We’ll watch everything from blockbusters to indie dramas to westerns to cartoons to horror to documentaries to musicals to science fiction. We’re going to talk about founding fathers, like John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, and even more important American figures, like Rocky Balboa and Tom Cruise. We’re going to travel to the baseball fields of the Midwest, the beaches of France, near-futuristic dystopias, and to the Moon and back.

As America celebrates her 250th birthday (nationally, the anniversary is branded “America 250” because the word “semiquincentennial” is hard to say — but it goes so well with the word “cinema,” so we’re using that), there’s no better time to review the movies that make us who we believe ourselves to be.

Read more

Batman (1966)

The Rocketeer (1991)

Superman (1978)

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)

Kick-Ass (2010)

Spider-Man 3 (2007)

Mystery Men (1999)

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)

Madame Web (2024)

For more Haiku Reviews:

Haiku Reviews #1 | Haiku Reviews #2 | Haiku Reviews #3: 1999 | Haiku Reviews #4: Cut the Cord, July 2022 | Haiku Reviews #5: Halloween 2022 | Haiku Reviews #6 | Haiku Reviews #7: Steven Spielberg | Haiku Reviews #8: Halloween 2023 Part I | Haiku Reviews #9: Halloween 2023 Part II | Haiku Reviews #10: 1983 | Haiku Reviews #11: 1992 | Haiku Reviews #12: American Politics | Haiku Reviews #13: Summer 2024 | Haiku Reviews #14: Sports | Haiku Reviews #15: Stephen King | Haiku Reviews #16: 2024 Documentaries | Haiku Reviews #17: Snow | Haiku Reviews #18: 1998 | Haiku Reviews #19: 1985 | Haiku Reviews #20: Summer 2025 | Haiku Reviews #21: Halloween 2025 Part I | Haiku Reviews #22: Halloween 2025 Part II | Haiku Reviews #23: Halloween 2025 Part III | Haiku Reviews #24: Christmas Classics | Haiku Reviews #25: Snow Part II | Haiku Reviews #26: 2000

The Big Combo isn’t typically listed among the greats of film noir — you’d be hard pressed to find it on any noir aficionado’s Mount Rushmore alongside the Maltese Falcons and Sunset Boulevards of the world — but the latest home media release from Ignite Films makes a solid case for a respectability reassessment. Though the film’s Poverty Row production and public domain status have discounted the picture’s potential popularity for years, a sleek and nice-sounding disc can help anything crackle and pop. This disc helps The Big Combo feel alive again.

Cornel Wilde (co-star of the underrated and underseen Road House) plays Police Lieutenant Leonard Diamond (a fantastic noir cop name), who is obsessed with bringing down notorious gangster Mr. Brown (in more ways than one, this film inspired Quentin Tarantino during the making of Reservoir Dogs), a big bad wolf if there ever was one. He’s also madly in love with Mr. Brown’s girlfriend, Susan (Jean Wallace, who was married to Wilde at the time), who is suicidal at the idea of being stuck with Brown forever. Leonard both literally and figuratively flirts with danger (Brown is obsessed with Susan, they’ve been together for four years) , and, on more than one occasion throughout the film, finds himself a little too close to the edge. Not everyone will have a happy ending…

Mr. Brown is played by Richard Conte, who stepped in to play the role at the last minute when Jack Palance dropped out. Conte brings a certain weightiness to the role, an intense menace and violence. In the film’s famous torture scene (if you know the scene in Reservoir Dogs, you’ll recognize what else inspired Tarantino), you feel just how much he loves being in control. Genre stalwarts like Brian Donlevy (The Glass Key, Kiss of Death) and supporting performances from folks like a pre-fame Lee Van Cleef (For a Few Dollars More) round out the cast.

There is a checklist of preferable elements that make up great noir, and The Big Combo boasts plenty of them. It’s dark, it’s violent, it’s suspenseful. This is most notably achieved through cinematographer John Alton’s stylized photography, which is not only strikingly beautiful (the shadows, the fog), but also helps cover up the film’s teeny budget. (Look closely in the background in a few frames and you’ll go, “Oh, there’s nothing behind them.”) Director Joseph H. Lewis (best known for Gun Crazy) has made a movie that your favorite filmmakers, from Tarantino to Michael Mann (the Heat influence is obvious, both thematically, with the identities of the cop and the robber, and visually, with the climax looking straight out of that film’s climax), owe a debt to.

Ignite Films, the folks behind recent releases of The Story of G.I. Joe and Re-Animator (the sequel, Bride of Re-Animator, is on the docket for this summer, in plenty of time for scary movie season), have put on this new 4K and Blu-ray edition for the film’s 70th anniversary. Their work continues to impress. It’s been given the full restoration treatment, and it looks and sounds better than it has in seven decades. In particular, Alton’s photography is to die for. It’s sharp, stunning, forboding, and encroaching. The final shot…wow…that’s noir, baby.

The release is available in four different editions. I have the “Premium Vintage Steelbook,” which comes with three discs, five lobby cards, and a customary booklet. Extras on the disc include newly produced features like an audio commentary from Imogen Sara Smith (NOIR CITY magazine editor-in-chief — if you’ve picked up on their issues, and you should if you haven’t, then you know what a great classic cinema mind she is), an interview with critic Philippe Garnier, a video essay by Scout Tafoya, and a whole other movie with amazing John Alton cinematography, 1949’s The Crooked Way. The booklet includes essays by Eddie Muller (the Czar of Noir himself— any release with the Muller stamp of approval is sure to move some units as he’s the authority of this community), Ben Sachs, Alonso Duralde (I particularly liked this one), Katie Stebbins, Scout Tafoya, and Garrett Clayton.

This is the third release I’ve reviewed from Ignite Films, and I’m looking forward to what’s next, both literally with Bride of Re-Animator and figuratively with whatever else they want to release. I’ve enjoyed them all, and I appreciate them pushing me to finally press play on films I’ve wanted to watch but haven’t had the excuse to. My only complaint so far is that the currently low-key operation can’t put out more.

My local video store has over 43,000 distinct titles that don’t disappear at the end of every month.

Here are reviews for three of them:

The Count of Monte Cristo (2002)

Edmond Dantés's life and plans to marry the beautiful Mercedes are shattered when his best friend, Fernand, deceives him. After spending 13 miserable years in prison, Dantés escapes with the help of a fellow inmate and plots his revenge, cleverly insinuating himself into the French nobility.

section: drama

If you had the displeasure of being in my orbit for the first three months of this year, I probably told you that I was reading The Count of Monte Cristo. If that was annoying, I’m sorry. I really am. But part of the reason I kept saying it out loud was because I thought that if I told enough people, I wouldn’t be able to back out. That their awareness of my literary undertaking would hold me accountable. So every time I wanted to give up on this 1,300-page beast (which wasn’t often because it really is a fantastic read, but I definitely found myself going, “I’m on page 831 and I’m not even close...”), I knew that I couldn’t and wouldn’t. And now I’m proud to say I read every damn word — and most of them were pretty good.

This 2002 adaptation clocks in at 131 minutes and after an hour only covers about one-seventh of the book. There’s only so much it can cover in the second hour (I don’t want to hear anyone dog on how much plot Emerald Fennell excised from Wuthering Heights again), and it does that well enough, I suppose. Jim Caviezel is a servicable Dantes, Guy Pearce a slimy enough villain, it was cool to see Richard Harris in something that isn’t Harry Potter (he’s got almost 100 credits and I’ve seen three that aren’t Dumbledore), and a young Henry Cavill definitely stands out. Lush costumes and on-location adventuring make it a fun watch.

But I can’t even hit it with a “the book was better” because if I asked you which you would rather have, $5 or $100, you’d choose the crisp Benjamin every time.

If a Man Answers (1962)

Rich socialite Chantal marries photographer Eugene and everything seems blissful until her envious friend attempts to break them up. In desperation, she turns to her mother, but the advice she receives may do more harm than good.

section: classics

I’ve been on a bit of a Bobby Darin kick recently. After seeing the Broadway bio-jukebox musical Just in Time three times in the last nine months (I named it my favorite musical of 2025), I’ve been listening to and watching a ton. I went back and rewatched the 2004 biopic Beyond the Sea, written, produced, and starring Kevin Spacey (it is, unfortunately, pretty good — and clearly an influence on Warren Leight and Isaac Oliver’s book for Just in Time); I’ve been spinning This Is Darin (the vinyl record, not the Spotify playlist) while making dinner; and I’ve been caught once or twice singing “Dream Lover” to my beloved pup.

I decided it was time to start digging into some of his movies, and I wanted to start with If a Man Answers, the rom-com starring Darin and his wife, Sandra Dee. The couple’s marriage is such an important part of both the musical and the movie about his life, so I figured I could get to the Golden Globe winner (Come September, where the two met, but she plays opposite Rock Hudson) or the Oscar nomination (Captain Newman, M.D., where he was the only one nominated in a cast that includes greats like Gregory Peck, Tony Curtis, and Robert Duvall) another time.

If a Man Answers is a weird movie because it’s a rom-com about a couple that’s already married played by a couple that’s already married. It starts strong, with a title song by Darin and adorably animated opening titles, but that’s about all the energy the movie has for the next hour.

The plot synopsis — wherein a woman makes her husband jealous by taunting him with the idea of a new lover, sending herself flowers and having her mother ring the house and hang up immediately — doesn’t even start until most of the way through the movie. The beginning is a lot of Darin and Dee back-and-forth. I was surprised that the two don’t really have cackling chemistry, though the dialogue does them no favors. After the teasing does start, Darin dispatches it pretty quickly with a plan of his own involving Cesar Romero — the first time I’ve seen him play a non-Joker role. It’s cute and fun, but much it doesn’t amount to much of anything in a particularly ‘60s way. That is, until Darin ends the movie by...never mind...you’ll just have to watch it.

Cool World (1992)

While incarcerated for murder, cartoonist Jack Deebs found escape by creating Cool World, a series featuring a voluptuous femme fatale named Holli Would. But the artist becomes a prisoner of his own fantasies when Holli transports Jack into Cool World with a scheme to seduce him and bring herself to life. Hard-boiled detective Frank Harris – the only other human in Cool World – cautions Jack with the law: Noids (humans) don't have sex with doodles (cartoons). However, flesh proves weaker than ink as Holli takes human form in Las Vegas, staring in a trans-universal chase that threatens the destruction of both worlds.

section: animation

In high school, my friend group, the well-nicknamed “Boys Club” (I suppose because no girls were members), would host a regular “Bad Movie Night.” (As you can see, we weren’t particularly clever with names.) We would all take turns programming titles, which featured a lot of movies we found on “worst movies of all time” lists, like Troll 2, Freddy Got Fingered, Birdemic: Shock and Terror, and Death Bed: The Bed That Eats. We were always threatening each other with Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2, though I don’t think we ever watched it.

Filmmaker Ralph Bakshi, whose notably X-rated cartoon Fritz the Cat played on one of these nights (not because it’s bad, but because of its notoriety — submission criteria varied), made one of the Bad Movie Night movies I never saw: Cool World. I’m pretty sure I just fell asleep the second it started, which is something I would do from time to time. I can’t say the pitch “Who Framed Roger Rabbit? but for perverts” really interested me, so I was out like a light. Catching up with it all these years later, I think I made the right decision.

Brad Pitt, still working out the kinks of his Brad Pitt-ness, is the film’s gumshoe, but he doesn’t seem comfortable doing that. He plays opposite the animated Holli Would, the Jessica Rabbit of the piece. She’s still a cartoon, but I guess the goal was to make her even sexier than Jessica Rabbit, so it could be believed that Brad Pitt would want to bonk her. She’s voiced by Kim Basinger, who would win an Oscar for playing another femme fatale a few years later in L.A. Confidential. So they had the right idea, I guess. Well, I guess Robert Zemeckis had the idea...

Credit: Each plot synopsis from Letterboxd via TMDb.

For Film East’s latest book, Art/Film, I contributed a chapter on one of my favorite filmmakers, Spike Lee, specifically his interest in live theatre and our shared affinity for David Byrne’s music. I’ll also be joining the international book launch tour on Saturday, May 23rd, at the Rehoboth Beach Film Society for a visual reading and book signing. Spike’s work means so much to me, and I’m so happy we can share this piece in print forever.

To celebrate the book — which comes out next week on May 11th — Feature Presentation is running a week’s worth of reviews and retrospectives all about the man himself. We end this four-part celebration with the chance to catch-up with some unseen Joints.

And welcome back to The Library!

The Library is my attempt to watch at least 50% of the films in my DVD, Blu-ray, 4K Ultra HD, VHS, and Laserdisc home library. To be included in the column, I can't watch it streaming or catch it at a repertory screening — I have to watch the disc. I’m moving slowly on this effort — it’s been over a year since the last edition — but I’m not stopping until I get to that coveted 50%.

Current Count: 1,013 of 2,264 - 44%

Malcolm X (1992)

A tribute to the controversial black activist and leader of the struggle for black liberation. He hit bottom during his imprisonment in the ‘50s, he became a Black Muslim and then a leader in the Nation of Islam. His assassination in 1965 left a legacy of self-determination and racial pride.

Yes, that’s right, I had never seen Malcolm X. I consider myself a Spike Lee aficionado, but I had never seen his biggest and boldest epic.

To be fair, this was an active decision on my part. There are some filmmakers whose work you cherish, whose work you hold so close, that you make a point to save some of it. That way, you will have more to look forward to*, more to discover. I was holding out hope that one day a 70MM screening would come my way; I had to “settle” for the Criterion 4K** disc that I purchased during my Art/Film research process.

*Elric Kane has talked about this wonderfully on the Pure Cinema Podcast. I am not alone in this feeling.

**Does anyone else have an issue with 4K discs freezing...like...all the time?

To absolutely no one’s surprise, it’s a stunner. I’ve actually turned it on a few times before, but (and this has nothing to do with the movie itself) after a few minutes, I always knew it wasn’t the right time. You have to be sat for a 212-minute behemoth, and if you aren’t mentally (or physically, for that matter) prepared for the journey, it will steamroll over you.

Spike starts hot (the burning American flag, the Rodney King footage), but Denzel, echoing the growth of his character, simmers. Hot and hotter. When the white woman asks what more she can do, and X sharply responds, “Nothing,” it reaches a boiling point. At the film’s emotional climax, it runs over. By the end, I couldn’t believe I was watching the same movie where Spike and Denzel stunted out in their zoot suits.

I’m looking forward to digging into the disc’s extras which, including a feature-length documentary, collectively run over three hours.

Crooklyn (1994)

From Spike Lee comes this vibrant semi-autobiographical portrait of a school-teacher, her stubborn jazz-musician husband and their five kids living in '70s Brooklyn.

Spike needed to zag after Malcolm X’s zig, and that’s exactly what he does with Crooklyn. After the expansive epic, he went small and intimate with the story of the Carmichael family. Taking place on and around their Bed-Stuy stoop in the summer of ‘73*, it’s a much more low-key picture, a portrait of a family and a snapshot in time. Alfre Woodard is a sniper, Delroy Lindo (in his best Spike role until Da 5 Bloods) is a hot potato, the kids are adorable, and I appreciate the appearance from David Patrick Kelly.

*Oh my god, the muuuuuusic. Sly and the Family Stone! Stevie Wonder! James Brown! I know choosing compilation albums is a cheat, but this could be a solid pick for “desert island records.”

But Spike (and this is why I love him) just can’t help himself. After the film started fairly “normal” and “straightforward,” I was tricked into thinking he wasn’t going to go for his Spike-isms. I was quickly proven wrong when the film cuts to the two “glue-sniffers” (Spike casts himself as one of them, which is just hilarious...and perfect casting), hanging upside down, floating down the street, accompanied by Curtis Mayfield’s “Pusherman.” There he is! That’s the Spike I know and love!

He does something similar when the young girl Troy goes to spend some time with her family in the South. He shoots the sequences with an anamorphic lens, stretching it so that it appears distorted and elongated. This makes Troy’s whole trip feel awkward, surreal, and occasionally nightmarish. And, I must say, Spike fooled me. I thought something was wrong with my Kino Lorber Blu-ray*, and I went back a few scenes to make sure I wasn’t crazy. I even Googled it to double-check. But that’s on me. When it comes to Spike, I should have known better...

*Unlike the Criterion disc for Malcolm X, there are no extras here, except for a few trailers. I appreciate them putting out affordable bare-bones discs (I only paid $9.99 for this during a sale), but...do people watch these trailers?

The Original Kings of Comedy (2000)

The house is rockin’ and the laughs are rollin’ as comedians Steve Harvey (The Steve Harvey Show), D.L. Hughley (The Hughleys), Cedric The Entertainer (The Steve Harvey Show) and Bernie Mac (Life) meet in this riotously comedy summit.

One of the things I love most about Spike — and, to plug the book one last time this week (it’s really good, I promise!), what I wrote about in Art/Film — is his commitment to working outside the framework of traditional narrative filmmaking. His constant and consistent output of documentaries, stand-up specials, filmed theatrical performances, and more makes digging into his filmography that much more fulfilling.

The Original Kings of Comedy was one of the last live performance preservations I had left, so I pulled my DVD off the shelf to wrap up this column. Because I’m white, I grew up with the Blue Collar Comedy Tour DVD, which I watched a million times* and basically memorized. The two shows are quite similar in their structure and their construction, which means, because these guys were first, that Blue Collar just ripped them off.

*Listen, I was a kid who loved stand-up and had few places to find it. Sue me...

I was not as familiar, however, with the comics themselves. Sure, I knew Steve Harvey from Family Feud and D.L. Hughley from Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (I told you I was white), but I didn’t know them as comics. I was surprised by how physical a performer Harvey was, including an extended bit where he just plays music and dances along to hype the crowd up. I couldn’t believe that Hughley was doing crowd work in an arena. That’s a confident performer. Cedric the Entertainer was funny, but had the most straightforward set. Bernic Mac was the show’s closer, and he had to go last because he’s so crazy, dirty, and explosive. Spike edits in so many audience reaction shots, and they were just losing their minds. All four of them just totally murder.

Credit: Each plot synopsis comes from Letterboxd via TMDb.

Patrick is joined by special guest Matt R. Lohr of the Tales of Lohr newsletter to talk about David Byrne, Spike Lee, and John McClane.

Listen to the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or everywhere else!

Bluesky @featpresvid

featurepresentationvideo@gmail.com

Patrick @patrickjregal

Taylor @taylormalone

A podcast from Feature Presentation: featurepresentationvideo.com

Welcome back to Feature Presentation’s Spike Lee Week!

For Film East’s latest book, Art/Film, I contributed a chapter on one of my favorite filmmakers, Spike Lee, specifically his interest in live theatre and our shared affinity for David Byrne’s music. I’ll also be joining the international book launch tour on Saturday, May 23rd, at the Rehoboth Beach Film Society for a visual reading and book signing. Spike’s work means so much to me, and I’m so happy we can share this piece in print forever.

To celebrate the book — which comes out next week on May 11th — Feature Presentation is running a week’s worth of reviews and retrospectives all about the man himself. We continue this four-part celebration with double feature pairings for all sides of Spike’s career.

Do the Right Thing (1989) and The Perfect Neighbor (2025)

If Do the Right Thing is the greatest film ever made about police brutality, then The Perfect Neighbor, one of the finest documentaries of the past year, is about what happens when the police don’t do anything. Director Geeta Gandbhir — herself a former assistant editor on Spike’s films like Malcolm X and Clockers — tells this story of a white woman repeatedly calling the cops on her Black neighbors (for no good reason, it must be added) largely through surveillance cameras, mostly police officers’ body cams. If you’ve seen Do the Right Thing (and you really should if you haven’t), then you’ll know that The Perfect Neighbor can only have a tragic ending. It’s one thing to see it in fiction, however. It’s another to see it in real life.

Jungle Fever (1991) and The Dutchman (2025)

One of the things that I like most about Jungle Fever, a film where Wesley Snipes begins an affair with a white woman, is that it’s about so much more than that. Sure, it’s about infidelity and interracial relationships and societal expectations and sexual stereotypes and straight-up racism. But Snipes’ character is a fully fleshed out person, not just a vehicle for the plot. We know what kind of husband and father he is. We know what kind of boss he is. We know what kind of man he is — particularly in his interactions with his drug-addicted brother, a breakout Samuel L. Jackson. It’s not just about his relationship with a white woman.

Amiri Baraka’s stage play Dutchman is one of the foundational texts on this subject, a 50-minute one-act about a white femme fatale who viciously attacks Black targets. Though director Andre Gaines’ (producer of Spike’s film Da Sweet Blood of Jesus) film adaptation is a bit of a mess, it expands this story (casting André Holland and Kate Mara in the leading roles) to tackle so much more. It also, in a clever bit of reconfiguring, openly discusses Baraka’s 1964 work in the film. From 1964 to 1991 to 2025, the themes are a thread.

BlacKkKlansman (2018) and Three the Hard Way (1974)

BlacKkKlansman is the real-life story of a Black cop, Ron Stallworth, who infiltrated the KKK in the 1970s. While all of these proud racists, from the local chapters to the Grand Wizard David Duke, are treated like the idiots they are, there’s always the undercurrent of danger and violence. It’s a film that’s both ridiculously funny and sweatily intense.

Follow it up with a film from the ‘70s, a Blaxploitation actioner from pioneering director Gordon Parks Jr., Three the Hard Way. This one follows Jim Brown, Fred Williamson, and Jim Kelly as they investigate a white supremacist’s plot to poison the nation’s water supply, all in an attempt to totally eradicate black people. Hard to believe? No. Probably considered a far-fetched idea outside of Black America for decades, the movie is maybe more timely than ever. It’s silly, sure. But also quite scary. And full of all the Blaxploitation tropes we’ve come to know and love.

Summer of Sam (1999) and Zodiac Killer Project (2025)

Summer of Sam is a story about the infamous serial killer, but done in only the way Spike can do. It’s Zodiac by way of Boogie Nights, where the fear and despair linger in a ‘70s set cityscape. If you go into this film looking for something new about the Son of Sam, you will be disappointed. There’s nothing true crime about this. Though there are glimpses of the man and the motive, it’s about what this terror and panic did to the people of New York, even those not really affected by the crimes.

Zodiac Killer Project, similarly, isn’t really about the never-caught Zodiac Killer. It’s a documentary about a documentary that didn’t happen, one that fell apart at the last minute. Director Charlie Shackleton instead made his film about the true crime genre as a whole, its conventions and its machinations. As a result, it tries to take down that whole ecosystem before building it back up again. I like it more as a concept and a critique than I do as a feature film, but I can see what Shackleton is doing. Just like Spike, he’s talking about the thing while only ever talking about other things.

Bamboozled (2000) and Network (1976)

Bamboozled is really just Spike remaking one of his favorite movies, Sidney Lumet’s classic Network. If you want to see just how little things change over time, watch these two movies about the power of television, public perception, and cultural complacency.

Network is a movie I respect (particularly the prescience) more than I like. It all came true, and I’ve seen that television. I’ve seen it aped on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, in movies like Christine and Nightcrawler, in books like Cue the Sun!, you get the idea. My favorite version is probably Bamboozled, but that’s because I love Spike. His film has more bite, so I would suggest watching it second. That way, you can see what Spike saw and how exactly he upped the ante.

Da 5 Bloods (2020) and Slaughterhouse-Five (1972)

One of the things I love about Da 5 Bloods, the second of Spike’s war films highlighting the contributions of Black soldiers (after Miracle at St. Anna), is how it plays with space and time. As the five men travel back to Vietnam to bury their friend and look for a buried treasure, they also occasionally travel back in time to their fightin’ days alongside the late great Stormin’ Norman (the late great Chadwick Boseman). The older actors play their younger selves without de-aging effects.

This was never done more famously than in Kurt Vonnegut’s 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five. Vonnegut’s protagonist flashes back, forward, and into other dimensions, where he witnesses the bombing of Dresden, a future he never thought he could have, and his time on the alien planet of Tralfamadore. If your anti-war story needs to bump up the allegory, introduce some magical realism or some science fiction. George Roy Hill’s film isn’t as strong as the novel, but it’s the only film adaptation, so just read the book if you want the truest pairing.

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (2014) and Sinners (2025)

After the success of Sinners, I saw a TikTok (which I will not link here because I’m calling this person out) say something along the lines of “If you liked Sinners…you should watch Interview with the Vampire…because it’s also about vampires!” Mind you, I’m not picking on a random person, I’m identifying a professional (!) in this industry who wildly misunderstood what we all liked about Sinners. Needless to say, gay Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt vampires were not at the forefront of my mind.

If you liked Sinners (just like Network, you should probably watch this one first in the double feature because it’s the movie you’re probably more familiar with), follow it up with Spike’s lo-fi version Da Sweet Blood of Jesus. A remake of the 1973 black horror classic Ganja & Hess, you’ll find a similar metaphor of racial disparity at work here. Plus, Spike loved Ryan Coogler’s Sinners (as we all did), writing this on his Instagram after seeing the film:

I Was Acting Like I Was Courtside At Da World’s Most Famous Arena-MADISON SQUARE GARDEN And We’re Kickin’ Da Celtics In Dat Green Ass🏀😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 Word Iz Bond I Haven’t Felt This Way In A Movie Theatre In A Minute. Last Thing I Told My Brother Ryan”He Really ,100,Tapped Into Our Ancestors On This Joint”. AND DAT’S DA BLACK CINEMATIC POWER,TRUTH,RUTH.YA-DIG❓SHO-NUFF🎥🎬👊🏾🎥🎬👊🏾🎥🎬👊🏾🎥🎬

Welcome to Feature Presentation's Spike Lee Week!

For Film East’s latest book, Art/Film, I contributed a chapter on one of my favorite filmmakers, Spike Lee, specifically his interest in live theatre and our shared affinity for David Byrne’s music. I’ll also be joining the international book launch tour on Saturday, May 23rd, at the Rehoboth Beach Film Society for a visual reading and book signing. Spike’s work means so much to me, and I’m so happy we can share this piece in print forever.

To celebrate the book — which comes out next week on May 11th — Feature Presentation is running a week’s worth of reviews and retrospectives all about the man himself. There's no better place to start than the five films that feel most representative of his entire career…

Do the Right Thing (1989)

Sal is the Italian owner of a pizzeria in Brooklyn. A neighborhood local, Buggin' Out, becomes upset when he sees that the pizzeria's Wall of Fame exhibits only Italian actors. Buggin' Out believes a pizzeria in a black neighborhood should showcase black actors, but Sal disagrees. The wall becomes a symbol of racism and hate to Buggin' Out and to other people in the neighborhood, and tensions rise.

Do the Right Thing was Spike Lee’s third movie, following the very much a debut rom-com She’s Gotta Have It and the bold-swing, I-didn’t-love-it-but-I-probably-need-to-revisit-it School Daze, and it’s about a lot of things and a lot of ideas. It’s mainly about the Bed-Stuy neighborhood in Brooklyn. It’s about the neighborhood’s people, particularly the at-odds Black and Italian populations. It’s about the pizza served at the pizzeria with all the Italian guys on the wall. It’s about the music on the radio that emanates from the brownstone stoops. It’s about the heat on a hot hot hot summer day, one so hot that the fire hydrant needs to be busted open so you can enjoy the cold water before the police arrive and break up the fun.

And yes, it’s about what happens when the cops get involved. Spike plays Mookie, a possible no-goodnik who works at Sal’s Pizzeria, the link and mediator between the film’s opposing sides. You would imagine that would be the police, but as I wrote about in Art/Film, the police cannot and will not do the right thing.

Do the Right Thing is one of the greatest movies ever made, and it’s mandatory viewing for anyone and everyone. It was, however, nominated for only two Academy Awards (it lost both), neither of which was Best Picture. That was awarded to Driving Miss Daisy, the exact kind of racial aw-shucks film that Spike’s vibrancy directly contradicted. Go figure. The world just wasn’t ready yet for what he had to say.

Malcolm X (1992)

A tribute to the controversial black activist and leader of the struggle for black liberation. He hit bottom during his imprisonment in the ‘50s, he became a Black Muslim and then a leader in the Nation of Islam. His assassination in 1965 left a legacy of self-determination and racial pride.

After a couple moderate successes (including his first collaboration with Denzel Washington, the jazz-filled Mo’ Better Blues), Spike wrote and directed the cinematic biography of Malcolm X. Filmmaker Norman Jewison (director of the civil rights classic In the Heat of the Night) was originally hired by Warner Bros. to helm the project, but several dissenters opposed the idea of a white man directing the life story of such an important Black figure. Spike was, naturally, one of those voices — and one of the loudest. Former and future collaborator Denzel was already cast in the lead role (a role he seemed born to play), and after Warner moved on without Jewison, Spike was a natural fit to take over.

At 202 minutes, the film is an epic in every sense of the word. Denzel’s portrayal is big and brash and bold, obviously, and Spike’s commitment to scope is equally grand. For example, the film spends nearly an hour on X’s pre-activism life of crime (where Spike casts himself as then-Malcolm Little’s zoot suit-wearing best friend Shorty), and hauntingly flashes back to his childhood run-ins with Klansmen. When X converts to Islam and becomes an activist, the film takes its time as he crafts his identity, meets his wife (a largely unknown Angela Bassett), and begins to preach his message. Then, of course, there’s the haunting ending. Spike, as he is wont to do, takes this opportunity to remind us that the more things change, the more they stay the same. His maximalist tendencies are the perfect match for the story of a man who was often larger than life.

Bamboozled (2000)

Frustrated when network brass reject his sitcom idea, producer Pierre Delacroix pitches the worst idea he can think of in an attempt to get fired: a 21st century minstrel show. The network not only airs it, but it becomes a smash hit.

A few years ago, I saw a revival screening of Spike’s 2000 film Bamboozled. And, more than two decades after the film’s release, I still found it as shocking and shit-stirring as he intended it. The film’s editor (and six-time Spike collaborator) Sam Pollard was on hand to talk about the film afterward in a Q&A. One of the things he talked about was how Bamboozled was one of the first major films to shoot primarily on standard-definition MiniDV tape (always one for innovation, that Spike!), and, as Pollard remarked, “It looks like shit.” Spike would have as many as seven cameras running at one time, capturing an unbelievable amount of footage. Clocking in at 135 minutes, it’s hard to imagine what was left in the edit.

Its length, however, is quite representative of its unwieldiness. Spike, in his characteristically kitchen-sink fashion, wanted to tackle everything under the sun in this take on one of his favorite films, Sidney Lumet’s Network: consumerism, capitalism, television, racial politics in the early 20th century, racial politics in the mid-20th century, and racial politics entering the 21st century. Spike had big ideas and he wanted to find a place for all of them in his film, often leaning towards Damon Wayans, Jada Pinkett Smith, or Michael Rapaport to just say what he’s feeling out loud in their own dialogue.

It’s also an incredibly funny film, but one whose comedy is borderline gallows humor: painfully dark, supremely upsetting, always political. Crowds in 2000 weren’t ready for it, and I’m not sure crowds now can handle it either. Once again, he was ahead of us all.

BlacKkKlansman (2018)

Colorado Springs, late 1970s. Ron Stallworth, an African American police officer, and Flip Zimmerman, his Jewish colleague, run an undercover operation to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan.

After roughly a decade of low-budget obscurities (he raised the $1.4 million budget for Da Sweet Blood of Jesus on Kickstarter, of all places; his 2012 film Red Hook Summer played in 41 theaters), Spike burst back onto the scene with BlacKkKlansman, starring another Washington, Denzel’s son, John David. It’s the true story of Ron Stallworth, a Black cop who joined and infiltrated the KKK. After some time working on his cinematic experiments (his first remake, 2013’s Oldboy; his modern-day adaptation of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, 2015’s Chi-Raq), Spike was back on top doing what he did best.

BlacKkKlansman was the first Spike film I saw in the theater, and I was struck, as I often still am, with how he tied this film set in the 1970s to the modern day. He ends the film (light spoilers here) with footage from the Unite the Right Rally, the white supremacist gathering (you remember the tiki torches; the president called them “very fine people”) that resulted in the death of counter-protester Heather Heyer on the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia. I did not know this was coming when I sat down to see the film…in Charlottesville, just 2.4 miles away from where the attack occurred. This was not the first time Spike did something like this — Malcolm X opens with the beating of Rodney King — but it was the first time I felt it so viscerally.

Highest 2 Lowest (2025)

When a titan music mogul, widely known as having the “best ears in the business”, is targeted with a ransom plot, he is jammed up in a life-or-death moral dilemma.

I did not choose Highest 2 Lowest for the last spot on this list because it’s Spike Lee’s most recent offering; I chose it because few films can single-handedly represent a Spike Lee Joint like it can. (I also couldn’t stand the idea of John David having the same number of movies as Denzel on the list, but that’s beside the point.) While the film received a mostly positive critical reception, everyone that I spoke to seemed mixed on it. And honestly, I get it. It’s kind of a mess. But it’s the kind of movie only Spike could make. I mean, come on, it starts with Norm Lewis (Da 5 Bloods) singing “Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin’” over a sweeping shot of New York; it stops dead in the middle of the film’s insanely intense action set piece so that a character can look right down the barrel of the camera and yell, “Boston sucks! Boston sucks!” That’s a capital-J Joint, baby.

There’s the New York setting he explores so well in 25th Hour, Summer of Sam, and Crooklyn, among others. There’s the fifth red-hot collaboration with Denzel, the Mifune to his Kurosawa, after He’s Got Game and Inside Man. There’s music played way too loud at all the wrong times like…well…a lot of his movies. If you’re not already an appreciator of his brand of bullshit, you might not be able to recognize these as variations on a theme. But then maybe you just need to watch some more Spike.

If it were the last Joint, it would be a fitting conclusion, the bookend to a blockbuster career. Luckily for us (as he points out on the Blu-ray featurette), Spike is always looking forward to what’s next. Whatever and wherever it is, Hollywood, independent, remake, reimagining, Netflix, Apple TV+, musical, documentary — hell, I’ll even watch something about the Knicks — I’ll be there.

Credit: Each plot synopsis comes from Letterboxd via TMDb.

The Under 700 Club: Reviews in under 700 words for movies with less than 700 logs on Letterboxd (log count as of this publication: 627)

When Bruce Lee died in 1973, right at the height of his popularity, success, and the Bruce-mania phenomenon, the public’s thirst for more Bruce Lee movies couldn’t be quenched. At the time, there were only four Bruce movies (The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, The Way of the Dragon, and Enter the Dragon), so low budget studios quickly built an entire subgenre capitalizing on Bruce’s fame by making movies with guys named Bruce Li, Bruce Le, Bronson Lee, Dragon Lee — newcomer Jackie Chan was even billed as “The Next Bruce Lee”. These knockoffs starred in titles such as Revenge of the Dragon, Bruce Takes Dragon Town, Goodbye Bruce Lee: His Last Game of Death, The Big Boss Part II, New Fist of Fury, and Bruce Lee Fights Back from the Grave (which has one of the greatest posters I’ve ever seen.) This trend was called, fittingly, “Brucesploitation,” the exploitation of the man’s name, likeness, and celebrity.

In turn, as Letterboxd user Feck points out, 2007’s Finishing the Game: The Search for a New Bruce Lee could be dubbed “Brucesploitationsploitation.” It’s a mockumentary, imagining the what-if and what-might’ve-happened when Lee left his final film, Game of Death, unfinished.

The loving caricature is directed by Justin Lin in-between 2006’s The Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift and 2009’s Fast & Furious, in what could not be a more obvious example of doing “one for me.” After a few Hollywood movies, Lin wanted to return to his independent roots, headlining Asian actors in a distinctly Asian story. Doing it largely off-the-grid means that the film’s budget is ultra-low, which is disguised well enough in the ‘70s exploitation aesthetic. It also means that it’s a not-so-subtle send-up of Hollywood’s antics.

Before the greedy producers can finish Game of Death, they need to cast the picture. Breeze Loo (“I really don’t know why people keep confusing me and Bruce. I mean, seriously, we are two totally different actors…’), star of Fist of Führer (which only coincidentally sounds like Fist of Fury), wears a blue jumpsuit, which is obviously nothing like Lee’s famous yellow get-up. Cole Kim (Sung Kang, reuniting with Lin after Tokyo Drift — three other actors from that movie also appear in this one), trying to break into Hollywood, accidentally detours briefly to the set of a porno, almost co-starring alongside hardcore icon Ron Jeremy. At the open cattle call, several guys in bad Bruce Lee wigs (including a couple of ballsy non-Asian guys) audition to replace the man himself.

And it doesn’t get any better when they get further along in the process. Because the white casting director just assumes everyone can do some sort of martial arts (“They all take karate classes and things”), she has them physically fight some Vietnam vets (you know, white guys with experience killing Asian people) to prove their manliness. Screen tests, glimpses of a movie that seems to be just as cheesy and terrible as you’d want it to be, are filled with badly missed cues, flubbed lines, bad overdubbing (voiced by George Takei!), and all-around awkwardness.

While it’s not always laugh-out-loud funny (though there is a very sneaky Pearl Harbor joke that could easily go unnoticed), there’s plenty to appreciate in both the concept and the execution. Movies like this only get made if guys like Lin nonchalantly bust out a few blockbusters. It’s not a blank check because Lin’s check very clearly had a pretty small dollar amount written on it, but it’s a passion project all the same. With some fun performances (Roger Fan, another Lin alumnus, is the highlight as Breeze Loo), exploitation-homage filmmaking, and some funky 70’s sounds, it’s worth seeking out — I had to rent the DVD labeled “Blockbuster Exclusive” from my local video store.

BaltiShorts (2025-26)

An MdFF favorite, the BaltiShorts program showcases movies and celebrates filmmakers from all over Maryland. This year’s selections will make you laugh, make you cry, and you might even feel a misty Chesapeake breeze on your face.

BaltiShorts is an annual tradition at MdFF, a shorts program highlighting the Charm City, the state of Maryland, and regional DMV stories, featuring documentaries about nearby businesses and narratives with a distinctly local flavor. Festival programmer Samantha Mitchell introduced the screening, reinforcing the idea that MdFF shows films from “across the street and across the world,” with BaltiShorts representing the former.

Ethan Romaine’s “Blue” kicked off the lineup, a short and sweet not-exactly-romantic-comedy centered around a car breathalyzer; “Crab Yarns,” from director Alexander Snider, reminded me just how grateful I am for the watermen who harvest blue crabs (quite straightforwardly wearing, as one of the men did, their Southern Maryland Blue Crabs baseball team t-shirt) so I can enjoy them every summer; “Chasing Memories” from Morgan State graduate Taja Copeland, was an anxiety-stricken look at “friendships that ended without closure,” well represented in clever aspect ratio changes; “S.O.S,” directed by Joseph Vivens involved seasonal allergies, shameless mixtapes, and a surprising snake, filmed on location on a very recognizable street in Silver Spring. 

On the back half of the bill, “Tattoo Medicine,” featuring artist and small business owner Pili Lopez and directed by sibling Dani Lopez, was a look at how tattoos can be used to heal, the second such story in as many years at BaltiShorts; Multi-hypentate artist Chaseedaw Giles gave us “The Baltimore Barber,” the second such story set in that location in as many years at BaltiShorts; Samson Binutu’s “Big Wins,” a touching look at raw grief, caused many an audience member to cry; and finally, Eric Rodney Cotten’s “Motor House: The Making of Baltimore’s Creative Crossroads,” a documentary about anti-gentrification, drove Mitchell’s point home — hyping up a business just two blocks down from the Parkway Theatre. 

Mārama (2025)

1859. When a young Māori woman is summoned from New Zealand to North Yorkshire, she uncovers her horrific colonial heritage and is compelled to confront and destroy the titled Englishman who devastated her family.

I followed that up with Mārama, a story from New Zealand, which only further highlighted Mitchell’s idea, as I don’t think you can get much farther away from Baltimore, Maryland than New Zealand. This is the story of a Māori (the indigenous people of mainland New Zealand) woman (Ariāna Osborne) hired as a governess to a wealthy white whaler’s granddaughter. A slow horror film about the nightmare that is colonialism, it played to a sold-out crowd Saturday evening — which is practically a miracle. Can you imagine, outside of the organization of a film festival, this many people showing up to a film dissecting the socio-political implications of a culture they probably only barely understand?

On top of that, it was an enthusiastic crowd, jolting at mirror movement jump scares, loudly gasping at twists and revelations, and cheering on moments of much-deserved revenge. I didn’t like it quite that much, as “horror as something” cinema just isn’t my thing, but fans of Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others (which we podcasted about in 2024 in a double feature pairing with Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House — which coincidentally played in a revival screening at MdFF on Friday night) or the work of Australian filmmaker Jennifer Kent should add this one to their watchlist. I did like it more than I like most elevated horror, particularly thanks to the work of cinematographer Gin Loane, whose pale nightmares and ironically bright and bold daytimes really brought home the themes of the piece.

Honeyjoon (2025)

In this light-and-dark comedy, June and her Persian mom Lela take a trip to the romantic Azores islands for a grief anniversary, with contrasting ways of coping. A charming surfer takes them on a tour as they (and we) surf the waves of life, loss, flirting… an unforgettable ride.

The Tribeca — Maryland pipeline is real, as this is the third year in a row that MdFF has programmed something I saw (and enjoyed) during my last Tribeca. I didn't get a chance to catch Honeyjoon again this week, and I'm jealous of those who did, as it's probably the movie from last year's festival that I think about the most. I'm rerunning my coverage below, and I'm looking forward to catching it again on wider release.

Honeyjoon is my second Tribeca film in a row about the differences between folks my age, those of us caught in the half-generation between true millennials and true zoomers, and our parents. I’ve also been enjoying the same concept on FX’s Adults, which is about adults learning how to adult. And not in the true millennial posting on early Facebook “lol adulting is real” way, but in the terrifying and impossible way. I guess we’re getting to make movies and tv shows now and our main perspective is “Holy shit, our parents lied to us.”

Writer/director Lilian T. Mehrel’s film works because it’s thematically rich, while still giving you enough room structurally to see yourself in her characters. While the film is about June (Ayden Mayeri) celebrating, with her mother Lela (Amira Casar), the life of her late father in his favorite place, an island off the coast of Portugal, I saw myself and my parents in her picture.

Take June, for example. I’ve never had to reckon with my American upbringing and my Persian heritage, but I’ve felt too distant from my own ancestral lineage to accept any of it. My mother has never told me to cover my arms at the pool or the beach, but she has asked me about my clothing choices well into adulthood. And my father hasn’t passed, but, just like the scene where she discovers her father’s old anti-depressants, I’ve had peripheral-opening moments where I realized my parents were people with issues and struggles too. I think we’ve all had moments like that.

This is the second film I’ve seen from the AT&T Untold Stories pitch competition (Smoking Tigers was the first), and from what I’ve seen, it’s going swimmingly. This kind of movie struggles to get distribution when it’s by men and about men (Ex-Husbands, one of my favorite movies of last year and hopefully one of your favorites of this year, is a direct comparison), so we need programs like this to make movies about women and by women to even happen. And for only a million bucks! Can you imagine what Mehrel will be able to do with more?

Spoilers in this line only: God, the sexting fakeout was...so disappointing.

When a Witness Recants (2026)

In 1983, author Ta-Nehisi Coates learned that a 14-year-old boy was murdered in his Baltimore middle school. Upon revisiting the case, he uncovers the truth: Three innocent teenagers were wrongfully convicted and spent 36 years in prison — creating a lasting impact on the accused, the witnesses, and their community.

While director Dawn Porter’s latest documentary, When a Witness Recants, is a Baltimore story, it is not a uniquely Baltimore story. It’s the story of the Harlem Park Three, three young Black men falsely accused of murdering a classmate for being quite literally in the wrong place at the wrong time, and you’re no doubt already familiar with countless tales of traumatized communities, police injustice, and legal misconduct. What sets this particular film apart, however, is that it’s not about those things; it’s about real justice, persistence, and, as the title suggests, trying to rectify past mistakes.

Alfred Chestnut, Andrew Stewart, and Ransom Watkins were just teenagers when white detectives looking for quick answers coerced witnesses into nonsensical statements, even going as far as telling one of the boys, “You’re Black, I’m white, I have a badge — who do you think they’re going to believe?” While everyone knew they were innocent, from their poor public defender to the mother with a literal receipt to prove it, the prosecution relied on those “eyewitnesses,” and all three received life sentences. Porter, returning to the festival after opening the 25th edition with her film Luther: Never Too Much, tells the story of the murder, investigation, and trial through a mix of deposition recordings and graphic novel-style animation (by Dawud Anyabwile), as well as letting the men tell their own stories. As Baltimorean, writer, and executive producer Ta-Nehisi Coates puts it in the documentary, this was the first time that he, as a neighboring boy, saw injustice with his own two eyes, saying, “Part of maturation is you realize horrible things happen in the world.”

After serving a collective 108 years in prison, the three were exonerated after one of those witnesses, a key figure in the film, told the truth. But, as the men show, forgiveness is not a given. The Harlem Park Three lost a lifetime of experiences, from losing family members to not being able to start their own families to not even knowing how to pay a phone bill, and they can never get those chances back. In the film’s tense and emotional climax, a reunion between the three men and that particular witness, we’re reminded that while it’s never too late to do what’s right, it’s always better to do it the first time.

Porter, Chestnut, Stewart, Watkins, and former State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby (who played a crucial part in their release) were all in attendance and participated in a Q&A after the screening. They were joined by a number of friends and family members scattered throughout the audience, as it’s a movie about them and for them as well. As Porter noted in her introduction to the film, MdFF gave them the chance to bring this story back home. If the HBO Documentary Films credit was any indication, I’m hoping this story is available to all soon.

Misper (2025)

Set in a crumbling seaside hotel, MISPER follows Leonard (Samuel Blenkin, Alien: Earth), who begins to quietly unravel after his colleague Elle (Emily Carey, House of the Dragon) vanishes.

Sunday evening’s closing night film, Misper, is the first feature film collaboration from writer Laurence Tratalos and director Harry Sherriff, who flew in for the fest and participated in a Q&A after the screening. Misper is British police slang for “missing person,” and that’s just what this film is about. Leonard (Samuel Blenkin) works and lives at a former world-class but now rundown hotel in a misty coastal English town. Lonely, and often quite bored — one online review from the rare customer compares the hotel to the Overlook, which might partially explain why no one stays there — with his job, his one source of joy is his co-worker Elle (Emily Carey), and their even interactions stop at polite smiles and shared bags of crisps. One evening, he finally gets up the nerve to ask her if she has any plans tonight, and she responds, excitedly, “Nothing. What are you doing?” He agrees, “Nothing,” and the conversation ends there. It’s that night that Elle goes missing, vanishing without a trace.

The film, a quick 74 minutes, is an exercise in tone, shifting often between sad-sack humor and anxious uneasieness, with a quick detour into a terrifying whodunit. Above all, it’s a film about dealing with loss, even one as intangible as an unfulfilled crush. It’s above grieving the unknown, the possibility, the idea of something new and exciting. Tratalos and Sherriff are clearly playing with their inspirations, David Lynch with a dash of Wes Anderson injected with that dry British wit, and I’m interested to see what they do next. I’m grateful for MdFF for the introduction, and I’m ready for whatever next year’s fest throws at me.

Each plot synopsis and all photos are from MDFilmFest.com

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Cecil B. Demented (2000)

Erin Brockovich (2000)

Traffic (2000)

Best in Show (2000)

Cast Away (2000)

Coyote Ugly (2000)

Ready to Rumble (2000)

Almost Famous (2000)

The Skulls (2000)

Bring It On (2000)

For more Haiku Reviews:

Haiku Reviews #1

Haiku Reviews #2

Haiku Reviews #3: 1999

Haiku Reviews #4: Cut the Cord, July 2022

Haiku Reviews #5: Halloween 2022

Haiku Reviews #6

Haiku Reviews #7: Steven Spielberg

Haiku Reviews #8: Halloween 2023 Part I

Haiku Reviews #9: Halloween 2023 Part II

Haiku Reviews #10: 1983

Haiku Reviews #11: 1992

Haiku Reviews #12: American Politics

Haiku Reviews #13: Summer 2024

Haiku Reviews #14: Sports

Haiku Reviews #15: Stephen King

Haiku Reviews #16: 2024 Documentaries

Haiku Reviews #17: Snow

Haiku Reviews #18: 1998

Haiku Reviews #19: 1985

Haiku Reviews #20: Summer 2025

Haiku Reviews #21: Halloween 2025 Part I

Haiku Reviews #22: Halloween 2025 Part II

Haiku Reviews #23: Halloween 2025 Part III

Haiku Reviews #24: Christmas Classics

Haiku Reviews #25: Snow Part II

Patrick: We’re back with another edition of The A-Listers! This weekend, Taylor and I saw Project Hail Mary, contributing some of our AMC A-List dollars to the biggest movie of the year so far. We took different approaches to this material, as I decided to listen to the audiobook (the internet was right, it is excellent and most likely the superior way to read the book), and Taylor went in (mostly blind). So Taylor, what did you think?

Taylor: Do I think the movie, at times, blows through some important details for the sake of time? Yes. Do I think it devolved into full-on hokey by the end? Also yes. But all in all, I enjoyed it quite a bit! It’s just a good ol’ touching movie with a pretty straightforward story and effective momentum. I don’t think it will end up on my year-end list, but I did enjoy it for what it was. That is to say, however, based on other praise, maybe I liked it less than a lot of people.

Patrick: I say that you went in “mostly blind” because the trailers and all marketing materials spoiled what is the book’s biggest development. I suppose, as a result, I feel comfortable talking about it here — aliens! Aliens exist! And they’re spider-looking goofballs who communicate through musical tones. Since Rocky the Eridian was spoiled for you, was he what you were expecting? What did you think about him?

Taylor: Yes, while watching the trailer, you perked up and went, “THEY JUST SPOILED THE WHOLE THING! YOU AREN’T SUPPOSED TO KNOW HE MEETS AN ALIEN!” So that was about all I knew other than it starred Ryan Gosling. I’m going to be honest, my first impression of Rocky was mainly disgust because of his very spider-like features, but I think the character design does enough by the end, through way of both personality and distinct movement, to dissuade the connection to creepy crawlies. I was appreciative of your knowledge of the book when talking to you about Rocky, because while I got the sense he was smart, the direction of this seemed to imply that that was merely secondary compared to his frequent annoying and, at the same time, charming qualities.

Patrick: Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the dorks behind Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, 21 Jump Street, and The Lego Movie, clearly wanted Rocky to have a buddy-comedy relationship with Gosling’s character, and played up his sillier characteristics. He now mainly functions as Dr. Grace’s sidekick, which sort of bothered me. In the book, he’s incredibly intelligent! He’s like one of the single smartest Eridians — an intelligent race! I can, however, slightly justify it because it’s really Gosling’s movie, as he’s in full movie star mode. I’ve been hard on him for a long time. I thought the Gene Kelly comparisons to his La La Land performance were sacrilegious, I don’t find his Ken schtick in Barbie very funny (or at least have a hard time seeing why someone else couldn’t have done that just as well), and I’m take him or leave him in his most cultish roles, like Drive or The Nice Guys. Despite this, I think this is the strongest he’s ever been. It’s so perfectly in his range. As I was reading the book, I kept thinking, “Yep, I can hear how Gosling is gonna do that,” and then he did it that exact way every time.

Taylor: I have always liked Ryan Gosling. When you’re 14 and your first boyfriend says, “Let’s watch The Notebook…it’s how I feel about you,” he’s going to leave a lasting impact (Gosling, not the boyfriend). And while some of his performances have had diminishing returns for me, I’ve always been smitten by him. This said, his boyish charm was gone in Barbie when he showed up puffed up with what I assume was filler and Botox throughout his face. He’s SO HOT, and he DIDN’T NEED IT! I was thrilled to see he was back to his normal-looking self in this movie, which made me enjoy his performance so much more.

To touch on what you said about range, I will admit, regardless of the fact that I have always considered myself a fan of his, I do think directors have overestimated his comedic abilities. He’s funny. He’s down to clown. I admire that about him. But his humor shines, as it does throughout Project Hail Mary, when he’s given a more ironic sense of humor. The laugh-a-minute bro humor just doesn’t work for him as much as his pretty face tries to sell it. I agree with you that this was perfectly within his range from start to finish.

Patrick: I think directors make the mistake of having him play dumb, like in Barbie. When he plays stupid, like in the Close Encounter or Beavis and Butt-Head SNL sketches, he can’t make it through without laughing because he spends the whole time going, “Haha, isn’t this stupid?” Project Hail Mary doesn’t use humor to undercut his intelligence (it heightens it, if anything), and cool as a cucumber is a much better look on him. That being said, the fact that I liked the book and that I’ve never liked Gosling more is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here. Cinematically, I feel like Project Hail Mary plays like a sci-fi greatest hits compilation album. Did you feel that way?

Taylor: I did, but is it not self-aware in that? I mean, there’s even an Alien joke in there when he says he was concerned the alien could be living inside of him. While there’s something fun and Easter-eggy about that, it’s not the kind of direction that really…sustains. Been there, seen that. In saying that, I feel like I’m being unnecessarily harsh because I did enjoy it. I just don’t know that it’s something that will stay with me or will warrant a rewatch anytime soon, if ever.

Patrick: I will probably reach for Interstellar when I want those feels and those dramatic elements (the suicide mission, the use of time dilation, and the heightened drama) and The Martian when I want a lighter version (another Andy Weir novel adapted by Drew Goddard — plus Matt Damon is way more “my guy” anyway), so I’m not sure about this movie’s rewatchability.

Taylor: I would agree, but then I’d be saying something positive about Christopher Nolan, and that would be bad for my rep.

Patrick: See you next time, folks.

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In 2020, I did something I never thought I would do as long as I lived — I quit the Boston Red Sox.

At the beginning of the year, they traded away their star player, Mookie Betts. Mookie was (and still is) an incredible ballplayer, a guy with all five tools that scouts look for: contact hitting, power hitting, speed, an all-reaching glove in right field, and a powerful arm. He was one of the most decorated players in the sport — an MVP award, multiple accolades for both his hitting and his fielding — and he wanted his contract to reflect that. Red Sox management disagreed about his value, and despite raising ticket, concession, and merchandise prices every year, grumbled that he wasn’t worth his asking price. The two parties played a game of chicken, which resulted in the front office sending Mookie to the Los Angeles Dodgers on February 10th, where he signed a 12-year extension, essentially a career lifetime deal. Mookie will forever be remembered as a Dodger; he will wear a Dodgers cap on his Hall of Fame plaque.

The timing was eerie, as it was almost exactly 100 years after the Red Sox traded away their star player of the 1910s — Babe Ruth. After Babe, one of the all-time home run hitters, The Great Bambino himself, was sent to the New York, the Yankees went on to win 26 World Series titles before the Red Sox would win another. Dubbed the “Curse of the Bambino,” it would take Boston 86 years to win the World Series, a losing streak that didn’t end until 2004. If the Curse of the Bettsbino turns out to be similarly tragic, I will be dead before the Red Sox win another World Series. (A side note: Los Angeles has won three titles in the six seasons they’ve had Mookie on the team.)

Around the same time, Boston’s manager, Alex Cora, was being implicated in the 2017 Houston Astros cheating scandal, the worst in the sport since the 1919 Black Sox threw the World Series. Houston, where Cora worked at the time, used video cameras to steal the other team’s signs, in what is known in baseball simply as “cheating.” Cora, though he denied it, was considered to be the mastermind of the crime, and there was evidence to suggest he brought the practice to Boston when he took over the team in 2018. As a result, he was suspended from the team for the next year.

Then, to top it all off, the pandemic hit, and Major League Baseball’s season went from 162 games to just 60 meaningless contests, all played in empty ballparks in front of cardboard cutouts of fans. I couldn’t bring myself to watch a single pitch. For the next year, I followed the Red Sox as closely as I follow Sherwin-Williams stock prices and revisions to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. That is to say, I did not care at all.

The thing that brought me back, when I was truly at my lowest point as a Sox fan, was the movie Fever Pitch.

Bottom of the 1st

Fever Pitch is a romantic comedy about math teacher Ben Wrightman (Jimmy Fallon) and business executive Lindsey Meeks (Drew Barrymore). Though she’s completely out of his league in every conceivable metric, she’s smitten by his charm and goofiness, and the two fall in love. Ben, however, is hiding a dark secret...his Red Sox fandom. Their relationship is perfect in the winter, but as soon as spring training hits, Lindsay realizes that his entire world revolves around the Red Sox. She had an idea when she stayed over at his apartment and saw his Sox bedsheets, Sox decor, and Yankee toilet paper, but she really had no idea. His season tickets equal 81 afternoons, evenings, and nights at the ballpark, and those are just the home games. Their date night dinners are replaced by Fenway Franks, their sex life dictated by Boston’s wins and losses.

At the time, Boston fans were known as among the most overzealous and rabid in the sport. The movie takes place in 2004, and no one knows, especially Ben (and even the filmmakers), that the Red Sox will, in just a few months, win the World Series for the first time in 86 years. Instead, even after decades and decades of failure, he believes, he hopes, just like all Red Sox fans did, that this would be the year. That’s what makes Boston fans so special: they never give up. Every pitch, every swing, their place in the standings, the beat writers’ scoops, the Tuesday nights against Cleveland — it’s not a way of life, it is life. This is what Lindsay cannot understand. She knows that Ben can love both her and the Red Sox, but does she always have to come in second?

Top of the 2nd

I was never the suffering Red Sox fan depicted in the movie. The Red Sox have won the World Series four times (2004, 2007, 2013, 2018) since I was born, which, before the escapades of the 2004 Sox as depicted in Fever Pitch, could only be said of people born in the 1910s. I was not there for Bucky freakin’ Dent. I did not watch the ball roll through Bill Buckner’s legs on live television. I did not experience heartbreak when Aaron Boone hit that home run in 2003.

In fact, I didn’t even witness those first two championships. I became a Red Sox fan in 2009 when the Single-A team in my hometown, the Salem Avalanche, became a Boston affiliate. When I was a little kid, they were a Colorado Rockies farm team, but they changed franchises right when I got into baseball and started attending games regularly with my family. Thank the baseball gods Boston took over the team, or I might be a Rockies fan to this day.

Getting to watch players like Anthony Rizzo, Daniel Nava, and Ryan Kalish all play for that ’09 team, and eventually see them make the major leagues, was the coolest thing imaginable to a kid from a small town. I was hooked. If they could escape Salem and make their way to Boston, maybe I could too. I have been a Boston Red Sox fan ever since. I still haven’t seen a game at Fenway Park, still haven’t even been to Boston, but I did watch on television as Koji Uehara and Chris Sale got the final outs in 2013 and 2018, and I did cry both times.

Bottom of the 2nd

Drew Barrymore has always been cute. When she was a little kid, acting in movies you know, like E.T. and Firestarter, and movies you don’t know, like Irreconcilable Differences, she smirks her way through the whole thing, fully aware of the camera (which she looks straight into often) and how silly her costumes feel. There’s an endearing quality to these performances, that even though she comes from a Hollywood dynasty and even though she’s a nepo baby of the highest order, she’s just a kid having fun.

That quality, that honesty, never seemed to go away. Even when she grew up and flashed David Letterman, it felt more chuckleheady than cheeky. That’s why her rom-com era, of which Fever Pitch is firmly planted, made you believe dorks like Adam Sandler and Jimmy Fallon and Justin Long stood a chance. That’s why her talk show is best known for her barefoot, cuddly, eye-contact-heavy interviews with her friends. She’s one of the stars who feels like us.

It’s easy to forget that Jimmy Fallon also seemed like a regular guy. For a long time! Now, he’s the guy who fake laughs his way through every interview and every sketch on every episode of The Tonight Show. And that’s fine, that’s what he is. But when he laughed his way through his tenure on SNL, we thought it was genuine. When he first took over Late Night, we saw the Jimmy Fallon we had liked for a decade, and had forgotten existed after flops like Taxi and Doogal. He was charming, likable, and, lest we forget, handsome. This is a guy who almost bagged Nicole Kidman in 2005.

Top of the 3rd

That childlike quality is something that Lindsay likes about Ben. When he complains about past girlfriends who haven’t understood him, Lindsay vows never to be one of those girls. It bothers him that they’ve considered him childish and immature, saying, “How about sometimes I like to be 11 years old.”

I became a baseball fan when I was 11 years old exactly. I would watch the Baltimore Orioles on MASN, and when I grew up, my first Red Sox game was in Baltimore at Camden Yards. I would watch the Chicago Cubs on WGN, and now I’ve seen the Red Sox play at Wrigley Field.

I like to get to ballgames early and watch the players hit batting practice. Sometimes I patrol the outfield seats to find any home run balls they may have deposited. I’ve kept some of them, I’ve given some away to kids. I like to go when they give away bobbleheads, which decorate my office, and hats, which line my closet. I like to heckle the other team. I like to make fun of bad National Anthem singers, and then sing the 7th-inning stretch song at the top of my lungs. I like it when the game is tied and goes into extra innings, because that means more baseball.

Every summer, I go back to Salem, and I feel like a kid again. I always order hot dogs. I peruse the new merchandise at the team store. I take pictures on my phone like a proud grandmother at a piano recital. I root root root for the home team. I am 11 again. Salem rebranded last year as the Salem RidgeYaks, which is a stupid name, but I don’t even care. I will buy the merch and wear it proudly because they are responsible, in large part, for my love of baseball.

Bottom of the 3rd

At the beginning of their relationship, Ben tells Lindsay that he can’t meet her parents during the upcoming weekend because he’ll be in Florida, attending Red Sox spring training, an annual tradition for him and his buddies. What do they do there? “We say which players they should keep, which they should get rid of.” Lindsay follows up with a question, naive and sincere, presented with a smile that only Drew Barrymore can smile, asking, “And the Red Sox ask your opinion?”

He responds, “Well, not yet.”

This is meant as a joke. I only think it’s funny because I think Drew Barrymore is adorable. I do not, however, agree with the implication that what Ben is doing is pointless. As fans of this organization, we reserve the right to offer our opinion on the state of the team. Our analysis of minor leaguers in spring training may not matter to the scouting department, but it will matter on the SoxProspects.com message boards. Our Red Sox podcasts, of which I have hosted two, are merely free advice for a franchise that may need it. Our tweets, always adorned with #RedSox and #DirtyWater, are for the greater good.

Top of the 4th

The following are real things I have tweeted, back when I still used Twitter, over the past few seasons, edited only for clarity and context:

“Are we again looking at a season where Nick Pivetta is the best starting pitcher in the #RedSox rotation?”

“Yoshida should play first base”

“How do they plan to improve the infield defense?”

“I’m not gonna be upset about mediocre offense against Roansy Contreras. Guy’s a stud in the making.”*

“I decided that I don’t give a shit anymore.”

“Bello sucks btw”

“Don’t forget that Verdugo sucks”**

*I was totally wrong about this one. He ended up being so bad that even Colorado cut him. He pitches in Japan now.

**Alex Verdugo was one of the trade pieces the Red Sox received in exchange for Mookie Betts. That only had a little bit to do with how much I hated him.

Bottom of the 4th

They may call it “playing a game,” but there is nothing light-hearted about following a baseball team through the six-month slog that is 162 games. Because the baseball season covers three of the four calendar seasons - spring, summer, and fall - it feels like it takes up more than a majority of the year.

You watch them in March, and it’s still somehow freezing cold, even though it’s March.

You watch them in July, when you’re absolutely baking in the hot sun and unbelievably the ballpark has no shade whatsoever and thank God the Nationals have cold water fountains and the only reason you’re staying is to see if Kyle Schwarber hits that third home run and he does and it’s awesome.

If you’re lucky, you watch them in October, when the team is weathered and withered. Only two-thirds of the players (if they’re lucky) survived injuries, trades, cuts, slumps, draughts, and losing at least 60 games.

Ben Wrightman is the fan who is there for it all. He knows who is hot and who is cold. He knows the status of every player on the injured list. He knows Mark Bellhorn’s splits against left-handed pitching. He knows the weather forecast in Detroit and the odds of the game being called for rain in favor of a doubleheader tomorrow. When Lindsay grows weary of his availability — she’s resorted to working on her laptop at the game, to the disgust of the die-hards around her, just so they can spend some time together — she complains that he only sees their calendar as his baseball schedule, saying, “You don’t see us tangled up in the sheets…you see the Mariners are coming in, and Pedro’s pitching Friday.”

I love the next moment so much, even though I hate everything about why I understand it. Ben says, “No, on Saturday. Schilling’s Friday.” He cannot help but correct her about who the starting pitcher is for Friday night’s game. He knows that he shouldn’t (and I know that I shouldn’t when I do it too), but he simply cannot stop the words from leaving his mouth. Why? Because it matters to us. Seattle’s not a good team, and with Pedro (Martínez) and (Curt) Schilling starting, and probably winning, the first two games, the odds are pretty good that we can sweep the series on Sunday. And we need those wins badly, because we’re still trailing the Yankees in the division race.

These games affect our schedules, our love lives, our meals, our sleep or lack thereof. They even affect the clothes we wear.

Top of the 5th

The 2018 Boston Red Sox won the World Series, not because they assembled one of the great teams of the century and not because they won an 18-inning marathon in Game 3 and not because Steve Pierce turned into Carl Yastrzemski for the five most important games of his life, but because I wore the same ball cap every single day that year. It’s a Salem Red Sox hat in a style they don’t make anymore for a team that no longer exists. I still wear it to games, though unfortunately all of the good luck juice was squeezed out in 2018, and it no longer works. I am still expecting a call from either the Boston Red Sox organization (I’m still awaiting my World Series ring) or the National Baseball Hall of Fame, where I will happily donate the hat to their permanent collection.

Bottom of the 5th

One of my favorite things about Fever Pitch is all of the great footage of the 2004 Red Sox. It’s higher quality stuff than any of the television rips available on YouTube, obviously, so it’s a real treat. I mean, it’s literally Hollywood-level craftspeople using Hollywood-grade equipment to film my favorite baseball team.

Manny Ramirez had the sweetest right-handed swing I’ve ever seen. Smooth and patient, but he could smash a baseball. David Ortiz, on the other hand, while still being majestic and powerful, would sometimes swing so hard he’d come out of his shoes a little bit and end up standing on one foot. Watching those two hit back-to-back in the lineup was a sight to behold.

On my most recent rewatch, one quick clip made me cry a little. Tim Wakefield pitched for the Red Sox for 17 years, and was what’s known as a “knuckleballer,” which means he would throw a pitch slow and off-speed, erratic in its motion, and unpredictable in its flight pattern. A good knuckleball on a good day floats like a butterfly and stings like a, uh, butterfly. And Wakefield had a good knuckleball. It’s infuriating for hitters because they can’t make sense of it.

Well, most of the time. A lot of knuckleballism has to do with a pitcher’s fingernails and the direction of the hair on the guy’s knuckles and the speed of the wind and the humidity in the air, and sometimes the ball simply doesn’t dance and the pitcher just gets destroyed. Tim Wakefield, however, never complained. Regardless of how well he was pitching, he would do what the team asked him to do: start games, come in relief, close games, start on Tuesday, go long on Thursday, eat this one so the rest of the bullpen could stay fresh. He was a mainstay in the Red Sox clubhouse for a long time, and Boston fans respected his persistence and his flexibility. He was one of my favorite players.

Wake passed away on October 1st, 2023, at the age of 57, after a tragic battle with brain cancer. A private man, fans only knew about his battle a few days before his death. I happened to be at the Boston game that day, watching the visiting Red Sox team take on the Baltimore Orioles. The Orioles, in a display of true class, held a moment of silence in honor of Wake. I cried then, too.

Top of the 6th

Ben reaches rock bottom in the movie when Lindsay breaks up with him and maybe starts seeing another guy (Andrew Wilson, back when he was trying to make that acting thing happen), causing him to, for the first time in his life, reassess his priorities. He has an epiphany when he’s out at a bar after a particularly brutal Red Sox loss, drowning his sorrows with buddies. They look over and see three Red Sox players (Jason Varitek, Trot Nixon, and Johnny Damon) eating dinner together. You would think that would be a neat moment for these die-hard fans, but the players have the audacity to enjoy their meal. After a loss! They’re laughing and drinking and having a good time. “They’re eating,” one of them says with disgust, as if he couldn’t even stomach the idea, much less actual food, after such a miserable game.

“Why shouldn’t they eat?” says Ben. “They played hard. They did their best.” Then it hits him. “I kind of envy those guys. They understand something we don’t. Their whole life isn’t out on that field. It’s their job, it’s not an obsession.”

As a Red Sox fan (though I believe this could apply to any die-hard sports fan), I always take something away from this moment in the movie. Losing is inevitable. The Dodgers still lost 42% of their games last year. Ted Williams is considered the greatest hitter of all time, and he failed to get a hit in over 65% of his career at-bats. It’s important to remember that baseball is supposed to be fun. It is supposed to be, at least for me, an escape from my problems and from the world’s troubles. Hell, maybe it is just a bunch of guys “playing a game.”

Bottom of the 6th

The Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees have long hated each other, in what has grown into one of the great rivalries in professional sports. This is altogether a side-effect of The Curse of the Bambino, New York’s star-studded dominance for decades, and Boston’s severe underdog mentality. It is also just because they are two high-profile teams, with similar resources and notoriety, rabid fanbases, located near each other, in the same division, who play each other a bunch every year.

In 2004, in the third inning of a game against New York, Red Sox pitcher Bronson Arroyo threw a little too inside to Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriguez, hitting him in the arm. A-Rod, as players are wont to do, took offense to this and had some choice words for Arroyo. Jason Varitek, the Red Sox catcher behind the plate, stood up (literally, from his crouching position) for his pitcher, and, rumor has it, said, “We don’t hit .250 hitters,” implying that A-Rod wasn’t playing well enough to strike fear in the Red Sox pitching staff. Rodriguez liked that even less and got in Tek’s face. Varitek then, to the delight of all Red Sox fans (and really most baseball fans), proceeded to punch A-Rod right in the face, starting a brawl between the two teams. I have, and proudly wear, a “VARITEK FIGHT CLUB” t-shirt, because I support my team in their hatred for the New York Yankees.

In 2018, in a game early in the season against New York, Red Sox pitcher Joe Kelly threw at Yankees designated hitter Tyler Austin, undeniably on purpose. Earlier in the game, Austin slid into Sox shortstop Brock Holt, spiking him in the leg with his cleats. Kelly, in an act of retaliation (in baseball’s time-honored tradition of getting even), threw a 98mph fastball directly into Austin’s right arm. Angered by this, Austin threw down his bat and peacocked his anger toward the pitcher. Joe Kelly, never one to say no to fisticuffs, dropped his glove, waved Austin toward him, and said, “Come on.” Austin charged, Kelly clocked Austin with a right hook, and got him again a few more times before Austin went down in the dogpile that started between the two teams. I have, and proudly wear, a “JOE KELLY FIGHT CLUB” t-shirt, because I support my team in their hatred for the New York Yankees.

Top of the 7th

After this epiphany, Ben decides to sell his season tickets to show Lindsay how serious he is about their relationship. It is important to note that these are not just tickets to every home game, but excellent seats just behind the dugout. You can’t just buy seats like this. Ben’s Uncle Carl (played by Lenny Clarke, a guy we all wish our uncles could be) bought these tickets decades ago and left them to Ben in his will. People literally have to die for you to have seats like this. They’re so valuable, in fact, that when one of Lindsay’s friends’ husbands finds out about them, he asks Ben, “Do you find my wife attractive at all? ‘Cause we could work something out.” Ben laughs it off, and then there’s a beat.

“Well, do you?” he asks again.

When Ben decides he wants to sell his seats, the two agree on a price of $125,000. This is the kind of business deal that requires not only a contract, but lots of signatures and lots of initials on that contract. When Lindsay finds out about this, she panics. If Ben is willing to do this for her, he couldn’t be more serious about the two of them, but it’ll break his heart. She takes off for the ballpark (Ben doesn’t have a cell phone) and buys $600 scalped tickets (the Red Sox are playing the Yankees in a very important playoff game, and those last-minute tickets don’t come cheap) so she can get inside to stop him. The tickets, however, only let her into the centerfield gate, and Ben’s seats are behind home plate — on the other side of the park. She won’t make it in time if she shuffles through all of the people, so she takes off her shoes, jumps onto the field, and runs straight for him.

“What are you doing!” he screams, “You’re going to get arrested!” Out of breath after both her run and the ensuing security chase, she huffs out, “Don’t sell your tickets. These seats are important to you. This is your summer family, your Uncle Carl. You love me enough to sell your tickets. I love you enough not to let you.” She rips up the contract before the police take her away.

7th Inning Stretch

Where it began / I can’t begin to know when / But then I know it’s growin’ strong / Was in the spring / And spring became the summer / Who’d have believed you’d come along?

Hands / Touchin’ hands / Reachin’ out / Touching me, touchin’ you

Sweet Caroline (Bum, bum, bum!) / Good times never seemed so good (So good! So good! So good!) / I’ve been inclined (Bum, bum, bum!) / To believe they never would

Bottom of the 7th

The Red Sox should not have won the 2004 World Series, and that’s because they especially should not have won the 2004 American League Championship Series, the final playoff round before making the World Series. Trailing the Yankees in the standings for most of the year, they had to win 22 out of 25 games toward the end of the season to sneak into the playoffs. After beating the Anaheim Angels in the first round, they faced the arch-rival Yanks for the American League pennant.

Between 2003 and 2004, the two teams played each other 45 times, and Boston won 23 and lost 22 of those contests. In 2004, the Boston outscored New York by only one run, 106–105. The match-up was about as even as one could be. However, all four of the previous times the two teams met in the Championship Series, New York booked their ticket to the World Series, including when they did so in just the previous year.

And that’s how things seemed to be going again as the series began to take shape. In a best-of-7 series, New York won the first three games. In the history of professional baseball, no team had ever come back to win a series down three games to none. In Game 4, with the Yankees leading 4-3, New York had Hall of Fame closer Mariano Rivera on the mound. Rivera, known then and now as one of the greatest pitchers the sport had ever seen, was ready to hammer the nail in the Boston coffin. Red Sox fans left their seats early, determined to at least beat traffic if they couldn’t beat anything else.

Then, something miraculous happened. Kevin Millar walked to start the inning, putting the tying run on base. Red Sox manager Terry Francona replaced him on the base paths with pinch runner Dave Roberts, the speediest player on the team. Everyone in the ballpark and everyone watching on television knew that Roberts had one job: steal second base. Rivera knew and tried to keep him in check a couple times, but it was no use. On the first pitch, Roberts took off for second base, came in just under the tag of Derek Jeter (I have seen this clip 713,487 times, and I still can’t get over how close it was), and stood safely in scoring position. Sox third basemen Bill Mueller then hit a single into centerfield, and Roberts easily scored to tie the game. There was hope.

In the bottom of the 12th inning, David Ortiz, with that mammoth swing, hit a two-run home run to win the game and keep the team alive. The odds were still against them, but momentum was in their favor.

In Game 5, David Ortiz, affectionately known to Sox fans as Big Papi, hit another extra-inning walk-off home run, this time in the bottom of the 14th, to send the series back to New York. The Yankees had long had Sox star pitcher Pedro Martínez’s number, beating him in crucial playoff games in each of the last two years, including Game 2 of this very series. After a particularly brutal loss that September, Pedro admitted defeat against the rival Yanks, saying, “What can I say? I tip my cap and call the Yankees my Daddy.” As you can imagine, Yankees fans got a lot of play with a “WHO’S YOUR DADDY?” chant whenever they saw Pedro after that. He may have started Game 5, but David Ortiz ended it, and Boston fans cried, “WHO’S YOUR PAPI?” as Yankee fans headed back to New York for the next game.

In Game 6, pitcher Curt Schilling, working against a torn tendon sheath in his right ankle, took the mound. As his white sock turned red from the injury’s blood, Schilling dominated the Yankees in what became known as “The Bloody Sock Game.” By then, everyone had forgotten about “Who’s Your Papi?” The real question became, “Why not us?” Sure, no team had ever won a series on the precipice of a four-game sweep, but why not us? Why can’t we do it?

By that point, the drama was all but gone. Game 7 was a Boston massacre, killing the Yankees 10-3 in the Bronx. They had completed the greatest comeback in the history of baseball. With unprecedented momentum on their side, the Red Sox swept the National League champion St. Louis Cardinals in four games, winning the World Series for the first time in 86 years, and finally breaking the Curse of the Bambino.

Top of the 8th

I cannot overstate how extraordinarily lucky the cast and crew of Fever Pitch were. When the Red Sox fans at the beginning of the movie say, “This is the year,” this was written as a joke because of course it wasn’t going to be the year. It hadn’t been the year in 86 years. When Fever Pitch recaps the ALCS at the end of the movie, I get chills every time.

Taking inspiration from the real-life miracle, the co-directing Farrelly Brothers arranged for Fallon and Barrymore to be in attendance, in character, at the final game in St. Louis. In the movie’s final scene, as the Sox celebrate their World Series win, Ben and Lindsay run onto the field, kiss charmingly, and hug every player on the field. Many Red Sox fans actually hate this moment, because as they felt the rush of one of the greatest moments of their entire lives, they looked up at the tv and said, “What the hell are Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore doing on the field?”

I don’t care. I love it. I’m glad that Ben didn’t sell his tickets, that he and Lindsay made up, and that the two of them got to experience that moment together.

Bottom of the 8th

Ranking 2004 Boston Red Sox Movies/Shows:

4. Queer Eye for the Red Sox (2005): Following the fame and fortune bestowed on the team after breaking the curse, the Red Sox went on a media blitz. The worst one, by far, is their appearance on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, where the Fab Five tries to cut Johnny Damon’s hair and get the guys to clip their toenails or whatever. It’s embarrassing, partially because it’s clear no one wanted to do it, and partially because it’s just one gay panic joke after another.

3. 30 for 30: Four Nights in October (2010): Hosted by Bill Simmons and Fever Pitch co-star Lenny Clarke, the two pretend to throw back beers at a Boston bar while telling us nothing particularly insightful.

2. The Comeback: 2004 Boston Red Sox (2024): To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the team, Netflix produced a three-episode series, and it’s the best documentary by far. In particular, it has really great interviews with Pedro, Papi, Tito Francona, Tek, Dave Roberts (who, if you can believe it, is now the Los Angeles Dodgers’, and therefore Mookie Betts’, manager), and Kevin Millar.

1. Fever Pitch (2005): Obviously.

Top of the 9th

In his book Faithful, which chronicled the ups and downs that fateful season, notable Sox fan Stephen King wrote the following after Boston defeated New York in the 2004 ALCS:

“Last night, in a game that was never supposed to happen, the Boston Red Sox completed the greatest comeback in the history of American professional sports. In light of that accomplishment, an inning-by-inning postmortem would be pretty anticlimactic stuff, and not very helpful in understanding the magnitude of the event.

“Is winning the American League pennant an event of magnitude?

We are, after all, fighting some kind of screwed-up war in Iraq where over eleven hundred American soldiers have already died, not to mention at least two hundred American civilians. We are fighting (or trying to fight) a war on terrorism. We are electing a president in less than two weeks, and the dialogue between the candidates has never been hotter. In light of those things, does winning the pennant even matter?

“My answer: you bet your sweet ass it does.”

Doesn’t that feel like something that could be written today? Keeping up with the news is an exhausting, depressing, and often embarrassing venture, what with the collapse of our government, the very concept of democracy which we hold so dear, and the optimism our country once had. Our president is a fascist, countrymen are being murdered in the street by law enforcement, we are bombing the Middle East, and the chances of our country’s health, safety, and sanity have never been more unclear. How does one cope, in between the social activism and political productive struggle, with the futility of our future?

My answer: baseball.

Bottom of the 9th

Earlier in the film, as Ben realizes how much of a role the Red Sox have played in his relationship, he takes the time to reconsider what he truly loves most. Lindsay is not the foil to his fandom, she’s not the buzzkill who doesn’t understand his love for baseball. She represents an imperfect and stark reality, one where baseball takes the back burner to life’s responsibilities. He comes to the conclusion that he might just need to grow up.

Looking for advice, he consults one of the most mature people he knows, a young student on the baseball team he’s coaching. The boy, with sincere conviction, delivers one of the most thought-provoking arguments in the whole film when he says, “You love the Sox, but have they ever loved you back?”

I love Fever Pitch because, though he tries to choose Lindsay over the Red Sox, in the end, he doesn’t have to. His love for Lindsay isn’t the same kind of love he has for his baseball team, but Lindsay helps him realize that the two can co-exist. It can be a thing that the two can do together, a crucial part of their bond that doesn’t need to compete with the other parts of their lives. It can be fun, it can be relaxing, and it can even bring the two of them closer. In return, the Red Sox will provide beautiful summer nights at the ballpark, all of the hot dogs you can eat, rousing off-key renditions of “Sweet Caroline,” come-from-behind triumphs, and even a World Series trophy or two or four.

The Red Sox do love me back.

The Sphere is an experience. It’s an edifice you can only imagine in Las Vegas, a maximalist venue boasting a $2.3 billion price tag and a calendar full of immersive concerts and state-of-the-art screenings. Since opening in September 2023, it’s become a go-to destination for those looking to be transported to another world, away from the oppressive Vegas heat or the incessant trilling of slot machines. Currently, you can take a trip to Oz.

About a month ago, I was in Vegas for work, and my boss (a very nice man) got a bunch of us tickets to see The Wizard of Oz. I was excited, if a bit intimidated. The Sphere is hard to miss if you’re in Vegas; the exterior is covered in 1.2 million LED pucks that feature a rotating video playlist of clips that seem to follow you wherever you are in town. I watched it on the drive from the airport to the hotel, from work, and, finally, walking in, head upturned, mouth agape. At one point, the exterior played an animated video of psychedelic cats dancing in outer space, which really set the tone.

I was happy to squeeze in some fun time in the midst of a busy week of work, and it occurred to most of our group that we probably hadn’t seen The Wizard of Oz since we were kids, and I’d definitely never seen it like this. The film was reworked, reformatted, and in some cases, new shots and sequences were created to accommodate the 160,000 square foot screen, the highest resolution screen in the world.

We made our way to our seats, popcorn in hand, and climbed the several escalators and sets of stairs it took to get there. The seating is aggressively raked to give everyone a decent view of the giant screen. And despite the convex outside, the inside of the venue is more like a giant cylinder, with the screen curving upwards at the top.

As the show got underway, with the all-familiar overture cascading through the rows, the sepia opening scene unlocked a trove of memories I’d been sitting on since childhood. Even though I wouldn’t describe The Wizard of Oz as one of my all-time favorites, I didn’t realize how much of it I would still remember. The way Judy Garland clutches Toto to her face, the sound of Aunt Em’s voice calling out for her as the twister picks up. It all felt familiar, even at almost 73 meters tall.

The screen is huge, but all the main action still takes place in a reasonable rectangle at the center of the screen, giving the audience a place to focus. When Dorothy’s house gets swept up in the tornado though, the sequence takes up the entire screen, one of several parts of the film that have been expanded and reworked to create a unique experience. This was also where the immersive effects in the theater started up, as giant fans blew thousands of paper leaves into the audience. We also got to elbow each other out of the way for foam apples that fell from the ceiling, and watch a couple flying monkey puppets glide over our heads towards the screen.

The plot of the film is unchanged, and all the major moments you know and love get their moment, but not without some noticeable concessions and changes. A few of the musical numbers are shortened to make room for the immersive set pieces that were added, and large group scenes are expanded to fit the format with a generous helping of AI. The forest trees crawl with insects and squirrels and birds, munchkins and Ozians chat amongst themselves and mingle on the fringes of the main action. Even the mountains and landscapes far in the background get the 16K treatment. Every pixel is filled with something for you to look at. If you are easily distracted, this will no doubt pull your attention away from the yellow brick road.

That said, it is cool that a film entering its 87th year is getting another major run. It still means so much to people, and I’ll admit that seeing teenage Just Garland crooning wide-eyed in her pigtails made me a little emotional — I do have a heart, after all. But I also have a brain, and as we wandered back out into the chilly Las Vegas evening, I started musing on what these “immersive experiences” really offer us.

I left feeling satisfied, if a little undernourished. There’s nothing wrong with The Wizard of Oz at the Sphere, but nothing really exemplary to recommend it either. It joins the ranks of things like Van Gogh or Monet immersive experiences, taking precious works of art and using technology to create a visceral, visual cacophony. It’s cool, but is it artistically sound? I’m inclined to say no. While it’s great that audiences can experience art they already have a connection to, I don’t know if things like this really convince new audiences that they should care about the works of art they’re being immersed in. It’s hard not to feel like it’s all washing over you, hundreds of feet above your head, too bright and too big to really make an impact. The Sphere is betting these shows are too big to fail, but I left feeling like they’re too big to really succeed.

The Under 700 Club: Reviews in under 700 words for movies with less than 700 logs on Letterboxd (log count as of this publication: 283)

Back in November, boutique Blu-ray label Vinegar Syndrome announced a new line of releases under their new “Reviver” sublabel. Essentially, VinSyn (as the cool kids call them) has acquired an unreasonable amount of film reels, negatives, and prints over the years, more than their hard-working archivists could possibly keep up with, and they needed an excuse to release those movies on disc. Knowing that it would be difficult to move stock on a “lost film” since, you know, no one has ever heard of the movie, they’ve concocted Reviver, where the titles are a secret, and movies arrive only designated by a release order number.

Reviver #1 is Boots and the Preacher, a drive-in rednecksploitation feature from 1972. I debated not spoiling that in the title of this piece, or trying to be coy about it, or putting a disclaimer of sorts, so as not to spoil the fun of the release’s secretiveness. After all, it’s not very often you sit down to watch a movie with absolutely no idea what it is. (As the lead programmer of my household’s television, I only get this opportunity once a year, at the annual Exhumed Films Horror-thon. Looking for that experience again, I jumped all over this release.) Even the semi-regular mystery movies at AMC and Regal and Cinemark get leaked online, and you can make the decision about whether or not it’s worth it to see Fly Me to the Moon or Song Sung Blue a week before everybody else. But the release was announced four months ago, my copy arrived three months ago (their turnaround time has improved significantly), and it’s been plenty spoiled online since then. I figured anyone who really wanted the surprise would have acted on it by now.

Plus, the feature isn’t the only thing on the Reviver disc, as it’s joined by a collection of assorted shorts. It starts with “Day of the Stalking Horror,” a shot-on-Super 8 horror fakeout. Next is “Friday 13,” a silent 11-minute horror short, very interestingly not titled “Friday the 13th.” The final short before the film is “Carolina,” a whopping 20 minutes that largely consists of quiet shots of birds. Setting up the southern setting, I suppose. (After the feature, there’s some information on the Reviver line, which is interesting.)

As for the 80-minute feature presentation, Boots and the Preacher (which is very hard to Google because the very similarly titled Buck and the Preacher also came out in 1972) is a regional exploitation film made by a bunch of amateurs about the goings on in a (their?) small town. After a woman is found murdered at a local radio station, the entire town is suspect to some degree or another. Boots is the madam of the local brothel, and Preacher’s morals are no stronger than anyone else’s in that regard. The movie goes off on a million different tangents, including one with real-life country musician Jim Arp playing himself (his song “Stolen Moments,” featured in the film, is an absolute country western banger. It’s also completely unavailable on streaming, except for a YouTube video from 14 years ago with less than 1,000 views. Vinegar Syndrome, not just with movies but with music, again makes the claim for physical media), which is fun, even if it has barely anything to do with the plot.

Vinegar Syndrome has built up plenty of goodwill over the years, especially when it comes to rescuing previously considered lost cinema. However, there’s a reason they had to sucker us into buying this, and I don’t blame them for doing it. This movie is rough (reviews like this only confirm it), but they got us before we knew better. Now I know better. I appreciate and admire what Vinegar Syndrome is doing, but I probably won’t be buying another one. The proceeds from this line go directly to their extensive archival process, but perhaps there could be a way to make a donation of some amount in exchange for credit of some kind? I don’t need these discs clogging up my shelves, even if the experience is fun and unique.

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I didn’t want to be this person. I wanted to watch Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” and be impressed. Or, at the very least, entertained. Especially since I wrote a piece back in December about how I was probably going to hate it. I don’t like feeling like the scold, shushing the kids giggling in the back of the class because the teacher is saying something important. Who am I to spoil someone’s fun? If this film brought you joy, I’m happy for you. Jealous of you even! For I have never left a movie theater feeling more joyless. But if you, like me, snuggled up next to your significant other on Valentine’s Day hoping to be wooed, seduced, and delighted by glittering sets, lavish costumes, and gorgeous hotties, and instead left the theater not just disappointed, but depressed, this is for you. I see you. And our voices matter too.

In the name of diplomacy, I start by sharing what I liked in this film, before I let my righteous anger burst forth. Here’s what worked: there are a few sequences at the beginning of the film, when the protagonist Cathy and Heathcliff are children, that serve their purpose. The child actors are well cast, and their dialogue at least fits their age demographic. After an inexplicable opening sequence where Cathy and her companion Nelly witness a public hanging (where the condemned also gets a hard on), the opening titles appear over a gothic and misty set with a pulsing, dramatic score. Tiny braids of hair weave over the scene, spelling the title in rippling cursive. That was cool! I didn’t mind the score, it had a character and even an arc that fit the story. Some of the costumes were nice to look at. Alison Oliver gives a committed performance as Isabella Linton. She has technique and perspective, and her scenes held my attention. The rest of the supporting cast: Shazad Latif, Hong Chau, and Ewan Mitchell, are doing their best to deliver fully realized performances in a film that is only interested in the superficially vague. I respect their work and the work of the many artists that put countless hours into realizing a world and a vision that had as much coherence as a toddler reading Shakespeare, and as much subtlety as a bear horn.

Here’s what didn’t work: literally everything else. I won’t even address that this is technically an adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic novel. What would be the point? My social media algorithm has been spamming me for months with content promoting this movie, assuring me that, though it would not be a “faithful” adaptation of the famous book, it would be surprising and unique. A fresh, modern take on a stuffy, perplexing, and dark story. Which, if that’s what had been delivered, would not have offended me in the least. So we’ll ignore the book for the moment, forget that it even exists.

As a movie, as a work of art, it does not fail in what it sets out to do. The saddest part is, I think this is exactly the film Fennell and friends wanted to make. It saddens me that this was the goal all along. Instead of a complex, compelling story about two people doomed to be consumed with one another, we see a perfectly ordinary tale of forbidden love and aimless lust. Their love affair comes about with no real obstacle other than Cathy’s passing guilt about cheating on her wealthy husband. And when she finally spurns Heathcliff for good, she resigns everyone in their orbit to misery until she finally dies of a broken heart. We’ve seen it all before. Why make this movie and call it Wuthering Heights at all? You’d be better off making a feature-length Charli XCX music video that’s loosely inspired by the characters in the book. That’s basically what this movie would have been, except for the fact that the much-publicized Charli soundtrack is barely in it. What I saw was as cynical a work of art as I have ever seen. A tedious, vacuous effort interested only in itself. It’s not daring, it’s not unique, it’s not shocking, it’s not sexy. It’s boring. And it’s some of the laziest storytelling I’ve seen in a while. In truth, I felt trolled.

If I’m being really honest with myself, I’m angry. As a person who likes movies, who wants them to be good, and who wants to believe there’s a place for female perspectives to thrive in Hollywood, this movie felt like a slap in the face. Audiences deserve better, female audiences deserve better than what Fennel has made for us. How little she and the powers that be must think of us, to believe we would be titillated, let alone satisfied with such an inarticulate display of shallow carelessness.

But let it not be said that I come with only resentments and no examples. Here are some specific things I did not like:

1. The dialogue. Sure, there are lines taken directly from the book and put into Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi’s mouths. It doesn’t help. They are interwoven with lines of dialogue so oblique and clumsy that the greatest actors in the world could not imbue them with true feeling. The lines throw a bucket of cold water on whatever chemistry the leads possess.

2. The sex scenes. There is so little plot left in this movie to build relationships around by the time Cathy and Heathcliff get down to it, I couldn’t care less. The sexual moments come and go at bizarre moments, do little to carry the flimsy plot forward, and are shot with as much creativity as it takes to open a pack of gum. There are smatterings of horseplay and kinky funny business that are as uninteresting as they are in poor taste.

3. The sets. At best, they are inoffensive. At worst, they are like a Barbie Dreamhouse for people who love ketamine. They background a series of tableaus that I think are meant to be visually stimulating or moving, but are only empty of meaning and bizarre. The alcoholic father dies in a room piled high with empty bottles styled to look like an art installation. The Linton’s fireplace is adorned with casts of human hands cascading up the walls. The drawing room walls are encrusted with crystals. Cathy’s room is the exact color of her skin, a literal shrine to her whiteness. There is no thematic value in any of these choices. Fennell chooses them simply because she can.

4. The costumes. There is obvious craftsmanship and hard work involved in their fabrication. Then why, in God’s name, does Cathy enter her husband’s room on her wedding night in a strapless, cellophane-looking garment tied with a big ribbon? I get it, she’s supposed to look like one of the sweet confections the Lintons tempted her with, becoming an object and a plaything to them. But it’s so obvious and basic that by the time you figure out what they’re going for, you no longer care. Why is she constantly dripping in jewels and tiaras?! This is 19th-century Yorkshire, not Versailles. The whole aesthetic seems to evoke some overblown Vogue editorial spread, with zero of the restraint or care it would take to pull something like that off.

The stylistic excesses are so extreme, the aesthetic so blatant and bland that it feels like a practical joke. All of this brings me to the question: who is this for? It’s clearly not for people who have read the book, or appreciate it. It’s not for fans of the romance genre, for it contains very little in the way of substantive romance. It’s not for cinephiles. It’s not really for the male gaze or the female gaze.

Think about those conventionally hot, rich people you went to high school or college with, you know the ones. They were beautiful, and because they were beautiful, they went through life with a certain blissful unawareness. You laughed at their jokes even when they weren’t that funny. You complimented their outfit just because it was new and expensive. And so they thought, or think, that because they are beautiful, wealthy, and successful, they must also be smart, funny, and interesting. This movie is what happens when those people are given 80 million dollars and told, “Go for it!” If that still sounds like two hours and fifteen minutes of fun to you, by all means, get a ticket and go see for yourself. I’m hoping that someone somewhere starts funding female-led projects that do more than skim the surface of meaning and truth.

But before you accuse me of being a cranky hater, let me assure you it brings me no joy to write such a negative review. In fact, I had as much fun writing this piece as I did watching the film. None!

Patrick: Taylor, this movie could not have come at a better time for us. In the past six months, we’ve gone deep down the Survivor rabbit hole, coming back to the show after years off and binging it non-stop. I’ll even be writing weekly Survivor 50 recaps for this very website! Send Help, the latest from genre film maestro Sam Raimi, sees Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien, an overworked office drone and her nepo baby boss, crash landing on an island and surviving thanks to her long history with Survivor. Before we talk about the movie, do you think you could survive on an island?

Taylor: You know, I think many people would look at me and say, “Absolutely not, she could never last five minutes.” Perhaps because I’m terrified of any flying insect, from a butterfly to a junebug to a bee. Or maybe it’s because if my skin feels at all dry, I can’t focus on anything else until it’s resolved. Or the dead giveaway is that I am fully addicted to my modern comforts. BUT! What these haters do not know is that I am an only child who played Survivor in her backyard EVERY DAY growing up. Rain or shine, I was out there, making mulch fires and living off the bountiful berries of my parents’ garden. So as to not disappoint little Taylor, I have to say that YES, I could survive on an island!

Patrick: I’m not so sure about actual survival, but because I’m delusional, I think I could do well on Survivor. I’m not going to say I’d win, because that’s a crazy thing to say, but I do think I’d...make the merge! Yeah, I could make the merge. McAdams’ Linda Liddle (maybe the name is a bit much, it’s just one degree away from Linda Loser) not only survives on this desert island, but she thrives - quickly creating a shelter, starting a fire, and even killing a wild boar in a classic Raimi gross-out gore scene. I love Rachel McAdams so much (after seeing this, I thought, “I’m gonna go on a McAdams run and see everything I haven’t” - but I pretty much have already!) and she’s having a total blast here. Raimi loves an actor he can put through the wringer, so the two are a match made.

Taylor: First of all, I only think you could make the merge on the new era Survivor. I love you, but your intolerance for inept people would make you become the villain eventually. Secondly, you have yet to see About Time, so that’s a must, especially since we’re officially in the new year and are no longer spending every evening watching movies for our Best of 2025 podcast. Third…well, third, and fourth and fifth is that I adore Rachel McAdams. I have seen most of her movies more times than I could possibly count (we even saw her on Broadway in Manhattan Theatre Club’s Mary Jane), and she’s someone who I just won’t ever tire of. Her energy is electric, and I’m convinced you could throw her in just about anything (this movie alone has a little bit of everything) and she would crush it.

I also have to note here that Rachel McAdams stars in one of our all-time favorite comfort movies, one we throw on all the time when we don’t know what else to watch - Game Night. Patrick and I fucking love Game Night, and while I’m not going to say that Send Help eclipses it, and part of Game Night’s re-watchability is its PG-13ness, I can see this becoming a similar “What the hell, let’s throw on Send Help” sort of movie. This is also my plea for Rachel McAdams to keep making these kinds of movies because I just have so much fun with them, and the world needs more fun!

Patrick: She goes head-to-head here with Dylan O’Brien, who has really impressed me in the past few years. He was one of the standouts in Saturday Night (which we wrote an A-Listers about!), and gave one of my favorite performances of 2025 playing dual roles (move aside, Michael B. Jordan!) in the film Twinless. As Send Help’s snot-nosed brat, he totally understands the kind of guy who was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple. His father (played in a face-in-picture-frame-only cameo by Raimi friend and collaborator Bruce Campbell) founded and built the company, and when O’Brien’s character takes over, he screws over everyone who isn’t his friend, especially Linda. Boy, does he come to regret that...

Taylor: I wasn’t a Teen Wolf girl, and I was only distantly a Maze Runner girl (in the sense that I saw every movie but only because at that time I saw every dystopian franchise), so despite my awareness of him for close to two decades at this point, this is the first time I’m truly watching him - his movies, his notable talent, his career - and recognizing him as the dynamic actor that he is. What has further caught me off guard is how much I like Dylan O’Brien the person, not just the actor. I’m not one to keep up with press tours, but every video I see of him and Rachel promoting this movie has me completely hooked. He’s a guy who, you can tell, loves this, all of it. Loves to act, loves movies, loves meeting and working with those he admires. I look at him and I have this tingle in my heart that says “We made the right person famous,” and I just can’t fucking believe I’m saying that about the Teen Wolf guy! Don’t let us down, Dylan!

Patrick: I feel like, without spoilers, we need to talk about the direction this movie decides to go.

Taylor: One of my worst cinephile traits, and one I know drives you personally insane, is that I’m always one or two or ten steps ahead of a script. Any time an actor or director tips their hand ever so slightly, I just have a way of seeing all the cards. Honestly, I hate it about myself maybe even more than you hate it about me. What I appreciated about this movie is that I had no earthly clue where the hell it was going. And not in a you-can’t-predict-it-because-it-makes-no-sense-way, but in a even-when-I-think-it-can’t-get-crazier-it-DOES way. It’s kooky and hysterical and dark and bonkers and terrifying and thoughtful and gruesome, and somehow it pulls it all off.

Patrick: I think one of the things that Raimi and Co. do so well here is make it so that you’re never on one person’s side for too long. Right when you feel like you’ve decided who you want to put your faith (or sometimes pity) in, the next scene changes it up. Even after that scene happens. And that, along with the Survivor easter eggs and our love for the cast and the blood and guts, is what made this movie a blast.

Taylor: This December, after I’ve seen all the “most anticipated” movies of the year and then some, I might scroll past this and wonder why I rated it so high (four stars on Letterboxd, baby!), but this is my formal record stating that I had a blast watching this with you. Good performances. Zany and unexpected direction. A solid script that we all can relate to in some way. It’s just a good ol’ time. It doesn’t need to be The Odyssey; it’s fine being exactly what it is.

Patrick: Long live January trash!

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A podcast from Feature Presentation: featurepresentationvideo.com

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Haiku Reviews #3: 1999

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