Pop Culture Archives - Ian Thomas Malone

Tuesday

13

January 2026

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COMMENTS

Classic Film: Loving Annabelle

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

The past few years have been quite the mixed bag for LGBTQ representation. Queer visibility is greater than ever, but there has been quite the push and pull to see that reflected on screen. In many ways, the early aughts feel like a lifetime ago, especially through the prism of 2006’s Loving Annabelle.

Simone (Diane Gaidry) is a poetry teacher at an all-girls Catholic boarding school, which she also attended. Simone is a reserved teacher, clearly struggling a bit under the repressive confines of her religion, a dynamic not exactly lost on the school priest (Kevin McCarthy). There’s a certain natural sense of claustrophobia at a place like Saint Theresa’s, full of nuns ready to punish any deviation from the norm.

Simone’s life is upended when a new student, Annabelle (Erin Kelly) arrives at the school. Annabelle is a free spirit, quickly earning the ire of Mother Immaculata (Ilene Graff), the school principal, when she refuses to take off her Buddhist beads. Assigned to Simone’s dorm and her classroom, Annabelle quickly takes an interest in the new authority figure in her life.

Initially resistant to Annabelle’s many charms, Simone starts to crack. While watching Annabelle over spring break, Simone takes her student up to her beach house. As Simone’s hard exterior starts to give way, Annabelle learns the source of her teacher and crush’s intense reservations, eventually prompting a relationship between the two.

Director Katerine Brooks’ narrative is quite the problematic story. The dynamic between teacher and underage student creates plenty of power dynamic issues that the film is reluctant to explore. With a runtime of just 76 minutes, there is little space to address any of the themes, an almost nonexistent third act.

Gaidry and Kelly are quite the awkward fit. Annabelle exudes a level of spunk that dances around the idea of maturity, a manic pixie dream type that’s just barely believable within the panopticon of a place like Saint Theresa’s. Kelly does an admirable job with what she was given, but Annabelle is not exactly a three-dimensional character.

Gaidry, on the other hand, brings a tragic lived-in quality to the tortured Simone. Brooks’ messy feature shines brightest when highlighting the cost of Simone’s decades of repression, capturing the zeitgeist of being gay in George Bush’s America. The curtain is never quite pulled back on Simone’s character, but it’s also easy to see how much she gave up of herself just to maintain a semblance of composure in her stuffy world.

The aughts were not a nuanced time for gay people. Plenty of teachers lost their jobs just for being gay, let alone sleeping with a student. Twenty years later, we can understand the twisted thought process that might lead a grown adult to throw out common sense, even if we don’t agree with her abuse of power.

Loving Annabelle is not a great movie. There’s too much left on the table for the pieces to make for a particularly satisfying experience, but Brooks constantly shows her audience how much she understands about these complicated dynamics. We don’t always need to watch upstanding citizens.

Sometimes, the world is better off with messier protagonists like Simone. You don’t need to give her a pass for sleeping with her student to see the tragedy of a life wasted, in service to repression. Simone gave her whole life to a school that would turn its back on her the second she life an authentic life.

The canon of LGBTQ films is similarly messy, full of talented directors forced to adapt their works to the hysteria that’s plagued our nation for longer than anyone could care to admit. How many gay people could really be themselves in 2006, with no consequences to their well-being or their livelihoods? Simone was a woman of faith, with absolutely nothing to show for it.

Plenty in our country want to return to the times of Loving Annabelle. Far too many parts of America never stopped being that oppressive wasteland. Brooks’ work feels like a relic of a bygone era, but for many, it’s still their present. It’s a sad indictment on our reality that this film, and all its imperfections, are still so potent twenty years down the road. We should have moved on by now, but this film still has plenty to teach us all.

Friday

9

January 2026

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COMMENTS

‘Marty Supreme’ review: Chalamet’s powerful treatise on ego is not to be misssed

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

Part of the beauty of art is its ability to circumvent the normal rules of society. Who would want to spend an evening with some of the most unpleasant people on the planet? In real life, the thought of such an expenditure would be preposterous. Marty Supreme certainly offers a compelling case for the contrary.

The narrative follows Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet), a talented but arrogant table tennis player, trying to make a name for himself in 1952, long before the sport achieved even a semblance of mainstream popularity (Table tennis wasn’t added to the Olympics until 1988). Unfilled with his job as a shoe salesman at his uncle’s store, he robs the safe to fund his travel to London for the British Open.

While in London, Marty lets his ego do most of the talking. He angers the head of the International Table Tennis Association (Pico Iyer) by complaining about the shabby player accommodations, choosing instead to stay in an extravagant suite at the Ritz Hotel. Rather than prepare for the tournament, Marty chases after Kay Stone (Gweneth Paltrow), a retired actress and wife of Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary), a pen tycoon. Rockwell takes an interest in the sport after Marty loses the British Open to a Japanese phenom.

Marty Supreme is director Josh Safdie’s first film without his brother since 2008’s highly underrated The Pleasure of Being Robbed. Safdie’s command of pacing is quite exceptional, building up dramatic tension with the pizazz and precision of a high-octane ping pong match, aided greatly by a synth-heavy score from Daniel Lopatin. Few films that carry a hefty 150-minute runtime flow with such ease.

Safdie strikes gold again with his trademark casting of non-actors. Kevin O’Leary, best known for his appearances on Shark Tank and Fox News, puts forth a compelling effort as Rockwell. O’Leary doesn’t quite disappear his role in the same way as Kevin Garnett in Uncut Gems, but Mr. Wonderful exudes sleaze on just the right level, holding his own against Chalamet and Paltrow.

Chalamet delivers what could very end up being a career-defining performance. Marty is so transparently full of himself, but Chalamet’s charm offensive is quite contagious. The character is most sympathetic when looking out for Rachel (Odessa A’zion), his married childhood friend who became pregnant as a result of their affair, but Safdie never tries to get his audience to feel for Marty. There is nothing admirable about his antics, no reason to root for him beyond the pleasant aroma from the vapors of his charisma.

What’s so delightful about Safdie’s storytelling is the way he presents a man, so consumed by his own greatness, without expecting anyone to buy into his crap. No one took ping pong seriously in 1952. Even today, it’s hardly the kind of sport whose top stars sleep in presidential suites and sit down to dinner with Hollywood A-Listers.

Our world is full of billionaire men who think they can change the world with a snap of a finger. Last year, Elon Musk walked into the federal government with nothing more than a chainsaw. The world’s richest man came with no plan, and left Washington having accomplished nothing besides a colossal headache that will take years to correct.

Marty Mauser has a lot of raw talent. He is quite clever. Somewhere along the way, he became convinced that the Meidas Touch was all that mattered. Talent only takes you so far.

Safdie manages to craft a narrative that provides plenty of thrills, even if you’re not terribly invested in Marty’s fate. He doesn’t quite stick the landing, a bit of an unsatisfying come down after a two and a half hour high. Fans of Uncut Gems may be disappointed by the sheer amount of familiar notes within Marty Supreme’s rhythm.

Egomaniacs rarely contemplate the limits of their own genius. Men like Musk are not solely driven by their bank accounts, but also through the adulation of their admirers. Marty would be a lot better off if he’d spent more time honing his own talent instead of incessantly trying to convince the rest of the world that he’s “Hitler’s worst nightmare.”

He is a nightmare, yes. Safdie’s frantic film plays out a lot like an elite game of ping pong, impressive to those who otherwise couldn’t care less about the sport. That’s the thing about ego. When you’re completely high on yourself, you think you’re all that matters, even while the rest of the world laughs at you and your silly sport.

Monday

5

January 2026

2

COMMENTS

‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ review: Cameron finally proves his critics right with this dull slop

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

The Avatar franchise is often referred to as the most culturally irrelevant billion-dollar franchise. James Cameron directed three of the four highest-grossing movies of all time. Does it really matter if you don’t see tons of kids trick-or-treating as forgettable scantily clad blue aliens?

Cinema-obsessed philosophers can pontificate what it means for society that billion billion-dollar film contains a bunch of characters with forgettable names, a plot that resembles the love child of Ferngully and Dances With Wolves, and draws out little emotion from its audience when the credits roll besides relief that they can finally use the bathroom. None of that really has to matter. All we should really care about concerning Avatar: Fire and Ash, the third film in the franchise, is one simple question. Is this film any good?

Fire and Ash picks up right where The Way of Water left off. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoë Saldana) are still mourning their son’s death. Jake grows worried that Spider (Jake Campion), the human son of Quadritch (Stephen Lang), who was human in the first film before being resurrected as a Na’vi Recombinant, can’t survive in their environment without his breathing mask. An effort to bring Spider to other humans is disrupted by the Mangkwan, a clan of exiled volcano-dwelling Na’Vi. The Mangkwan leader Varang (Oona Chaplin) allies with Lang and his human handlers, still after whale brain juice and colonizing the planet, to terrorize Sully and his family once again.

The Way of Water premiered thirteen years after its predecessor. Cameron’s second film on Pandora had a lot of natural goodwill going for it, the lengthy gap between installments serving as a natural palate cleanser. The Way of Water was chock-full of technological breakthroughs. Whatever shortcomings existed in its narrative were easily washed over by the breathtaking nature of the cinematography, underwater special effects that had never been done before.

Fire and Ash comes just three years after The Way of Water. Pandora is still a beautiful place, with some of the best special effects in the industry, but it’s not a new place. We’ve been here before.

Complicating matters even worse is the fact that we’ve seen this story before. Fire and Ash is essentially a mash-up of the first two movies. Viewers are once again treated to a giant battle over colonization.

Fire and Ash struggles to overcome the clunky child custody case at the core of its narrative, a story otherwise content with playing a medley of Pandora’s greatest hits. Spider’s arc follows a lot of the same beats as Sully’s journey in the original Avatar. He’s a human who wants to be Na’Vi, caught between a biological father who is now a Na’Vi, and an adoptive Na’Vi father who was once human. To complicate matters worse, Cameron throws in a parallel to the Binding of Issac that seriously undercuts Sully as a character.

The Way of Water spent a lot of time building out Sully’s family, and the water-based Metkayina people. Putting aside the cliches, their family and their world felt alive, something worth the three-hour-plus investment that these films ask of their audiences. Fire and Ash doesn’t really care much about any of that development. The ball isn’t moved forward so much as it’s punted into the ocean.

Instead, we get a lot of repetitive scenes and clunky exposition. The idea of the Mangkwan is mildly interesting, but Cameron does nothing with them. Varang is a one-dimensional secondary villain in a film content to reuse the same big bad for the third movie in a row.

Aside from the heavy emphasis on Spider, the kids play second fiddle this time around. Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), Jake’s surviving son, gets barely any arc. Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) is still weird, a dynamic that isn’t exactly helped by having a 76-year-old woman play a teenager. Avatar has a lot of characters with confusing names, but Fire and Ash doesn’t give many reasons to care about a single one of them.

James Cameron has made at least two of the greatest sequels of all time, in Aliens and Terminator 2. The Way of Water defied all the naysayers who looked to the whole franchise with a collective shrug. Sadly, that appears to be the very same energy Cameron brought with him into Fire and Ash.

197 minutes is quite a long time for most audiences to stay engaged. Fire and Ash’s similarly long predecessor managed to circumvent this dilemma quite well with its strong pacing that still found time to embrace the quiet moments of its narrative. Here, Cameron hasn’t done enough legwork to keep things running smoothly. It’s too easy for the mind to wander amidst a film that’s largely running on autopilot.

Fire and Ash isn’t a terrible film, though easily Cameron’s worst since Piranha 2, his directorial debut that he mostly disavows. In some ways, it’s something worse, a validation of everything that’s been said about the Avatar franchise. Not every movie needs to be a cultural behemoth. Our society is essentially moving on from any strand of a collective consciousness as it is.

But a movie does need to give its viewers some semblance of satisfaction for having made the investment. A lot of time and money went into making this complete bore. For decades, Cameron’s films have wowed audiences around the globe. Sadly, there’s nothing new here.

Thursday

13

November 2025

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‘Predator: Badlands’ review: a very solid, safe entry in the long-running franchise

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

Academic research is often described as carving a new niche between two thoroughly explored subjects. Outside of medicine, the sciences, and a few other fields, people who arrive to grad school looking to break ground in the wild west are frequently met with disappointment, instead expected to cater to the norm. Conformity takes a lot of fun out of the whole adventure.

Hollywood functions in much the same way, especially toward its long-running franchises. Filmmakers are not supposed to reinvent the wheel so much as give their audiences a slightly fresh perspective on the wheel they already know and love. Director Dan Trachtenberg found that sweet spot with 2022’s Prey, a delightfully unique perspective on the Predator franchise, quite a feat for the seventh entry in the series (counting the two Alien vs. Predator films).

After directing the animated feature Predator: Killer of Killers, which was released this past June, Trachtenberg returns for his third go-around with Predator: Badlands, a film that flips the original concept. Once the big bad, the titular Yautja are now the protagonists.

Badlands follows Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), the runt of his clan. Weakness is not exactly tolerated among predators, but Dek’s older brother Kwei (Mike Homik) shows some rare mercy toward his sibling, angering their father Njohrr (Reuben de Jong). After Kwei refuses his father’s orders to kill Dek, Njohrr executes him instead. Desperate to prove he belongs in his clan, Dek travels to the “death planet” Genna to kill the fearsome Kalisk.

Once on the inhospitable planet, Dek meets Thia (Elle Fanning), an android from the Weyland-Yutani corporation (who make all the synthetics in the Alien franchise), who’s missing her bottom half. Thia also misses her sister Tessa (also Fanning), the leader of the synth team dispatched to Genna, also hunting the Kalisk. Despite his species’ inclination for solitude, Dek teams up with the non-person to hunt his prey, dreaming of revenge against his father.

Trachtenberg frequently demonstrates his deep comprehension of the franchise. Clocking in at 107-minutes, the narrative moves briskly through its paint-by-numbers plot. The pacing is quite strong, if not a little formulaic.

Schuster-Koloamatangi walks a fine line with Dek quite well. Badlands is the first Predator film to earn a PG-13 rating. The lack of gore and extreme violence does come with some unnecessary cutesy antics, but Dek is a relatable protagonist. The film doesn’t go for full Terminator 2 cartoonish antics for its villain-turned-lead.

Fanning is the real core of the film, carving a niche for Thia that’s quite different from the synths who have come before in previous Alien films. Found family is predictably a major theme of the narrative. Badlands has zero human characters, though the film can’t really help but filter its musings on identity through a distinctly human lens.

It’s hard not to be won over by Fanning’s relentless sense of earnestness. The film isn’t afraid to wear its emotions on its sleeve. Much like its synths, there is a perpetual sense of artificialness to the narrative’s sense of heart. Trachtenberg is moving too quickly to give his work much of a chance to breathe.

The action work is quite strong, particularly in the first two acts. Trachtenberg blends practical effects and CGI quite well. Things come a little undone in the third act. Everything is a bit too predictable. The final action sequences lack any real sense of suspense.

The film’s big issue is that Dek and Thia are both about 80% of fully fleshed out characters. They’re easy to bond with, not necessarily because of the work of the film, but because we’ve seen these types of characters before. Both actors put forth fine work, but the whole experience is a little too cookie-cutter.

Trachtenberg delivers a solid popcorn film, entertaining work that falls well short of what we know he’s capable of. One might have hoped he’d swing a little harder for the fences after the treat that was Prey. Instead, we’re left with something perfectly content to be aggressively fine. The lazy third act is essentially a metaphor for the whole film: just good enough.

Nobody necessarily expects greatness from a franchise eight films in. Prey delivered that, when no one expected it. As a series, Predator hasn’t exactly hit the high watermarks of its companion franchise, Alien, whose first two installments were directed by Ridley Scott and James Cameron at the top of their games.

Badlands is a fun time. It’s an extremely competent film, an accolade that shouldn’t feel like an insult for a narrative that never once tried for greatness. The bar could have been raised after Prey. One can’t help but wonder why it wasn’t.

Sunday

12

October 2025

0

COMMENTS

‘Tron: Ares’ review: pathetic slop sprinkled with pretty visuals and a killer score

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

The world of Tron is not exactly Shakespearean in nature, but Disney’s handling of its enigmatic science fiction franchise over the past forty years has been nothing shy of a tragedy. The Grid is such a delectable palette for creative storytelling, something that no filmmaker who’s touched the material has ever quite figured out. The same pattern emerges through the decades. Tron hits theaters, impresses with its visuals, bores with its plot, and makes just enough money that someone considers bringing it out of hibernation every few decades.

Tron: Ares tries to set itself apart from its predecessors, at least on the surface, with its preoccupation with the real world rather than The Grid. Fifteen years have passed since the events of Tron: Legacy. ENCOM is in a technology race with Dillinger Systems, founded by former ENCOM executive and original Tron tertiary villain Ed Dillinger. Dillinger Systems is now run by Ed’s grandson Julian (Evan Peters), who courts the military with his new Master Control Program (MCP), Ares (Jared Leto).

While Dillinger Systems and ENCOM are both capable of bringing their digital constructs into reality, essentially a reverse of the technology that sends humans to The Grid, neither can do so for longer than 29 minutes. New ENCOM CEO Eve Kim (Greta Lee) and her assistant Seth (Arturo Castro) travel to a remote Alaskan bunker once used by Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) in search of the “permanence code” that would remove the 29-minute limitation.

Julian sends Ares and his second-in-command, Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith), to capture hacked ENCOM and capture Eve, in search of the permanence code. Along the way, Ares starts to develop a conscience, realizing that Dillinger Systems is the bad kind of capitalism, while ENCOM is the more benevolent corporation. Ares and Eve team up, escape the Dillinger version of the Grid, and try to learn a bit about humanity as they run around trying to evade Athena.

Ares spent about fifteen years in development, much of it as a direct sequel to Legacy, before being redeveloped around Leto’s character. The Legacy screenwriters, Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, received a story credit for Ares. The finished product puts quite a bit of distance between itself and Legacy, while clinging hard to the original 1982 Tron.

Director Joachim Rønning is put in the untenable position of having to craft his own narrative that never really lets you forget it relies on Tron’s broader lore. Casual fans may not remember Dillinger much, but the constant references to the Flynn family do no favors to Ares’ bloated cast of cardboard human characters. Peters does a serviceable job as a generic evil billionaire, a bargain bin Lex Luthor.

Lee exists in this weird space where Eve is the lead human character, and basically the de facto protagonist. Ares is clearly meant to be Leto’s vehicle. Rønning provides some basic slivers of plot to try to endear his audience to Eve, but Lee is never really afforded a chance to make the character her own. It’s as if Disney realized that Legacy managed to stand upright without a particularly memorable lead performance from Garrett Hedlund as Sam Flynn, and decided that Eve similarly didn’t have to do much either.

Leto fully immerses himself in the role of a computer program desperate to be a real boy. He is a very believable soulless construct. He even has a few slivers of charm here and there, but the film suffers from an uneven point of view. This film is less Eve’s or Ares’ than a paint-by-numbers action flick capable of going through the motions, but never really making them feel alive.

Gillian Anderson is largely wasted in a supporting role as Julian’s mother Elisabeth. The rest of the supporting cast put forth an eager effort, but the film suffers from way too many characters. Turner-Smith is perhaps the one actor who seems to know this is supposed to be a Tron movie. Athena is a lot of fun.

Both Tron and Tron: Legacy suffered from uneven storytelling, requiring state-of-the-art visuals and stellar scores to carry their narratives. Rønning delivers the visuals. Ares is a beautiful sight to behold on the big screen. Nine Inch Nails put forth a superb musical effort that would almost justify Ares’ existence as an extended music video, paying homage to the ground trodden by Wendy Carlos and Daft Punk while carving out their own niche. The music is pretty much the only original thing Ares has going for it.

The film’s original sin is its preoccupation with the real world. People don’t wait decades to watch programs fight in cities. Tron’s real treasure is The Grid. Ares barely cares about The Grid.

If the screenwriters didn’t know how to tell a good story in The Grid, they’d hardly be the first. This is not a franchise known for its meaty plots. Ares had fifteen years to fix the narrative shortcomings of Legacy, a film that in spite of that gaping hole, and Hedlund’s forgettable lead performance, had plenty of things going for it. It’s frankly pathetic that this is what they came up with.

The result is indistinguishable from the AI it nominally critiques, empty slop poured into its audience’s feed trough. Rarely does a major blockbuster rely so heavily on its composers to add any semblance of creative expression to such a lifeless corpse. There are way too many scenes that drag for an action film that clocks in at just under two hours.

Even Bridges feels fairly checked out amidst the film’s finest sequence, well-executed nostalgia bait for diehards of the original Tron. There’s much more of The Dude in his performance than Flynn, which might be the right attitude to bring to this disaster. The third act is far too pleased to give its audience slivers of what would have been a far more interesting movie.

Tron has never been prestige art. Tron and Tron: Legacy are both deeply flawed narratives that succeeded due to the ample heart that went into both productions. Those films brought something new to the table. They had something to say.

Ares is often very pretty. The music is wonderful. Yet again, this franchise was let down by its screenwriters. It’s taken forty years to make three Tron movies. Maybe in another forty years, we’ll get one with a decent plot.

Monday

22

September 2025

0

COMMENTS

‘Spinal Tap II: The End Continues’ review: a meager attempt at a sequel

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

Comedy sequels are tricky for an obvious reason. Just because something was funny once doesn’t mean it’ll be funny again. In fact, if something was already once, that’s a decent sign that it won’t be funny again. In general, the laws of diminishing returns affect comedies way more than drama.

This is Spinal Tap is one of the most beloved comedies of all time. What began as a satire of the music industry eventually took on a life of its own, with numerous reunion concerts, television appearances, and a few albums since the film’s 1984 premiere. Somewhere along the way, the lines became blurred and Spinal Tap became something of a real band, a reality that defines and plagues the follow-up film.

This is Spinal Tap was an early entry in the mockumentary genre, but the film had a real plot and a real narrative. Director Rob Reiner crafted something that felt like an actual rock documentary while never losing sight of its purpose as a comedy. Band members like David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) and Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) thought they were cool, but Reiner made clear to the audience that these people were washed-up losers. The exploration of their humanity gave the film an endearing quality that greatly added to its legacy.

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues is much more like a straight concert documentary. The film reunites the main trio, St. Hubbins, Tufnel, and Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) in New Orleans for a reunion in New Orleans, billed as their final show. The three have drifted apart in the past few decades, each pursuing other interests. St. Hubbins scores podcast music, Tufnel runs a guitar and cheese store, and Smalls operates a Museum of Glue. None of them has much affection for each other, a puzzling dynamic that remains underexplored throughout the narrative.

Much of the film centers around Tap practicing for their reunion show, jamming in a studio, mostly sitting in chairs. It’s kind of sweet, to a certain extent, watching old friends at it again after forty years. Guest in particular retains a healthy dose of that boyish charm he brought to Tufnel.

There are a few laughs to be found in the studio, particularly when it comes time to find a new drummer, a perilous task given the fate of all their other percussionists. The stagnancy drags. It’s neither funny nor particularly interesting to watch semi-pretend musicians rehearse for a semi-pretend concert. Against all odds, Reiner managed to make an 85-minute runtime feel like three hours, a painful slog that drags its way to the finish line.

Reiner, who reprises his role as fictional director Marty Di Bergi, seems quite bored throughout the endeavor, as does Guest, who struggles to muster up enthusiasm in many scenes past the first few minutes. This is Spinal Tap was Reiner’s first directorial effort. It’s understandable why he has such obvious love for the material, but that affection doesn’t translate well onto the finished product.

Two cameos from Paul McCartney and Elton John attempt to liven things up, while also highlighting a fundamental problem of the film. At one point during the original film, David gets angry when Spinal Tap is billed lower than a puppet show at a gig at an amusement park. Spinal Tap used to be pathetic. Now, musical icons want to play with them.

Spinal Tap’s extended victory tour would be more acceptable if this film had tried to include more actual jokes. There are a couple of gags here and there, but nowhere near enough to pad out a feature-length runtime. The improv doesn’t work at all. McCartney, in particular, looks like a deer in the headlights when it comes to humor. Elton fares a bit better in a smaller appearance.

Did the world need another Spinal Tap film? No, but the music industry has changed quite a lot since we last checked in with the band. There was ample material to make a sequel. Reiner and crew just settled for the laziest path imaginable. There is some novelty in seeing them all on the big screen again, but this was a pathetic showing from the creative crew behind some of the greatest comedies of the past forty years. Everyone deserves better.

Wednesday

3

September 2025

0

COMMENTS

‘Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale’ review: a satisfying victory lap for the Crawley family

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Downton Abbey, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

(L to R) Laura Carmichael stars as Lady Edith, Harry Hadden-Paton as Bertie Hexham, Elizabeth McGovern as Cora Grantham, Hugh Bonneville stars as Robert Grantham and Michelle Dockery as Lady Mary in DOWNTON ABBEY: The Grand Finale, a Focus Features release.

Change has always been at the core of the Downton Abbey franchise. There is a certain natural contrast between its themes of navigating the post-Edwardian era and the reality that much of the best drama occurs within the trappings of that old world audiences know and love. After fifteen years, six television seasons, and three movies, the time has finally come to say goodbye, for presumably the last time.

Set at the beginning of the 1930s, not all that long after the events of the final season, Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale centers its narrative on Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) as she assumes command of the estate. Lady Mary’s ascension has been a long time coming, first discussed in season four. The death of Lady Mary’s husband Matthew (Dan Stevens) upended both the planning for Downton’s future within the show, as well as the series itself, which had to work around Stevens’ unexpected departure.

For the second half of the series, Lady Mary spent much of her narrative consumed with new suitors. After spending most of seasons four and five caught between two men, writer/series creator Julian Fellowes threw a curveball at the tail end of season five with the introduction of Henry Talbot (Matthew Goode). Lady Mary and Henry enjoyed a truncated romance throughout much of season six before marrying at the tail end of the series.

There was always a certain irony in Mary ending up with a car enthusiast after her first husband perished in a car accident during the season three Christmas special, an event that spoiled many viewers’ holiday. Three movies in, one can’t shake the feeling that déjà vu occurred once again while casting Mary’s spouse. One might have thought that the most important consideration for picking Mary’s second husband would be availability for the films that were an open secret by the show’s final season.

Instead, Fellowes settled on Goode, a highly sought-after actor with a schedule far too busy to play arm candy to Lady Mary. In some ways, this ended up working out kind of well. Henry’s minuscule part in the first Downton Abbey film and complete omission from the second two films might be disappointing for those who enjoyed the awkward pairing of Mary and Henry, but his absence gave the films some natural drama missing from the show finale’s preoccupation with tying everything in a neat little bow.

The Grand Finale largely focuses its narrative on the fallout of Mary’s divorce from Henry. Banished from London society, Mary seeks solace in her familiar Yorkshire, which is not immune to snobbery of its own. Set not long after the events of Downton Abbey: A New Era, Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) is still reeling from his mother’s death, unsure of his place in the world he’s given his life to preserving, resisting the gentle guidance of his wife Cora (Elizabeth McGovern) to relax in his old age.

Cora’s own mother passed away offscreen in between films. Expecting some of her inheritance to cover construction on the estate, Cora is shocked when her brother Harold Levinson (Paul Giamatti, reprising his role from the season four Christmas special) arrives in London with a poor financial outlook. Harold also brought his enigmatic financial advisor, Gus Sambrook (Alessandro Nivola), to explain his poor business dealings, which has been a recurring pattern for him since season four.

The final chapter has much more modest trappings than its cinematic predecessors. There’s no marquee event like a visit from the King or a mysterious French villa gifted to a dying octogenarian anchoring the narrative. Instead, Fellowes’ modest intentions serve as more of an extended episode of the series, a well-deserved victory lap.

Fellowes takes great care to ensure that each member of the franchise’s large ensemble gets a moment to shine. There are a few storylines that harken back to the show’s early days. Major events like World War I and the Spanish flu happened during the series, alongside more modest conflicts, like stomping out favoritism in the village Flower Show or whether a lady’s maid could still prepare a restorative broth. The Grand Finale manages to recapture some of the fun of the show’s early days as it wraps up storylines for over a dozen characters.

The shadow of the franchise’s matriarch and apex predator Violet Crawley looms large over the film. Maggie Smith is sorely missed. While nobody can replace her searing wit, Fellowes includes several tributes to the Dowager throughout the narrative. Fans of her frequent sparring with Isobel Crawley, the new Lady Merton (Penelope Wilton) will find much to enjoy.

While the film finds space for the whole cast, The Grand Finale is a lot less forcibly egalitarian than the first two films. This is Lady Mary’s film. Edith (Laura Carmichael) and Tom (Allen Leech) see their roles drastically reduced, the latter functioning in little more than a cameo. There’s a few touching moments for the older servants approaching the age of retirement, though the film conveniently forgets all that time spent on bed and breakfast investments from the final two seasons.

One of Fellowes’ finest achievements in the series was his portrayal of the Crawleys as quiet allies of the gay community. Series archvillain turned sympathetic hero Thomas Barrow (Robert James-Collier) struggled to accept his sexuality for much of the franchise, ultimately finding acceptance with actor Guy Dexter (Dominic West) in the previous film, resigning his role as butler of Downton. At a time when LGBTQ rights are under immense attack around the world, Fellowes finds ample beauty in his portrayal of the 1930s aristocracy as far more accepting than their modern counterparts.

Acceptance is an issue at the heart of The Grand Finale. Used to being the center of attention, Lady Mary struggles with her new outcast status as a divorcee in a world governed by tradition. Lord Grantham struggles to accept that his old world is gone.

There is a little awkwardness to be found at the heart of the drama. Mary is exiled from London society, yet expected to take the reins of an estate from her still-living father. There is a small acknowledgement that earls are no longer treated like village kings and queens, but Fellowes crafts a story that’s pretty damning to the concept of primogeniture amidst a narrative that still upholds the idealistic nature of country estate life.

Downton Abbey has always favored soapy storylines instead of serious drama, but missing from this film is an implicit defense of Downton as an estate. The series spent most of its run defending Downton as a place of employment, something even the first film managed to squeeze in late in its runtime. Free of her occasional nastiness, Fellowes firmly establishes Mary as a figure worth championing, but is Downton itself a cause worth championing? The film leaves a lot of food for thought on that front.

The pacing is a bit off throughout much of the film. Characters blow through scenes, speaking their lines without much of a chance to breathe. The 124-minute runtime is nearly identical to the first two films, only a bit longer than the Christmas specials that bookended each season after the first. An additional ten minutes would’ve given several scenes a much-needed chance to breathe.

As a franchise, Downton Abbey started wrapping itself up all the way back in season five. With that in mind, The Grand Finale didn’t have a ton of loose ends to tie up, besides the strands of plot that came loose from the last finale. Life is messy.

Downton Abbey took some turns that were out of Fellowes’ control, cast members whose absences had immutable effects on the narrative. Like its characters, the show managed to adapt. The Grand Finale is a triumph for the franchise and all its characters we’ve grown to love. Above all else, it’s a lot of fun to spend another few hours in this delightful world.

Tuesday

26

August 2025

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Classic Film: Metropolitan

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

There is a period of time in many young people’s lives where they grapple with the mechanics of the society around them, often interjecting the material they studied in school into their idealistic view of how society should work. Much of it is nonsense. The exercise often grows old around the same time you realize that the kids at the kegger don’t care about some long-dead French socialist.

Whit Stillman’s 1990 debut film Metropolitan centers its narrative around an odious, mostly harmless group of college students bored on winter break. Tom Townsend (Edward Clements) is a middle-class outsider making his way through Princeton. Tom hates high society, particularly debutante balls, but attends one anyway. A chance encounter lumps Tom in with a social group known as the Sally Fowler Rat Pack, who mostly attend balls and spend all night talking about philosophy and other idle musings.

Tom begins to shed his anti-bourgeoisie feelings as a result of the newfound attention bestowed on him by members of the SFRP, who largely adopt him into their group out of boredom, and a shortage of male escorts for the ball. Tom looks up to Nick Smith (Christopher Eigeman), one of the more outspoken and opinionated members of the group, who paints a bleak outlook for their generation. One girl in the group, Audrey (Carolyn Farina) grows attracted to Tom, who’s still hung up on his ex, Serena (Ellia Thompson), a friend of many of the women in the SFRP. Tom’s introduction into the group is met with suspicion by a few, namely Jane (Allison Parisi), who is extra defensive of Audrey.

Produced with a budget of just over $200,000, Stillman largely relies on his script and his actors to propel the narrative. Most of the scenes take place in apartments or on the peripherals of debutante balls. Eigeman and Parisi propel much of the story, both possessing large personalities capable of finding ample nuance in largely repetitive scenes. Clements, who never acted again aside from a small role in Star Trek IV: The Undiscovered County, fully embodies the awkward, aloof Tom, a young man who struggles to get enough of the very thing he claimed to hate.

The work of Jane Austen supplies a steady backdrop for Tom and the rest of the characters. Audrey is a huge Austen fan. Tom dumps on Austen’s work without having read it himself, instead relying on literary criticism to supply him with the opinions he thinks he’s supposed to have, without any sense of irony.

Stillman finds plenty of subtleties that elevate Metropolitan above a standard comedy of manners, able to engage earnestly with the concerns of youth without ever bending to the self-importance of his characters. The members of the SFRP are all experiencing their first small taste of freedom. That kind of liberation can go to one’s head rather easily. Stillman doesn’t fall for the superficialities of youth, instead opting for a more subtle approach that manages to supply some meaning for all the time spent discussing philosophy in the middle of the night.

The characters in Metropolitan often feel like a stretch of winter break is the most important part of their lives. Stillman handles them with grace without expecting his audience to buy into their nonsense. Metropolitan is not exactly life-changing cinema, but there’s a lot of heart in Stillman’s examination of the junior members of the bourgeoisie.

Tuesday

26

August 2025

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‘Last Summer’ review: a haunting treatise on lust

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

One of film’s disquieting pleasures is the way the medium offers its viewers the chance to experience a life that they themselves would never lead. The thought of an adult woman sleeping with her stepchild is wrong on so many levels. As director Catherine Breillat demonstrates in her 2023 film Last Summer (original French title: L’Été dernier), subjects that repulse on a visceral level can still elicit feelings from unexpected places.

Anne (Léa Drucker) is an attorney who works with at-risk children. Anne lives in a quiet town outside Paris with her husband Pierre (Olivier Rabourdin) and two adopted children. A self-proclaimed “gerontophile” (attracted to older people), Anne seems to enjoy her comfortable life, even with a little obvious distance from her husband, until Paul’s troubled seventeen-year-old son Théo (Samuel Kircher) comes to live with them.

Théo is the polar opposite of Paul, anti-social, mischievous, and charming. Théo bonds with the children while getting on Anne’s nerves, especially with Paul’s frequent work-related absences. Théo’s magic eventually takes hold, leading the adult woman to make the very bad and irresponsible choice to sleep with her stepson.

Based off the 2019 Danish film Queen of Hearts, Breillat revels in the uncomfortable. Last Summer has numerous spicy scenes, played with an energy that orbits the realm of passion without ever really touching the surface. Something is clearly missing from Anne’s idyllic country life. Drucker plays Anne with such precision, a woman intoxicated by the thrill of the hunt without ever losing sight of the obvious destruction caused by her decisions.

Anyone can conjure up an image of the perfect life. Each of us might need to swap out some pieces to match the reality we can make for ourselves. Some of us don’t have much money, or the ability to have kids of our own. Sometimes the love we once shared with our spouse withers and dies. Breillat is fascinated not just with power dynamics, but with decay.

Kircher plays Théo with a perfect blend of charisma and tediousness. Théo’s boyish looks never compensate for the reality that he’s a clueless young kid. The justifications for Anne’s infatuation with him exist in her own head. Breillat never tries to defend her protagonist’s horrid behavior.

There is something weirdly alluring in watching the drama unfold. Théo’s penchant for drama precludes him from discretion. Anne’s excuses are hardly believable to anyone, except for those so caught up in the idea of the idyllic life that they’re willing to ignore the reality right there in front of them.

Drucker is agonizing. Anne is a truly tedious character, obsessed with the gaze that men, usually older, have bestowed upon her all her life. Stuck in a boring, quiet town, with nothing to amuse her beyond the children she adopted to fulfill that very purpose, she begins to fall apart, until the very second that the gaze returns. It’s ugly, but deeply human at the same time.

Life doesn’t always go the way we planned. You can’t control the actions of others, only the way that you choose to receive them. Breillat produces the film’s most compelling work when she homes in on that reality. Last Summer is an uncomfortable ride through its 104-minute, but there’s a lot of food for thought. You can piece together the model of an ideal existence fairly easily, but it takes much more effort to make it come alive.

Friday

15

August 2025

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‘Shin Godzilla’ review: Hideaki Anno’s bizarre gem has only improved with age

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

All the way back in the 1950s, Godzilla began as a metaphor for nuclear weapons. The horrors that the giant lizard could wreak on downtown Tokyo were nothing compared to the atrocities that mankind could inflict on itself. Many decades and dozens of films later, the franchise has managed to evolve and encompass new real-world parallels without straying too far from its original message.

The 2016 film Shin Godzilla was recently re-released to theaters, enjoying an expanded North American market fresh off the heels of 2023’s blockbuster hit Godzilla Minus One. Shin Godzilla dedicated much of its runtime to a satire of the Japanese government’s response to the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011. Nearly ten years later, it’s hard to believe that directors Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi’s work could have another timely parallel on their hands in the COVID-19 pandemic.

The narrative largely centers around Rando Yaguchi (Hiroki Hasegawa), a Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary in the Japanese government. The Coast Guard responds to news reports of an abandoned yacht in Tokyo Bay, and blood pouring into the Aqua-Line, though the government remained skeptical of anything nefarious. Only Yaguchi and a few others in the crowded cabinet meeting take the threat of a creature causing the chaos seriously.

Much of the first act of Shin Godzilla plays like a political satire. Godzilla wreaks havoc on Tokyo while the politicians shuttle from meeting to meeting, only to decide that the correct course of action requires more meetings. Whenever somebody manages to cut through the red tape, either the Japanese or American government demands a swift cover-up. The citizens are routinely lied to about the danger that Godzilla presents. Only when Yaguchi forms an off-site group to focus solely on defeating Godzilla does anything productive actually happen.

Anno, best known for his work with the Evangelion franchise, puts forth a delectably postmodern take on Godzilla. Anno’s kaiju is hideous. Its initial form looks like a lizard with googly eyes. There’s a lot of humor, pointed on a direct collision course with the horrors on full display. The narrative whiplash works well for the genre. Even when you can guess what’s going to come next, the results are genuinely surprising.

The incompetence of the government often competes with Godzilla for the most horrifying aspect of the film. Humanity may not face an imminent threat from an ocean-dwelling leviathan, but we’ve lived through recent crises where the strength of our civic institutions has been tested, and often found wanting. With people who willfully deny scientific evidence and basic reality in positions of power, who can truly say which is worse?

The narrative does start to lose a bit of steam in the third act. The first half of the film is so laser-focused on political satire that it never really gives much time to developing its human characters. Yaguchi himself often functions as a stand-in for the lead character in the absence of anyone else who meets the description. Hasegawa does an admirable job endearing the audience to his character, but Anno and Higuchi don’t have a lot of interest in exploring humanity beyond the failures of the government.

The 120-minute runtime is a bit excessive, especially when the second half is light on Godzilla in parts where more of the big guy might have been welcome. Anno delivers a singular take on Godzilla that’s bound to stick with its audience long after the credits roll, a damning indictment on government incompetence that’s only improved with age. Fitting for its director, Shin Godzilla is a strange narrative, quite uneven at times. For the 31^st entry into a decades-old franchise, perhaps the biggest achievement is the film’s delivery of something that feels genuinely fresh. There’s never been a Godzilla quite like this before.