Digger
I mean, doing an nepo baby oligarch friendly film in the year of our Lord 2026 is a choice, the Trump stuff is just red meat to keep the wolves away. Worth it to break out of my Alejandro G. Iñarritu self imposed ban, but the Babel sickness is still there.
First of all, this is not Dr. Strangelove, at all. This is a Cruiser vehicle, and while he’s no lightweight, he can’t touch Peter Sellers with a 3 meters pole.
Dr. Strangelove is direct and straightforward, this is super intellectual and layered. Both are funny in their own way, none have a pie fight.
It’s also no Okja, nor Princess Mononoke.
The ass cancer bit is great. The board room meeting has the great “woman present” joke.
This is no Mickey 17, the Trump satire is very on the nose. The VP West’s the same literal American flag suit Hegseth does, that Book a Tailor monstrosity made in Vietnam or something.
Cruise playing hinself is alluring, bur is that the reason why the character must have a good arc?
Does that mean the nephew is an ungrateful idiot, mocking someone who treated him well?
Like a Marvel film, it undercuts it’s morality with the double subversion, turning it all into artsy mush. I do agree with the director, it’s entertaining, it’s truly enjoyable. Very beautiful, amazing sound.
The cast is out of this world, but the Cruiser is not even at his best. It’s no Les “swinging past your knees!” Grossman. There’s the chief from Project Hail Mary, the “rubber dinghy rapids” dude,the teacher from A Serious Man, Walter Sobchak, RoboCop 3, one of the kaiju hunters in Pacific Rim, the “what kind of American are you” dude from Civil War. Don’t forget the assistant, not Hunter Schafer.
Even the bad reviews are entertaining.
It’s like being trapped inside a tuba for two hours
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.