A specter is haunting America — the specter of left-wing radical violence. As the country balances on a knife edge and radical nutcases shoot up and burn churches and assassinate conservative icons, Hollywood figured it was time to throw a Molotov cocktail into the tinderbox.

I went and paid 17 good American dollars to see "One Battle After Another" so you don't have to. Fair warning: Better-paid critics than I have given this terrible movie — a loose adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's 1991 novel "Vineland" — rave reviews. It has also generated plenty of precious "Oscar buzz" for director Paul Thomas Anderson as well as for stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio Del Toro, and Sean Penn.

Watching 'One Battle After Another' may not be entertaining, but its celebration of vitriol and murder is clarifying. This is not the usual 'anti-conservative' Hollywood bias.

Insidious propaganda

As you might suspect from the people involved, this is more than the usual Hollywood slop. It’s an insidious piece of propaganda that speaks to the depravity of the left and, I fear, wanders into wholly new territory that portends truly dark times ahead.

The movie's first offense is its running time: an interminable two hours and 50 minutes. (Am I the only one who thinks we need a new rating system for any movie over 90 minutes long? Rated NB = "Nap Before.")

The film opens with our antifa heroes violently attacking an ICE detention center to liberate the detainees. One wonders whether Juan, up here to work construction, might have some hesitation about white and black revolutionaries spraying AKs and gassing U.S. Border Patrol agents on his behalf, but the white liberal director’s myopic lens doesn't dwell on those questions.

Weed and self-pity

DiCaprio plays Bob Ferguson, a has-been revolutionary holed up in a Northern California sanctuary city, padding around in a weed haze, a bathrobe, and self-pity. His daughter Willa, played by Chase Infiniti, scolds him for misgendering her nonbinary prom date. The revolution will always eat its own.

Her mother, Perfidia Beverly Hills, was a rat who turned state's witness and slept with Penn’s comically over-the-top ICE agent, named Lockjaw. Willa may be his biological daughter. Lockjaw is evil because he wants border security and has a Nazi haircut. Hollywood eschewed subtlety a long time ago.

Lockjaw, meanwhile, wants to impress a cabal of Patagonia-vested white supremacists — a hedge-fund-meets-Gestapo ensemble who seem to have wandered in from a bad HBO pilot — so they'll let him join their club. How better to do that than by hunting down our antifa heroes?

Photo by Brooks Kraft LLC/Corbis via Getty Images

Empty artistry

Here’s the tragic part: Paul Thomas Anderson is still a genius. The camera work is exquisite. The pacing (when he wants it to be) is taut. The centerpiece car chase is one of the most technically stunning action sequences of the century.

Anderson is, after all, the man behind "There Will Be Blood" and "Boogie Nights." But artistry is empty if it doesn't serve the truth, and "One Battle After Another" is pure left-wing propaganda. The film glorifies the fantasy of bloodshed, depicting conservative America not as wrongheaded neighbors but as literal Nazis to be liquidated. The revolutionaries are cast as sexy, tragic heroes. Blowing up a senator’s office? Righteous. Knocking out half of Los Angeles’ power grid? Revolutionary chic. The collateral damage to working stiffs barely scraping by? Never mind.

Watching "One Battle After Another" may not be entertaining, but its celebration of vitriol and murder is clarifying. This is not the usual "anti-conservative" Hollywood bias. When the perpetually sweaty DiCaprio shouts “¡Viva la revolución!” while detonating bombs, you're meant to cheer. And if you're not cheering, well, those bombs are meant for you.

Increasingly, Hollywood views half the country not as fellow citizens with outdated beliefs, but as enemies who deserve punishment. Owning firearms, favoring borders, voting differently — these aren’t policy differences; they’re treated as moral crimes, grounds for extermination.

Luxury nihilism

The old trick was to sneer at conservatives as rubes or buffoons. Now the fantasy is direct violence. What was once snide mockery has hardened into veneration of the kill shot.

That's not to say that it is an altogether convincing fantasy. The usual ignorance of liberals when it comes to actual, real-world violence — their compulsive need to make revolution "cool" — is on full display. At one point, a bank robbery is staged by an antifa firebrand with a name I won’t print; this is the group's usual method of "fundraising." Anderson seems blissfully unaware that modern bank heists are idiotic — bills are marked, surveillance is everywhere. No one outside a Nicolas Cage movie thinks it’s viable.

And let's face it, none of the laptop warriors celebrating "One Battle After Another" are likely to to take to the streets to firebomb ICE. Then again, they don't have to. While they indulge their adolescent rebellion fantasies in front of an IMAX screen, their luxury nihilism trickles down to the truly unhinged and desperate, some of whom are perfectly willing to try to change minds with a bullet. Which means the fight may be coming to you, whether you sit out this "Battle" or not. Buy ammo.

'Triumph of the Heart': An unflinching depiction of what it means to follow Christ

The current landscape of Christian cinema is more desert than garden. Too many films settle for pandering and saccharine depictions of the faith, as if doing the bare minimum to attract what they assume is a captive audience. Meanwhile, moviegoers thirst for stories that challenge them with reality of the Christian life.

With the success of "Sound of Freedom," "The Shift," and "Cabrini," Angel Studios has shown that viewers will show up for more nuanced, high-quality fare, but most "faith-based" films still seem content to take as little risk as possible.

As Kolbe, Marcin Kwaśny embodies an ordinary man who makes the extraordinary decision to pick up his cross and follow Christ, whatever the consequences.

This was all in my mind as I attended the premiere of "Triumph of the Heart." I wasn't sure what to expect; word of mouth has been strong, but would it live up to the hype? I'm happy to answer that question with a resounding yes.

Greater love hath no man ...

"Triumph of the Heart" tells the incredible true story of the Polish Catholic priest and newspaper publisher who would become Saint Maximilian Kolbe (Pope John Paul II canonized him in 1982). Arrested and sent to Auschwitz in 1941, Kolbe volunteers to take the place of a prisoner condemned along with nine others to die in the camp's starvation cell.

As the men cope with despair, starvation, and ideological division, Kolbe's humanity and their shared Polish identity forge a brotherhood that allows them to face down evil and die with honor.

A humble saint

Not since Paul Roland’s "Exemplum" have I seen such a truthful and realistic depiction of Catholicism. These characters are far from perfect, and that includes Kolbe himself. He smokes, he has regrets, he makes mistakes. But he’s also relentlessly hopeful, courageous, and brave in his faith in Jesus Christ, which empowers him to be a source of light for his fellow cellmates who struggle to maintain their dignity.

This is no sanitized depiction of sainthood. As Kolbe, Marcin Kwaśny embodies an ordinary man who makes the extraordinary decision to pick up his cross and follow Christ, whatever the consequences.

Sherwood Fellows

The weight of despair

The actors playing the other prisoners are equally astounding, making you feel the weight of their despair and claustrophobia in the confinement of the hellish, one-window bunker.

Especially impressive is Rowan Polonski’s Albert, who gets the film’s central arc. As he mourns the life with his wife that he passed up to fight in the war, he struggles to accept the inevitability of death and resist the temptation of suicide. It's a dark but layered portrayal of suffering that took me aback like nothing I've ever seen in a Christian film.

Keystone-France/Getty Images

As camp commandant Karl Fritzsch, the man who condemns the prisoners to death, Christopher Sherwood makes a chilling antagonist. But the more deadly foe is Satan himself. He never shows up, except for some artistic shots of a snake peppered throughout the third act, but his presence is tangible as the heroes grapple with despair. All of which makes Kolbe's admonition to “finish the race” (as seen in the movie's trailer) ring with such emotional power as they reject Satan and embrace the hard way out.

Trusting in God

Writer/director Anthony D'Ambrosio has created a deeply Catholic film. That D'Ambrosio himself struggled with anxiety and insomnia while bringing this story to life comes as no surprise; this is a movie that exudes the painful uncertainty that comes with trusting in God's plan.

"Triumph of the Heart" is also a triumph for Christian/Catholic cinema, a profoundly moving examination of the suffering that often accompanies the pursuit of holiness. I can only hope its example inspires other filmmakers to bring the full richness of the Christian faith to the big screen; the possibilities are endless. For now, go see "Triumph of the Heart." The hype is real.

'Eddington' unmasked: Another slick, sick joke on American moviegoers

Director Ari Aster ’s "Eddington," which has inspired more heated discussion than it ticket sales, drops us unpleasantly back into an America at the peak of COVID-19 hysteria.

Our putative protagonist is Joe Cross, well-intentioned but beleaguered sheriff of the small desert outpost of Eddington, New Mexico.

Aster's previous films resolve with satanic forces claiming victory over well-meaning innocents just trying to grapple coherently with temptation and strife.

Already burdened with a psychologically fragile wife (Emma Stone) and a live-in, conspiracy-obsessed mother-in-law (Deirdre O'Connell), Cross must now keep the peace for a populace bitterly divided over masks, social distancing, and business closures, while facing down BLM riots. His downtime doomscrolling (remember the black squares on Instagram?) offers no relief.

Six-feet showdown

Cross himself is COVID-skeptical, to the say the least, which puts him at odds with Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), the kind of slimy, fake, media-savvy politico who could give California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) a run for his money.

Watching the first half of this movie in 2025 is enjoyably cathartic. Even the audience at the screening I saw — in an art-house theater in liberal Chicago — cringed at the movie's virtue-signaling adults and their brainwashed teens. The biggest laugh came when a father, having just been subjected to a rant from his son about "white abolition," blurts out, “Are you f***ing re****ed? YOU’RE white!”

I doubt I have to remind anyone that only a few years ago, these reactions would have been very different.

Truther or dare

From our vantage point in 2025, Cross seems to be the most levelheaded man in town, a flawed but decent public servant trying to make sense of a world gone mad. Finally, we think, a belated but nonetheless welcome jab at the liberal delusions that held sway in our country for the last decade.

That's when Aster pulls the rug out from under us. Our hero makes a series of choices that progress from foolhardy to downright evil, choices he ends up paying for in the most grotesque way possible. We, in turn, are punished for daring to identify with Cross. It's as if Aster wants to leave us not merely disillusioned but utterly humiliated.

Pascal's ostensible villain also falls away to reveal a much more formidable nemesis: the powerful corporation behind the development of Eddington's much-contested "SolidGoldMagikarp Data Center." These shadowy Big Tech overlords seem to validate every paranoid imagining of the online fringes, right and left: jetting in hooded, well-trained shock troops to carry out false-flag "Antifa" attacks and thwart populist dissent, distracting a divided and confused public from the very real threat they represent.

Eric Charbonneau/A24 via Getty Images

Jabber jibber

Now … some critics may believe that this is the main message of the film. That the struggle is Them vs. Us. The real villains are the faceless "Eyes Wide Shut" cabal of world controllers who send out their minions to subvert the will of the people. “Smart viewers understand this,” the critics will say.

Well, I’m a smart viewer, and I don’t care about that. Maybe it is Them vs. Us in real life, but in Hollywood, and to Ari Aster, and to the audience in the theater on both sides of the aisle, the message of "Eddington" is clear: You can't win.

Aster's previous films, "Beau Is Afraid," "Midsommar," and "Hereditary," all resolve with satanic forces claiming victory over well-meaning innocents just trying to grapple coherently with temptation and strife. No one is held accountable for the perpetration of this violence; there is no justice or righteous retribution.

"Eddington" turns out to be just another variation of this story, this time using COVID instead of the supernatural to torture its characters. The question we should ask is who benefits from this nihilistic message?

Certainly not the audience. Joe Cross and the people of Eddington may be stuck where they are, helpless before the whims of their sadistic creator, but there's nothing keeping us in town. None of us would want to live in Aster World; maybe it's time we admitted it's not even a nice place to visit.

'The Naked Gun' remake is laugh-out-loud funny? Surely, you can't be serious

I had a lot riding on "The Naked Gun" — not just the $20.49 I shelled out for the ticket, but the fact that my friends Dan Gregor and Doug Mand co-wrote and co-produced the 2025 reboot.

I was in a tough spot: If their take on the Leslie Nielsen and ZAZ team comedy classic sucked, how was I going to ask them for my money back?

Venmo, probably.

Neeson’s action-hero physicality also delivers. Watch for the 'bodycam' scene, where he gives a performance that I can only describe as 'The Grey' but with IBS.

Post-postmortem

In my book, "That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore," I provide a postmortem on the death of comedy — but also a hopeful look forward to comedy’s rebirth. It’s been three years since "That Joke" debuted, and in that time I’ve seen the end of cancel culture, the shifting of the Overton window back to its original factory settings, and a comedy resurrection thanks to online “content creators,” podcasters, and stand-up comics.

For good and ill, the three often go together. Think of all the comic turned creator turned podcasters you follow. On the bright side, it’s never been easier for comedians to produce their work without having to answer to gatekeepers, but on the downside, there is the temptation to chase the algorithm, as Marc Maron put it recently on Howie Mandel’s podcast, to the detriment of the art.

A reboot to boot

The one genre that hasn’t seemed anywhere near a revival is the feature-length comedy. So Gregor and Doug — as well as director Akiva Schaffer and the rest of "The Naked Gun" 2025 team — were already fighting an uphill battle.

To make matters worse, they’re doing a reboot in a time when aren’t we all just tired of reboots? And, man, of all the reboots to reboot, you go ahead and reboot "The Naked Gun" to boot? That sounds impossible to pull off!

So I drove into Manhattan to witness the impossible on the big screen at the AMC theater in Times Square. Now that I think of it, if the movie sucked, I’d have to tack on tolls and the cost of parking to my refund.

Buttafuocus group

Gregor, the Long Island boy and NYU grad, had invited friends in the New York area to the watch party. Doug, the Philly kid and NYU alum, was doing his watch party in Philadelphia, where I imagine there was a higher chance of post-"Naked Gun" rioting.

The three of us met at NYU through improv. We performed on the same improv and sketch comedy team, the Wicked Wicked Hammerkatz, before graduating to the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater.

One of the reasons the Hammerkatz got a run at the UCB was because Gregor was able to pack the audience with his friends and family from Long Island. So walking into theater 17 for the 7 p.m. screening of "The Naked Gun" was a bit of a nostalgia trip for me: seeing the faces of the friends who had been supporting our comedy — throughout our various levels of success — for more than 20 years.

The hot seat

I had planned to sit alone — that’s why I picked a seat away from the crew — but Gregor had a seat for me right next to him. Son of a b***h. A great seat, sure, but do you understand what kind of pressure that put on me?

In the past, when I haven’t enjoyed a friend’s performance, I would use a line I stole from Matt Besser, one of the founding members of the UCB Theater: “It looked like you were having fun up there.”

I didn’t want to have to use that line. And I didn’t. Because for the next hour and 25 minutes (and some change, if you stay for the credits), I was laughing out loud. At points, tears in my eyes.

Jokes on jokes

There are so many jokes in "The Naked Gun" reboot that as you’re laughing, you’re missing new ones. It’s a brilliant design, really, to make sure audiences have to come back for another viewing to catch what they missed the first time around.

I want to talk about my favorite gags from the movie, but I don’t want to spoil them, and, well, there really is no way I can do them justice. "The Naked Gun" nails visual comedy, plays on words, and the straightest delivery of the stupidest (sometimes crudest) lines. It’s a hell of an homage to the originals.

I know original co-creator David Zucker had his reservations — this is his baby, after all — but he should be happy to see this one all grown up.

mastercrash.com

A very particular set of skills

No, Liam Neeson is no Leslie Nielsen. He's Liam Neeson. And he's played up his gruff, grizzled persona for laughs before.

In the early 2010s HBO series "Life’s Too Short," the "Taken" star briefly appears as himself, menacing Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant into doing some hilariously rigid "improvisational comedy" with him. It’s a brilliant performance, but it made me wonder if Neeson could ever carry a whole comedy.

I wonder no more. "The Naked Gun" performs a kind of alchemy by which it turns an incredibly intense figure like Neeson into a font of laughs.

In an interview with IndieWire, Gregor says, “The basic task was, ‘What’s the stupidest thing we can get Liam Neeson to say?’”

Neeson’s action-hero physicality also delivers. Watch for the “bodycam” scene, where he gives a performance that I can only describe as "The Grey" but with IBS. (Busta Rhymes is also great in the scene. Yes, Busta Rhymes is in the movie too.)

Chemistry lesson

Neeson’s chemistry with Pamela Anderson is so good that it’s obvious why they’re dating. Going into the theater, I stupidly didn’t even know she was in the movie. And yet there she is. Having pulled off the rare feat of aging gracefully in public, Anderson is elegant and magnetic — which makes the stupidest things Gregor and Doug get her to say and do that much funnier.

Danny Huston is brilliant as the villain, and his evil plot is the type of storyline that could be its own spinoff — it could work as another comedy spoof or a drama.

And if you’re wondering if "The Naked Gun" is “woke,” let’s just say if you think you can guess the punch lines from the setups, you’re going to be happily disappointed.

My boys did the impossible. See "The Naked Gun" once and you’ll want to see it twice. No refunds.

'28 Years Later': Brutal, bewildering, and unabashedly British

Britain has been reduced to a dysfunctional, plague-ridden landmass where hideous creatures consumed by rage roam in search of prey. Small, isolated communities are struggling to survive with scarce resources and little hope for rejuvenation, leaving them to cling to quaint remnants of a bygone era.

It's good thing we have Danny Boyle's long-awaited follow-up to 2007's "28 Weeks Later" to distract us.

Boyle’s film, whether intended or not, unapologetically embraces British culture, drawing on Shakespeare and Kipling.

Completing the trilogy that began in 2002 with "28 Days Later," "28 Years Later" picks up, unsurprisingly, 28 years after the initial rage virus outbreak.

Britain is currently in a military-imposed lockdown, shut off from the rest of the world. A group of survivors are living on a remote island not far from the mainland. In many respects they are totally isolated — not just geographically but culturally. There is no electricity. No internet. Men work with their hands, while children sing Anglican hymns at school.

The accordion provides entertainment in the evening, helping the revelers forget the terror lurking nearby. For these contemporary Pilgrims, the tidal island is linked to the mainland by a fortified causeway.

First blood

Among them is Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who decides to take his 12-year-old son, Spike, to the mainland to kill his first infected — a coming-of-age ritual among the island’s inhabitants. During this hunting trip, we witness the full mutated horror of the virus. Decaying skeletal creatures lurch forward while fat ones writhe across the ground like Jabba the Hutt with eczema.

These early scenes feature some stunning gore — cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle beautifully captures the moment of impact with a time-freezing jolt that is reminiscent of the bullet effect from "The Matrix."

Then Boyle makes a distinct tonal shift toward sentimentality, transforming the narrative from a father-son tale to an emotional mother-son one. As Spike is inducted into the zombie-slaying hall of fame, his mother, Isla (Jodie Comer), remains bedridden due to an undiagnosed illness.

Here the movie turns into a quest. Spike takes his sickly mother away from the relative safety of the island to find the infamous Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), who might be able to treat her.

A bone to pick

There are some genuinely interesting ideas here. The issue is that it seems like the movie has been divided into multiple parts, each with a different tone. Numerous scenes conclude abruptly, often resulting in confusion or a lackluster climax. Characters enter and exit the story much like a sitcom, and despite dramatic introductions, they contribute little to the storyline.

The doctor is depicted as an enigmatic and influential presence; however, Fiennes’ talents are wasted in this role. When he eventually appears on screen, he is covered in iodine, spouting pseudo-intellectual nonsense and shooting tranquilizer darts at monsters. He spends his time creating massive memento mori towers from bones and skulls — of which there is no shortage. In fact, more than one living character will end up in his art project before movie's end.

At moments, this story compels us to contemplate our own mortality. At other moments, it treats us to the spectacle of a spray-tanned Voldemort neutralizing a ripped zombie Neanderthal sporting a distractingly large Hampton Wick.

Nailed it

"28 Years Later" is strongest in its depiction of Spike's coming of age. You see how the painful lessons and mistakes turn him from an innocent boy into a responsible adult. That haunting sense of loss that comes with leaving behind what you were and the terrifying realization of what you need to be to survive. Boyle really nails that feeling. It's just a shame that it gets overshadowed by a confusing plot.

There is a lot about this film that will confuse Americans — not least the regional accents. Unfortunately, trying to understand what a Geordie is saying is like asking if a cat can grasp the concept of Sweden. Contrary to popular mythology, not all of us Brits sound like we’ve stepped off the set of a Richard Curtis movie or live in a castle.

Rule, Brittania

Boyle’s film, whether intended or not, unapologetically embraces British culture, drawing on Shakespeare and Kipling, while exploring themes of social cohesion, identity, and in-group preference — elements intrinsic to the survival horror genre. The cast is entirely white. In a world where entertainment has been ideologically captured by identity politics, it's a welcome and refreshing change.

Possibly the best thing is the music. It's similar to the score featured in "28 Days Later," which includes haunting contributions from Canadian ambient post-rock band Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Scottish trio Young Fathers. The suspense, paranoia, and carnage are heightened by a thumping, deep bass rumble.

While entertaining and at times poignant, "28 Years Later" is a movie that fascinates as much as it frustrates due to undeveloped characters and a nonlinear narrative. Let’s hope they iron out these problems in the sequel, "The Bone Temple," which is set for release next January.

At the helm is Nia DaCosta, infamous for directing "The Marvels," a movie that single-handedly ushered in Hollywood's anti-woke backlash. I’m already terrified.

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.

A hardworking father running his own plumbing business, who often leaves by 6 a.m., not to return till 8 p.m.

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.

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.