'Primetime' A Review

Primetime is a period thriller that dramatizes the production of the 00's TV show To Catch A Predator. Robert Pattison stars as the obsessive Chris Hansen. 

Pattison gives a big expressionistic performance, full of quirks and ticks and complete with an eerie imitation vocally. It's fun to watch no question. The supporting cast are equally intriguing- Merritt Wever as a producer is great, Phoebe Bridgers as one of the show's decoy's is amazing, Anna Faris and Alex Winter in what are basically cameos, and Eric Rahill brings some desperately needed levity. But the pitch perfect casting doesn't really come to anything because there seems to be no point to the any of it. A story about gross people doing gross stuff to other gross people. No matter how good the actors are, given the script, the task to make something compelling out of it is impossible.

Writer/director Lance Oppenheim's first narrative feature shows a lot of promise and deploys his unique, saturated, psychedelic inspired visuals and he gets incredible performances out his cast but like Spermworld the result seems only to revel in how compromised the situation and people are rather than making any broader statements or tapping into any larger themes(which he did successfully in Some Kind of Heaven and Ren Faire). So the result is something that is something that is excellent in regards to craft but almost meaningless as far as content. It comes across as particularly thin in the wake of 2025's much more incisive Predators. 

Inspired acting and captivating visuals wrap a narrative that has no purpose, empty calories.

Currently in theaters.

Stream It.

'The History Of Concrete' A Review

The History Of Concrete is a documentary, basically an extended episode of John Wilson's HBO show How To with John Wilson. Through B-roll, narration, and random interviews the movie quickly diverges from the subject of it's title and explores random tangents. More stream-of-consciousness than themeatic.

Fans of Wilson's show will certainly be pleased with this but beyond that the appeal is doubtful. There's no focus, it's not actually about concrete, Wilson as a personality has the kind of Brooklyn hipster irony and apathy that has limited appeal(whether this be more comedy than documentary or vice versa). He even injects his difficulty making the film into the film in, what comes across as, a kind of petulant entitlement. Beyond a certain subset of older Gen Z, younger Gen Y, and New Yorkers this has little to nothing to offer.

Sprawling subject matter and uneven cringe comedic beats makes the movie basically an overlong, poorly paced version of Wilson's show.

A doc that purports to be about something but ultimately has nothing to say, a vague curiosity.

Currently in theaters.

Stream It.

'Mother Mary' A Review

Mother Mary is a psychological drama about a pop star, the titular Mother Mary(Anne Hathaway) who returns to her estranged costume designer Sam(Michaela Coel) in a time of crisis.

Coel is incredible here- poised, present, and captivating. An absolute star. She's able to bring coherence and relatable emotion to an abstract and occasionally pretentious script. Hathaway is miscast. Whether her inclusion was more of a business decision to secure funding or she was simply not the first choice she really struggles in the role. She looks awkward in the pop star costuming, she looks clumsy in the choreography, and she's just generally not believable as a Gaga or Madonna stand-in.

Writer/director David Lowery has a sumptuous visual style and that is fully on display here, even on a limited budget the movie looks fantastic but he falls prey to the issues that have plagued his work on-and-off since the beginning, this proclivity for narrative vagueness and an artistic pretention that renders a lot of his film's somewhat inert.

Worth a watch for the visuals and Coel but don't expect coherence.

Currently streaming on HBO Max.

Stream It.

The Perpetual Wave

The ocean

in its endless breaking

and reforming
in its ceaselessness

are we reminded

of our own endurance

our own vitality

our own inevitable changeability

despite its countless permutations

and diversions

it remains eternal

in its timelessness

are we reminded

of our own mortality

of the precious precariousness

of the Now

How could this not elicit gratitude?

this beneficence

for which we are undeserving

'The Death Of Robin Hood' A Review

The Death Of Robin Hood is a period drama, a gritty "realistic" take on the last days of the folk hero Robin Hood(Hugh Jackman) who(twist!) is actually a murderous villian.

Jackman is compelling and fierce in the role but the story itself is so bleak, so dull, so lacking in any kind of narrative purpose that it doesn't much matter. The supporting cast is good-to-great Jodie Comer is wonderful as a prioress and Bill Skarsgård is unrecognizable(in a good way) as Little John. But however good the cast is they cannot elevate or make sense of a script that is 100% DOA.

Visually the film is dark and atmospheric, beautifully moody and transportive. The score is at times incongruous but period appropriate and evocative. The big and glaring issue is the story itself, the "take" on the Robin Hood legend the premise of which is- what if that was all a lie and he's actually just a thoughtless violent selfish murderer? Which like, fair I guess, if he ever did exist this is probably more "true" but this "spin" is not entertaining, it has nothing to teach the viewer, there is no lesson to be learned, no discoveries. The film basically opens with a child murder(the first of several) and although the fight choreography is compelling in-and-of-itself the context in which it exists is mostly repugnant and/or woefully uninteresting.

Successful at what it sets out to do but spectacularly miscalculates that that outcome is in anyway something people would want to see. Maybe worth a distracted viewing for the cast and the production for those with a strong stomach.

Currently available to rent on most VOD platforms, streaming soon on HBO Max.

Stream It.

'Heart Of The Beast' A Review

Heart Of The Beast is a survival thriller about a veteran James(Brad Pitt) and his dog Odin(Uber, Seeka, Ryker, and Hondo) who crash in the Alaskan wilderness and have to trek out injured and ill equipped.

Pitt here isn't able to exude his typical movie star wattage and as a result an already flimsy story falters pretty much from the jump. The various Odins fair a lot better but the script overly relies on the emotional heft having a dog(or any pet) in a movie carries and as the runtime clicks along it feels pretty transparently like emotional manipulation.

Shot in New Zealand it looks like Alaska(ish) but the CGI animals are really bad and a lot of the survival beats feel perfunctory and recycled. There's just not a lot to this, we've seen in several times in recent years, and this adds nothing to the genre and doesn't execute it particularly well on top of that.

Too mediocre to be offensive, too cookie-cutter to be interesting.

Currently in theaters, coming soon to Paramount+.

Don't See It.

Mind Body Connection

It can be easy to forget
our minds are bound to earth
confined to our blood and bone

but when struck ill

we are brought, crashing

to the present moment

our bodies, without a thought

deploy countermeasures

those shivers

are the sudden rush

of our defenses

I am grateful

for that chill

those shakes, the chattering teeth

I am brought back to my body

solidified in my flesh

I am myself I had forgotten

sickness an irritant

but in the convalescence

am I reminded

of my wonderous fragility