THE SMASHING MACHINE

If you can put aside the fact that a 53 year old Rock is playing someone between the ages of 29-32, this movie is surprisingly good. I say surprisingly because I’ve never been a big fan of the Safdie’s films and I never expect much from a Rock performance outside of maybe being entertained. But this exceeded my somewhat low/non-existent(?) expectations. Benny Safdie made a solid movie after splitting off from his brother and The Rock (finally) gave a performance that wasn’t some version of his wrestling persona. To be clear - there are definitely some parts in the film where the pro-wrestler Rock starts to creep out but for the most part he keeps it at bay. And could you blame him? Part of the reason he was cast in this role was because of his pro-wrestling background. I’m sure he had to tap in to that persona for all the physically demanding parts.

Instead of trying to imitate Mark Kerr and do an impression of his unique high-pitched mid-western accent - he just acts. This is something a lot of veteran actors need to do when it comes to biopics. From Viola Davis as Michelle Obama to Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, it seems like actors are more focused on nailing an impression of the subject rather than give a genuine performance. And it usually ends up being an embarrassingly bad SNL skit-level portrayal. That’s not the case here.
At the end of the day this is a mostly single-performance driven movie and The Rock does a fine job of carrying everything on his back for the most part.

The Smashing Machine, based on the 2002 documentary of the same name, follows a 3-4 year period in the life of mixed martial arts legend; Mark Kerr. We follow the ups & downs of his fighting career and the toxic relationship between he and his girlfriend.
Again - most of this falls on the performance of the Rock but it isn’t the only highlight. The Smashing Machine is an interesting mix of brutal fighting scenes and the almost boring day-to-day routine of Kerr (arguing with his girlfriend, training, injecting steroids in secret, doing chores around the house etc). That formula worked for me. The movie goes back and forth between incredibly violent to mundane (the relationship between Kerr and his girlfriend was the most uninteresting part of the story for me).

The Rock wasn't the only performance of note here. I can already feel the snarky comments from the readers forming but I found Ryan Bader’s portrayal of Mark Coleman to be almost Bressonian (monotone, deadbeat, dry, etc). Prior to acting, Bader was a seasoned fighter (this movie only cast real life mixed martial artists). Because his forehead/brow and nose are so beaten up from years of fighting, his performance is lacking certain emotions because he can’t move his face like the average person. And it works! It adds to the realism of it all. There’s even sort of an entire second movie within the movie where we follow Coleman juggling his time between being Kerr’s cornerman/trainer/support system and an aging fighter with only so much time left.

Folks might roll their eyes at this one but all the scenes of Emily Blunt and The Rock doing chores around the house reminded me of Jeanne Dielman…

Jeanne Dielman... / The Smashing Machine

Jeanne Dielman... / The Smashing Machine

There's a lot of nostalgia that comes along with The Smashing Machine. Throughout the movie Safdie reminds us that The UFC was a relatively new organization. I remember renting UFC vhs tapes with my friends in the early/mid-90's and following it early on. So when the film namedrops folks like Don Frye and Dan Severn, I'm reminded of my friends, the sleepovers and all the people telling us how UFC will never come of anything. I don't follow UFC at all these days because it's such a massive entity that's too multifaceted to follow. But every time Safdie hints at the early days of UFC I'm reminded of how I was one of the earlier followers decades ago.  

I kind of criticized the casting of The Rock earlier on due to his age but who else could have played a physical role like this? The Rock and Mark Kerr both fall under that racially ambiguous category. When it comes to known/established actors - The Rock was the only person that could have done this. Sure, Benny Safdie could have taken a chance on a no-name and/or up & coming actor but right now it’s about putting butts in seats at the movie theaters and we all know The Rock is going to do that. Even for an "indie" film. This is a separate conversation that’s much bigger than this one movie but we really have no big/physically imposing young leading men right now. Decades ago, 6’-1” actors like Anthony Quinn, Robert Mitchum or James Earl Jones played boxers & wrestlers and made it look believable. Unless I’m forgetting someone I can’t think of too many physically imposing young actors right now. There's also a venn diagram between modern pro-wrestling and mixed martial arts. It makes sense that a former pro-wrestler would play the part of Kerr.
Given how guys like Bautista, Cena and The Rock are used in films today, I can’t help but think how much the ball was dropped by the movie industry by not utilizing old school wrestlers like Harley Race or Nick Bockwinkel as tough guys in the 70’s & 80’s. Imagine Killer Kowalski or Buddy Rogers squaring against Clint Eastwood or Burt Reynolds. I know we had the occasional old school pro-wrestlers like Tor Johnson and Kola Kwariani pop up every now and then but the well was untapped (guys like Hogan & Piper paved the way but they weren't exactly draws). 

I think because we aren’t seeing The Rock pull off the same performance we’ve seen in almost everything he's been in, a lot is being made of this so-called “gritty” performance that's out of his comfort zone. Some are even talking Oscar-worthy. I don’t think The Rock’s acting was that good, but it works. 

If you're a fan of The Safdie's and weary of Benny going off to do his own thing, rest assured that The Smashing Machine has the same style as their previous movies (just slightly more subdued). If you're indifferent towards or not a fan of The Safdie's, I'd still give this a chance even out of curiosity.

HIM

I’m a fan of Jordan Peele so I don’t mean any disrespect when I say what I’m about to say but - Him is what happens when you ask AI or ChatGPT to generate a Jordan Peele-esque script. It touches on all the hot online debate topics in a very checklist sort of way. Biracial commentary? Check. Black athletes with white wives? Check. Dialogue about Black quarterbacks in the NFL? Check. Comparing pro (mostly Black) professional athletes at the NFL combine to slaves at an auction? CHECK. This is yet ANOTHER movie made for people to debate with each other on Twitter. A ragebait movie if you will. The problem is this movie is really bad. Not in a One Battle After Another kind of way. As much as I really did not like that movie, I at least had a lot to say about it. This one? Not so much. At the end of the day this is about cool imagery first. The substance and plot come third & fourth. 

It's clear that this movie exists just to set up shots like this. Just be a photographer...

Anyone familiar with this blog knows I love a good movie reference but when your only purpose is to set up scenes to reference older movies and/or paintings, I have a problem with that...

The Street Fighter / The Story Of Riki-Oh / Him

I will say that between One Battle After Anoter and Him, the understanding that some people have of biracial people is very naive and a little troubling. I’ve noticed that the Blackness of biracial is so conditional when it comes to Black folks. If you’re half Black and mixed with anything else and you just happen to simply mention that one of your parents is white or Asian or Latino, you’re met with this weird hostility form a certain sector of insecure Black people that think you’re treating your Blackness as lesser than (just recently Carmelo Anthony shouted out his Puerto Rican father at his hall of fame induction speech and so many Black Americans took offense to it). If you’re biracial and you date a light skin woman (or another biracial woman) you’re automatically a colorist that doesn’t like dark skin Black woman. It’s very childish and weird. There’s something so insecure about some modern Black people that a lot of their (very personal) insecurities get projected on to biracial people. At times, Him plays out like it was made by someone with no understanding of Biracial people outside of commentary from bitter folks on TikTok and Twitter. There's a lot of projection on to Him but if your aren't familiar with certain spaces/podcasts/social circles/social media accounts, you won't get it.

What’s so frustrating about Him is that in the right hands this could have been an interesting movie. A top prospect college quarterback (Cameron Cade) has his skull cracked right before the draft and he loses every offer except one. He goes off to train for a week with his idol (Isaiah White) whose spot he may be taking as White is considering retirement. Each day gets weirder and Cameron starts to notice things aren’t what they seem. Throw in the psychological horror aspect and you got something. I’m not saying this would have been a masterpiece but it could have been interesting in a good way.

Besides the aforementioned issues concerning how this film handles race in a naive rage-baiting kind of way, its relationship to football seems very naive as well. No offense but this movie comes off like it was directed by someone that never played a competitive sport let alone high level football. It's like it was directed by someone that made up a bunch of bad stereotypes about all athletes and then believed them just to get upset.
As I was watching Him I kept wondering if the director’s only relationship with football was watching Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday. I’m sure Him will be used as another indictment on toxic masculinity. I’ll be the first to acknowledge the sometimes obvious male-centric toxicity in football that starts early on in pop warner or middle school but if you don’t know it firsthand it’s easier for you to fall victim to showing it in a very naive and childish way. And that’s what happens with Him.

This is for people that don’t actually watch football but obsess over things like Travis Kelce’s dating life or angrily question why Pat Mahomes didn’t marry a Black woman. I imagine people that like to dissect the imagery in Kendrick Lamar music videos will find Him “deep” and/or “layered”. It’s not tho. Between the not-so hidden satanic imagery and all the implications about sacrifices & rituals - the movie wears its agenda on its sleeve. And if that stuff still goes over your head, don’t worry….comedian Jim Jeffries plays a personal trainer that constantly warns our young star athlete to watch out. *SPOILERS* apparently there’s a secret society/organization that grooms young biracial boys since childhood to become football stars. So outside of the target audience I mentioned earlier - this movie plays in to the dumb conspiracy theories believed by Joe Rogan/Alex Jones listeners.


This movie is just bad. The Adam Sandler remake of The Longest Yard is a better look at football and race relations. If you do see this, stick around for the ending. As bad as the movie is, I doubt nothing will prepare you for the climax. 

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER

I’m just not seeing what the rest of the world is seeing. This is an unserious movie as far as I'm concerned. I sincerely mean this when I say that I hate to be the guy that dislikes the movie that everyone seems to love but One Battle After Another was, as the young kids say, problematic. It just weirdly panders to certain specific types of people (performative liberals) and it uses current events (the migrant deportation crisis) in a very cheap way to do the pandering. But it’s ok because people like to be pandered to today now more than ever. Everyone seems to be in a bubble or an echo chamber. There’s no real discourse. No nuance or middle ground. People only want to be agreed with and if they see someone on the opposite end of the political spectrum express an opinion or even a fact they don’t like, they have to disingenuously disagree like a stubborn toddler.

Speaking of no more nuance or middle ground - I’m almost certain that because I don’t love this film and have criticisms of my community that I’ll be labeled a “coon” (a term that has lost all of it’s sting), a sellout or just out of touch. As you read on you’ll see that I have absolutely no love for conservatives but because of this critique, folks will associate me with conservatism or MAGA.
I never thought I’d say this but I’m feeling like Armond White after watching OBAA. White represents a type of Black conservative that I detest but when it comes to expressing interesting thoughts about film - there’s no one like him.

One Battle After Another is a movie made for modern Twitter liberals, unfunny Black Twitter pundits that think surface-level representation is more important than meaningful messages, folks that call Joe Biden & Kamala Harris “uncle Joe” and “auntie Kamala” and emotional college students that think they’re making a difference by debating stupid conservatives on college campuses (you aren’t making a difference. You’re just making yourself look dumb by arguing with racists using your performative feelings).

Conservatives will watch this movie and immediately get that they’re being targeted. Sean Penn’s “General Lockjaw” clearly represents a cartoonish iteration of MAGA. There’s literally a subplot (which kind of turns in to the main plot) involving a secret society of American White Nationalists that believe in racial purity. When it comes to the white characters in this movie it’s pretty straight forward and surprisingly interesting. When it comes to the Black characters, Paul Thomas Anderson treats them like caricatures.
The conservative analysis of this film will be nothing surprising. They’re always so predictable. The only critique they ever seem to have these days is “this movie made me feel bad as a straight white man”. I dunno - if a movie like Sinners or even OBAA made you feel like you’re being attacked as a white man, maybe you need to stop being so weak and not let a movie hurt your feelings. But that’s just my opinion.

Folks on the opposite side of conservatism (liberals, “the left”, democrats, etc) will watch One Battle After Another and feel validated and seen. They’ll praise the (cartoonish surface-level) representation of Black women in the movie like it’s something daring (it’s not). A lot of times white liberals can be clueless about their relationships with Black people and that comes out in One Battle After Another.
A White liberals will have “BLM” in their Twitter bio, wear a thrift store Nelson Mandela t-shirt but won’t have any actual Black friends. Furthermore - they sometimes think they know what’s better for Black people than Black people themselves. They get comfortable and insert themselves in certain Black business that doesn’t concern them. They really do sometimes see us as props. One Battle After Another just confirms this.

Besides Regina hall, I thought the Black women in the movie were used as sexual fetish props. There’s a scene in the film where a group of Black revolutionary women rob a bank and one of them starts to give a speech about Black pussy and the power of it. …Just rob the bank, please.
But lemme guess - as a man, even a Black man, I just don’t get how empowering this is supposed to be, huh? A non-Black person with blue hair and a septum nose ring will see that scene and call it “iconic” or something.
But this all makes sense. Of course a white filmmaker like Paul Thomas Anderson would be responsible for a forced scene involving a Black woman preaching about Black pussy in the middle of committing a bank robbery. The crowd that this movie is for is the same crowd that thinks getting Megan Thee Stallion to twerk for Kamala Harris will secure votes. These are the same people that think getting strippers to promote voting will secure the Black male vote because all we think about pussy.

Teyana Taylor’s entire performance was a one-note scowling jezebel stereotype. I know folks are going to describe her performance as a “strong Black woman” but in reality it was just “I’m mad but I’m also horny, white boy!” Let’s also not forget she ratted out her fellow revolutionaries (which led to most of them being murdered) proving she wasn’t really about that life. She also abandoned her child. But again - certain liberal white folks will cheer that on and call it empowering because, again, so many of them see Black people as props for their weirdo agendas. Being a mother is stifling and depressing but being a promiscuous informant that sleeps with the police (who I thought was supposed to be the enemy) is empowering and free (I'm sorry but while Teyona's character was obviously "complicated", she was still shown as a protagonist at the end of the day). 

Black folks are the only people that have their degeneracy cheered on by non-Black people as something empowering or strong. I’m also starting to get sick and tired of the strong and/or independent stereotype that has been forced on Black people in media and in real life (Black women especially). It would be nice if we were allowed to be light and silly in movies more often like we sometimes very much are. But that’s another conversation bigger than One Battle After Another.

What I thought was supposed to be a father/daughter movie about how living the revolutionary lifestyle can often times leave you with nothing to show for later in life, turned in to something else. At the end of the day the climax was about a white supremacist (Sean Penn’s General Lockjaw) joining a super powerful secret society of white supremacists that has an illegitimate black daughter that he has to kill before his fellow white supremacists find out and kick him out of the club. If that's what you're in to then cool. I guess I'm just not.

Leonardo DiCaprio was quite good and the final car chase scene was pretty great. But one sequence and a good performance doesn’t save a movie like this.
The sitcom-style ending is enough to make a logical person lose their mind. *MILD SPOILERS* DiCaprio’s daughter in the film saw how living the revolutionary life left her parents traumatized & depressed yet she still decides to follow in their footsteps?? I just don’t buy that.


I know I’m in the minority on this and some of my words sound harsh but if you can get out of your feelings maybe you can at least see where I’m coming from (notice I didn’t say you have to agree with me).

THE SCHOOL OF CHANTAL AKERMAN: ANDREW BUJALSKI

Jeanne Dielman... / Support The Girls

Nobody else makes a movie like Akerman. They just have that extraordinary strength of vision. To see and be near that as a 20-year-old made me see how deep and committed an artist could be - Andrew Bujalski, thefilmstage.com

Andrew Bujalski was not only a huge fan of the late great Chantal Akerman but he was also a student of hers so it only makes sense that he took a thing or two from her films and put them in his.
It wasn’t until I started watching more of his movies that I caught some major visual similarities between the two.

On the last entry (click here to read) I caught this…

Saute Ma Ville / Mutual Appreciation

But after watching and rewatching a some of his films I caught a few more similarities that I found interesting.

I know I’ve opened myself up to people calling these similarities vague and/or not very unique. Fair enough. How many movies have scenes of people lying around or standing in a kitchen? But I think the fact that Bujalski was taught by Akerman and has shouted her out on a number of occasions means something a little deeper.

(This post will be ongoing and updated)

• It is perhaps a little unfair to Chantal, who has the most diverse (yet consistent) portfolio of masterpieces of any auteur, that I still gravitate to her raw first feature. I can’t help it. At an impossibly young age, she’s got everything working already. Fully formed voice, piercing gaze, fearlessness, humor, invention, and—with apologies to Delphine Seyrig, Aurore Clément, Sylvie Testud—her finest leading lady - Andrew Bujalski, criterion.com

Jeanne Dielman... / Mutual Appreciation

Je Tu Il Elle / Computer Chess

Les Rendezvous D’Anna / Computer Chess

Jeanne Dielman... / Mutual Appreciation

Je Tu Il Elle / Mutual Appreciation

Saute Ma Ville / Mutual Appreciation

Je Tu Il Elle / Mutual Appreciation

Jeanne Dielman / Beeswax

Jeanne Dielman... / Computer Chess

Les Rendezvous D’Anna / Beeswax

Je Tu Il Elle / Mutual Appreciation