Contemporary 2025 – The Magnificent 60s

Marty Supreme (2025) *** – Seen at the Cinema

I’m sorry to be bursting the bubble of yet another Oscar juggernaut. Once more an outstanding performance just about saves this shaggy dog story, a narrative so rambling if you had dropped King Kong into the plot I wouldn’t have been surprised. It’s a mesh of two narratives that just don’t fit. In the first place we’ve got a Paul Newman (The Hustler, 1961) type of hustler in the shape of the titular Marty (Timothee Chalamet) in yet another “sport” (like American pool in The Hustler, not to be confused with the more widely-accepted snooker or billiards) that’s not been recognized by the powers- that-be as a proper sport.

And then we’ve got a standard 1950s slice-of-life drama where everyone is just mean to each other. Marty knocks up his neighbor’s wife Rachel (Odessa A’zion) and refuses to take responsibility in case it gets in the way of his dreams. Out of spite, his uncle Murray (Larry Sloman) arranges for him to be arrested. For a spot of revenge, millionaire benefactor Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary) forces Marty to bend over a chair and be beaten on the bare backside by a table tennis paddle. Rachel fakes being beaten up by her husband so that Marty will beat him up in return

And that’s before we get into a smorgasboard of bits and pieces that are either rejects from other screenplays or might well have made a small indie picture of their own such as the the bizarre attempt to extract $2,000 ($25,000 in today’s money) from small-time hood Ezra (Abel Ferrara) for his lost dog, this being a gangster who lives in a fleapit hotel, whom Marty first makes acquaintance with when his bath falls through the ceiling on top of Ezra and dog. This particular episode ends, would you believe, in a shootout of the Quentin Tarantino/Tony Scott intensity.

And that’s before we get into exactly how a posh hotel like the Ritz would fall for a cheap New Yorker in a cheap suit and let him run up a bill not far short of $20,000 in today’s money while he seduces former movie star Kay (Gwyneth Paltrow), wife of Milton. And before Marty sets fire to a bunch of table tennis players he has successfully hustled.

Of course, everyone’s against our darling Marty, the powers-that-be don’t allocate him decent accommodation and ban him from a tournament because he failed to get his notification of attendance in on time, the Japanese guy Endo (Koto Kawaguchi) who beats him must be cheating , and he’s forced to earn a crust by competing against a seal. Given he’s so busy biting the hand that feeds him – stealing a necklace from Kay, trying to shaft Milton, refusing to rush to his mother’s hospital bed – it’s a surprise he’s got any time left for actual table tennis.

The sporting action, what little we see of it, works well. Though the director doesn’t see fit to fill us in on the rules – no idea how many points are needed to win or how many games are in a match though to keep us onside someone occasionally calls out “match point”. However, it is athletic stuff, both players racing around the table.

There’s a mawkish ending which I didn’t for a minute believe.

So what we’re left with as with most of the other major Oscar contenders is a picture’s that’s run away with itself (150 minutes, anyone?) redeemed by a fabulous performance. This is truly one of the all-time greatest performances. In any other world Marty would be a low-life who never got anywhere or perhaps given his line in salesmanship ended up a conman, but here he finds redemption in table tennis.

It’s a testament to Timothee Chalamet (A Complete Unknown, 2024) that we invest so much in this thoroughly unlikeable character and go with the actor all the way. Gwyneth Paltrow (Avengers: Endgame, 2019) is the best of the rest who mostly seem as if they are stock characters from an early Scorsese picture.

But it’s a testament to the lack of studio management that is bankrupting Hollywood that nobody is able to rein in the narrative excesses of director Josh Safdie (Uncut Gems, 2019). Written by the director and producer Ronald Bronstein (Uncut Gems) – never a good idea to leave control of a screenplay in the hands of the screenwriter.

Another great performance in a mess of a narrative.

The Housemaid (2025) **** – Seen at the Cinema (Three Times)

An absolute cracker, two blistering performances, tons of twists, and set to become the word of mouth hit of the year. Clever piece of counter-programming though nobody was foolish enough as I was to market it as an “AvataMaid” double bill and just as well because it would blow the overlong and rather tepid James Cameron epic out of the water.

This didn’t come trailing a whole bunch of accolades from a film festival and print critics have generally been snooty about it because they don’t know what the public really wants. Nobody thought to sell it as a woman’s picture either, but I saw this (three times now) in a packed theater on a Monday night and the crowd, mostly women, just lapped it up. Not because it was a hot romance or said something pious about motherhood or women’s issues but because, without giving away too much of the plot, it featured two tough cookies, almost a modern Thelma and Louise, who weren’t going to take it anymore.

Nobody is what they seem. And the plot slithers from under you. I had no idea what this was about apart from the fact that the book was a bestseller. So I came in expecting the usual kind of story – new housemaid Millie (Sydney Sweeney) infiltrates millionaire’s household, dupes the loving mother Nina (Amanda Seyfried), seduces husband Andrew (Brandon Sklenar) and between them the lovers find a way of offing the wife and getting away with it.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. Nina, who seems initially a great employer (giving Millie $20 at the job interview to cover her time), turns out to be anything but. The house is a complete mess, she blames Millie for anything that goes wrong, seems on the edge of a constant nervous breakdown, and eventually sets her up to be arrested. And there’s no bonding with her daughter Cece (Indiana Elle), the most stuck-up obnoxious brat.

On the other hand not only is Andrew goddam handsome with a fabulous smile, he’s a saint to put up with his wife. Turns out she spent nine months in a psych ward after trying to drown her daughter in the bath. And that means should they split up, she’ll likely lose custody, and thanks to the ruthless prenup, will be penniless, and mad though she is who’d want to give up a millionaire lifestyle.

Turns out there’s a reason why Millie is so sweet and never stands up to her employer. She’s on parole and her parole conditions mean she needs a job and an address. To lighten her load, Andrew takes her side against the worst his wife can throw at Millie. Unwittingly, Nina is the architect of her own downfall, and it’s no wonder Andrew and Millie end up in bed and in love.

That’s not a twist, that’s what the audience was led to believe was going to happen. Twist Number One is Nina’s reveal is that Millie is serving a 15-year stretch for murder, still a third to go while out on parole. Twist Number Two isn’t that Nina also knows about the affair or even that as a result of another exceedingly malicious act by his wife that Andrew throws Nina out.

Twist Number Two is the best twist since The Sixth Sense (1999). Initially, it looks as if Nina is distraught with grief at losing her cushy number. But that quickly turns to being hysterical with relief at being freed of Andrew’s grip.

Why she would want to be free and what kind of trap Millie is walking into forms the second half of the picture and that’s a helluva ride, twist piling on twist, a combination of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Jane Eyre (madwoman in the attic).

If we’ve had too much torture porn over the last couple of decades courtesy of Saw and its imitators, this raises the art to a new level. This is torture of the most subtle kind, at least initially, with one woman having to pull two hundred strands of hair (complete with follicles) out of her head.

But the best twist in this smorgasboard of twists is that it’s not Millie who’s walking into a trap, but Andrew. Millie was hired because she beat a man to death and Nina reckons she’ll be more than a match for her husband. I’m tempted to reveal more just for the pleasure on the clever tale, but I’ll let it go at that. And, as you have come to expect with this type of thriller, there’s a stinger in the tale. Here, there are two.

Sydney Sweeney (Eden, 2024) and Amanda Seyfried (Seven Veils, 2023) are both superb, and you have to take your hat off to Brandon Sklenar (It Ends With Us, 2024) for his transformation from saint to devil.

Neatly directed by Paul Feig (Another Simple Favour, 2025) and he does well to control the balance although obviously following the template laid down by screenwriter Rebecca Sonnenshine (Archive 81 TV series, 2022) adapting the Freida McFadden novel.

A welcome return to what Hollywood does best, beginning with a stellar story and then adding actors who can bring something to it, rather than the other way round, which usually results in a rambling tale only elevated by performance which is distinctly unsatisfying.

It says something for the quality of a thriller than even knowing all the plot points I was delighted to go back for a second look – and a third – and came away even more impressed at the way the pieces locked together.

Box Office Update: The Housemaid which cost only $30 million is already into hefty profit with $122 million worldwide compared to critical fave Marty Supreme (costing $90 million) which has attracted only $66 million worldwide so far. In Britain going head-to-heead with Marty Supreme, The Housemaid has double the gross of the Chalamet number.

Plus it’s been so successful there are plans for a sequel.

Nuremberg (2025) **** – Seen at the Cinema

Richly satisfying drama of the kind they don’t make any more. For a start writer-director James Vanderbilt isn’t spoiling everything by preening with the camera, trying to draw attention to himself at the expense of what is a very solid narrative. Where you might expect all the hypocrisy to be laid at the door of the Nazi High Command, in fact it’s evenly spread, two prime examples among the legal team hoping to bring Hitler’s second-in-command Goering (Russell Crowe) to his knees. And although lazy journalists, and even lazier marketeers, are hyping Crowe (The Exorcism, 2024), if they took a closer look they would find four other performances worth more than a passing mention.

Of course, everyone knows how this ends. Or do they? Theoretically, it’s about making an example of Goering and the other top Germans who greenlit the Holocaust. But, in fact, the reality is that it has never ended, and that other rulers, in the same almighty positions of power as the Nazis, have continued to commit genocide long after Hitler’s regime was disbanded.

Like Judgement at Nuremberg (1961) this in part sets out to discover what was it about the German character that permitted them to carry out their atrocities. Psychiatrist Dr Kelley (Rami Malek) commits professional suicide by determining that there was nothing, particularly unique about the Germans and that given the right circumstances it could as easily happen in the United States or any other civilized country.

Although it’s promoted as a duel between Goering and Kelley, there’s more at stake. The whole concept of war crimes for a start, the idea that a group of countries can legally arbitrate in the affairs of another country, here the USA, Britain, France and Russia must come to together to argue the case against Germany. Nobody wants to get their hands dirty should the whole idea fall flat on its face, so Justice Jackson (Michael Shannon), leading the American legal attack, could as easily be fall guy as hero.

Goering is more humanized than Kelley. Following an unusual meet-cute, there’s an opportunity – but the director doesn’t fall for it – to set up Kelley in a romantic relationship with journalist Lila McQuaide (Lydia Peckham) but instead the card tricks that appeared to melt her heart become a different magical metaphor. Goering is a doting husband and father and Kelley becomes surreptitiously involved with his loving wife and piano-playing daughter. And despite appearing smart in his profession, Kelley is out of his depth with women, given a sharp lesson by Lila.

Kelley has taken on this job in the hope of writing a bestseller about his experience. Jackson expects to be nominated to the Supreme Court. Goering just wants to stay alive. Kelley takes the measure of Goering far better than the intellectually arrogant Jackson. In fact, Kelley is fearful that if Jackson doesn’t tread carefully, then Goering will wipe the floor with him.

The prosecutors have a few clever tricks up their sleeve. Kelley, under the guise of befriending Goering, uncovers his legal plan, which stops the German in his tracks.

But only for a moment. Goering is such a smooth operator that he skewers Jackson and it takes the last-minute intervention from languid Brit Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe (Richard E. Grant) to save the day.

There’s a fifth peripheral character here in Sgt Howie Triest (Lee Woodall), a German-speaking American, who has two of the best scenes. In a reversal of the usual trope where it’s the hero in an idle moment who divulges his past, here it’s the supporting actor. And where Kelley has only pretended compassion with Goering its Triest who provides another condemned German with the dignity to walk to the gallows.

Usually when you have a writer-director, the writer aspect is subservient to the director, but here James Vanderbilt (Truth, 2015) is fully in command of the narrative without resorting to tricksiness. The screenplay is littered with cutaways that maintain the tension as the story leaps ahead from one narrative point to the other. There’s a classical structure here, Vanderbilt laying the ground rules, what’s a stake for everyone, heightening the tension as it plays out, and throwing a few spanners in the expected works to keep it brimful of twists right to the end.

Virtually everyone gets the chance to be haughty, virtually everyone thinks they have a winning hand and how hopes are dashed makes for a terrific tale.

For sure, Crowe is ahead in the lazy journalist’s eyes in terms of plaudits, but Rami Malek (The Amateur, 2024) runs him close and in the supporting actor stakes it’s a toss-up between Michael Shannon (Death by Lightning TV mini-series, 2025), who switches from confidence to despair in the twinkle of an eye, and Lee Woodall (One Day TV mini-series, 2024) who waits and waits and waits before snipping in and stealing chunks of the picture.

Adapted by Vanderbilt from a book by Jack El-Hai.

For once, zippy dialog and nippy narrative merge. Supremely confident direction turns this into an engrossing, adult, movie.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025) ** – Seen at the Cinema (out on Dec 12 on Netflix)

An unholy mess. Serve Netflix right for once again indulging one of their “visionary” directors. I’m assuming either director Rian Johnson is a true believer or he’s embarked on a spoof that doesn’t work. Either way it’s a bone-headed venture filled with the dullest characters you would ever come across and testing audience patience to the limit by keeping the star of the show, private detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), out of the picture for the first 30 minutes, dumping all the exposition on Fr Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor), the most cliched priest this side of Bing Crosby and relying on the “locked room” conceit, handled with some deadly ham-fistedness, to see the audience through an extremely trying time.

Once you work out that the title relates to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and that we’re entombed in a flummery of Christian jargon, you start hoping this is going to head down the satirical route and that at least you’ll get a few laughs for your hard-earned bucks. But, no, it’s so straitlaced it might as well have called on a corset to design the narrative. In order to help the director out of a whole series of cinematic cul de sacs everyone overacts and we skip over inconvenient plotholes.

The priest is sent to help out in a rundown parish run by nutcase Monsignor Jefferson Wilks (Josh Brolin) whose idea of fun is to relate in detail, under the guise of confession, how many times, and how, he has masturbated that week. There’s a godforsaken subplot about lost treasure and a mysterious child who you’ve guessed from the off is the son of Wilks.

When Wilks is done to death in church in a small room off the altar, then we get the standard roll-call of suspects. These include church manager Martha (Glenn Close), who specializes in letting out blood-curdling screams, alcoholic doctor Nat (Jeremy Renner), barmy novelist Lee (Andrew Scott), suffering from the opposite of writer’s block who can’t stop spewing out an interminable book, Vera (Kerry Washington) who’s been put in charge of bringing up mysterious boy Cy (Daryl McCormack), now a failed influencer, and crippled Simone (Caillee Spainey) who Wilks has bled dry. Every now and then local cop Geraldine (Mila Kunis) turns up to listen in awe to Blanc.

Fr Jud is the main suspect for no apparent reason that I could see except the writer says so and he’s the most handsome guy around and wouldn’t it be great if Blanc could recruit a priest sidekick in the way of the television series of yore.

So first of all we get a lecture on the “locked room” thesis with reference to Golden Age of Crime novelist John Dickson Carr who invented the term and then to the likes of Agatha Christie and others who took up the challenge. A variety of theories are presented by Blanc with the sole purpose of showing everyone how clever he is by knocking them all down.

Once we enter Resurrection territory it gets downright stupid, the dead man rising again on the third day in the manner of a certain religion, and then there’s another murder and because we’ve run out of things with which to add genuine tension a lot of the action now takes place in pouring rain and Fr Jud who looks like he is in the clear gets once again targeted as the main suspect.

And then we’re into scene after scene after scene of exposition and a ton of talk about “free will” and “grace” – religious terms you understand. Confession, you might not be surprised to learn, plays a key role.

This might have been more acceptable with a better cast. This is nothing like an all-star cast such as used to decorate Hercule Poirot epics and helped out with keeping an audience engrossed in the first two in the series. This is populated by over-the-hill stars like Glenn Close (Hillbilly Elegy, 2020), Mila Kunis (Bad Moms, 2016) and Jeremy Renner (Avengers: Endgame, 2019) and actors who wouldn’t be considered stars except in television like Andrew Scott (Blue Moon, 2025). Josh O’Connor (Challengers, 2024) is out of his depth. Josh Brolin (Weapons, 2025) would be closest we’ve got to what might constitute a genuine star but he was second-billed in that and only then because everyone else was a nobody.

The role of the star is to enliven a picture and those with an undiluted screen presence give audiences something to hang their hat on or direct their sympathies to. But none of this bedraggled lot, every character underwritten, would you care a fig for.

Rian Johnson ruins his own creation.

Death By Lightning (2025) ***** – Netflix Hits A Home Run, At Last

Streaming at its best. Take an obscure subject, a long-forgotten character, an incident that’s a mere blip in history, actors of less than middle rank in box office terms, and by breaking it down into easily consumable parts turn a history lesson that might be an indigestible three hours on the big screen into a riveting, enthralling drama of the highest quality that takes a no-holds-barred approach to politics

Small wonder you won’t have heard of U.S. President James Garfield (Michael Shannon) given he held office for around three months. Or of his misfit assassin Charles Guiteau (Matthew Macfadyen), less than a footnote in history for making the grave mistake of gunning down a President nobody had ever heard of.

Garfield shouldn’t even have been President. A mid-level politician on the verge of retirement, he wasn’t even in the running for the Republican nomination, which should have gone to Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant. But in one of those quirks of politics, the voters liked what they heard of Garfield and in a grass roots rebellion shooed him in. He won the Presidential election by a whisker.

And then his troubles started. He was too honest for the job. Unwilling to follow the standard corruption and hand out highly-paid posts to rank-and-file unfitting for the job, he found himself up against the New York political powerhouse headed by Roscoe Conkling (Shea Whigham) who controlled the bulk of the revenue entering the country. And the battles with Conkling would have easily made a House of Cards-style series in itself as the dueling politicians attempt to outwit each other.

But in the background, and weaseling his way into the foreground, is con man, thief, forger, misfit Guiteau with as much entitlement as could sink a battleship who, nonetheless, grasps the key essential of politics of the era which is that helping to grease the greasy pole is all you need to reap the benefits. Except his efforts to become anyone’s righthand man fall way short, as his ambition and lack of any relevant skills are widely mocked – he expects to be handed an ambassadorial role although he speaks no foreign languages – despite occasionally finding an opening.

Having been dismissed by the President himself, he decides Garfield is totally the wrong person for the highest position in the land and takes it upon himself to rid the nation of this burden. Even the assassination is ham-fisted and Garfield would have survived except for the efforts of the ham-fisted surgeon who killed him through septic poisoning.

That’s the climax to a thoroughly involving mini-series where no punches are pulled as far as politics are concerned. Conkling doesn’t mind being the man behind the throne as long as he gets credit for pulling the strings. Political wheeling-and-dealing has never been so ruthlessly exposed.

But it’s not as if Garfield is an innocent in that department. While not stooping to corruption, he pulls the legs from under Conkling by appointing Conkling’s righthand man Chester Arthur (Nick Offerman) as his Vice-President, a scheme that while initially backfiring eventually pays dividends. And it’s ironic that Conkling’s demise is down to a thwarted mistress.

The narrative switches on like a thriller, twists and turns every inch of the way. But as much as the riveting narrative, the joy of this is in the performances. Matthew Macfadyen, double Emmy award-winner for Succession (2018-2023), is rightly going to be considered to have landed the plum role, a fellow so much of a misfit that in a “free love” community nobody wants to have sex with him. But it’s a close-run thing. Michael Shannon (A Different Man, 2024) is outstanding, and Shea Whigham (F1, 2025) has immense fun especially with his eyebrows and dominating curl, while Nick Offerman (Civil War, 2024) in shifting from oaf to man of honor has a peach of a role, not forgetting Betty Gilpin (The Hunt, 2020) as the straight-talking wife of the President.

None of these are stars, not even of the indie persuasion, and yet it’s amazing what they can do with their characters.

Directed with effortless style by Matt Ross (Captain Fantastic, 2016) from a script by Mike Makowsky (Bad Education, 2019) adapting the bestseller Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard.

Outstanding.

Frankenstein (2025) **** – Seen at the Cinema

I came at this with a bucketload of reservations. First was the length. I grew up with versions of this tale that were around a good hour shorter. Ninety minutes seemed to be the ideal length not a stonking 150 minutes. Secondly, I’m not a huge fan of director Guillermo del Toro and excepting Pacific Rim (2013) – an outrider in his portfolio – and The Shape of Water (2017) felt his reach was not matched by his grasp. He was the kind of director whose work I was supposed to like and invariably responded less well than I had expected. And third of course was, even with the trend for reimaginations and remakes and in the hands of a “visionary director” (a vastly over-used term), I had seen this story so often before I wondered what else he could bring to it.

So I was very pleasantly surprised to find an emotionally satisfying thoroughly enjoyable work that did not outstay its welcome. Moreover, it doesn’t rely on the tropes of outraged villagers carrying torches and as far as I can gather without me going back to the sacred text whatever changes have been made to the original appear logical and true. Both the creator and the monster at various points will touch your heart.

One of the aspects I most enjoyed was the creation. The detail involved was in keeping with heist movies where robbers work out their plan in minute detail or war films where the audience is filled in on the strategy and tactics involved in battles as though they were adults who could understand the importance of long scenes of dialog rather than treating them as children who preferred to go straight into the action regardless of whether they understood what was going on or not.

Here, we begin in the Arctic where an exploration vessel trapped in ice comes upon a very ill Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) who is being pursued by the monster (Jacob Elordi) of his creation.

Then we’re in flashback mode. Victor is son of a famous but tyrannical surgeon (Charles Dance) whose adored mother dies in childbirth giving birth to a more favored brother William (Felix Kammerer).

Then we shift to a medical disciplinary court where Victor is on trial for his experiments in reanimating corpses, for playing God in a society where the Supreme Being was still considered in charge of everything on Earth. But no matter how clever the corpse appears, capable of apparently playing catch, the case goes against him and his dreams, and career, would be in tatters except for the intervention of wealthy arms dealer Harlander (Christoph Waltz), uncle of Elizabeth (Mia Goth) the fiancée of William.

She’s intellectually advanced for a woman of the era, studying insects, and more than a match for Victor and for a while it looks like we’re in for an awkward love triangle. Meanwhile, Victor is harvesting bits and pieces of fresh corpses from battlefields and stitching them together in a way that maintains the body’s unique nervous system while Harlander happily stumps up the enormous cost.

The experiment, which takes place in a remote castle and costs the life of Harlander, is a success but given the monster’s size (Jacob Elordi) Victor keeps him in chains in the castle’s vast cellar. But he soon becomes exasperated by the creature’s lack of intellect, speech limited to repeating his creator’s name (and his own as it turns out).

When Elizabeth discovers the creature, she falls in love with it and turns against the scientist and keeps the gift of a leaf the creature has given her pressed inside the pages of a book. Since the creature is fit for no more than a circus exhibit rather than acclaimed as an experiment, and needing someone to blame for Harlander’s death, Victor fits up the monster, blaming him for setting fire to the castle.

Victor escapes, takes refuge in a cottage where he is educated by a blind man, and discovers his own emotions. Hounded out of there, he sets out to find Victor who is attending his brother’s wedding. The monster’s plea for a female companion is derided by Victor and in a melodramatic moment he accidentally shoots Elizabeth. The monster carries the dying woman out of the wedding pieta style.

So the hunt is on. Victor flees to the frozen north and eventually when the monster engineers a confrontation, he is able to attempt reconciliation with his creator.

The question asked – who is the monster? The creator or the result of his tampering with nature?

The acting is top notch, Jacob Elordi (Saltburn, 2023) should have walked off with the acting plaudits except that Oscar Isaac (Dune, Part One, 2021) elicits our sympathy and then our horror and Mia Goth (Maxxine, 2024) excels in a role where she is not called upon, as so often before, to overact. As far as Christoph Waltz (No Time to Die, 2021) and Charles Dance (The First Omen, 2024) are concerned their roles are minor variations of characters both have played before.

Praise is very much due to writer-director Del Toro for not losing my interest for a minute.

Since this is a Netflix production I could have saved myself a few bucks and waited till it appeared on the small screen. But unlike other big budget works by “visionary” directors, this will work very well on the smaller screen because, despite some arresting visuals, it’s essentially a chamber piece involving a handful of characters.

The highest praise I can give any director of an epic is the ability to not lose my interest for a single minute. So all praise Del Toro.

After The Hunt (2025) *

Don’t you hate it when directors want to have their cake and eat it? Effectively, this is a fairly humdrum MeToo thriller but looks like it’s written by a dozen op-ed columnists taking aim at half a dozen targets, populated by little more than cliche characters, wrapped up in a fog of pretension, and spectacularly sabotaged by a deus ex machina ending that no amount of Oscar-baiting can salvage.

Large gobbets of narrative are missed out, theoretically so we make up our minds about the characters but in reality because the director can’t make up his mind where he wants to go. When the director can’t make up his mind how to frame a scene he resorts to showing us hands.

So here’s the myriad scenarios at play. Married alpha female Alma (Julia Roberts), pushing 60, a philosophy professor, adored by her students, with whom she flirts at will, is battling a pushing-40s singleton rival Hank (Andrew Garfield), adored by his students, with whom he flirts at will, for a coveted tenure at Yale. Quite why Alma, at her age, hasn’t achieved tenure before is never explained. To help heat things up, Hank has the hots for the older woman.

Wealthy gay student Maggie (Ayo Edebiri) claims Hank raped her and he’s fired. Pressure is brought to bear on Alma to back Maggie. But there’s a twist. Or theoretically, there’s a twist. Hank is about to expose Maggie as a plagiarist so she’d use any excuse to get rid of him. Theoretically. And this is one of the many ways in which the picture ties itself up in knots because Maggie doesn’t know about Hank’s suspicions.

Maggie also knows Alma’s big secret because hunting in a toilet cabinet for toilet roll she finds taped to the underside of a shelf an envelope containing stuff that might (it later transpires) allow Maggie to happily set Hank up on the assumption Alma would take her side.

This he said/she said plays out to a mess of philosophy. The screenplay takes potshots at each generation in turn, the older one represented by Alma, the next one represented by Hank and the entitled younger contemporary one represented by Maggie who take up vicious arms against anyone who oppose their limited point-of-view, i.e. the cancel culture generation.

But there’s something wrong with Alma. She takes a couple of pills first thing in the morning and is prone to collapsing in pain. But being the philosophic sort, she’s a stoic and doesn’t tell faithful husband Frederik (Michael Stulbarg) and is popping other pills at other times. But she’s committed the grievous sin of not fully endorsing Maggie and the pupil has stirred up her friends to arms.

Given Alma’s been caught stealing a prescription and is hauled before the departmental authorities, it seems she’s for the high jump. But, lo, suddenly she’s handed a miraculous get-out-of-jail-free guard. Surrounded by baying students, she collapses. Naturally, this being the social media generation, this encounter is filmed. Turns out Alma has perforated ulcers. And the outcome is that the students end their opposition to her (in case, presumably, they are blamed for causing said collapse), and the department decides that stealing prescriptions can be swept under the carpet, so she gains tenure, Hank is cast out into the wilderness and Maggie transforms herself into a MeToo poster girl for Yale.

But that’s not even the barmiest part. Alma’s big secret is that, as an underage teenager, she was seduced by an older man. She only exposed him when he dropped her for another woman and he committed suicide. Despite common sense telling her that she was not to blame, she persists in wallowing in guilt, viewing the man who abused her as the victim of her wiles. Which just goes to show you can study Kierkagaard and philosophers till the cows come home but if it suits a barmy director’s narrative purpose you will end up being presented as dumb as all get-out.

So this all plays out against a backdrop of philosophical gibberish and Frederik’s jealousy of the attention lavished, by males and females alike, on his charismatic wife.

When a marketing team goes down the Oscar-bait route – see Dwayne Johnson and The Smashing Machine – and claims stunning acting is the reason for seeing a movie devoid of the more essential audience engagement you know you’re in for a rough ride.

Sure, both Julia Roberts (Ticket to Paradise, 2022) and Andrew Garfield (We Live in Time, 2024) have dumped their usual cuteness but it’s not enough to save the picture. Ayo Edebiri (Omni Loop, 2024) is left with no choice but to over-act. Directed by Luca Guadagnini (Challengers, 2024), written by Nora Garrett in her debut.

I saw four movies in two days and in all honesty Gabby’s Dollhouse best fulfilled audience expectation.

This is not just a complete dud but way past its meager theatrical run is going to annoy the hell out of everyone as marketeers and critics try to position Roberts as an Oscar contender.

The worst kind of lazy filmmaking.

The Smashing Machine (2025) ***

I’m sorry to have to break this to you but it’s a sob story. Top fighter loses in his bid to become world champion – in fact, he doesn’t come close. Sure, he recovers from addiction but his love life takes a beating because like any other careerist he’s too focused on job and the girlfriend is an unwelcome distraction.

Apart from that it’s a paean. But to the unknowns, the pioneers in a sport now worth billions. Admittedly, the rules keep changing so it’s hard to keep track – and our hero has joined the Japanese version of the UFC so he’s not even a god of the UFC – but basically the sport seems to consist of hauling your opponent to the canvas and then beating the daylights out of him until he taps out.

And we’re also into another risky trope – the movie equivalent of the comedian who wants to play Hamlet. We’ve had various iterations over the last few years (Demi Moore in The Substance, 2024, Pamela Anderson in The Last Showgirl, 2024) and here we’re served up global megastar Dwayne Johnson (Black Adam, 2022) with hair, a thin thatch on top, eyebrows and belatedly a little goatee.

And sure he’s light years away from his normal screen persona – as though that’s doesn’t take acting and is merely an extension of his WWE persona The Rock – and his Mark Kerr is certainly an interesting character, determined not to be riddled with doubts, keeping emotions at a distance and becoming addicted to painkillers. But there’s just not enough narrative for a gripping story. I’d never heard of Mark Kerr and I’ve never heard of the Japanese version of the UFC and director Benny Safdie (Uncut Gems, 2019) makes it hard for me to care.

A whole raft of supporting characters shuffle in and out, introduced only by an unseen commentator, whose voice strangely never rises to any peak of excitement and who comes across like he’s delivering a movie voiceover rather than being integral to the plot. So there’s a whole bunch of fights featuring characters who you’ve never heard of appearing for a minute or so.

The better story concerns Mark’s buddy, Mark Coleman (Ryan Bader), a family man and making a comeback.

But really this can’t make up its mind what approach to take – the blood and thunder a la Raging Bull (1980), the behind-the-scenes work a la Rocky (1975), or exploring a relationship set on edge by vulnerabilities, girlfriend Dawn (Emily Blunt), all cleavage and tight trousers, a walking touch-paper, oozing volatility. Mark Kerr was a former wrestler who transitioned into this sport, but there’s little attempt to explore the background in the way of The Iron Claw (2023).

Sometimes the wrong kind of hype can kill off a picture’s commercial prospects. Judging by the dismal opening weekend, the star’s built-in audience has opted out of a movie that features Johnson in a potentially Oscar-winning performance while the arthouse bunch, which would normally steer clear of any Johnson vehicle, has shown little interest in finding out whether he can act. Perhaps, more critically, the burgeoning UFC audience, preferring the overt to the subtle, has turned its nose up.

And the ironic thing is, yes, this would be an interesting performance, whoever played the character, because Mark Kerr isn’t your normal sportsman. But apart from his obvious emotional reticence revealed in scenes with his girlfriend, too much of his character is revealed in interviews with journalists rather than through the drama.

I don’t know where the dough went on this one. It cost $50 million but mostly takes place on confined sets. We are told that Mark Kerr fights in front of thousands of people but you barely see about fifty and way in the background.

Written by the director.

Interesting rather than involving.

On Swift Horses (2025) *** – Seen at the Cinema

Authentic story stymied by unlikely plot. Set in a post-Korean War American when the United States is still a land of opportunity even for blue collar workers but sexuality and other forms of self-expression are stifled and the homosexual world is only accessible through secret codes. Married Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones) hankers after something of the wilder life apparently enjoyed by the brother Julius (Jacob Elordi) of her staid husband Lee (Will Poulter). Truth be told she hankers after an illicit relationship with Julius.

Muriel harbors two other secrets. Firstly, she wants to gamble, a notion that would never gain approval from her husband, who accounts for every penny in his bid to own his own home and thus move up in society. Secondly, she has lesbian tendencies and gradually, encouraged by the self-confidence generated through successful betting at the racetrack, she assumes a different persona, surprisingly capable of making the first move.

Lee is aware of his brother’s proclivities, though these, too, are measured in guarded tones. Julius lives “in another world”, not just the low-down hustling and gambling and earning a living as a gigolo and card cheat. His homosexuality is repressed but his barriers are broken down by Mexican hustler Henry (Diego Calva). But while Julius is willing to settle for a life of energetic sex with Henry, his lover has greater ambition and plans to move up in society via the scam route.

Muriel’s affection for Julius is not hampered by the fact that he constantly steals from her, pocketing the cash she sends him for a bus fare home, burglarizing their house while they sleep. And while she is happy to indulge in a casual affair with gay neighbor Sandra (Sasha Calle) she’s not whole-heartedly committed to that lifestyle. And it’s hard to see just how committed she is to Lee – the horde of cash she wins at the racecourse she keeps hidden from her husband even though it would miraculously ease their upwardly mobility.

While Muriel negotiates the hidden world with some care – gay people of both sexes meet at a certain hotel or come together under the guise of a book club – Julius is less wary and is beaten up and robbed a couple of times.

This isn’t quite the lush America of 1950s Hollywood with women bedecked in colorful dresses and enjoying cocktails, but there’s still satisfaction to be had in hauling yourself up and owning a tract of land and your own house. And it’s still down’n’dirty. Casinos spy on customers through two-mirror mirrors set in the ceiling and beat the life out of anyone caught cheating.

What wins your heart is the yearning. Muriel is caught in a half-world, even when she finds a willing lesbian partner she still aches for a heterosexual whirl with Julius. And Julius who believes he has found a safe sexual haven with Henry discovers that the latter’s naked ambition will destroy their tryst.

What doesn’t work are the fairy tale aspects. Julius isn’t a particularly good card cheat, a hidden ace or a partner at another table providing him with illicit advantage at the poker table. You’d expect he’d be rumbled quite easily. But the plot says no.

Similarly, Muriel enjoys an unbelievable good run on the horses, able to turn tips overheard from customers in the diner where she works into winning bets. Pretty quickly, and without a stumble, she has amassed a stash of $20,000. As if.

The ending doesn’t work either, Julius galloping on a horse (yep!) from San Diego to Las Vegas – a distance of some 350 miles (that’s some horse!) – after he realizes that, in fact, his heart belongs to Muriel, whose marriage has at last broken up, and she’s decided to follow her heart and become a gambler.

It leaves you wondering what kind of relationship they would have, a lavender marriage, where both are free to indulge in other aspects of their sexuality, no doubt living high on the hog from her racetrack winnings and his cheating at cards.

It looks to me like the director has bottled out of the third act, the one where supposedly they are the person of each other’s dreams and manage to make a life together as happy gamblers, until one or other decides that a person of their own sex is more fulfilling ultimately than a person of the opposite sex.

You didn’t need the barmy plot for this to work. And in fact it’s the barmy plot that gets in the way of it working. Both Julius and Muriel are entirely believable in looking for a love that dare not speak its name but can yet be easily located if you can follow the codes or if your gaydar is sufficiently developed.

Oddly enough, the most heart-breaking scene is the one before the barmy galloping. On the message board inside a gay meeting place are notes revealing the heartbreak caused not just by the dashing of love’s hopes but the destruction of marriages by men unable to conceal their secret desires.

The acting is uniformly good, though Jacob Elordi (Saltburn, 2023) thanks to his vulnerability, wins by a nose from Daisy Edgar-Jones (Twisters, 2024). But Will Poulter (Warfare, 2025) and Diego Calva (Babylon, 2022) also score points. Movie directing debut from Daniel Minahan from a script by Bryce Kass (Lizzie, 2018) based on the novel by Shannon Pufahl.

While you have to admire the actors for taking a gamble on this project – Elordi and Edgar-Jones are down as executive producers so they might also have taken pay cuts. But it has been an unmitigated financial bomb. Even the leanest movies these days appear to cost upwards of $10 million and this has barely touched the $1 million mark in global box offices. I attended the only daily screening at my local multiplex and there was only one other person in the audience. It probably deserves better and might have an afterlife on a streamer.

Enjoy the performances and ignore the plot.

Honey, Don’t! (2025) ** – Seen at the Cinema

Had I still been in the magazine business I would have welcomed this with open arms because it would have provided an ideal headline – “Honey, Don’t Go.”

I’m not sure what Ethan Coen (True Grit, 2010) thought he was making and even if it was a shaggy dog story as often were the tales he concocted with his brother this has turned out more like a dog’s breakfast. Which is a shame because it’s about time Margaret Qualley (The Substance, 2024) was elevated from indie product to mainstream. She’s certainly got a screen presence and if someone could only fit a movie around what she has to offer she’d be on her way.

Excepting some salty dialog, this comes up short on every front. The narrative is so thin it’s disappeared down every convenient rabbit hole, the characters are equally lacking (though my guess is they’re meant to be slices of cliché, that’s the game) and there’s a deliberate emphasis on keeping emotion to the bare minimum.

The two main characters, private eye Honey Donohue (Margaret Qualley) and cop M G Falcone (Aubrey Plaza), congratulate themselves on being so completely self-centered that all dalliances are strictly confined to one-nighters, such restrictions imposed before the other person gets all weepy and emotional. Honey and MG, both being lesbians, are able to get away with such notions. Imagine a male attempting to classify all females as just too emotional.

I say Honey is a private eye but it’s kind of hard for her to keep clients because they keep on being bumped off before she can take any action. And when she does, she doesn’t prove much cop. In fact, she’s actually that old film noir fallback – the dupe. And she only realizes she’s been played for a patsy when she sees – another old fallback – two cups on a table (it’s an old-fashioned house hence the teacups).

It’s a strange construct. The audience knows what’s going on but poor Honey is kept in the dark and at the climax it looks very much like she’s setting herself up to be the dupe again.

So what the audience knows that Honey doesn’t is that a woman who died in a car accident has had a distinctive ring stolen by a woman on a moped, Chere (Lera Abova), who in another old-time fallback can’t pass a pool without skinny dipping. The ring has a logo that ties in with that of the religious scam being run by uber hunk preacher Rev Drew Devlin (Chris Evans).who uses the church as a cover for some drug-running for Chere and to provide him a harem of submissive females.

A sub-plot that then becomes a main plot sees Honey putting in some time helping out her aunt’s wayward daughter Corinne (Talia Ryder) though you suspect she’s there just to let Honey beat the bejasus out of her niece’s abusive boyfriend.

There’s also an old creepy homeless fella hanging around that starts out as a red herring, looks as though it could dovetail into an emotional scene, but then shies well clear of that because, well heck, Honey doesn’t do emotion.

I’ve got a sneaky feeling that the director wasn’t trying to make a Coen Bros movie so much as a Tarantino one. There’s a helluva lot riding on the word “Macaroni” for example. And the application of lipstick. And there’s a helluva lot of nudges towards the hardcore – in the way of sex not music – a dishwashing scene and a bar sequence come to mind.

Sure, Honey snaps off a few one-liners but mostly you’re going to remember her sashaying along in a tight skirt and clackety high heels – which may well have the director’s intention for all I know.

This feels like a clumsier retread of Drive-Away Dolls (2024), a similar dive into lesbian-led crime, also starring Qualley, directed by Coen and co-written by Tricia Cooke, who performs the same service here.

More a collection of mismatched sequences with a myriad of oddball characters none distinctive enough to make you sit up than anything in the way of a coherent plot.