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Hollywood

Unoriginal ‘Sinners’

Directing a film is a little like coaching a football team—both are jobs for natural leaders of men—but strikingly few auteurs played serious team sports after age 18. Ron ...

Robert Pattinson in Mickey 17

‘Mickey 17’: Where Bong Goes Wrong

With his new science-fiction satire Mickey 17, South Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho is back with his first movie since he swept the Academy Awards for 2019 with his lucid-looking ...

Adrien Brody in The Brutalist

The Most Serious Film Ever Made

H.L. Mencken once said that no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public, but the American public of his time was full of Lorenzos the Magnificent by ...

Cinema Pope

Conclave is a (non-action) thriller set inside the Sistine Chapel during the election of a new pope, starring veteran acting luminaries Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, and John ...

The Death of Hollywood Part III: Don’t Dream It’s Over (But Yes, It’s Over)

London, 1911. Two proper gentlemen meet for an ale. “With this land grant and generous endowment by the Brothers Wilks—who stomp the earth to extract petrol for lamps and ...

The Death of Hollywood Part II: Local Actors Act Loco

I’ve had a lot to say over the years about how rightists refuse to act locally, or seem incapable of doing so. With one of the defining aspects of the Trump era being “the ...

In the Year 2025, Will Hollywood Survive?

The defining entertainment industry story of 2024 was the collapse of Hollywood, the “death of movies,” to quote the L.A. Times. The defining story of 2025 is, to quote the ...

Justine Bateman, 1987

L.A. Boned and Brimstoned

I never did get to do my New Year’s “wrap-up” column (I got distracted by the H-1B visa thing, then the fires started). I feel bad not only because it broke a long-standing ...

Bob Dylan

Tangled Up in Bob

The musical biopic A Complete Unknown competently depicts the most famous of the heel turns Bob Dylan has amused himself with over his long career: how he stabbed in the back his ...

Pantheon, Rome

‘Gladiator II’: A Rightful Heir

Sir Ridley Scott’s 2000 movie Gladiator with Russell Crowe as the hero Maximus has been one of the more unexpectedly culturally influential films of the 21st century. Americans ...

Tall (but True) Tales From the Casting Room

Having a column that runs Monday/Tuesday means I’m forever doomed to post the evening before/day of elections. And today? You’re on edge. Everyone is. So I’ll take my cue ...

Celluloid Caesar

Has 85-year-old Francis Ford Coppola pulled off the artistic comeback of the century by liquidating half of his heirs’ expected inheritance in his wine business to film ...

Alger Hiss, 1950

Red Scare

I considered writing about presidential politics, but the way things are going lately, by the time you read this on Wednesday, we may well be on to a whole new storyline I can’t ...

Casting My Eyes

As I mentioned last week, I took a Substack poll regarding my readers’ preferred topics, and the top vote-getters were “scolding idiot rightists” and “musing about ...

Dining Nazis, Whining Jews

I’ve done three straight weeks of politics, so let’s lighten the mood with the Holocaust. Wait, that came out wrong. I mean, let’s lighten the mood with Hollywood. And the ...

Joachim Phoenix as Napoleon

Little Boney Goes Hollywood

The Last Duel, a 2021 film by Sir Ridley Scott with Matt Damon as a mulleted French aristocrat chud battling honorably (if stupidly) a suave Adam Driver in 1386, turned out to be ...

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