The world turned upside down: Hamilton at 10

One of the things about great art that distinguishes it from the merely good is the way it changes over time. It is malleable, not because anything inherent to the piece changes but because we change. It becomes what we need it to be, meeting the moment to reflect our hopes, our fears, and our insecurities.

When Hamilton debuted on Broadway 10 years ago, we were in Year 7 of the Barack Obama presidency. That presidency, though complicated, at least felt like the needle was moving in the right direction, pointing toward the dream of a more perfect union. It felt like an era of progress, opportunity, and possibility. For whatever flaws and failures you want to discuss from that time, America had at least pushed up against the bounds of what was possible, discovered a way to move forward.

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical reflected this in both execution and theme. Blending hip-hop and R&B with traditional Broadway musical numbers, a mostly non-white cast portraying the all-white Founding Fathers, its story of the fight for change and the need to put the cause above the self – it all spoke to the moment. In a word, it was inspiring. It said: Get out there, change the world, remake it in your image.

Then, 2016 happened. The desire to make America great again is inherently backward thinking, regressive, a challenge to the very notion of progress. It is borne out of fear and an inability or refusal to adapt to a changing world. It is also a weak argument, which to succeed requires only that good people do nothing. As we saw, though many stood, enough good people did nothing.

For this, too, Miranda had given us the blueprint in the form of Aaron Burr. He says nothing, does nothing, stands for nothing. He waits to see which way the winds blow, then follows. He is always behind, whereas progress and change exist at the tip of the spear. The Alexander Hamilton of Miranda’s story proudly – if haphazardly on occasion – carries the spear into battle. The Burrs of the world, who refuse to join the fight, only make it that much harder for the people on the front line to succeed.

The years went on, Hamilton becoming both the most successful musical in history and a flashpoint in the culture wars. The very people who mocked college students for requesting “safe spaces” were aghast when their vice president was booed while attending a performance of the show on Broadway. “How about a little respect and civility?” cried the people in their “Fuck Your Feelings” T-shirts.

Perhaps a few more of them would have survived if we would have printed “Fuck Your Feelings” masks. Oh, right, the pandemic. While the Hamilton cast recording was on its way toward becoming the best-selling cast album of all time, the apparatus put in place to protect the nation – and the world at large – from the next inevitable virus was being dismantled by people more concerned with destroying what came before than building what would come next. Backward thinking, remember?

So, those of us privileged enough to quarantine quarantined. We sought comfort. We sought release. We sought something to make us feel a little more whole, a little more human again. And once more, there was Hamilton.

In early February 2020, Disney paid $75 million to acquire the rights to a filmed version of the Broadway show, featuring the original cast, in one of the most expensive film-acquisition deals in history. The announced plan was to release the film in theaters in October 2021, but you will note that “early February 2020” is about five weeks before everything changed.

Cinemas shut down. Broadway theaters shut down. The world shut down. Apart from whatever else this meant – which we don’t have time to get into here – it accelerated the streaming revolution exponentially. Last Cinema Standing or not, to get my movie fix, I had to stream (though I did attend a fair number of drive-in movies during the lockdown).

The race was on to dominate the streaming landscape. Netflix, of course, had a massive headstart, having been in the game, pushing this radical change for years. Amazon Prime had been around, taking up much of the rest of the marketplace. But, as it became clear streaming was the future, everyone felt the need to get in on the action. Disney being Disney, the Mouse House got in ahead of the curve – pun intended; remember flattening the curve? – and launched Disney+ in November 2019, a mere four months before lockdown. HBO Max launched in May 2020 and Peacock in July that year.

What was Disney to do with this $75 million investment in a film with no theaters in which to play it? Well, bully for them, the company had a streaming service in need of a splashy way to draw subscribers. Nothing could be splashier than a high-quality recording of an era-defining, zeitgeist-capturing musical that was just sitting on a shelf for the theoretical day theaters might reopen. So, Disney dropped Hamilton into the streaming ocean, and more than a splash, it was a tidal wave.

It premiered July 3, 2020. Within a month, an estimated 37 percent of all Disney+ subscribers had watched it. At the time, that translated to 22 million subscribers, and unless they all watched it alone, that meant significantly more than 22 million people had watched it. The weekend of its release, the Disney+ app saw a 72 percent increase in downloads over the week prior. It ended up being the second-most streamed film of 2020, behind only Wonder Woman 1984.

If you were on the internet at the time, you know its impact went far beyond streaming numbers and app downloads. It was inescapable. The memes, the discussion boards, the videos, the fan theories – Hamilton was everywhere. Every theater kid, past and present, came out of the woodwork to celebrate this cultural moment.

I watched it July 6, three days after its release. Then again July 7. And again July 12. It had me. Instantly, I recognized it as the towering artistic achievement that it is. I had just two regrets. First, I lived in New York City during Hamilton’s Broadway heights. I could have seen it, should have seen it, but tickets were going for $500 a seat minimum. The expense felt unjustifiable. This was a large part of the reason Miranda agreed to create a filmed version of the show in the first place: to make it accessible to families without $2,000 to spend on a Broadway show, if they could even get to Broadway.

It’s one of the reasons I prefer film to live theater. The rush of live theater is wonderful. I have acted in a number of shows and sat in attendance for some fabulous productions. But, it’s an experience reserved for those privileged by money and proximity. It is fleeting, existing only for the moment of time in which it is performed, which is what lends it its power. But, it’s not very democratic. I cannot convey to you the experience of sitting in the third row of the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in 2015 and witnessing the magic of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. You had to be there.

With a movie on the other hand, I can take you to the cinema and you will have the same experience I did. I can lend you a DVD or send you a link to stream it. It will be the same tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. And, we need not live anywhere near each other or near a single venue to share the experience. Film is for the people.

The second regret I alluded to was that I could watch the recording of Hamilton only at home, not in the theater as intended. I have a very nice TV and a comfortable living room, but it’s no cinema. And, while I understood the business thinking behind Disney’s decision, I lamented that we might never see Hamilton on the big screen. And then, all of a sudden, here it was.

In theaters this week, at long last, we have Hamilton. It opened No. 2 at the box office, earning a little more than $10 million. For a show that has slipped from the zeitgeist and a film that has been available to stream for five years, it’s an impressive haul, and Disney must be wondering how much money was left on the table all these years. The Disney coffers, however, are none of my concern. We are getting this show at the exact moment we need it, reflecting still our ever-changing hopes, fears, and insecurities. 

It would be absurd if it weren’t true that we have the opportunity to watch a cast of mostly Black and Latino performers sing about the promise of building a free nation at the very moment the Supreme Court of that nation has empowered the government to terrorize communities of color.

How darkly comic that just a couple weeks removed from the latest mass shooting to result in the deaths of children – a uniquely American pastime – we can take in a story about cycles of gun violence and the need to break our patterns in order to protect future generations from the mistakes we have made.

What cosmic joke puts us in a theater for a show about the power of democracy and the need to stand up to tyranny in the same instant that the very foundation of democracy – that one person’s vote counts the same as another’s – is under attack, not for the first time and surely not for the last?

I would love to sit here and gush about everything that makes Hamilton such an achievement as a piece of musical theater: the intricacies of the lyrics, the stunning choreography (which is only improved by seeing it on the big screen, by the way), the structure, the detail, and the performances. But, you don’t need me to tell you that what Miranda has created is singular in its vision and execution. The show speaks for itself.

And, anyway, me sitting here, breaking down how Miranda’s leitmotifs clue us in to each character’s fate long before they become clear in the plot would be a little like analyzing the brush strokes on Monet’s Water Lilies. It would be fun and perhaps informative, but it would miss the forest for the trees. I’m more interested in what we feel when we take it in and what we can do with that feeling.

In the moments before his onstage death, Alexander sings:

“Legacy, what is a legacy?

It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see.

I wrote some notes at the beginning of a song someone will sing for me.

America, you great unfinished symphony, you sent for me.

You let me make a difference.

A place where even orphan immigrants

Can leave their fingerprints and rise up.”

So, the feeling I am left with watching Hamilton now is that these words do not reflect the America I see around me, but rather the nation I wish we could be. The villains want to write our country’s coda, but we cannot let them. Let this moment in history be a measure, a phrase, a single note that fades into oblivion and gives way to the song we sing tomorrow, together in triumph.

Monday Miniatures: The Toxicity of the City

Peter Dinklage in The Toxic Avenger

Welcome to Monday Miniatures, where I tell you about some of the stuff I’ve been watching in the past week that I wouldn’t otherwise get to share.

The week of Sept. 1-7, 2025:

Caught Stealing, directed by Darren Aronofsky

How I watched it: In theaters (AMC Burbank 16)

Fun but ultimately empty is how I would describe Aronofsky’s latest, a scuzzy romp through the criminal underworld of 1998 New York City. I had a great time while I was watching it, and I think Austin Butler is a movie star, but I left the theater feeling like I’d enjoyed a wonderful buffet of desserts and wishing I’d had a full meal.

For a long time, I would have called Aronofsky one of my favorite directors. Requiem for a Dream was an absolute revelation to me the first time I watched it, and his first five films (Pi, Requiem, The Fountain, The Wrestler, and Black Swan) comprise one of the most emotionally arresting and visually inventive filmographies of the past three decades. Noah is a biblical epic with ambitions that outstrip its accomplishments, and Aronofsky feels a little lost in all the CGI. And, I love mother!, but now, eight years on, its box office failure feels like it may have broken the director a bit.

It all led to The Whale, which despite its two Academy Award wins, feels like the most anonymous movie Aronofsky has made. And now, we get Caught Stealing, which is less anonymous than it is a well executed imitation of other filmmakers and films, specifically Martin Scorsese, Guy Ritchie, and a whole host of post-Quentin Tarantino ’90s crime films. It’s not bad. It’s a lovely time at the movies. But, it’s not the director I fell in love with all those years ago.

The Toxic Avenger Unrated, directed by Macon Blair

How I watched it: In theaters (Alamo Drafthouse DTLA)

I am glad I watched the original Toxic Avenger the previous week, as this film is loaded with so many winking nods and knowing callbacks that it feels almost required in order to have a passing understanding of Blair’s remake. 

Blair won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance with his debut feature I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, which is a good film that I liked but which I believe is mostly remembered for representing a watershed moment in the shift to streaming supremacy. Netflix bought it out of Sundance and put it straight onto its streaming service a month later, bypassing theaters entirely. Before that, the idea of the top prize winner at Sundance not playing in theaters would have been unthinkable. Now look where we are.

As suggested by the “Unrated” portion of the title, Blair’s followup effort has endured a similarly strange release journey. After premiering at a number of fall festivals in 2023, the film was deemed by one distributor “unreleaseable” due to its violent content. This is absurd on the face of it, as the film is no more violent than a John Wick movie, which suggests to me distributors were scared off by the film’s tone and its environmental message.

Blair nails the Troma tone, the practical gore effects are fun (even the poor CGI shots lend a Troma-esque quality), and Peter Dinklage is inspired casting as the unremarkable custodian who becomes Toxie. In fact, the whole cast is wonderful, including Jacob Tremblay and zola. star Taylour Paige as Toxie’s allies and Kevin Bacon and Elijah Wood as the nefarious enemies.

An interesting change for this updated version is that in the original, the gym rat bullies and the corrupt politicians polluting the town are separate antagonists. Here, they are one in the same, with Bacon playing Bob Garbinger, a corrupt business tycoon running a fitness empire built on supplements that not only don’t work but which in fact poison the town. Bacon is a perfect meathead, playing a type that will seem all too familiar to those of us living through the current moment.

I had a great time with this movie. It honors the original while improving upon it and finding something new to say using a classic character, which is about the best we could ask for from any remake.

Ms. 45, directed by Abel Ferrara

How I watched it: Criterion Channel

This was not my speed. I appreciate Ferrara’s whole thing and that many people jibe with it, but it’s not for me. I find it thematically shallow and exploitative for the sake of exploitation, particularly this film, which concerns a mute seamstress (Zoë Lund) who is sexually assaulted multiple times and goes on a bloody rampage of revenge through the dilapidated streets of early ’80s New York City.

The whole rape-revenge genre is fraught, of course, and Ferrara just isn’t the filmmaker to have a sensitive or nuanced take on the material. He seems more interested in contriving an ending in which he can have Lund dress up as a sexy nun – with a gun. It’s all a little boys-only boarding school fantasy. Lund is fine as the lead, but she doesn’t have anything interesting to do.

Dangerous Animals, directed by Sean Byrne

How I watched it: Shudder

This is a movie about a serial killer who uses sharks as his weapon of choice. If you didn’t know, now you know. Heckuva premise. I had wanted to catch this one in theaters when it was out earlier this summer but could never work it into the schedule. So, when it premiered on the Shudder streaming service Friday, I watched it first thing.

It starts off with a bang, then takes its foot off the pedal for a large chunk of the first half. We get some ho-hum character development and some hokey dialogue, but our heroes, played by Hassie Harrison and Josh Heuston, are certainly likeable enough by the time we get to the bloodletting. And, if we’re being honest, that’s what we’re all here for in the shark-wielding serial killer movie, yes? Well, on that front, it delivers.

Jai Courtney plays that killer in a performance that’s pitched to the back rows, and it’s perfect. He’s having so much fun that he practically insists the audience have fun, too. We get a few cutaway shots to Courtney by himself, celebrating his latest kill, and while I will leave you to discover the details yourself, trust me when I say those moments are worth the price of admission in and of themselves.

Again, the movie does drag a bit until the final act, and because much of the action is set on a quite small boat, some of the sequences can start to feel a tad repetitive. There are only so many ways to stage an escape on a set with three basic looks. I will say that one of those sequences features an escape from handcuffs that I have never seen before and which absolutely shocked me in the best way. Points for originality there. Overall, despite a relatively brief runtime (98 minutes), the movie could have been tighter, but the promise of the premise is fulfilled, so it’s well worth a watch.

Hamilton, directed by Thomas Kail

How I watched it: In theaters (El Capitan, Hollywood)

If you have followed the site at all over the past five years, you will be aware of my abiding love for Hamilton, both the musical and the filmed stage production, which has been available on Disney+ since 2020. This past weekend, Disney finally released it into theaters, as had always been the plan until the pandemic hit. I will have more on this in a separate piece on the site this week, so be on the lookout for that. Until then, all I will say is that if you can see this in theaters, do see it. It’s magical.

Weekend at Bernie’s, directed by Ted Kotcheff

How I watched it: AMC+

This rewatch was inspired by the season finale of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s excellent AppleTV+ show The Studio, in which Rogen and Co. must parade around the passed-out-drunk executive that owns their studio as though he is alive and awake. Bryan Cranston won an Emmy this past weekend for his work in the episode, which is a tremendous feat of physical comedy.

That feat derives directly and almost whole cloth from the work of Terry Kiser as the titular Bernie in this ’80s farce par excellence. I couldn’t guess how many times I have seen this movie, which we owned on VHS when I was growing up and which was in fairly constant rotation. As a child,I loved Andrew McCarthy’s wacky, fun-loving Larry. Of course, as adults, we gravitate toward the anxious, put-upon Richard (Jonathan Silverman). But, on this watch, I specifically paid attention to Kiser as the dead body at the heart of the film, and he is magnificent.

There are some jokes that don’t stand the test of time – In an ’80s comedy? You don’t say! – such as when the fake suicide note suggests Larry is going to get a sex-change operation, which he immediately equates to being called a drag queen. Unfortunate stuff, and frankly, a little out of sync with where we were even in 1989. But, generally speaking, it’s all in good fun, and if you can’t laugh at the sight of a lifeless corpse water skiing, you might be as dead as Bernie.

Interesting to note Kotcheff had one of the more prolific and versatile careers of his time, bouncing among period dramas, thrillers, action, and comedy with a fair amount of facility. He is responsible for filming one of the great Australian masterpieces in Wake in Fright, a terrifying descent into madness that I highly recommend if you have not seen it. But, he certainly will be best remembered for launching the Rambo franchise with 1982’s First Blood, a more interesting, introspective movie than you remember it being.

Kotcheff died in April this year, just three days after his 94th birthday. Rest in peace to a talented journeyman who left his mark on the industry.

Monday Miniatures: Classic Action, Early Auteurs, and New Releases

Dusan Makavejev's Man Is Not a Bird

Welcome to Monday Miniatures, where I tell you about some of the stuff I’ve been watching in the past week that I wouldn’t otherwise get to share.

The week of Aug. 25-31, 2025:

The Raid, directed by Gareth Evans

How I watched it: Amazon Prime rental

This one had been on the watchlist for a while. Film fans I trust had long recommended it as one of the pinnacles of action filmmaking in the new millennium. I don’t know if I’m willing to go that far, but there’s definitely a lot of fun to be had. The plot is video game stuff, the characters are thin at best, and because the story takes place in one location, even a few of the quite good action sequences start to feel a little samey.

That said, there are two big set pieces here that are worth the price of admission. The first is the hallway fight in which our hero, Rama (Iko Uwais), takes on and defeats what feels like an endless stream of bad guys coming from the stairwell and the elevator. The second is a drug lab fight that manages to bring some fresh looks to a film that’s pretty drab overall. Ultimately, it was fine, if a bit overhyped for me, and I’m probably good on the Raid franchise. By the way, if you’re looking to rent this movie as I did, the U.S. release is called The Raid: Redemption. If you’re like me, I just saved you 10 minutes of googling.

A Better Tomorrow, directed by John Woo

How I watched it: Tubi

Because I had watched The Raid, I found myself in the mood for more martial arts movies and discovered this early John Woo film that was his big breakthrough at the box office. More importantly, perhaps, this was the first of five films Woo would make with Chow Yun-fat, including The Killer and Hard Boiled. Their collaborations essentially defined the action genre for the next decade the world over, particularly once Woo made the leap to U.S. filmmaking, which he did immediately after Hard Boiled.

I see this film’s importance, but I did not think it was very good. One can see all the ways Woo would become the filmmaker he became. All the basics are there, but it all feels so basic. It’s a story about brotherhood, family, and Hong Kong gangsters, and it clearly laid the groundwork for the gun fu style of action filmmaking. It’s just that Woo did all of these things better later. 

Despite playing low status in this film, Chow already has the aura of the coolest person in the room, and he gets the best action sequence in the film by far, a restaurant shootout that doesn’t end quite the way you think it will. Definitely check this out if you’re interested in the building blocks of a pair of action legends, but if you want them at their peak, check out their later collaborations.

Thunderbolts, directed by Jake Schreier

How I watched it: Disney+

By now, I hope we can all agree the Marvel Cinematic Universe should have ended with Avengers: Endgame. That would have been the artistically prudent decision. But Marvel (at least the film division) and less so Disney are not machines built to print art. They are built to print money. And, aside from bona fide hits Spider-Man: No Way Home and Deadpool & Wolverine, they’re not even reliably great at printing money anymore.

So, what of the art? Apart from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and the aforementioned No Way Home, quality is not really part of the equation anymore. Rather, it seems like an exercise in how long the studio can keep this tired old boxer of a franchise on its feet and in the ring. There is, perhaps, no better example of this than Thunderbolts*, which I missed in theaters but caught up with the day it was released to Disney+.

It’s competently made, the conflict is refreshingly earth-bound, and Florence Pugh can truly make anything work. But, what this movie ultimately is selling is The New Avengers, which the text of the film explicitly calls out as a craven stunt. However, just because you call it out doesn’t make it not so. My interest was held for much of the brief runtime, but I can’t give it much more than that.

Deadstream, directed by Vanessa Winter and Joseph Winter

How I watched it: Shudder

Though it seems divisive among horror fans, I had a good time with this one. It stars Joseph Winter as a YouTube personality who does extreme stunts for internet clout. He gets canceled and, worse, demonetized, so as part of his attempt to claw back into the spotlight, he decides to livestream himself spending the night in a haunted house. Unfortunately for him, the haunting is real, and he will go through quite a bit of hell in coming to this realization.

The film wrings some classic tension and scares from empty rooms watched by motion-activated GoPro cams, cribbing very much from the Paranormal Activity playbook. Later on, as things ramp up, there are some cool, gory effects, which I won’t describe since the surprise is half the fun. But all in all, the movie is knowingly funny. There’s a lot of broad comedy about internet influencers and the economy of virality, which I found both funny and astute. It’s no masterpiece, but spooky season is right around the corner and you could do worse.

Man Is Not a Bird, directed by Dušan Makavejev

Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator, directed by Dušan Makavejev

Innocence Unprotected, directed by Dušan Makavejev

How I watched them: Criterion Channel

My love of Makavejev began by accident, one of those weirdly serendipitous happenstances that sometimes is required to discover something new. In my freshman year of college, one of my hobbies was just to hang out at Borders on the weekends. Remember Borders? It was like Barnes & Noble, if you weren’t around for the halcyon days of mega-chain bookstores. I was totally super cool and had tons of awesome friends and also spent my weekends hanging out at bookstores by myself. I contain multitudes.

Anyway, I picked up one of the random film magazines and started thumbing through it when I got to a column on upcoming Criterion releases. At the time, I may have owned one Criterion release (the two-disc special edition of Do the Right Thing), but as a burgeoning cinephile, I knew it was important to be in the know about Criterion. A lot of cool stuff came out in June 2007, including Lindsay Anderson’s If… and the Chris Marker double feature of La Jetée and Sans Soleil.

However, what caught my eye was a small paragraph on the release of two films by Yugoslavian provocateur Makavejev. I had never heard of the director, much less the two films: W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism and Sweet Movie. The descriptions made both films sound so daring, confrontational, and nakedly political (in every sense of the phrase) that I absolutely had to see them. So, on nothing more than a magazine recommendation, I pre-ordered both discs. I fell in love with them that summer, and when I returned for sophomore year in the fall, I became very annoying about them, as a college kid is wont to do.

I eventually caught up with Makavejev’s one stab at commercial filmmaking, The Coca-Cola Kid, which is still weird and subversive as hell, but I had never gone back to the beginning. Makavejev had made three well-regarded features leading up to my beloved arthouse classics, two narrative features and one experimental documentary.

Watched in close succession, as I did, they reveal a filmmaker coming into his own, building the confidence and know-how to create what would become his lasting legacy. Man Is Not a Bird, his first feature, is much closer in style and substance to the then-nascent Czechoslovak New Wave than it is to the more experimental Yugoslav Black Wave movement, of which Makavejev is among the most important figures. And yet, all of his pet themes are there: political oppression, man’s destructive desire for self-pleasure, and the failure of our institutions to serve the people.

Love Affair, on the other hand, sees Makavejev toying with the pseudo-documentary style that would define his greatest works. He mixes a narrative about a young woman’s doomed love affair with straight-to-camera interviews with criminologists and coroners discussing the modern approach to murder and crime solving. The jumbled timeline and flashy editing are exhilarating, and you can see Makavejev becoming Makavejev.

By Innocence Unprotected, he has made the leap, ready to become the filmmaker who would make W.R. and Sweet Movie. The film is a documentary about the first Serbian sound film, also called Innocence Unprotected and made during the Nazi occupation, featuring interviews with some of the people behind the film, including most notably the director, writer, and star Dragoljub Aleksić. But, it is also a collage of wartime news reels, Nazi propaganda, and nearly the entirety of the original Serbian film. 

The original film is bad, but the way Makavejev uses his film to recontextualize it lends it depth and gravity. It reminded me a bit of Radu Jude’s Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World. While W.R. and Sweet Movie remain his masterpieces and my favorites of his work, this journey through Makavejev’s early features has only deepened my love for those films and increased my appreciation of the filmmaker.

The Toxic Avenger, directed by Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz

How I watched it: Amazon Prime

I knew this film by reputation but had never seen it. The same could be said for me of the whole Troma Entertainment experience. I know of The Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke ’Em High, and Tromeo and Juliet, but I had not seen them. I mostly remember the studio for offering a part in one of its movies as the grand prize for a VH1 pop culture game show. Which one? I don’t recall off the top of my head.

Anyway, I wanted to catch up with this because I was interested in seeing the currently-in-theaters remake starring Peter Dinklage and I wanted the original context. Fans of these films will ridicule me for saying this, but it’s so much wilder than I could have imagined. It has the blood, guts, and bare breasts common to a lot of ’80s horror and cult films, but it is all pitched to such campy highs that the film becomes genuinely, endearingly baffling.

It certainly captures a specific mid-’80s, anti-Reagan, counter-culture spirit in its distrust of political institutions, the police force, and generally anybody who would be considered “cool” in a different movie. At its deepest core, if it can be said to have deeper themes of any kind, it’s about the toxicity of vanity, specifically with regard to physical appearance. Our hero – who is spontaneously and uncomplicatedly embraced by the people of his home town – is a deformed monster who mostly battles gym rats. I think the theme is pretty clear. More to come next week.

Highest 2 Lowest, directed by Spike Lee

How I watched it: In theaters (Laemmle Monica)

Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to write about this film in a more in-depth fashion at some point this week. For now, I will say that Lee’s remake/reimagining of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low is a fascinating piece of interpretation that makes a number of changes to the source material that I think largely pay off in a more modern context. Denzel Washington is tremendous, towering in more ways than one, and A$AP Rocky is the surprise of the year so far for me.

The Roses, directed by Jay Roach

How I watched it: In theaters (AMC Americana at Brand)

What a blast this was! This film did slightly less than $10 million at the box office this weekend in its debut, despite being marketed to high heaven, and I get it. I don’t know who was asking for a truly bleak comedy about marriage that is a remake of a popular but little-discussed Danny DeVito movie from the ’80s. But, damn it, the people are missing out.

Roach wanders out of the wilderness of made-for-TV docudramas like Game Change and All the Way to get back into Meet the Parents mode with a comedy that has real jokes and real characters and real pathos, a shock on all counts in the modern cinema landscape. Perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised as the adaptation comes to us from Tony McNamara, writer of The Favourite and Poor Things, so we know he has a way around a wicked word or two.

But, the real joy here comes from the chemistry between stars Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch. As two people with equally deep wells of love and hate, dripping with resentment for one another, they are absolute dynamite. All Roach has to do is set the fuse, start the camera, and step back. It’s marvelous to see two such talented performers given characters with such depth, complexity, and honesty. I highly recommend checking this out in theaters with an audience before it becomes just another comedy (with a kind of bad poster) languishing on a streaming service. It’s better than that.

Nobody 2, directed by Timo Tjahhanto

How I watched it: In theaters (AMC Americana at Brand)

I caught this because it looked like fun. It delivered fun. It did not deliver much more than that. The plot machinations are haphazard at best, the character development coming off the first film is illogical, and the CGI is frankly pretty bad. All that said, if you like Bob Odenkirk kicking ass, in this film, Bob Odenkirk kicks ass. There’s a great fight on a “duck boat,” and the climactic carnival battles gets about as much fun out of its setting as one can imagine – often in ways that are totally illogical, but the Nobody world already plays pretty fast and loose with logic. Not as good as the first film, but maybe more fun.