Review – Darkest Hour

After a long career of putting his personal touches on familiar characters, Gary Oldman finally got his Oscar for this one. I freely concede the possibility that someone who likes Winston Churchill more than I do would have found this more entertaining than I did. Mildly amusing

Review – All the Way

Bryan Cranston does a solid job playing Lyndon Johnson, not that mastering a walking wad of clichés like LBJ is exactly the height of the thespian craft. And that’s a shame, because the politics and emotions surrounding the passage of the Civil Rights Act called out for an exploration of Johnson’s nuances rather than his cartoonish bombast. With such a stellar cast, a better movie might have been made. Mildly amusing

Review – The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It

The Conjuring series seems to be paralleling the zeitgeist of the Republican Party. When the first one came out in 2013, its standard horror movie approach coincided with the final days of the GOP as a mainstream political party. By the time the second one rolled around in 2016, movie and party both had taken a hard turn into the realm of fanatical self-righteousness. And now in 2021 we’ve got a Qanon-esque demonic conspiracy that’s equal parts elaborate, nonsensical and pointless. The Warrens even use their flim-flam as a legal argument, which in the real world was soundly and justly rejected by the court. How much more Trumpian can they get? I like a good demonic possession as much as the next horror movie fan, but this series is taking things to places where it just isn’t fun anymore. See if desperate