★½ Christopher Nolan does not believe in gods enough to make dramatic the act of defying them. The film he presents is not really an odyssey so much as a divine comedy, but without any comedy… or the divine. If this is supposed to be the epic, poetic tale of a king’s return – the […]
Federal courts have made a lot of news lately. Most of it is not good. We ask a lot of our courts, but life was better when America did not know the names of federal district judges like Jeb Boasberg, Tanya Chutkan, Amir Ali, Amy Berman Jackson, and so many others. The present judicial landscape […]
This has been done before, but like all things sports-related, it needs an occasional update. So let me distinguish mine by beginning with something provocative: the 2025 Seattle Seahawks team is one of the greatest football teams in history. The 2025 Seahawks played the hardest schedule of any Super Bowl winner in a decade. Before […]
The Ohio man with my name is making me look bad, and I’m starting to take it just a little bit personally. It apparently isn’t a 2020s Christmas until Vivek Ramaswamy pours kerosene over his political future in the form of an essay where any valid kernel of a point he makes within it is […]
American Civil Rights is now a “right-wing” cause. It was apparently not enough that working out, liking hot girls, and eating red meat are all considered right wing. Nor was it enough that liking America, being patriotic, or flying the stars and stripes are also now right wing by default. In 2025 America, it is […]
It had to be done.
Last night, Pete Hegseth was confirmed to be the next Secretary of Defense. With three Republican Senators voting against him – two of them hailing from states that elected President Trump by overwhelming margins – this is the first confirmation process in several years that required the Vice President’s tiebreaker vote. As the confirmation process […]
★★ When a movie is less than good, it matters less where it lies within the chronological order of its franchise and more how it got to be its way. A little over a decade ago, Fede Alvarez rebooted The Evil Dead (1980). The final product was a misfire worth remembering only for the concentrated […]
★★ Richard Linklater and Glen Powell are not deep thinkers. Hit Man would be a much better film if they understood that. Linklater in particular has never evolved in his musings about life, human needs, and the sense of self after one, no more than two, semesters of college. If he took more than that, […]
★★★½ I don’t believe in the end of history. Count me proudly among those many – left, right, and center – who mocked ol’ Francis Fukuyama for his book, and still adheres to the imperfect, yet far more perceptive word of Fukuyama’s old teacher Samuel Huntington and his response essay The Clash of Civilizations? Back […]
V for Verbatim 