Netflix’s thriller "A House of Dynamite" very much wants to teach us something about the folly of waging war with civilization-ending weapons. The lesson it ends up imparting, however, has more to do with the state of contemporary storytelling.

The film revolves around a high-stakes crisis: an unexpected nuclear missile launched from an unspecified enemy and aimed directly at Big City USA. We get to see America's defense apparatus deal with impending apocalypse in real time.

It seems the best Ms. Bigelow, Mr. Oppenheim, and the team at Netflix can offer up is a lukewarm 'nukes are bad, mmkay?'

Triple threat

“Revolves” is the operative word here. The movie tells the same story three times from three different vantage points — each in its own 40-minute segment. From first detection to the final seconds before detonation, we watch a bevy of government elites on one interminable red-alert FaceTime, working out how to respond to the strike.

This is the aptly named screenwriter Noah Oppenheim's second disaster outing for the streamer; he recently co-created miniseries "Zero Day," which features Robert De Niro investigating a nationwide cyberattack.

That series unspooled a complicated and convoluted conspiracy in the vein of "24." "A House of Dynamite" clearly aims for something more grounded, which would seem to make accomplished Kathryn Bigelow perfect for the job.

And for the film's first half-hour she delivers, embedding the viewer with the military officers, government officials, and regular working stiffs for whom being the last line of America's defense is just another day at the office ... until suddenly it isn't. The dawning horror of their situation is as gripping as anything in "The Hurt Locker" or "Zero Dark Thirty."

Then it happens two more times.

On repeat

In Shakespeare’s "Twelfth Night," Duke Orsino laments a repetitive song growing stale: “Naught enters there of what validity and pitch soe'er, but falls into abatement and low price.”

Or put another way, the tune, not realizing its simple beauty, sings itself straight into worthlessness.

And somehow, this manages to be only part of what makes "A House of Dynamite" so unappealing. Our main characters — including head of the White House Situation Room (Rebecca Ferguson), general in charge of the United States Northern Command (Tracy Letts), and the secretary of defense (Jared Harris) — offer no semblance of perspicacity, stopping frequently to take others’ feelings into account before making decisions, all while an ICBM races toward Chicago. From liftoff to impact in 16 minutes or less, or your order free.

Missile defensive

So thorough is this picture of incompetence that the Pentagon felt compelled to issue an internal memo preparing Missile Defense Agency staff to “address false assumptions” about defense capability.

One can hardly blame officials when, in the twilight of the film, we’re shown yet another big-screen Obama facsimile (played by British actor Idris Elba) putting his cadre of sweating advisers on hold to ring Michelle, looking for advice on whether his course of action should be to nuke the whole planet or do nothing. The connection drops — she is in Africa, after all, and her safari-chic philanthropy outfit doesn’t make the satellite signal any stronger. He puts the phone down and continues to look over his black book of options ranging "from rare to well done,” as his nuclear briefcase handler puts it.

And then the movie ends. The repetitive storylines have no resolution, and their participants face no consequences. The single ground missile the U.S. arsenal managed to muster up — between montages of sergeants falling to their knees at the thought of having to do their job — has missed its target.

Designated survivors — with the exception of one high-ranking official who finds suicide preferable — rush to their bunkers. The screen fades to black, over a melancholy overture. Is it any wonder that audiences felt cheated? After sitting through nearly two hours of dithering bureaucrats wasting time, their own time had been wasted by a director who clearly thinks endings are passé.

No ending for you

If you find yourself among the unsatisfied, Bigelow has some words for you. In an interview with Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, she justified her film's lack of a payoff thusly:

I felt like the fact that the bomb didn’t go off was an opportunity to start a conversation. With an explosion at the end, it would have been kind of all wrapped up neat, and you could point your finger [and say] "it’s bad that happened." But it would sort of absolve us, the human race, of responsibility. And in fact, no, we are responsible for having created these weapons and — in a perfect world — getting rid of them.

Holy Kamala word salad.

Photo by dikushin via Getty Images

Bigelow-er

For much of her career, director Kathryn Bigelow has told real stories in interesting ways that — while not always being the full truth and nothing but the truth — were entertaining, well shot, and depicted Americans fulfilling their manifest destiny of being awesome.

That changed with Bigelow's last film, 2017's "Detroit," a progressive, self-flagellating depiction of the 1967 Detroit race riots (final tally: 43 deaths, 1,189 injured) through the eyes of some mostly peaceful black teens and the devil-spawn deputy cop who torments them. "A House of Dynamite" continues this project of national critique.

But what, exactly, is the point? It seems the best Ms. Bigelow, Mr. Oppenheim, and the team at Netflix can offer up is a lukewarm “nukes are bad, mmkay?” This is a lecture on warfare with the subtlety of a John Lennon song, set in a world where the fragile men in charge must seek out the strong embrace of their nearest girlboss.

It’s no secret that 2025 carries a distinct “end times” energy — a year thick with existential threats. AI run amok, political fracture edging toward civil conflict, nuclear brinkmanship, even the occasional UFO headline — pick your poison. And it’s equally obvious that the internet, not the cinema, has become the primary arena where Americans now go to see those anxieties mirrored back at them.

"A House of Dynamite" is unlikely to reverse this trend. If this is the best Hollywood's elite can come up with after gazing into the void, it's time to move the movie industry to DEFCON 1.

‘Nuremberg’: Russell Crowe’s haunting portrayal of Nazi evil

Say what you will about Russell Crowe, but he has never been a run-of-the-mill actor.

At his best, he surrenders to the role. This is an artist capable of channeling the full range of human contradictions. From the haunted integrity of "The Insider" to the brute nobility of "Gladiator," Crowe once seemed to contain both sinner and saint, pugilist and philosopher.

In a time when truly commanding leading men are all but extinct, Crowe remains — carrying the weight, the wit, and the weathered grace of a bygone breed.

Then, sometime after "A Beautiful Mind," the light dimmed. The roles got smaller, the scandals bigger.

There were still flashes of brilliance — "American Gangster" with Denzel Washington, "The Nice Guys" with Ryan Gosling — proof that Crowe could still command attention when the script was worth it. But for every film that landed, two missed the mark: clumsy thrillers, lazy comedies, and a string of forgettable parts that left him without anchor or aim. His career drifted between prestige and paycheck, part self-sabotage, part Hollywood forgetting its own.

Exploring the abyss

But now the grizzled sexagenarian returns with "Nuremberg" — not as a comeback cliché, but as a reminder that the finest actors are explorers of the human abyss. And Crowe, to his credit, has never been afraid to go deep.

In James Vanderbilt’s new film, the combative Kiwi plays Hermann Goering, the Nazi Reichsmarschall standing trial for his part in history’s darkest chapter. The movie centers on Goering’s psychological chess match with U.S. Army psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, who becomes both fascinated and repulsed by the man before him. Goering, with his vanity, intelligence, and theatrical self-pity, is a criminal rehearsing for immortality.

The film unfolds as a dark study of guilt and self-deception. Kelley, played with that familiar, hollow-eyed tension of Rami Malek, sets out to dissect the anatomy of evil through Goering’s mind. Yet the deeper he digs, the more he feels the ground give way beneath him — the line between witness and accomplice blurring with every exchange.

Disturbingly human

Crowe’s Goering is not the slobbering villain of old war films. He’s disturbingly human, even likeable. He jokes, he reasons, he charms. He’s a man who knows how to disarm his enemy by appearing civil — and therein lies the horror. It’s a performance steeped in Hannah Arendt’s famous concept of the “banality of evil”: the idea that great atrocities are rarely committed by psychopathic monsters but by ordinary people made monstrous — individuals who justify cruelty through bureaucracy, obedience, or ideology.

Arendt wrote those words after watching Adolf Eichmann, another Nazi functionary, defend his role in the Holocaust. She was struck not by his madness but his mildness — his desire to be seen as merely following orders. Crowe’s Goering embodies that same terrifying normalcy. He doesn’t see himself as a villain at all, but as a patriot — wronged, misunderstood, and unfairly judged. It’s his charm, not his cruelty, that unsettles.

The brilliance of Crowe’s performance is that he resists caricature. He reminds us that evil doesn’t always wear jackboots. Sometimes it smiles, smokes, and quotes Shakespeare. It’s the kind of role only a mature actor can pull off — one who has met his own demons and understands that evil seldom announces itself.

It is also, perhaps, the perfect role for a man who has spent decades wrestling with his own legend. Crowe was once Hollywood’s golden boy — rugged, brooding, every inch the leading man — but the climb was steep and the fall steeper. Fame, like empire, demands endless victories, and Crowe, ever restless, grew weary of the war.

Getty Images

A bygone breed

With "Nuremberg," he hasn’t returned to chase stardom but to confront something larger — the unease that hides beneath every civilized surface. Goering, after all, was no brute. He was cultured, eloquent, even magnetic — proof that wisdom offers no wall against wickedness. And in a time when truly commanding leading men are all but extinct, Crowe remains — carrying the weight, the wit, and the weathered grace of a bygone breed.

At one point in the film, Goering throws America’s own hypocrisies back at Kelley: the atomic bomb, the internment of Japanese-Americans, the collective punishment of nations. It’s a rhetorical trick, but it lands. Crowe delivers those lines with the oily confidence of a man who knows that moral purity is a myth and that self-righteousness is often evil’s most convenient disguise.

The film may not be perfect. Its pacing lags at times, and its historical framing flirts with melodrama. But Crowe’s performance cuts through the pretense like a scalpel. There’s even a dark humor in how he toys with his captors — the court jester of genocide, smirking as the world tries to comprehend him.

Crowe’s Goering is, in the end, a mirror. Not just for the psychiatrist across the table, but for us all. The machinery of horror is rarely built by fanatics, but by functionaries convinced they’re simply doing their jobs.

Crowe’s performance reminds us why acting, when done with conviction, can still rattle the soul. His Goering is maddening and mesmeric. He captures the human talent for self-delusion, the ease with which conscience can be out-argued by ambition or fear. "Nuremberg" refuses to let the audience look away. It reminds us that every civilization carries the seed of its own undoing and every human heart holds a shadow it would rather not confront.

Russell Crowe is back, tipped for another Oscar — and in an age when Hollywood produces so few films worthy of our time or our money, I, for one, hope he gets it.

John Leguizamo's 'The Other Americans' puts art before activism

“Do you know John?”

Yeah, LinkedIn. I know John Leguizamo.

There is no way John Leguizamo knows me, but following the professional networking platform’s suggestion, I went ahead and sent an invitation to the actor/producer to connect.

I grew up in Queens; my family has a butcher shop in Spanish Harlem. If you think Latinos are so united, see what happens when you call a Puerto Rican a Mexican.

I haven’t kept up with Leguizamo’s career. The only times I see him pop up now is when he’s complaining about the lack of Latino representation in show business. In fact, when it comes to complaining about representation, John Leguizamo is overrepresented.

'Liquor Store Gunman'

I read in Variety that early on in his career, Leguizamo “felt humiliated" playing the role of "Liquor Store Gunman" in Mike Nichols’ "Regarding Henry" (1991).

“I shoot this white guy [Harrison Ford],” Leguizamo explains. “It was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m perpetuating what they want to see,’ which is negative Latino images.”

It’s interesting that Leguizamo felt humiliated playing a Latino stereotype in "Regarding Henry" but managed to put that humiliation aside a couple years later to play a Latino stereotype in "Carlito’s Way." To be fair: Latino gangster Benny Blanco from the Bronx is a far more memorable character than Liquor Store Gunman. (What kind of last name is “Gunman” anyway? It ain’t Latin.)

When not at the mercy of other screenwriters and casting agents for roles, Leguizamo, a one-man-show-making machine, made a career out of performing his own Latino characters — which are not all necessarily negative images but certainly stereotypical in many respects. I mean, this is the same artist who made "Freak," "House of Buggin’," and "John Leguizamo’s Spic-O-Rama," which is not to be confused with generic Spic-O-Rama.

In an interview with "NBC Nightly News," Leguizamo declares, “We’re almost 20% of the population, I want 20% of the executives, 20% of the stories, 20% of the principal leads, then I’ll be quiet.”

Regarding 'us'

By “we,” of course he means Latinos — which includes me (even though, again, John doesn’t know me).

I doubt a perfectly equitable distribution of roles in show business along ethnic lines will quiet Leguizamo though. Even a world where an Al Pacino can’t swoop in to capture the leading Cuban and Puerto Rican roles will shut Leguizamo up.

Notice Leguizamo isn’t making this appeal for equity when it comes to other industries. Can you picture John Leguizamo showing up to a farm or construction site, demanding fewer Latinos — legal or undocumented — because they’re overrepresented?

So in the year 2025, we’re about 20% of the population, but looking back at the "Regarding Henry" year of 1991 — can you imagine if that were the movie that defined 1991! — Latinos were only about 9% of the population.

In the year of Benny Blanco from the Bronx, 1993, it jumped to about 9.5%. The further you go back, the fewer Latinos there are in the United States. To expect to see yourself represented when there are so few of you out there is quite something. Narcissistic, you might call it. Perfect for a talent like Leguizamo — who has made a lot of work for and about himself. Albeit a lot of good, original, entertaining, and funny work, I must say.

Hate-watch interrupted

Which brings me to his new play, "The Other Americans," at the Public Theater — which I only heard about because of Leguizamo’s media appearances that come across like he’s on a grievance tour.

So from a marketing standpoint, the Colombian American’s promotional shtick worked. I bought a ticket — but to hate-watch his play.

I don’t like going into a show expecting it to suck — let alone wanting it to suck. I tried to shake those intentions as best as I could. One thing I made sure not to do before the show was to read Leguizamo’s “note from the playwright” that’s printed in the playbill. I don’t know if it really made a difference, because once I stepped into the Anspacher Theater at the Public Theater, he'd won me over.

I had a seat center-stage in the second row. The set looked like an authentic house in Forest Hills, Queens, with a fenced-in backyard and even an above-ground pool that the neighbors could see from their second-story windows. If the Jeffersons had been Latinos, this is what moving on up from Jackson Heights would look like.

The change in neighborhoods is a punch line, as is the pool. One of the first arguments in the play is whether the above-ground pool is a real pool or not, because real pools are in-ground, you know. Yes, an above-ground is kind of trashy, but it still holds water.

Bruce Glikas/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Crowd-pleaser

Leguizamo plays Nelson Castro, a Colombian American laundromat owner, and from his first entrance onto the stage, I’m all in, whether it’s watching him mix a drink or listening to him curse into his cell phone — in English and Spanish. When his wife, Patti (played by actress Luna Lauren Velez), arrives, they’re soon dancing, like a stereotypical Latin couple. The audience loves it.

It feels like I’m on the set of a mult-cam sitcom. The live audience laughs, oohs and aahs. At one point in the play, an audience member caps one of Patti’s lines with what I think was a, “You go, girl!”

I remember Leguizamo saying he was out to create “a new type of American drama” — but what we’re presented with at first is something I could see running on network TV. They’d have to clean up the language and cut back on the Spanglish, but even the plot is perfect pilot material.

Complicated portrayal

Nelson and Patti are preparing for their daughter Toni’s wedding as well as the return of their son, Nick, who’s been gone for some time. Mami’s so nervous she keeps burning the sofrito!

During one of their dance passes in the living room, I notice a run in Patti’s stocking. That image — whether the wardrobe department meant for it to be there or not — has stuck with me.

It turns out their son is coming home after being hospitalized for a nervous breakdown — which his therapist attributes to his family not addressing the trauma he experienced when he was brutally beaten by a group of white boys his last year of high school.

The attack happened at one of his family’s ’mats. The perpetrators even tried to stuff him into one of the washing machines “to wash the brown off of him.” (I guess the racist white boys succeeded? Because the actor who plays Nick, Trey Santiago-Hudson, is rather pale-skinned.)

Nick is in pain and while Nelson wants a do-over with him, the Latin father is not equipped to deal with it. Imagine asking your son who was just released from a mental institution what he has to be anxious about?

It’s in these moments where Leguizamo really shines. He plays such a great dick! Although I don’t think “shines” is the right word for a performance that has so much darkness to it. Nelson is not just a flawed man — in many respects, he’s a wicked man.

The plot to "The Other Americans" is sowell-crafted that I don’t want to risk revealing too much, but in one exchange, a family member compares Nelson to Sisyphus of Greek mythology. It’s a setup to a perfect sitcom punch line, where Nelson assumes it must be a real Greek guy from Astoria. But while Nelson shares some traits with Sisyphus, I think he’s even more like Tantalus.

Who's 'we'?

In his note from the playwright, John Leguizamo writes:

I wanted to write a play about race, and I wanted it to be complicated. I didn't want it to be a morality play, but rather I wanted to show life as we Latino people experience it. We don’t always see the microaggressions, or the systemic road blocks in effect. Even though there's a subtle tokenism at work around us, we often witness the macroaggressions: those obvious, in-your-face type moments. We Latinos experience racism through poverty, the schools in which we are allowed to enroll, and the geographical areas in which we are packed. In New York City, we are equal to the white population, yet you never see us on the cover of newspapers and magazines.

There’s more to his note, but I think this bit above is worth addressing. Firstly, this “we” stuff has got to go. Latinos are not a monolith. I grew up in Queens; my family has a butcher shop in Spanish Harlem. If you think Latinos are so united, see what happens when you call a Puerto Rican a Mexican.

Secondly, in the play Nelson is the one who blames “the system” (which is synonymous with racism) for his lot in life — for example, the failure of his laundromats. “The toxicity of the American dream” is another way I’ve seen it described. But as Nelson’s secrets are revealed, what becomes clear is that he, a tragic figure, is the one responsible for his and his family’s downfall.

The system — if there is one — has actually been very good to the Castros. Just like in real life, the system has been very good to Leguizamo.

With "The Other Americans," Leguizamo fails to make his political statement but succeeds in making a powerful piece of art. ¡Bravo, hermano! Please accept my invitation on LinkedIn.

Taylor Swift's 'Life of a Showgirl': The same sad sound and fury

If only Ophelia had ditched the flowers and gotten herself a redwood tree, maybe she could have turned things around.

Such are the latest musings of pop's most famous AP English student. Beware, all ye who listen here.

We have, in real time, watched Taylor Swift age but not grow. Her discography charts the elevation of emotional immaturity into an art form.

We weren’t surprised when a teenage girl struggled to control her emotions and thought that a boyfriend could save her. But to witness the “all grown up” version of that girl still in that same mental state is to feel a certain existential dread.

What we have in Taylor Swift's "Life of a Showgirl" — her 12th studio release in a career spanning two decades — is a cautionary tale about a middle-aged woman in a perpetual state of arrested development. (Cue Ron Howard: "Hey, that's the name of the show!")

This new album earns an “explicit” label for bad words and sexual content. But the deeper problem is not the vulgarity of the body — it’s the vacuity of the mind. "Showgirl" is less a collection of songs and more a case study in what happens when emotional adolescence becomes a permanent condition. Swift is not merely immodest; she’s foolishly immature. Let’s look at a few songs to get the point across.

Get thee to a nunnery

Every Taylor Swift song addresses the same inexhaustible mystery: How does Taylor feel? At times the feelings are so big that Swift has no choice but to enlist the help of the kind of literary heavyweights they write CliffsNotes about.

In “The Fate of Ophelia,” it's William Shakespeare's turn. Swift casts herself as Hamlet's doomed girlfriend — with a crucial revision: Instead of being undone by spiritual despair, Swift's Ophelia is saved by romantic ecstasy. Why drown yourself in the river when you can dive into the sheets? It takes a certain talent to depict sexual yearning poetically without making the reader cringe in embarrassment. Shakespeare had it in spades; Swift emphatically does not.

Never mind: This is Swift's vision, and her emotions are in the driver’s seat. But her peculiar vision of salvation through (finally) finding Mr. Right suggests serious spiritual depression rather than empowerment. Add to that her pride in thinking that referring to one of literature's most well-known characters imparts intellectual depth, and you have no reason to think she will ever mature.

It’s not so much a feminist reimagining as it is the fan fiction of a sophomore lit major. In this story, Ophelia has some prurient advice for her would-be Hamlet, but more on that soon enough.

Feminists will hate that she wants to be saved by a man. Christian parents should warn their children that no man or woman can save you and that entering a relationship with that expectation will surely doom it to failure. They needn't take Mom and Dad's word for it; this is a lesson you can see play out again and again in Swift's own songs.

Naughty 'List'

While Swift's "sex-positive" Ophelia has left her religious hang-ups behind, that's not to say that "Showgirl" discards the numinous altogether. In "Wi$h Li$t" Swift prays to God for “a best friend who is hot.”

The chorus petitions for a husband, kids, and a basketball hoop in the driveway. Lest this vision appear too wholesomely straight and suburban, Swift punctuates it with the F-word. She's also quick to acknowledge the listener's weary skepticism: Haven't we heard this all before? “I thought I had it right once, twice, but I did not,” she confesses. Yes, Taylor — we noticed.

This moment of honesty is meant to sound self-aware; instead it reads like the notes of a 20-year group therapy session that never progressed past week one. It’s a chronicle of romantic exhaustion mistaken for wisdom.

In some sense she sees her need for salvation, and she recognizes it must be personal/relational, but she looks for it in sex and not from Christ. A teenager missing this is sad but understandable. A middle-aged woman still missing it is culpable ignorance.

But wait. What if this really is the relationship that's going to save her? Swift makes her case in the next song.

Todd Owyoung/NBC | Getty Images

Stiff competition

It is called “Wood." And if that title prompts some involuntary Beavis-and-Butthead-style snickering, you are on Swift's wavelength.

The listener, having already endured the desecration of "Hamlet," must now endure the anatomical metaphor of the redwood tree. “He ah-matized me and opened my eyes,” she sings, before clarifying: “His love was the key that opened my thighs.”

Just ponder this. Swift has been wrong more than once before. But this time she's right, because this time she has proof: his "redwood." Is it too cynical to conclude that the only thing this guarantees is future musical torture — yet another song tearing down another false savior? It's too bad the title "Timber" has already been taken.

These are the kinds of lyrics that make one nostalgic for the intellectual rigor of bubblegum pop. Somewhere, Shakespeare’s ghost is filing a restraining order. Hamlet’s father bids us adieu.

But Swift needs more than an editor to fix her songwriting. Her problem isn't just bad taste — it’s a disordered worldview. In one sense, the title "Showgirl" is sadly apt: On this album Swift puts her spiritual emptiness on full display. She craves deep and lasting love, but years of seeking it in fleeting infatuations have left her soul in a deplorable condition.

Taylor's (re)version

We have, in real time, watched Taylor Swift age but not grow. From the dear-diary teenage angst of her self-titled debut to these latest middle-age manifestos of sensual self-affirmation, her discography charts the elevation of emotional immaturity into an art form. Taylor and her emotions are always in the center. There is no self-mastery, no self-discipline, no lessons learned. Just doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result.

Even the most dazzling career is a cautionary tale in the making. Just ask Madonna, still gyrating unhappily at 67. Parents may one day scare their daughters with the warning, “You better shape up or you’ll end up like Taylor Swift.”

Some will say I’m a grumpy old man. So be it. But Swift could stand to be a little more pessimistic herself. While she revels in her freedom to use bad words and talk about sex, she can't see that it changes nothing; she's still fleeing the same profound emptiness. We all are, and the more frantically we try to escape it on our own, the closer we get to the same grim destination: spiritual death.

It's only Christ's love that can save us. That Swift has persisted for so long on the same fruitless path is a testament to the allure of the world and the stubbornness of the soul. Perhaps instead of Ophelia, Swift should have drawn inspiration from another of Shakespeare's indelible creations: the Fool in "King Lear."“Thou shouldst not have been [middle aged] till thou hadst been wise.”

In the world of this album, however, wisdom is passé and self-absorption is a virtue. Swift gives us a spectacle with endless costume changes and a plot that goes nowhere. But even as we turn away in boredom, we should hold out hope that Swift will someday find a better ending. God's love has confounded expectations many times before. Even the most jaded showgirl sometimes gets a second act.

Bill & Ted share absurdist adventure in new 'Waiting for Godot'

Bill & Ted are Waiting for Godot.

That was the pitch. I’m going to attend a matinee performance of "Waiting for Godot," Samuel Beckett’s tragicomedy in two acts, at the Hudson Theater on Broadway. After which I will review Bill S. Preston, Esquire’s and Ted "Theodore" Logan’s excellent adventure into the theatre (with a hard “re”) of the absurd.

Were I waiting for Godot, I’d pass the time pretty much the way I did during intermission: by deleting spam voicemails offering me personal loans and tax relief.

I’m sure that was also the pitch to bring together Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter to play Estragon and Vladimir, respectively. The marketing is right there. But the play itself — which has a couple of winks to the "Bill & Ted" trilogy — will keep you waiting for the Wyld Stallyns to show up.

Spoiler: They, like Godot, never do. Instead, Reeves and Winter are Estragon and Vladimir in full — waiting brilliantly.

Wither Wick?

It’s wild to watch an action-hero mainstay like Reeves pull off Estragon: weak, bootless (at times it’s one boot, other times it’s both), can’t remember yesterday or even parts of today, regularly beaten by thugs off stage …

There’s no sign of John Wick or Johnny Utah in his performance and certainly no Neo. If the play’s two acts were "The Matrix," there’s no red pill to free him or Didi (his affectionate name for Vladimir) from it. If anything, it’s as if the companions have been damned by an overdose of blue pills.

“Who am I to tell my private nightmares to if I can't tell them to you?” Estragon asks his friend, with whom he shares a waking nightmare.

Winter’s Vladimir compliments his Gogo (his nickname for Estragon). Not with kind words — there are many times when he’s quite brutal to his friend — but with warm embraces, his own coat, carrots and radishes, and ways to pass the time, as they wait for Godot, which Vladimir constantly has to remind Estragon that they’re doing.

For what purpose? Why are they waiting for Godot? No one knows.

1953: Pierre Latour and Lucien Raimbourg in the original Paris production of "Waiting for Godot." Lipnitzki/Getty Images

Tunnel vision

Director Jamie Lloyd makes some great choices, from casting to staging and sound design. Every version of the play I’d seen before had kept the setting to Beckett’s minimal specifications. Act one opens on “A country road. A tree. Evening.” And in act two, we learn that some time has passed, hence, “The tree has four or five leaves.”

Instead of planting the tree on stage, Lloyd has the cast address the tree out somewhere in the audience. So I got to imagine the following happening somewhere above my face:

VLADIMIR
… What do we do now?

ESTRAGON:
Wait.

VLADIMIR:
Yes, but while waiting.

ESTRAGON:
What about hanging ourselves?

VLADIMIR:
Hmm. It'd give us an erection.

ESTRAGON:
(highly excited). An erection!

All the action happens in or around a huge tunnel that’s been built on the stage. The tunnel looks really cool — like something you could skateboard on — and it aids the physical comedy. Picture a barefoot Reeves running up a half-pipe only to slide down and pass out into sleep. At times, the tunnel appears to open and shut like the aperture of a camera, and its design is used to manipulate the sounds of the play, both the music and spoken lines.

The supporting cast is powerful. Pozzo, played by Brandon J. Dirden, is scary, imposing, and cruel — especially to his “pig” Lucky (played by Michael Patrick Thornton), who is in a wheelchair. I thought Lloyd chose to put the actor in a wheelchair, but it turns out Thornton is actually paralyzed in real life and uses one. So not a choice per se? — but it works. A lucky break.

Down in the hole

The first time I read "Waiting for Godot" was in high school. I have Brother Jeff — who was the sole Franciscan in a school of Marists — to thank for feeding me and the rest of our AP English class a bibliography of dread. So in addition to "Godot," we read James Joyce’s “The Dead,” T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and other works that explored the meaninglessness and senselessness of life that I was not prepared for.

I may still not be prepared for it. It’s been 25 years since I graduated from Catholic school, and "Godot" still haunts me: “Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave-digger puts on the forceps.”

Going into the Hudson Theater, I thought Lloyd might play up the "Bill & Ted" angle and set the play in a Circle K parking lot — you know, where the dudes encounter the phone-booth time machine and Rufus (George Carlin) for the first time.

But phone booths aren’t a thing any more, so I thought a more accurate contemporary version of "Waiting for Godot" would be Vladimir and Estragon texting each other their dialogue — “Nothing to be done 😢” — followed by two acts of doomscrolling.

Phelim McAleer

The weight of waiting

The official Instagram account for the play shared a post that leaned into the year 2025 with a cute group chat between Estragon, Vladimir, and Godot. Godot is typing (as depicted with an ellipses), and the phone has existentially low battery life. But alas, none of the characters in the show has an iPhone — not even a beeper.

The play is a real nostalgia trip. Beckett’s masterpiece is over 70 years old, the leads were once teen heartthrobs, they’re wearing bowler hats, and it’s a throwback to a time when boredom was possible.

When was the last time you were bored — when you felt the weight of waiting?

Thanks to my phone, boredom is almost an impossibility. Before showtime, I scrolled — until I was told it was time to put my phone away. Were I waiting for Godot, I’d pass the time pretty much the way I did during intermission: by deleting spam voicemails offering me personal loans and tax relief. I could imagine purgatory doing nothing but this. What could be worse?

Well, “in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ethan Hawke and John Leguizamo performed in a Zoom version of 'Godot.'" There’s your answer.

No play for young men

Ian McKellen as Estragon and Patrick Stewart as Vladimir. Robbie Jack/Getty Images

I think part of the greatness of "Godot" has to do with Beckett’s creation of characters that really take the form of the actors portraying them. Casting friends makes sense. I don’t know how close Pierre Latour and Lucien Raimbourg were when they were cast to perform the first presentation of "En Attendant Godot" in Paris in 1952. Maybe they were the Bill and Ted of their day?

On Instagram, actorEric Stolz shares his memory of the 1988 production starring Robin Williams and Steve Martin: “I’ve often thought that Beckett would have loved that Production, the absurdity they embraced brought it into the realm of the Marxs [sic] Brothers, which to me is a great compliment.”

After going down the "Godot" rabbit hole, I found that the duo that really nailed it for me was Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart. As much as I love Reeves’ and Winter’s performances, I have to admit my ageism. The boys — ages 61 and 60 — are just too young and fit for the roles.

McKellen and Stewart were in their 70s when they contemplated hanging themselves from that lone tree and argued over the salvation of the crucified thief in the Gospels. And it really works, because they’re old men. Vladimir has to piss uncontrollably, Estragon is senile, and they both stink like old men stink. Because they’re old men.

Vladimir and Estragon are excited over an erection — even if they have to hang themselves to get one — because they’re old and impotent. That joke’s been on my mind for 25 years — but now I realize that beyond the shock of the thought, the joke only really lands if we’re seeing old men deliver it. And while Keanu and Winter nail the back-and-forth — I literally loled — I don’t believe they’d need to commit suicide to get a hard-on.

I admit that I may have been influenced by a video I watched of Ian McKellen where he talks about "Waiting":

But what are they waiting for? I think the play’s been so popular over the years because Beckett was the first person to realize that an awful lot of life is about waiting. You were probably all waiting to come tonight. Probably in the odd moments in the last week when you’ve been thinking [mimes looking at his watch]: Christmas, or birthday, or holiday, or examinations; waiting to go to college, waiting to meet the right person. My age, waiting for death. We’re all waiting. What we’re doing is passing time. Getting through. … And Godot’s just a bit of hope to make life a little better.

After the curtain call, when the house lights came up, an usher was waiting to speak to a woman in my row. Apparently the woman had been recording the performance on her phone. You won’t find her footage online. She was forced to delete it. The play runs through early January 2026. Don’t wait to see it. It’ll pass the time.

Hollywood goes full antifa with 'One Battle After Another'

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.