Netflix sounds an alarm with painful 'Adolescence'



Let’s get this out of the way first. The new Netflix limited series “Adolescence” is utterly astonishing.

Astonishing in a good way, as you may never see a more amazingly crafted piece of television.

The four episodes explore Jamie’s initial denial of guilt and his father’s horror at seeing the CCTV footage of his son stabbing the girl over and over again.

The writing, acting, and production are top notch. However, the reason “Adolescence” stands out from other top-tier shows is that each of the four hour-or-so-long episodes is done in one take.

That means the whole one-hour episode is one very long camera shot. It also means the actors — including the young teen playing the lead role — cannot make any mistakes. All of the actors, for a whole hour, are basically performing live theater. No retakes, no catching their breath to refocus on the scene. Just one long camera shot.

And there are four episodes. They did this four times! So yeah, that’s astonishing. They deserve to win all the awards at those insufferable awards shows.

But it’s also an astonishing gut punch, particularly for parents of teens.

Telling it how it is, probably at your kids' school

I understand the story was based on real-life events, but the script seems to have veered off on its own, and this storyline is indeed all too realistic, not to mention incredibly painful to watch.

“Adolescence” tells the story of a 13-year-old boy named Jamie, who is attracted to an older girl at school who is bullied by someone sharing topless photos she apparently had taken. After Jamie tries to be kind to her, in a self-professed attempt to date her, she rejects him and then mocks him on social media as an “incel” — involuntary celibate.

The mocking escalates, and he responds, one night while he and his friends are out roaming the town, by stabbing her to death.

The four episodes explore Jamie’s initial denial of guilt and his father’s horror at seeing the CCTV footage of his son stabbing the girl over and over again. The second episode has the police interviewing kids at Jamie’s school, where it becomes obvious that these kids are living in a world that the adults are not bothering with; the disrespect shown to the teachers seems to underscore the fact that the teachers are not connecting in any meaningful way with their students.

The third episode aims to reveal what’s in Jamie’s head — it’s a long interview with a psychologist — and we get a pretty clear picture of a 13-year-old who is dealing with adult issues, over-sexualized behaviors, and social media bullying — all without the benefit of any adult intervention.

The most painful television I've ever watched

The fourth episode — quite possibly the most painful I have ever watched — concerns the parents struggling with the guilt that their neighbors and community have already assigned to them. The parents and their 18-year-old daughter endure a highly unpleasant family outing where the father is recognized as the killer’s dad. After the older sister shows love and compassion for her parents despite having just endured said outing, her father asks her mother, “How did we make her?” To which mom replies, “The same way we made him.”

The point being that they did the same things, and one child seems to be coping and well-adjusted and loving ... while the other stabbed a girl multiple times, in uncontrollable rage.

But let’s go back and talk about what is depicted.

  1. A hardworking father running his own plumbing business, who often leaves by 6 a.m., not to return till 8 p.m.
  1. A child trapped, spending all day in an institution where adult order and control has broken down, with rampant disrespectful behavior toward whatever authority does exist but especially among the teens toward each other. Young teens at the school engaging in adult sexualized behavior (nude photos, mocking a 13-year-old for being a virgin), and no adults caring enough to see or intervene.
  1. A 13-year-old who regularly comes home, marches upstairs, and spends the rest of the night on his computer by himself — except when he is out with his friends, fairly late at night with no adult supervision.

We find out about the dad’s long hours and the son’s computer time during the parents’ painful self-examination in episode 4. They rightly surmise that they could have done better, but regarding the computer time, the father points out that all the kids are that way these days.

'All kids are like that' — no excuse

Yes, they are. But they don’t have to be. And “kids being that way” — as well as tired parents working long hours — cannot be an excuse for no communication. Parents have to talk to their kids. A lot. There has to be a relationship.

The unsupervised roaming around at night goes hand in hand with the complete lack of communication. Obviously, parents should know where a 13-year-old is, especially at 10 p.m. That issue is never addressed, nor is the fact that the child’s school is a cesspool of toxic, inappropriate behaviors. Schools bear far too much resemblance to prisons — architecturally and procedurally — and the inmates can be feral in both.

I know. That’s pretty much every middle school, junior high, or high school, right? But if you’re thinking that — why are your kids there, again? Because there are alternatives. The point here is that the older your child gets, they continue to need plenty of time with you. And you have to be the one who makes sure that happens, because they won’t.

Failure of authority

Other reviewers are saying this miniseries is a referendum on “toxic masculinity.”

I guess it is a male child who stabs a female child, and that’s about as toxic as it gets. But it isn't because of his masculinity. It is a lack of masculinity.

We see teachers with no authority to provide a safe and effective learning environment; a father with no time to build trust so that Jamie can bring him his problems; parents caught up in their own problems and pursuits, who have a niggling feeling that all that computer time is not great, but they are willing to tell themselves “all kids are like that” while their son is alone in his room being torn to shreds, his confidence destroyed, his moral compass irretrievably broken.

Should you watch it?

I can’t recommend it, really. It’s peppered with profanity, but that pales in comparison to the emotional pain of watching it unfold. (The acting is exemplary, particularly Owen Cooper as Jamie and "Adolescence" co-creator Stephen Graham as his dad.)

However. If you have a teen in school ... or a teen who spends a lot of time alone in his/her room or on his/her phone or computer ... or a teen who’s out at night, you know not where ... then YES. You should watch all four episodes. In fact, you should go get that teen and have them watch with you. And then you should talk about it. All of it.

What could be a more important use of your time than that?

Another perspective

Dr. Justin Coulson raises some excellent points with his thoughtful review of “Adolescence” that I think are also worth consideration.

Latest 'Captain America' installment neither 'Brave' nor 'New'



“If we can’t see the good in each other, we’ve already lost,” says Sam Wilson in the penultimate scene of “Captain America: Brave New World.”

This lukewarm call to unity might well be Marvel talking to its disappointed fans. The studio remains in a precarious position, at its lowest point critically and commercially since "Iron Man" officially launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2008, revitalizing the brand with an unbroken, interconnected string of blockbusters that dominated the box office through 2019's "Avengers: Endgame."

One watches 'Captain America: Brave New World' with the suspicion that it started out as something much darker — and more compelling.

That film was the triumphant culmination of the MCU's first three "phases." Since then, the transition into what Marvel has dubbed phases four and five has been rocky.

Majors setback

Critics and audiences have found the overarching story unfocused and directionless. These tendencies were exacerbated when the studio fired actor Jonathan Majors, whose character Kang was meant to play a crucial role in the new saga, in the wake of domestic abuse allegations.

On top of all this, 2023's "The Marvels" gave the studio its first genuine bomb.

Marvel may have hoped that "Captain America: Brave New World" would recapture some of that old MCU magic. But while the $342 million it has earned since its Valentine's Day release hardly makes it a flop, that tally is a far cry from the $357 million “Avengers: Endgame” grossed in its first three days.

Moreover, audience response has been tepid, earning it a negative 48% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Mainstream critics hate it, finding it to be a hobbled mess destroyed in reshoots and delays, and negative word of mouth has contributed to one of the largest multi-week dropoffs in Marvel’s box office history.

New-job jitters

Of course, "Brave New World" is only nominally a Captain America movie. Gone is Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) as the original Cap, having retired at the end of "Endgame" and handed his shield to his partner Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), formerly known as Falcon.

This succession was given perfunctory treatment in Disney+’s “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.” As a black man, Wilson is conflicted about representing a patriotism that once excluded him and rejects the title. In doing so, he unwittingly cedes it to a jingoistic soldier named John Walker.

It is only after a post-national terrorist group emerges as a major threat to the world that Wilson finally accepts his new role, donning the red, white, and blue uniform and ending the series with a now-infamous lecture on the need to “do better” toward refugees and the oppressed.

“Brave New World” picks up shortly after these events, with Wilson having settled comfortably into the role of Captain America.

When his close friend Isaiah Bradley — a black super soldier from the Korean War imprisoned by the federal government and experimented upon — is wrongly arrested for an attempted presidential assassination, Wilson realizes that newly elected President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford, taking over for the late William Hurt) is being targeted by forces within the federal government trying to expose a dark secret.

Deep-state danger

The Captain America franchise has always treated the U.S. government with suspicion — it's an institution susceptible to Nazi infiltration and prone to turning on American citizens. The fact that the insane general from “The Incredible Hulk” could become president on a unity and peace platform just maximizes the irony of the dark realities of the country — and that’s before Wilson starts discovering hidden CIA black sites on American soil.

In the face of this threat from within, Wilson's ambivalence about being a black Captain America lingers; at the same time, he feels inadequate to live up to the legacy of his superpowered predecessor. That issue is largely resolved by Wilson's new Wakandan battle suit, while his ambivalence mostly comes out in dialogue.

Seeing red

The film’s most curious creative decision is to give Ross a redemption story. Despite his background attempting to hunt down the Hulk, killing civilians in the process, and committing numerous other crimes and abuses, Ross ends up the film’s most developed and sympathetic character. This is thanks especially to Ford's nuanced portrayal, which lets us see the similarities between Ross and Wilson, both of whom struggle to live up to what's expected of them.

Ross slowly reveals the man beneath the cynical, power-seeking military man we know from previous films. This Ross wants to be president because he wants to prove to his daughter that he has changed.

This adds depth to the much-publicized Red Hulk scenes. In this climactic battle, we see Ross’ secrets and anxieties slowly bubble up from within him and threaten to destroy more than his legacy.

The film’s dramatic core hangs on the question of whether Ross’ character change is sincere or not, weighing the fate of numerous characters against his willingness to tell the truth at the cost of his legacy.

And given that he’s the stand-in for American political and military power, it's clear that "Captain America: Brave New World" is asking this of the country he represents at large. Is America willing to speak the truth of its sins, or is it willing to let innocent black men take the fall for the sake of a greater legacy?

Missed opportunity

This is certainly more subtle than the heavy-handed anti-Trump (an outnumbered black man up against an orange — okay, red — president) commentary than many feared. Regardless, one watches “Captain America: Brave New World" with the suspicion that it started out as something much darker — and more compelling.

Years of rewrites and reshoots imposed on director Julius Onah (“The Cloverfield Paradox”) have sanded off the edges of the movie in awkward ways, with whole character arcs discarded and major scenes reshot on green screens.

"Brave New World" was originally called “Captain America: New World Order," a title that seems to promise a more direct confrontation with the secretive, hidden elements of the government behind our elected officials — the so-called "deep state."

What the new version gains in highbrow cred — it's both a reference to Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel of the same name and the line from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” that inspired its title — it loses in directness.

The resulting movie , neither politically relevant nor entertaining, strands our new Captain America in no man's land.

Back to the future? Palmer Luckey's Chromatic does nostalgia right



Billionaire entrepreneur Palmer Luckey seems to have hit the nail on the head at the exact right time with the new Chromatic, a Game Boy reboot of sorts offering better screen resolution and updated features.

With the tagline, "The future is retro," Luckey seems to, in some way or another, have his ear to the ground when it comes to the rapidly growing nostalgia trend sweeping North America.

Not even 10 years ago, most Millennials and Gen-Xers would have looked at an old Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, or Game Boy and paused for a moment, remembered a vague gaming memory, and moved on. Now, that box full of junk has huge retail value.

With mobile gaming capturing a gigantic market share, and platforms such as Netflix and YouTube pumping out their own low-cost games, the population is figuring out that some of their favorite old titles still stand up. With these games and consoles completely phased out of production, a new high demand for old tech has completely rocked the video game industry.

For example, a gold Nintendo 64 in a beat-up box can run a cool $1,000. Meanwhile, if your parents dished out around $100 for the special release of EarthBound for Super Nintendo in 1995, that investment has now grown 20 to 30 times, at around $2,000-$3,000, depending on where you look.

To fill the gap, consoles with the capability of playing everything from 1987-2005 and beyond have flown off the shelves.

Enter Chromatic, the latest gap-filler for Game Boy and Game Boy Color games. Produced by Palmer Luckey's ModRetro company, the tech guru said he wanted to "build the ultimate way to play Game Boy games."

"Not just the next one or one of many, but indisputably, the very best way, the most authentic, the highest quality, one that will last for generations as a piece of heirloom-grade tribute art," Luckey said in a launch video.

He's not wrong.

While most — not all — new-retro consoles feel somewhat soulless, before even opening the box gamers are greeted with colorful graphics right out of 1994 — the cheesy era, not the extreme era.

The box emulates a grade-school notebook that was drawn on by countless friends, each leaving a memory behind. The package communicates to the owner to keep it and not let it get damaged.

The Chromatic itself looks like a Game Boy but feels updated.

Photo courtesy ModRetro

Purposely made to feel like an old Game Boy — only in the good ways — the Chromatic includes those old-school button *clicks*, the use of a directional pad, and the same orientation of an old Game Boy Color.

The volume is operated by a dial (wheel), which feels great for some reason. Additional features include a Game Boy Color connector port and the IR port to communicate with other systems, as well.

The lesser features of a gaming system from 1989 were solved, too. The screen is an obvious upgrade from a Game Boy and Game Boy Color but manages to look identical, which Luckey said was a completely "irrational" move from a money standpoint.

The screen has the same pixel structure, identical layout, identical resolution, and size to the Game Boy Color display while promising to reproduce "the strange colors" that its predecessors did before it. By most accounts, including this one, it does the job it set out to do.

The body of the product is magnesium aluminum alloy, giving it a very industrial feel that brags about being indestructible. There is an additional headphone jack, USB-C port, and a single button on the right-hand side to bring up the settings menu.

Power options include a rechargeable battery pack, or users can simply use three AA batteries. Without either, users can plug-and-play but obviously must stay connected.

'I love the Game Boy, and I don't see this as a way to make money.'

A Chromatic side by side with an original Game Boy Color.

The Chromatic launched with nearly a dozen games, all of which are unique aside from a new Tetris cartridge that comes with the system. A new game is set to release each month.

At $199, this handheld will cost about as much as a secondhand, out-of-box Game Boy Color will cost today. Of course, it will also play all the games from Game Boy and Game Boy Color, plus its own catalogue.

Having said that, this is a collectible, and it was smartly made that way on purpose. With so much more heart than other reproduced firmware, the Chromatic delivers on what it promises. Gamers will feel what they're meant to feel with their old games, but their eyes won't be burnt out and a night-light won't be required to see the screen.

With this product, Luckey should be ranked as less of a Mr. Burns and more of an Arthur Fortune.

The 32-year-old basically threw his money at creating a system for sheer enjoyment, and so long as he doesn't try to block out the sun, maybe he can be trusted to recreate an N64 or PlayStation.

"I love the Game Boy, and I don't see this as a way to make money. I see this as a way to make the world's best tribute to the Game Boy, something that I'll be proud of for a very long time."

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Was Lincoln gay? New doc conscripts American icon to LGBT cause



Abraham Lincoln holds a mythic position in the American consciousness. He’s respected across the political spectrum. He redrew America’s social contract and self-image. And because he led the country through the Civil War and abolition, he’s now accorded a status befitting a Greek god, cast in bronze and marble.

Lincoln is essential to the American social contract, which makes him essential to any political cause seeking to reframe the national project. He’s criticized by “woke” leftists and alt-righters as a symbol of the neo-liberal consensus and used as a symbol of equality and unity by those in power.

One of the saddest things about the modern world is that the concept of close male friendship has functionally been destroyed.

It’s no surprise, then, that the LGBT movement would come to claim him as well. While no American presidents have ever been openly "gay" as such, a handful have attracted questions concerning their sexual proclivities. Lincoln’s predecessor James Buchanan, for example, was America’s only bachelor president, a pink flag for certain historians looking to "out" him.

Lincoln's outsized stature naturally makes him a far more tempting catch. As transgender and gay issues increasingly dominate the discourse, there have been more than a few attempts to use speculation about Lincoln’s private life and vague comments in his letters to canonize our 16th president as an official "queer" icon.

A deliberate provocation

A recent documentary boldly announces its intention in its blunt title: "Lover of Men: The Untold Story of Abraham Lincoln."

The film was released this fall to general praise from the press and backlash from conservative media. The filmmakers mostly laughed off said backlash, telling the Hollywood Reporter that they were “thrilled” that Ben Shapiro, Alex Jones, and Elon Musk were furious about it. “The reason that they notice the film is because it is compelling. This story is provocative,” said director Shaun Peterson.

The case "Lover of Men" makes goes roughly like this: Lincoln had very close relationships with multiple men throughout his adult life, relationships that were arguably more intimate than traditional friendships. He shared beds with men for months or years at a time, revealed details of his sex life to them in letters, and openly expressed his deep emotional connection to them.

The film essentially argues that Lincoln was LGBT avant la lettre, living an identity that would today be recognized as "queer," "fluid," or "non-conforming." Whether Lincoln actually had sex with any of these men is largely immaterial.

Strange bedfellows

"Lover of Men" dismisses most of the immediate rebuttals with a shrug; the first among them being that beds in the 19th century were expensive and scarce, and it wasn’t uncommon for inns to assign multiple men to a bed or for male friends to share beds.

Peterson's argument relies upon the common modern assumption that intimacy and sexuality are deeply entwined things. The possibility that two men would share deep affection without any hint of the erotic is mostly overlooked because the alternative soundbite — Lincoln was gay! — proves irresistible.

Ironically, Peterson's eagerness to reach this conclusion tells us more about the America of today than it does about Lincoln's era. One of the saddest things about the modern world is that the concept of close male friendship has functionally been destroyed. Even progressive feminists will admit that one of the privileges women enjoy is the ability to form intimate, non-sexual relationships without any hint of Eros.

Men consequently tend to be lonelier than women and have more trouble intimately bonding.

Part of this can be attributed to a decline in fraternal organizations, with most male-only organizations now admitting women. Part of it is also the growing masculine insecurity with being perceived as unmasculine.

The erosion of male friendship

Still, the pernicious influence of the LGBT lobby's tendency to cast public male intimacy as gay should not be underestimated. One needs only recall the particularly fanciful attempts to affirm the secret, sexual passion between "Lord of the Rings" protagonists Frodo and Sam, despite all evidence to the contrary, not least of which is author J.R.R. Tolkien's devout Catholicism.

The result is a negative feedback loop. Men have fewer and fewer opportunities to express themselves. They are criticized for not being emotional; at the same time, any emotional expression is seized upon as evidence of homosexuality.

Tolkien's close friend C.S. Lewis, himself a target of LGBT revisionists, diagnosed the problem more than 60 years ago in his book "The Four Loves": “Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend. The rest of us know that though we can have erotic love and friendship for the same person yet in some ways nothing is less like a Friendship than a love affair.”

Was Lincoln "closeted"? It's certainly possible — but it seems likely that the claim is beyond proving. "Lover of Men" takes this as reason enough to indulge its speculation. As one interviewee argues, “If the naysayers had their way, there wouldn’t be a gay history because you couldn’t prove it.”

And yet "Lover of Men" is not content to settle for the past. Appropriating Lincoln’s life as a story of repressed homosexuality is a means to entrenching the LGBT movement's power in the present; one commentator goes so far as to say the 14th Amendment should be extended to Americans identifying as transgender.

Whatever one's personal opinions on the matter, using Lincoln as a vehicle for modern-day activism in this way is bad history. We don’t know the secrets of Lincoln’s cloistered heart, and neither do the historians Peterson has assembled. We should be happy to admit our ignorance; some things are meant to remain a mystery.

'The Apprentice': Not your average Trump derangement cinema



"You create your own reality. The truth is malleable," Roy Cohn tells a young Donald Trump in the new movie "The Apprentice."

It's a lesson that the starry-eyed scion from Queens will take all the way to the White House.

The crude patriotism expressed by both Trump and Cohn may be self-serving, but it's hard not to see it as preferable to the pessimistic inertia dragging this once great city down.

But it could also serve as a warning to anyone trying to make a film about Trump: The reality-distortion field surrounding our 45th president affects his critics no less than his fans.

Man, myth, monster

Trump is one of the most controversial human beings in contemporary history; a populist messiah or rage-fueled fascist, depending on who you ask.

It is almost impossible to portray him in a neutral or sympathetic light, to grapple with the humanity under the accumulated detritus of five decades of public life.

Past attempts, like Showtime’s “The Comey Rule" — a blatant piece of "resistance" propaganda uninterested in any coherent depiction of the Trump administration's inner workings — don't bother trying.

As a result, most film and TV versions of Trump barely rise above Alec Baldwin's crude "Saturday Night Live" caricature, driven by partisan resentment and mesmerized by Trump's often disagreeable public persona.

Trump in training

“The Apprentice” largely avoids this trap by approaching its subject indirectly. Instead of the fully-formed scourge of democracy, it gives us a portrait of the deal artist as a young man.

Set in the 1970s and 1980s, the film opens on boyish Donald Trump still struggling to break free from his boorish, domineering father and his modest, outer-borough real estate empire.

A company vice president whose duties include going door-to-door collecting overdue rent from disgruntled tenants, the young Trump dreams of turning the family business into something bigger but is hampered by a federal lawsuit alleging racist housing discrimination (a charge the movie suggests is true).

It isn't until a chance meeting with infamous Joseph McCarthy prosecutor and political fixer Roy Cohn that Trump sees a way out from under his father's shadow. Taking the aspiring mogul under his wing, Cohn guides him through the early stages of his career by teaching him the three cardinal rules of winning: attack, deny everything, and never admit defeat.

Sympathy for the Donald

Echoing themes from “Citizen Kane” and classic Greek tragedies, "The Apprentice" presents the rise of Trump as a cautionary tale; director Ali Abbasi and writer Gabriel Sherman are smart enough to understand that their protagonist needs a sympathetic core if his hollowing out is to be effective.

Superficially, the movie isn’t shy about its contempt toward the man and his influences. Family patriarch Fred Sr. is unabashedly racist, Cohn drops homophobic slurs and rambles about liberals and socialists stealing from great men, and one of Trump’s opening scenes is him as a landlord threatening to evict Section 8 renters overburdened by medical bills.

Trump himself is depicted as a venal adulterer who goes as far as to rape his wife (as Ivana Trump alleged and later backtracked on in her 1990 divorce deposition). The movie works overtime to earn its bleak conclusion, in which the student callously discards the master.

Surgical strike

"The Apprentice" emphasizes Trump's ultimate dehumanization and moral degradation in the graphic, close-up shots of scalp-reduction surgery and liposuction (on a patient coyly suggested to be Trump) with which it ends. Evoking both Darth Vader and Dr. Frankenstein's abomination, this clinical, creepy scene makes the movie's subtext clear: We've just witnessed the creation of a monster.

Trump may be a monster, but he's also very much a product of his environment. As "The Apprentice" takes care to establish, the New York City of this era is rotting, with even the iconic Chrysler building in foreclosure. The crude patriotism expressed by both Trump and Cohn may be self-serving, but it's hard not to see it as preferable to the pessimistic inertia dragging this once great city down.

According to Abbasi, his goal was not to portray Trump as “a caricature or a crooked politician or a hero or whatever you might think, but as a human being.” As Politico puts it, he’s an anti-hero. “He’s tragic, not evil.”

High-rise Hamlet

Sebastian Stan brings this tragic note to his portrayal of Trump, especially in scenes with his alcoholic older brother, Freddy (a suitably dissolute Charlie Carrick), summoning a tenderness not often associated with the former president. Stan ably captures his subject's more peculiar eccentricities, speech patterns, and mannerisms — even if the face of the Winter Soldier occasionally proves distracting.

This is a quality film, to use one of Trump's favorite descriptors. But its nuance may well have hurt its commercial prospects. Despite being marketed as "the movie Donald Trump doesn't want you to see" (bolstered by Trump's threats to sue the filmmakers for "pure malicious defamation"), "The Apprentice" hasn't done much business after a week in theaters.

Not much of an October surprise after all. But then, maybe it was too much to ask a well-crafted period piece like "The Apprentice" to compete with the riveting drama playing out before us in real time.

Trump isn't one for dwelling on the past, and neither are those drawn to him, whether out of love or hate. Where's he's been has always been far less compelling than what he'll do next.

'Back to the Future' bully Biff Tannen comes clean



"I’m famous, I’m too famous, and I‘m not famous enough ... all at the same time.”

This is the dilemma of actor Tom Wilson, best known for playing bully Biff Tannen in the "Back to the Future" trilogy. It's a dilemma he explores in his entertaining documentary "Humbly Super Famous," available to watch for free on YouTube.

Fame is a double-edged sword. It can promise you money and success, but in your most private moments, your humanity is stripped away, as you are unable to escape the fact that the world sees you as nothing more than a celebrity. The world sees a character embedded into fans’ memories and pop culture, but what is behind the character? Who is the person underneath?

"Humbly Super Famous" is Wilson's comical yet moving attempt to answer these questions. The film features footage shot by him of his convention appearances, interviews with his family, and candid moments of him interacting with his "Back to the Future" co-stars Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, and Lea Thompson.

The film acts as a memoir of sorts for the actor reflecting on his career, his fame, his family, and his fans. Some of his interactions with the fans can be disturbing. When Wilson's mother dies at the hospital, for example, a nurse bombards him with comments and questions about "Back to the Future" as he tries to pray over his mother’s body.

Another anecdote from his career is too good to spoil here — suffice it to say you don't want to miss his "Batman" story.

Those who are already Wilson fans surely know his song "Stop Asking Me the Questions," in which he hilariously pokes fun at the well-intended but annoying questions he gets asked by fans on a regular basis.

Not that Wilson isn't grateful for his life-changing role, and the joy his performance brings to millions of people is not lost on him. Whether you’ve seen him at cons or had real interactions in person with him, which I’m grateful to say I have, it’s clear that the fandom that made him a household name, or "too famous," means a lot to him.

It is, however, understandable that he longs for people to see that there is more to him than the character of Biff Tannen. That role made Wilson famous, but it also made the man who made the role invisible to the public eye. It is evident that Wilson is a much more thoughtful person than the character who tormented two generations of McFlys.

This is what he means by "not famous enough," as comes across in a touching moment he shares with his daughter Emily. She and the rest of his family are highlighted throughout the movie; it's clear how much Wilson values their love and affection.The love they in turn feel for Wilson comes through as they share the personal impact his career had on them. It's clear that Wilson's Catholic faith has kept him grounded.

"Humbly Super Famous" is the epitome of a labor of love; Wilson alone shot, edited, produced, and directed it. It's a tribute to his fans, his family, and the career "Back to the Future" has given him, for better or for worse.

One theme emerges over the course of the almost 60-minute film: Whether you are famous, too famous, or not famous enough, what you do matters and how you treat people matters. The way Wilson makes time for people (no matter how inconvenient it may be) speaks volumes abour his character and his kindness, making him the rare Hollywood celebrity worth emulating.

I highly recommend checking out "Humbly Super Famous"; it’s easily one of the best films of the year.

Richard Nixon vs. God



Mention Richard Nixon and what first comes to mind is his Machiavellian cunning. Here is a man for whom power — acquiring it, maintaining it, and wielding it against his enemies — came first, right up until his brutal downfall.

But there was another, equally powerful force driving America's 37th president: his conflicted yet sincere Christian faith. Far from being a one-dimensional political animal, Nixon was a man deeply entangled in a lifelong struggle with God.

People don't think Nixon was religious. And he's not if you think ‘religion’ means ‘moral,’ ‘pious,’ or ‘loves to go to church.’

This struggle, as Daniel Silliman’s new biography, "One Lost Soul: Richard Nixon's Search for Salvation," reveals, shaped his actions and haunted his conscience until his final days.

Wm. B. Eerdmans

Hidden tensions

Silliman, an editor at Christianity Today, carefully peels back the layers of Nixon’s public persona to expose the spiritual tensions beneath.

Nixon’s quest for divine guidance, according to Silliman, was not a peripheral aspect of his life but central to his personal drama. This internal conflict, often overshadowed by his public scandals, is crucial to understanding the tragic dimensions of his story.

Even on the eve of his resignation, Nixon sought solace in prayer, overwhelmed by the weight of his sorrow and the collapse of his career. But as Silliman points out, Nixon's glance toward heaven wasn’t a desperate, last-minute attempt at redemption. It wasn’t some cheap Hail Mary.

On the contrary, it was a practice ingrained in him from his earliest days.

Religious roots

Nixon’s religious journey began with his Quaker upbringing. Raised in a household that emphasized simplicity, integrity, and self-discipline, these values laid the foundation for his early worldview.

However, his relationship with these ideals was far from straightforward. His father, a stern man, and his devout mother instilled in him a sense of duty and moral rigor that would shape his complex relationship with faith.

His marriage to Thelma Catherine “Pat” Ryan, raised Methodist, further rooted him in a faith that offered both support and stress. Nixon’s associations with two influential religious figures — Billy Graham and Norman Vincent Peale — would later play pivotal roles in shaping not just his personal struggles but also his political decisions and moral outlook.

Graham, the famous Baptist evangelist, was perhaps the most significant religious influence in Nixon’s life. Their friendship, which began in the early 1950s, was a powerful intersection of faith and politics.

Graham, with his mission to bring Christianity to the masses, embodied a form of religious authenticity and moral authority that Nixon deeply admired. However, at the same time, Graham’s unwavering commitment to moral purity often clashed with Nixon’s political pragmatism. Unsurprisingly, this created a tension that highlighted the disparity between Graham’s rigid ideals and Nixon’s actions.

Positive thinking

Norman Vincent Peale, a Presbyterian minister famous for his "power of positive thinking," offered Nixon a different kind of religious guidance. Peale’s teachings, which emphasized optimism and self-belief, resonated with Nixon’s ambitious nature. Moreover, in addition to providing him with a psychological framework, they also offered a roadmap for navigating the treacherous terrain of U.S. politics.

Peale’s philosophy was less about repentance and salvation and more about overcoming adversity through the sheer force of positivity. It was more Tony Robbins than Thomas Aquinas. This approach offered Nixon a “better” way to maintain his public image and manage the compounding pressures of his career.

However, Peale’s teachings also presented a paradox of sorts for Nixon. The contrast between Peale’s optimism and Nixon’s personal experiences of failure and moral compromise created a deep internal conflict.

While the power of positive thinking helped Nixon project a resilient public persona, it often clashed with the reality of his darker impulses and the ethical ambiguities that defined his political career.

A man in full

According to Silliman, none of this makes sense without reference to Nixon's spiritual battles. As he told Align, “People don't think Nixon was religious. And he's not if you think ‘religion’ means ‘moral,’ ‘pious,’ or ‘loves to go to church.’ But he's very religious if you think one of the things that means is someone struggling with God.”

“Nixon,” he added, “wrestled with the core Christian idea of God's grace his entire life. I argue that struggle is essential to who he was, and in the book, I show how it explains his great successes and his tragic humiliation.”

In Silliman's view, Nixon's inner, existential struggle with God is the key to understanding the man in full — and inseparable from his specific place in American history. By seeing Nixon in the context of America's mid-20th-century religious currents — most notably, the rise ofCold War Christianity and the impact of evangelical literature — Silliman presents a compellingly nuanced portrait of a complicated figure.

Like all of us, Nixon was far from flawless. Yet, the portrayal of him as a calculating villain fails to capture the full scope of his true character. Yes, his transgressions served his political ambition, but what did that ambition serve?

Silliman ventures an explanation. "I am not a crook," Nixon famously protested. Whether or not he truly believed this, Silliman suggests, he never managed to shake a deeper guilt: the guilt of a hopeless sinner in desperate need of redemption.

'Star Wars' show ‘The Acolyte’ can’t even do left-wing propaganda right: ‘It still FAILS’



"Star Wars" show "The Acolyte" cost $180 million to produce, and it’s finally over.

But after the season finale, Lauren Chen is wondering where the money went — or whether the writers of the show are even sane.

“I’m beginning to think that the writers behind ‘The Acolyte,’ they’re just bad people. Maybe even psychopaths,” Chen says, adding, “Overall, where this money went, I have no idea.”

In the finale, the protagonist of the show kills her old Jedi master, Sol, in cold blood, and it's presented as being “what’s right.”

“Is she really the protagonist? Like, I’m sorry, am I still supposed to like or relate to this character in any way, shape, or form?” Chen asks.

“Not only does basically the only good character in this show get murdered in the finale by the little girl that he helped raise and that he did rescue from these weird space witches, but on top of that, his memory and his legacy are completely dragged through the mud,” she adds.

The show itself was supposed to revolve around the theme of ambiguous morality, Chen doesn’t think it did a good job of that at all.

“Such disappointing stuff. And here’s the thing: The entire morality of this show essentially hinges on the fact that the writers believe that Sol was in the wrong, but they didn’t really do a good job convincing the audience otherwise,” Chen says.

While Chen doesn’t believe the show is the “worst thing” she’s ever seen, she says it’s up there.

“It’s terrible. It’s not good as a piece of "Star Wars" fiction, and it’s just not good as a show standing on its own. Like, it’s one thing if there were a show that kind of poked holes into "Star Wars" lore and canon, but at least it was entertaining to watch and decent,” she says.

“This is just not good as a piece of media. It’s not very interesting, it’s not every entertaining, and heck, even if we just look at it purely as a form of propaganda to push a social message, which it seems like is really all that the creators were interested in doing, it still fails, because the message it pushes is terrible,” she continues.

“It justifies murder, tries to add moral ambiguity into something that’s unambiguously bad, like having a temper or no control over your feelings. It’s just a failure all around,” she adds.


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'Midwit' writers of ‘The Boys’ just took WOKE to a new level



Amazon Prime’s “The Boys” has always been “woke,” but the latest season took the meaning of the word to an entirely new level.

“‘The Boys’ has really always been ‘woke’ since its first season,” Lauren Chen explains. “It’s only now, in its later seasons, particularly seasons three and four, that I found the wokeness is becoming really just too much.”

Chen points to one scene in particular that took it one step too far.

“There was a scene that was so stupid, so poorly written,” Chen says. The scene featured Victoria Newman, a Latina politician with super powers, and the newest character Sage, a black woman, whose entire presence in the show “is so frustrating.”

“Her entire premise is that she is the smartest person alive, but here’s the thing. That’s a problem because the writers for this show are not that smart. So, the question is, how do you portray the smartest person in the world when you are a certifiable midwit?” Chen asks.

The writers came up with a solution to this midwit condition they have by telling “the audience that she is smart, that Sage is smart, many, many times.”

In this particular scene, Newman and Sage are attending what appears to be a right-wing political gathering full of old white billionaires. The pair are scheming to get these billionaires on board with Newman as president, and Newman complains that she had “abortion mansplained” to her by a man who “refuses to be alone with any woman who’s not his wife.”

Not only is Chen disturbed by the abortion comment, the entire scheme is childish and not reflective of the “smartest person in the world.”

“Something that Sage in her infinite wisdom has concocted, but it’s like, well, obviously if you’re trying to seize political power, doesn’t it make sense to get other people who have power on board with your cause?” Chen says.

“That’s not some grandmaster strategy, that’s just literally the bare minimum you would expect to do if you are trying to do a soft coup. This is not genius-level stuff. I’ve literally seen women’s book clubs with more intricate political backstabbing and intrigue than this show,” she adds.


Was This Embarrassing Scene the "MOST WOKE" in TV Show History?
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Was This Embarrassing Scene the "MOST WOKE" in TV Show History?