as he glides this precarious balance of sympathy and pity against the outrage and fury he deserves as he is unwilling to face the consequences of his actions as the fear of losing what he claims to have always wanted outweighs personal responsibility, his own guilt and shame and  the acknowledgement that he has intentionally violated Nikki for his own ends. In many ways, I am stunned that there is even any sense of debate whether to the relative "heroics" and "villainy" of both Bear and Nikki because for me, Curry Barker's film clearly knows which side it is on. Trust me, there is no way to think otherwise especially when hearing the nightmarish sounds that erupt during and continuing through a large portion of the closing credits. Barker's "Obsession" wants to ensure that we do not escape the horror easily...just as Nikki could not. And again, Inde Navarrette is a force of nature and believe me, I sincerely feel that she should be remembered during awards season as her work is pure and unforgettable.  

Much like Olivia Wilde's "The Invite," Curry Barker's "Obsession" feels like a throwback as well as a gauntlet thrown down in our current cinematic age for a return to pure  storytelling fueled by well drawn characters and situations, inventive filmmaking and a thoughtfulness that prevents the film in question from being another disposable entry that is forgotten before you even return to your homes. This film certainly delivers the goods, from shocks and terror to sudden blasts of the ultraviolence. But, it is so m much more than that.  Also like "The Invite," it is a cautionary tale about relationships, how we can tend to lose ourselves when wanting to earn and keep attraction and affection as well as what occurs when emotions and conversations go unsaid, unacknowledged and unaccounted for as the intense pain inflicted, whether intentional or not, wreaks emotional and psychological havoc.

I now have my eye on you, Curry Barker. After the grand success of "Obsession," I am excited to see what you come up with next!   

INDOOR FIREWORKS: a review of "The Invite"

                             

"THE INVITE"
Based upon "The People Upstairs (Sentimental)" Written and Directed by Cesc Gay (2000)
Screenplay Written by Will McCormack & Rashida Jones
Directed by Olivia Wilde
**** (four stars) 
RATED R
RUNNING TIME: 1 hr 47 min

"...It's time to tell the truth
These things have to be faced
My fuse is burning out
And all that powder's gone to waste
Don't think for a moment, dear, that we'll ever be through
I'll build a bonfire of my dreams
And build a broken effigy of me and you..."
"Indoor Fireworks"
-music and lyrics by Elvis Costello

I would imagine for anyone that has existed within a long term relationship of any kind, we have all found ourselves within this space at some point.

Dear readers, I firmly believe that we are finding ourselves at a stage where Actress Olivia Wilde has emerged and has fully arrived as a filmmaker. From her sharply funny teen film "Booksmart" (2019) and her deeply underappreciated, undervalued and misrepresented yet searing psychological thriller "Don't Worry, Darling" (2022)--a film that seemingly landed her in "Hollywood jail" due to behind the scenes controversies that would never upend any male Director combined with a clearly passionate narrative diatribe against a toxic patriarchal establishment--for me, Wilde has been upon my radar as she has already demonstrated strong confidence behind the camera, effectively weaving worlds and stories that feel fully and freshly conceptualized and realized. 

With her third film, "The Invite," Wilde helms and co-stars in a satirical comedy of manners is by turns ribald, wise, deeply sad and housing a perceptive quality that probes deeply and wounds while doing so as she gives us a portrait of a marriage precariously wobbling on the ropes. "The Invite" is an interior chamber piece that indulges us in hefty surprises and copious laughter while simultaneously leaving blisters and bruises. For those of you in relationships, I am doubtful if it is necessarily one that you would wish to watch together as the darkest corners of relationships are exposed to degrees that are uncomfortably relatable. That being said, "The Invite" is formidable, as it is through the excellence on display in the writing, performances and direction that we have not only Wilde's best film to date but one of the best films of 2026.

So to as not produce spoilers, I gently urge all of you to attempt to see this film as cold as possible to ensure the best overall effect. Olivia Wilde's "The Invite" stars Wilde and Seth Rogen as San Francisco married couple and parents to a 12 year old daughter; stay-at-home, frustrated artist Angela and failed indie rock musician now music teacher Joe. On this fateful evening, Joe returns home from work to discover Angela feverishly preparing their home for a dinner visit from upstairs neighbors, the alluring Pina (Penelope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton), whom Angela desperately wishes to be befriended by and whom Joe wishes nothing to do with.

From this opening, Olivia Wilde's "The Invite" unveils an intimate dance between two couples who fluctuate between states of intense dilapidation and another with a seemingly breezy, free spiritedness that is wholly foreign, as well as attracting and threatening to the feuding Angela and Joe. The overall effect is as sobering as it is often electrifying as Wilde--alongside key collaborators Cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra, Editors Anthony Boys & Yorgos Mavropsardis and Composer Devonte Hynes, whose sinister score perfectly accentuates the intensity--places us upon an emotional knife's edge from which we and the characters threaten to fall from over and again. 

Enormous credit must be given to two distinct areas of Olivia Wilde's team and those belong to both Screenwriters Will McCormack & Rashida Jones, who more than know their way around navigating the intricacies of a relationship as evidenced in their previous screenplay for Lee Toland Krieger's "Celeste And Jesse Forever" (2012), and especially Wilde's set design crew who beautifully create an interior space that exists as much as a character as the people within the space as well as simultaneously functioning as an apartment, a source of shared history and the various nooks and caverns of two human hearts breaking over time, separately and together. 

This technique makes for an experience that serves as voyeuristic, confessional and seductive while also allowing for areas of risky peculiarities, boisterous moments and the boldly, dangerously dramatic, which places Wilde's "The Invite" is comfortable cinematic company with the likes of Sidney Lumet's "12 Angry Men" (1957), Mike Nichols' "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf" (1966), John Hughes' "The Breakfast Club" (1985), Roman Polanski's "Carnage" (2011), and believe it or not, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's "This Is The End" (2013).  

Additionally, like Richard Linklater's "Before Midnight" (2013) and Nat Faxon & Jim Rash's "Downhill" (2020), Olivia Wilde's "The Invite" exists within the rarefied air of the sorts of cinematic love stories that we truly do not typically see and are the ones that I often wish for. We have more than enough films of people falling in love, but not nearly as many that are brave enough to explore and investigate the territory of what it takes to either remain in love or to question precisely why did the characters ever fall in love and should they even attempt to love again. 

Wilde orchestrates a visually and emotionally claustrophobic environment where the silence is thunderous, the distance feels interminable and where the sanctuary of home is now unsafe due to the eggshells laid out everywhere, threatening to be broken like explosives in a minefield. With Angela and Joe, personal slights have becomes chasms of anxiety and rage and when faced with Pina and Hawk, and their cojoined essence of virility, unpredictability, openness and ease, the couples contrast, congeal, and ultimately reveal layered truths of exquisite depth that are ripe for debate and conversation for viewers long after the end credits appear. 

This quality is a testament to the magic that can be created when in the company of great writing,  direction and performances and Olivia Wilde's "The Invite" contains all three crucial elements wonderfully. All four leading performances in the film are uniformly excellent. As Angela and Joe, both Wilde and especially, Seth Rogen, make for a painfully compelling and convincing couple, who both house levels of self loathing due to past failures and disappointments now metastasizing as real and perceived current failures and disappointments of who they each felt that they could and should be vs. who they each actually are regardless of whatever good fortunes may actually exist if they were only able to acknowledge them.  

Seth Rogen surprised me powerfully as he more than holds his own alongside his co-stars. Now, this is not to suggest that he has morphed into a Daniel Day-Lewis styled actor but I find it incredible that he has only continued to discover and unearth new layers to his screen persona and like his work in Danny Boyle's "Steve Jobs" (2015), scripted by none other than Aaron Sorkin, Rogen rises to the challenges of "The Invite" handsomely. Imagine Rogen's character from Judd Apatow's "Knocked Up" (2007) nearly 20 years later now deeply wounded and scarred, afraid at what his life has been and what it might never become due to the realities of aging. Rogen still possesses his brilliant comedic timing but now, itis fueled by a very real sense of pain and when Wilde catches him in his most interior moments, he is almost shattering to regard. 

When all is said and done, Olivia Wilde's "The Invite" feels like a throwback as well as a serious gauntlet thrown down in our current age of cinema. Trust me, I am as excited to see Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" as any of you but Wilde has expertly delivered an experience that reminds you of a time when great writing, performances and direction were the only special effects...and that our current movie landscape more than deserves to have those kinds of films as readily available and in as many theaters as the epics.

For me, Olivia Wilde's "The Invite" is an invitation for us to an event and I gently urge you to accept.  

LISTEN...: a review of "Disclosure Day"

 

"DISCLOSURE DAY"
Story by Steven Spielberg
Screenplay Written by David Koepp
Directed by Steven Spielberg
**** (four stars)
RATED PG 13
RUNNING TIME: 2 hrs 30 min

This is one that I feel the need to sit with...

The year 1977, in which I was only 8 years old, was the year that I became fully aware and completely fell in love with the art and artistry of the movies. For so many people like myself, I am certain that both George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were the figures responsible for this cinematic awakening. As I reflect, what I find remarkable is how my memories of those experiences have existed for me. 

With Lucas' "Star Wars" (1977), which I saw on the very first day, my recollections are and remain s vivid that they are practically blinding. I can very easily place myself back at the River Oaks movie theater just outside of Chicago in Calumet City, being engulfed by the sound and vision presented in 70MM widescreen and Dolby sound, and further fully transformed emotionally by all that I had witnessed. It was unquestionably a stark before/after life experience never to be forgotten.

Now...with Spielberg's "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" (1977), my memories are hazier. My interest in astronomy, space and whatever existed out there beyond Earth was certainly a draw. But, even so, I do not quite remember whether I saw the film at the aforementioned River Oaks or at the Evergreen Plaza theater near my home at the time. Where I could remember every single moment from "Star Wars," my memories of Spielberg's film are relegated to specific scenes and moments as the film felt pitched towards more adult sensibilities despite its explicit childlike wonder and awe. While scene to scene and certain concepts were beyond my 8 year old comprehension, the sheer impact of the experience in totality was equally as soul shifting as what Lucas achieved.

I remember my introduction to what I have ever since referred to as "Spielberg lights," scenes where mist, dust or other airborne moisture creates vibrant beams of light from flashlights, almost as if they could be real world lightsabers. I was absolutely dazzled by the otherwise terrifying sequence of 5 year old Barry (Cary Guffey), alien abduction, punctuated by his opening of the door to his home to view a flooding of yellow and orange light augmented by an ominous sound. I even vividly remember a moment during a council meeting sequence where an older gentlemen exclaimed that "I saw Bigfoot once!" 

 

Most of all, as blue collar everyman Roy Neary, Richard Dreyfuss was magnetic, perfectly encapsulating both adult and child like sensibilities. From the moment what appears to be car headlights behind him rising upwards into the night skies to his bewilderment at momentarily being bathed in white light on a darkened Indiana railroad crossing. His gradual descent into perceived madness while being consumed by visions of Devil's Tower, which he attempts to reconstruct through drawings, mashed potatoes and a large scaled replica via dirt, bricks and house debris. His distinct need to find answers. I was ready to follow him everywhere including and even further than the film's majestic climax of contact and communication orchestrated through kaleidoscopic colors, sounds, those iconic five musical notes and the pure, primal wellspring of emotion that could have levitated me.

By the time of Spielberg's "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" (1982), he was already my favorite Director, ad that film, an exquisite jewel of a portrait of loneliness and friendship, is so perfect that to this day, it remains my favorite film, which I have only seen three times in my life.

Now, Steven Spielberg arrives with what definitely feels to be the third conceptual piece to themes he has explored over the course of his vast 5 decade plus career, his 35th film, "Disclosure Day." 

So as to not inadvertently produce spoilers, I will keep the plot description to the basics. Steven Spielberg's "Disclosure Day," set in the present rather than the Director's penchant for setting his stories either within the past or the future, finds the world on the brink of nuclear holocaust. Josh O'Connor stars as cybersecurity specialist Dr. Daniel Kellner on the run--with his girlfriend, a former nun Jane Blankenship (Eve Hewson)--from his employer, a clandestine government organization knows as the Wardex Corporation as led by CEO Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), for the theft of hard drives containing evidence of extraterrestrial contact throughout the decades and also, an alien artifact. 

Meanwhile in Kansas City, local news meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) suddenly begins to experience a psychic ability after an appearance of a cardinal in her kitchen. After several inexplicable moments of intuition, perception and the ability to speak and understand foreign languages of which she had previously no knowledge of, Margaret experiences a moment on live television during which she is stricken with the power of speaking through what sounds like a series of guttural clicks, thus alerting the attention of the Wardex Corporation, who are soon in pursuit of her. 

As these respective trajectories converge, we are also introduced to Hugo Wakefield (Coleman Domingo), a former Wardex employee leading a team of rogue employees who are guiding both Daniel and Margaret to what is planned as the titular "disclosure day," the moment when all will be revealed to the world at large.

Steven Spielberg's "Disclosure Day" is a superbly stirring experience, expertly showcasing that alongside his most recent cinematic triumphs of both his outstanding "West Side Story" (2021) and his sublime autobiographical document "The Fablemans" (2022), he, at nearly 80 years old, has not lost even one, solitary step as he remains as enamored with the process and the art of cinematic storytelling as he was in his younger days. As what we would expect from Spielberg, this is an elegant production--again aided superlatively by key collaborators Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski and Composer John Williams--that brilliantly blends the visceral (a sequence with a speeding train is as breathless as anything Spielberg has ever conceived) and the cerebral into a defiantly uncynical and surprisingly upending presentation that wisely illustrates how sometimes the most complex answers rest in what is seemingly the most simplistic.

I honestly cannot think of a time during a Steven Spielberg film when I did not feel necessarily grounded. As with every Indiana Jones adventure, "Disclosure Day" opens with what would essentially be the third act of any other motion picture but unlike Indiana Jones, Spielberg deliberately keeps us off balance for the majority of the film, leaving us in a similarity precarious state of mind as the characters of Daniel Kellner, Jane Blankenship and most crucially, Margaret Fairchild. Each of these characters, just as all of us within the audience, are questioning what exactly is happening simultaneously within each of themselves, the world and the nature of existence and how they all intersect and therefore, connect. 

While this tactic may be detrimental in another film, the effect here is as unnerving as it is thrilling as Spielberg has essentially created a chase movie yet the directions and end results are not being spoon fed to us or the characters, as we are possibly learning at the same rate as the characters themselves. To that end, much should be made of Emily Blunt's truly demanding, startling performance which is an amalgamation of confusion, wisdom, humor, a taste of schizophrenia and the holding of a mirror to us in the audience. It is as if she is existing within some odd liminal space and I honestly do not know how she pulled that off!

Throughout "Disclosure Day," we are all unsure as to the motivations, the agendas, the allegiances and alliances, again keep everyone consistently off balance. The further the film unfolds, we gradually understand how the disparate pieces connect, all leading to the film's controversial yet astounding climax--magically anchored by former news journalist Courtney Grace's bracing performance-which might be more than underwhelming for some viewers but for me catapulted me back to similar emotions I experienced when I first saw each of "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" and "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" those very first times. 

As previously stated, Steven Spielberg's "Disclosure Day" is a defiantly uncynical film and in its own way, perhaps even more than Phil Lord and Christopher Miller's beautiful "Project Hail Mary" from earlier this year, as it is a film that is ultimately speaking directly to this specific moment in our collective world culture and history when it is feeling that our own worst, basest instincts are rapidly hurtling us towards our own extinction...and for what? 

"Disclosure Day" is innocently and profoundly asking of its characters and us, what does it mean to be human? What does it mean to not only exist but to co-exist and what is our existence if it only encompasses the things that we can see, hear and touch in our immediate material world or solely through our own individualistic perceptions? And furthermore, what is existence and does it only involve all that we have been told and instructed to believe? Does our idea of existence only hold what feels possible for no other reason than we have brains that are indeed only human? 

I believe that with this film, and frankly throughout his entire filmography, Steven Spielberg is expressing that not do we have the capability to hold what is tangible and what is possible within our very human brains, that it is essential for whatever progression we hope to have within our shared humanity and interconnectivity with the world and beyond. For over and again vis his films and unquestionably with "Disclosure Day," Spielberg, one of our most empathetic filmmakers, implores of us to just take the time to...listen. This may feel to be an oddly facile concept to swallow but again, "Disclosure Day" rests in this unusual space of being an adult film based within its own innocence. It is a hopeful film which unveils itself with the backdrop of an impending nuclear annihilation. 

To that end, to me, "Disclosure Day" exists as a plea.

In my everyday real world life as a preschool teacher, and especially this year as it has presented itself as the most difficult, straiting, stressful, disheartening year in my entire nearly 30 year career, I am faced with a roomful of 3 year old children existing in various states of emotional dysregulation, anxieties, anger, and violent outbursts. And as I am trying to instill in them the tools of naming emotions, building an emotional vocabulary, and recognizing empathy by beginning to understand that they are co-existing in a space with other people than themselves, a constant refrain I share with the children happens to be the following; 

"Please listen...it's hard when you do not listen."

This is a sentiment that grows in importance and weight with me as I have grown older as I realize how powerful it is despite how simplistic it sounds. That when we each lead with our own sense of self-importance and self-preservation, that when we lead with our own sense of narcissism, that when we lead with our unwillingness to entertain a perspective different than our own for we are adhered unshakably to our own sense of rightness. When we lead with arrogance, recrimination, regret, grief, fear, anxiety and everything that seemingly rejects the core truth of what empathy is, we are only dooming ourselves, individually and collectively. 

In Steven Spielberg's "Disclosure Day," the concept of listening is something I think Spielberg is addressing upon multi-levels. To the story he is telling, definitely. With our interpersonal relationships and symbiotic nature with existence, certainly. Because we are being asked to not solely listen to people who are different than ourselves. But to also, listen closely to our hearts, our souls, to the environment and all that live within it. To listen to the nature of possibility itself, because honestly, how could the infinite expansion of existence only contain us within it?   

But, additionally, in some ways, I am also wondering if Steven Spielberg is using "Disclosure Day" to also address our relationship with the movies themselves. 

Yes, I understand how for some viewers of the film, the climax could be read as being somewhat anti-climactic. Perhaps that perception is not exactly the relative fault of the film itself. Perhaps it is representative of the fact that we as a society have long been conditioned to the cataclysmic, theater wall shaking conclusions filled with bombastic special effects driven fire and brimstone and one ending after another. Essentially the type of film experience Spielberg himself altered the entire film industry with over 50 years ago in "Jaws" (1975). 

Yet, Steven Spielberg has always existed as a filmmaker more thoughtful than simply throwing carnivalesque events at audiences just for the sake of doing so, and honestly, what most major film releases have ultimately become. For me, the climax of "Disclosure Day" was especially gripping, solidifying and uplifting the whole experience and in its own way, the entire film felt like a bookend to "The Fablemans." 

With "Disclosure Day," we witness Spielberg, lifelong champion of the cinematic arts and the movie theater going experience unveiling a film within our overly distracted age where movies are treated more disposably than ever, attention spans being shorter (I personally cannot stand the constant complaints about movie running times as if movies cannot end fast enough just to get the viewer onto the next thing instead of having the film itself as the full experience), and media literacy nose diving rapidly, literally imploring of us to just LISTEN. To LISTEN to our spirit and just allow ourselves to surrender and get caught up and be swept away in a dream for two and a half hours with a room full of strangers experiencing the exact same dream and then...let's just see how the dream affects us all.  

We have been conditioned to viewing the movies as fast food for so long now that the movie going experience as a cultural event doesn't feel to mean as much anymore. Perhaps the respective journeys of the characters within the story of "Disclosure Day," especially Emily Blunt's Margaret Fairchild, one could argue, are designed as a means to mirror our relationship with the movies and to think and remember that very first movie that made an impression and sent each of us upon our own journeys within cinema. Just as how "Star Wars" and "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" forever altered the course of my life. Frankly, I would not be here writing about films right now if not for those two movies. 

Maybe this is one reason why I felt so off balance during the majority of "Disclosure Day" because the film almost functions as if it is a dream. This is not to express that there are no more movies being made in the 21st century that people are not experiencing, becoming involved with and are passionate about. It's that the movie going experience has been diluted and fragmented to the point where we are conditioned to see something, offer a "hot take" and then, forget about it forever...instead of living with it, thinking about it, and possibly emerging from the experience feeling different about the world compared to the moments before you saw whichever movie it was. 

That inexplicable before and after...

Steven Spielberg's "Disclosure Day" is a film that rests within the pivotal moments between the before and the after, the wrestling that occurs with quandary of remaining just as you have been or walking into the unknown, the uncharted territory, the feeling of danger that resides in not being in control anymore...if you ever really were. For nearly 50 years of my life, Steven Spielberg has proven himself to existing as the best guide into the unknown that I could wish for. 

"Disclosure Day" is another excellent step further.

WHY ME?: a review of "Project Hail Mary"

 

"PROJECT HAIL MARY"
Based upon the novel by Andy Weir
Screenplay Written by Drew  Goddard
Directed by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller
**** (four stars)
RATED PG 13
RUNNING TIME: 2hrs 36min

I have to admit to you that in recent years, I have truly grown soft when it comes to my perceptions of Ryan Gosling. 

Truth be told, I have not always felt this way. In fact, there was a significant period where I was quite fascinated with this then new, younger actor who had a tenacity for pulling off a collection of strong, charismatic, deeply interesting and engaging performances, even in films I perhaps did not care for. 

As a cocaine addicted middle school teacher in Ryan Fleck's "Half Nelson" (2006), Gosling delivered a performance of insightful nuanced depth to the point where I knew he was one to watch. While Craig Gillespie's "Lars and the Real Girl" (2007) ultimately suffered from that indie film self-conscious/self-congratulatory quirkiness for me, Gosling's portrayal of a man arrested within mental illness resulting in his wholly unorthodox relationship, such as it is, with a blow up doll, was again a performance that impressed greatly due to its tenderness and honesty.

That being said, and I do realize that I exist within a bit of a minority, Ryan Gosling over the years has felt to exist within a  certain performance stasis. Not that he has ever given what could be considered to being a "bad performance," but one where they are all beginning to feel as if they were variations of the same one or two themes: the taciturn, emotionally absent male--Nicolas Winding Refn's "Drive" (2011), Denis Villeneuve's "Blade Runner 2049" (2017), Damien Chazelle's "First Man" (2018)--or the B.M.O.C./"Prom King"--Glenn Ficarra and John Requa's "Crazy, Stupid, Love" (2011), Damien Chazelle's "La La Land" (2016), every sketch  he giggles his way through on his visits to "Saturday Night Live."  Again, not a bad performance in the bunch whatsoever but a little of each goes a very long way and I was feeling a bit of coasting at work and my interest in his future projects waned.

With Phil Lord and Christopher Miller's exuberant "Project Hail Mary," Ryan Gosling not only brings all that we know to be his considerable gifts to the table, he considerably ups his game, crafting a performance that is honestly wonderful to regard. And to that end, the film as a whole is enormously entertaining and powerfully affecting in its creativity, filmmaking, storytelling and resonant emotion already making it for being one of the best films of 2026.   

As the film opens, we are introduced to Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), as he awakens from an induced coma as the sole survivor upon an interstellar spacecraft light years away from Earth. As he slowly recovers from amnesia, we learn that life on Earth is in peril as the sun is dying. Scientists have discovered an infrared line, known as the "Petrova Line," stretching from the sun to Venus, which contains a microorganism called "astrophage" escalating on the sun's surface causing it to dim, while also infecting other stars n our solar system, leading to an apocalyptic event for Earth in potentially 30 years time.

Grace soon remembers his life prior to space travel as a middle school Science teacher and former molecular biologist disgraced for a controversial paper once published regarding his beliefs about the possibility of the existence of alien life forms, eventually recruited by Government agent Eva Stratt (a quietly formidable Sandra Huller) to study astrophage alongside international Scientists. 

Further experimentations and discoveries by Grace afford the team the opportunity to enact "Project Hail Mary," in which a three person crew will fly to Tau Ceti, the only uninfected nearby star, to investigate and send information back to Earth via probes while also existing as a suicide mission for the astronauts involved as there will not be enough fuel for a return trip.  

Back in space, as Grace's memories re-emerge while still remaining confused as to how or why he is even on the spacecraft in the first place as he views himself being not remotely "heroic," he encounters another space vessel which amazingly contains a sole alien life form, a five legged rock formed creature Grace soon dubs "Rocky" (beautifully performed and voiced by puppeteer James Ortiz). 

It turns out that Rocky is upon the exact same space mission to save his own planet and the duo joins forces to hopefully successfully rescue their respective home worlds together.

To echo Rocky's own exclamations as heard in the film, all I could utter to myself over and again throughout the entirety of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller's "Project Hail Mary" was indeed, "Amaze! Amaze!! Amaze!!!" as what we have is unquestionably one amazing cinematic experience. 

On a purely aesthetic level, the film is an audio/visual feast executed in A+ level excellence. Lord and Miller, working in full collaboration with their team which incudes Editor Joel Negron, Cinematographer Greig Fraser and Composer Daniel Pemberton, delivered one of the first film going experiences in quiet some time that truly made my eyes and spirit bedazzled due to the purposefully more tactile execution of this material. 

I have proclaimed for many years upon this site that with the advent and over reliance upon CGI technology, we have entered the age where special effects simply are not special anymore due to their prevalence and lack of understanding that there is an artistry to be had and when the technology is utilized as a shortcut and not as a tool of specificity, the overall quality suffers. With "Project Hail Mary," Lord and Miller unveiled a film that is often visually mesmerizing in its brand of psychedelia, sometimes reminiscent of the stargate sequence in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968). 

I absolutely loved the usage of colors, light and shadow. The slight grain of the film stock. The lack of green and blue screens and the detail within physical sets and locations. Undoubtedly the puppeteering of Rocky! All of these elements and more congealed richly to convey the conceptual and emotional themes of time and space, in addition to distance, isolation, mortality, unity, communion and friendship. Lord and Miller's "Project Hail Mary" is a film made by human hands for human beings instead of something impersonal generated by a computer. Profoundly appropriate for a film that is overflowing with its moral sense of empathy and plea for humanity. 

Beyond the technical professionalism, creativity and invention, Lord and Miller's most miraculous achievement is capturing the film's tonality which dance's supremely upon a knife's edge of pathos  

and comedy, never for an instant losing sight of the other. It is incredible to me that film that is envisioning the extinction of humanity itself could be so light upon its cinematic feet while ensuring the existential stakes are always felt and not once abandoned for laughs. To that end, the comedy throughout is honest and not once overbearing. This is a film that exists within a specific symmetry as it is conscious of the fact that we are living in increasingly inhumane times and Lord and Miller purposefully have created a work that is earnest, sincere and open hearted in its humanity regarding the symbiotic nature of what existence actually is, can be and should be. 

In its own way, I felt Lord and Miller's "Project Hail Mary" to work in a similar cinematic stratosphere as Ryan Coogler's "Sinners" (2025) and Paul Thomas Anderson's "One Battle After Another" (2025) as it is a multilayered experience that straddles the intimate and the epic while firmly meeting the moment in our current space in the 21st century as again, Also we are co-existing in a precarious state due to a rapidly diminishing spiritual core. 

While "Project Hail Mary" is not being explicitly political, I do believe that all art is political to varying degrees. For instance, Lord and Miller have created a science fiction film based in ideas, certainly and precisely like Ridley Scott's "The Martian" (2015)--itself based upon Andy Weir's novel and with a Screenplay written by Drew Goddard--as well as existing in the same cinematic spaces as the aforementioned Kubrick landmark plus Steven Spielberg's "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" (1977), Robert Zemeckis's "Contact" (1997), Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar" (2014), Alex Garland's "Annihilation" (2016), and Denis Villeneuve's "Arrival" (2016). These are all films that are not about popcorn fueled destruction but ones that adhere to the undisputable reality that Science and Math are real and essential to understanding how existence functions. There is no way around that fact no matter what detractors may wish to exclaim and how distressing it is that reality itself has become debatable. But...here we are...

Also like "The Martian," this is a film entirely about process and problem solving as Grace, either solitary or working in conjunction with Earth Scientists and/or the alien Rocky, are faced with one conundrum after another. Not in a cliffhanger fashion, although there are many white knuckle situations and sequences to behold, but in a more practical sense of discovering all of the mini-problems that exist within the grand problem and again, the symmetry that exists between them.

Lord and Miller's "Project Hail Mary" is also a film about communication, making me feel this film to work in connectivity with Carroll Ballard's "The Black Stallion" (1979), Steven Spielberg's "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" (1982), James Cameron's "The Abyss" (1989), Dean Deblois and Chris Sanders' "How To Train Your Dragon" (2010) and the aforementioned "Arrival." This film is asking of us to truly think about our relationships, with those who begin as strangers and then grow emotionally close, to those who differ from ourselves, to especially our relationships with animals, nature and the environment that surrounds us. How do we begin to understand someone or something that is different than ourselves? How do we begin to share language? How do we begin to understand even when we cannot understand? And how does that communion between ourselves and others reflect or enhance the communion we have within ourselves?

The late, great Roger Ebert expressed the following words within Steve James' beautifully elegiac documentary film about Ebert entitled "Life Itself" (2014):

"We are all born with a certain package. We are who we are: where we were born, who we were born as, how we were raised. We're kind of stuck inside that person, and the purpose of civilization and growth is to be able to reach out and empathize a little bit with other people. And for me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy. It helps you understand a little bit more about hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us."       

  

I feel that the greatest success with Lord and Miller's "Project Hail Mary," is that this is a film that works as a distillation of Ebert's sentiments. Via the film's non-linear structure, Lord and Miller open with the quandary of one man, which extends itself to one planet, which further extends itself to an alien creature and widens the canvas further to include the alien's home planet and further than that, all of the species that exists in between. The drama contained within the film grows from singular to an interconnected universality. This is what makes the friendship between Grace and Rocky so palpable in its heart pounding emotion. This is how the film's themes of bravery, sacrifice, grace, compassion, and the realization that every single living thing contains a purpose and importance carries such weight. For without even one, the universe unravels. To have empathy for one you must have empathy for all because we are all in this together.

And for everything about and within the film that succeeds due to the concept of togetherness, I have to turn my attention at this time to the superb performance by Ryan Gosling who does indeed carry the film on his shoulders, making for an achievement that more than deserves whatever recognition he is bound to receive during awards season. 

Like Tom Hanks in Robert Zemeckis' "Cast Away" (2000) and Sandra Bullock in Alfonso Cuaron's "Gravity" (2013), for instance, large swaths of "Project Hail Mary" finds Gosling either all alone or acting without another human being, so to speak, and he makes the considerable task of holding the screen by himself seemingly effortless. 

Beyond that feat, it is more than fitting that Gosling's character's name is "Grace," as this is a performance that exudes the quality housed inside of the name. Ryan Gosling gives us considerable layers to the odyssey of Ryland Grace, an ordinary man living through an extraordinary time and experience, facing down mortality with the innate and honest fear that whatever it is that might make one person willing to take up an impenetrable challenge, he feels (or even knows) himself to not be that person. For what is courage? Strength? Selflessness? What does it mean to believe in oneself when you do not?  What does it mean when others see in you qualities and characteristics you do not see within yourself? How do you keep placing one foot in front of the other when you do not truly know the destination or the consequences of your actions or inactions? 

This is the quandary of life as it is lived. This is the quandary of what it means to be human. Ryan Gosling embodies this journey masterfully with such patience, charm, frailty, fragility, humor, tragedy and a widely open heartedness that always invites us to lean even closer to his magnetic screen presence. Whatever issues I had towards him previously, as I described at the outset of this review, were completely washed away with his performance in this wondrous film.

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller's "Project Hail Mary" could not have arrived at a more crucial time and I am feeling that the overwhelmingly positive response to the film showcases a societal need to be presented with something hopeful as the dark clouds feel as if they will never part for sunshine again. It is a film that reaching out for us just as we are reaching back towards it and the embrace felt in the union in nothing less than healing. 

While watching the film, I often thought about this song lyric from Todd Rundgren in his song "Sometimes I Don't Know What To Feel" (1973). In that, he sings, "Someone said the world's gonna end and I think it's true. I thought there was some love in the world but I guess I'm wrong." To that end, I thought of another Rundgren lyric, this time from his song "Fair Warning" (1975) when he sang, "I can't let the world die because no one would try."  

I really do not know if a movie can change the world but if everyone who sees and enjoys "Project Hail Mary" could internalize the messages contained and release them outwards as our own Hail Mary pass from one to another, maybe we could save ourselves.

What would Ryland Grace do?

GETTING BACK AND MOVING FORWARDS: a review of "Paul McCartney: Man On The Run"

 

"PAUL McCARTNEY: MAN ON THE RUN"
Directed by Morgan Neville
***1/2 (three and a half stars)
RATED R 
Running Time: 1hr 55min

I find it almost impossible to pick a favorite Beatle. 

The Beatles and the four men who constituted that band--John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney--have existed within my life for the entirety of my life, influencing, educating enrapturing and inspiring me every single step of the way to a degree that it is impossible to imagine my existence without their immense presence. 

I love all four men for differing reasons yet equally and beyond their superlative musicality. For John, it was (and still remains) the unwavering passion, brutal honesty and brave fragility of self examination, witty and questioning surrealism, for being a dream weaver. For George, it was (and still remains) the ocean that lived behind the quietness, his steady resolve, the spirituality that was ever present and all encompassing and certainly, the dry yet biting humor. For Ringo, it was (and still remains) the euphoria, the open emotional honesty demonstrating that tears are a display of strength, the patience and beauty of listening as a path to discovery and inventiveness. 

And still...if forced...if I searched within my deepest heart of hearts...I would have to say that Paul McCartney is the one who speaks to me most emphatically.

From a sheer musical standpoint, it always amazes me with how much music exists within a band due to the members that exist inside of said band. This feeling became gradually apparent to me once The Beatles disbanded and they al began embarking upon solo careers. By the time I was cognizant of The Beatles, their story had essentially concluded and my formative years experienced them as solo artists, the Beatles experience then a thing of a newly fresh past. Despite having been introduced to both "A Hard Day's Night" (released July 10, 1964) and "Abbey Road" (released  September 24, 1969) as an infant, I began truly ingratiating myself with The Beatles discography through my Dad's introduction due to my unshakable obsession with Director Michael Schultz's universally maligned yet eternally beloved by me, rock opera musical fantasy "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (1978). 

One obsession rapidly led into another, and greater obsession as "Beatlemania" soon existed within me. Allowance money granted me a new album from the mall record store. Frequent trips to my school library, where I could easily listen to records on the turntables complete with headphones, itself became its own obsession (and deepening my love of libraries), allowing me chances to hear this music and immerse myself more and more. It was in this particular space when I first decided to try the album "Ram" (released May 17, 1971) credited to Paul and Linda McCartney and Paul McCartney's second post-Beatles effort. While I knew the stunning storm to sunshine suite of "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey" from radio play, the album completely threw me off. I just did not get it at all. I could hear Beatle-esque qualities but it was decidedly not The Beatles and I didn't know what to make of it whatsoever. And for many years, even after gradually acquiring more post Beatles McCartney albums, I never listened to it again.

Yet, when I did re-acquaint myself with that particular album decades later...the re-introduction proved itself to being more than enlightening.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with or have even rejected to varying degrees the 1970's output of Paul McCartney as it existed so deeply within the immense shadow of The Beatles and the collective societal grief of the band's conclusion, Director Morgan Neville's documentary "Paul McCartney: Man On The Run" goes a long way into allowing us a greater insight into that period, offering us--as well as McCartney himself-an opportunity for a re-evaluation, re-appraisal and deeper understanding of not only the existence of Wings, but the why alongside the how. 

In many respects, one could think of this film as a spiritual sequel to both Michael Lindsay-Hogg's "Let It Be" (1970) and Peter Jackson's resplendent "Get Back" (2020) as "Paul McCartney: Man On The Run" begins with the ending of The Beatles due to the four members growing up, growing apart and becoming entangled in messy legal issues which pitted McCartney against Lennon, Harrison and Starr thus causing considerable strain and tension with their friendships. 

By this time, Paul had met, fallen in love with and married New York photographer Linda Eastman. The twosome, along with Linda's daughter, Heather-from her previous marriage and whom Paul would adopt-found refuge in a remote, dilapidated farmhouse in Scotland to escape the constant pressures boiling over in London. Faced with legalities and an angry press and fan base convinced that he was single handedly disbanding The Beatles, despite John Lennon's more private departure, months earlier, Paul fell into an alcohol fueled depression. 

The now Linda McCartney immediately became his port in the storm, his anchor, his soul mate and their love plus their growing family began to rejuvenate his mind and creative spirit, resulting in raw, intimate, purposefully unpolished home studio recordings that would ultimately become his debut solo album "McCartney" (released April 17, 1970), which itself was followed by the more polished yet still home grown effort from Paul and Linda, the aforementioned "Ram." 

Feeling a newfound sense of inspiration to combine with his restless creativity and need for invention, Paul McCartney decided that he wanted to continue making music knowing full well that anything he produced would inevitably be compared to the majesty of The Beatles. So...let's not form a supergroup of the rock and roll elite but return to the absolute basics, completely starting over in the formation of a new band, which happens to star a former Beatle...and his wife, Linda, musically untested and unprofessional but fully engaged with a "Why not?"/can-do spirit.    

Morgan Neville's "Paul McCartney: Man On The Run" is a lovely, kaleidoscopic voyage through a misunderstood decade in the artistic life of its subject, often narrated by the man himself, and resulting in an experience that functions mush like a Paul McCartney song. Whimsical, vibrant, joyful, inviting, engaging with its fair share of oddities and flying by the seat of the pants imagination and still tinged with a poignant sense of melancholy, bittersweetness, pathos and a crucial injection of optimism.

For as much of the music of this particular decade is on display within the film especially through an enormous amount of archived visual material that I know that I have never seen before, making for one piece of this multi-layered experience, Morgan Neville's film is not necessarily about the music itself. "Paul McCartney: Man On The Run" is decidedly not a song-by-song, album-by-album feature and while it is a tad surprising, that decision is not harmful to the film's overall impact in the least. What we are ultimately given is a more intimate portrait of an iconic figure that is warmly humanizing in its display and portrayal. 

Before I go any further, I wish to address a comment made by my very best friend during our college years together. There was one night, during our marathon conversations, be it in her dorm room or dining hall or wherever we happened to be when we were talking about McCartney's then recently released solo effort "Flowers In The Dirt" (released June 5, 1989), at the time, largely seen as a return to form. I vividly remember her remarking, concerning Paul McCartney's then 1980s/1990s era recollections about his past during he Beatles and Wings, that she felt him to being somewhat of an unreliable narrator as she expressed, "his story keeps changing." At the time, I was unsure as how to respond to that sentiment but over time, I think that perhaps it is not McCartney's story that keep changing but his perspective about the times and lives in which he lived. 

Morgan Neville's "Paul McCartney: Man On The Run" offers McCartney, as well as us in the audience, to also gather a greater and even newfound perspective over this specific decade of his life. As McCartney is a Producer on the film and as stated, he narrates as well, it would be conceivable to ponder if the film is a self-congratulatory puff piece. I will offer to you that it is not and although while I feel that he is again allowing us inwards as far as he wishes to, I found his candor and willingness to offer new shades enlightening. 

I was fascinated that Neville was able to display a sense of Paul McCartney, the eternal optimist, when he is in the throes of insecurity, feeling excited and proud of the work while creating but then unsure to even dismissive of the same work when critical reactions are poor to brutal and even then, watching him ultimately validated when the tide turns regarding public opinion. I was further fascinated to hear him express stages of anger he felt, towards John Lennon certainly but also towards the earliest Wings bandmates, guitarist Henry McCullough and drummer Denny Seiwell, upon their departure from the group shortly before the recording sessions for what would become "Band On The Run" (released November 30, 1973) due to financial strains, McCartney's relentless pace, wildly unpredictable self-starting touring schedules via multi-colored double decker bus complete with kids and animals and not truly feeling as being full democratic musical partners despite McCartney's assertions that they all existed in a true band. 

What affected me most were the sections where Neville offered us glimpses into McCartney's anxiety, occurring through the aforementioned alcohol laced depression, a nightmare recounted by McCartney himself, and even his difficulty with processing deeply disturbing events in his life from legal struggles, the drug related death of Wings guitarist Jimmy McCullough in 1979, John Lennon's murder in 1980 as well as his own 10 day imprisonment in Japan for marijuana possession, ultimately the catalyst for the disillusion of Wings.   

All of these elements ensured that we could begin to see an icon, a living legend as mere mortal, a human being with foibles and failures just as any of us walking the same Earth as himself. And to that end, Neville's film allows us to witness McCartney's tenacity, his work ethic, his undeniably restless sense of creativity and imagination and the forthright nature in which he pursued his muse regardless of what everyone outside of his word (and sometimes within his world) felt what rock and roll could and should be.

If he wanted to make an album from the comforts of home in a pure DIY fashion, playing all of the instruments himself, recordings raw and real, he did it. And as a result, he became a pioneer in one-man and home recording and the bedroom pop studios that are commonplace in the 21st century. If he wanted tr record protest songs and drug anthems-"Give Ireland Back To The Irish" (released February 18, 1972 UK) and "Hi Hi Hi" (released December 1, 1972 UK) respectively--both of which banned by the BBC, then so be it. If he wanted to record a nursery rhyme in "Mary Had A Little Lamb" (released May 19, 1972), then so be it. If he wanted to create a decidedly corny and goofy television variety show program, complete with a dance sequence and a cartoon mouse in "James Paul McCartney" (broadcast April 16, 1973) then so be it. 

It is that very adherence McCartney possesses towards his muse Neville presents confidently within "Paul McCartney: Man On The Run." For it is through McCartney's unbridled confidence in the act of creation that propelled him past all of the gatekeeping and rules created by critics, fans and even rock and roll itself thus elevating him to the status of existing as a pure artist. The film allows us to gain a greater appreciation for the timelessness of his output regardless of the time period in which everything was created. 

Most triumphantly, Morgan Neville's "Paul McCartney: Man On The Run" is a love story. From Paul to Linda McCartney and the family they created together as well as a powerful tribute to the unimpeachable strength of Linda McCartney entering an unforgiving and sexist world of rock and roll fully untested to not only survive it but to thrive and further ascend as an artist in her own right, always existing as an equal partner in creativity, family and life. And it is precisely through that love in which everything throughout this pivotal decade was created. Wings was birthed because Paul McCartney wanted to be in a band after The Beatles and he simply did not want to be away from or leave the love of his life behind...so WHY NOT do it together? It is fully due to that WHY NOT? that we can now see the roots of every artistic decision made during the1970's and the full existence of Wings.

The union of Paul and Linda is a celebrity romance that has always stuck with me and I truly appreciated the time Neville devoted to this essential portion of Paul McCartney's life. Even moreso, I loved seeing and hearing the copious amounts of archived interview footage and sound bites from Linda McCartney herself, a woman whose speaking voice I realized I have barely heard throughout my life, even as her vocal harmonies are forever riveted in my brain through the Wings discography. 

Long after The Beatles' disbanding, George Harrison once expressed regarding the enormity of the time, "They gave their money and they gave their screams, but The Beatles kind of gave their nervous systems." 

Ringo Starr expressed that if not for Paul McCartney's determination and endless enthusiasm, The Beatles would have amassed a far smaller output. John Lennon also once expressed that perhaps out of the four of them, and despite what critics and fans may have believed to the contrary, Paul McCartney maybe wanted The Beatles to exist the most. Morgan Neville's "Paul McCartney: Man On The Run" meets the subject at that precise point in his life where uncertainty and possibility collided and what resulted was purposefully not The Beatles for what could be...but what emerged is something equally pure and true in its intent and therefore, so worthy of reassessment and a deeper understanding.

For Paul McCartney, a self described "playaholic," because for him, he does not "work" music...he PLAYS music, his life and art has always existed as an invitation for us to join in. Morgan Neville's graceful documentary affords us another opportunity to do just that.