When I first saw the trailer for The Invite back in April while in a movie theater, I was immediately excited. Two performers I love, Olivia Wilde and Seth Rogen (that I often think are actually underrated). This also had a tone and a tension that you could tell even in a two minute trailer, was up to something. Coming out of the superhero era of movies that essentially dominated my twenties in the 2010s, it's been an enjoyable cultural shift now that we seem to be getting back to “normal” adult movies as I’m now unfortunately very quickly moving through my thirties. Being able to see snapshots of themes in your life or friends lives play out in popular art more so than a bunch of yoked actors parading around in tights and capes has been cathartic and meaningful, because the older I get the more and more clear it becomes that there really is no manual for any of this shit. Which makes any additional insight or outside perspective that much more appreciated.

As a creative myself it’s interesting consuming art made from the brains of people in roughly your own age bracket. This movie is directed by Olivia Wilde who as previously mentioned is also starring, playing the character of Angela. Seth Rogen playing her husband Joe is also a bit of a creative genius in his own right: writing or starring in movies such as Superbad, Knocked Up, The Pineapple Express, This is the End, etc. Rogen, 44 and Wilde, 42 I think are the perfect ages as elder millennials to give us a dramedy like The Invite. A movie to me that says a lot of the “quiet part outloud” and speaks broadly to a generation that often gets misunderstood or shit on by the generations above and below. A bit like the bastard step child or maybe more so the overlooked or often brushed over middle child of today’s society. A generation I’m very proud to be a part of, yet still feeling a little underprepared.

Breakdown

The Invite is very much a relationship movie but also a life movie, a “how did we end up here” movie, very much to me as spoken above, a bit of a millennial war cry. Angela (Olivia Wilde) is seen in the opening scenes doing some rearranging in her apartment, most notably wheeling in a new area rug to add to the living room. Angela is also doing some light food shopping at the local deli while her husband Joe (Seth Rogen) is at work as a music teacher. Joe on his way home riding his bike that his wife gifted to him, lays on the floor as he walks in immediately trying to stretch out his back. ** Cue the over 40 memes** Moving rooms in the apartment, Angela yells to him “shoes off please” as he’s still laying down, therefore feet not moving. It was that slightly passive aggressive “oh here we go” vibe that you could feel immediately, which sadly I think all of us have experienced more often than we’d probably care to admit. Within about 3 mins Joe was told to take off his shoes, softly yelled at for attempting to eat some cheese that had been laid out on the dining room table and then after being denied the cheese, softly yelled at again for having celery as a consolation prize because he wouldn’t be hungry enough to eat her Soufflé. Which he was unaware she was even making in the first place! (Every man’s been there) When questioning why the fuck did you make a Soufflé? It’s revealed that Angela invited their upstairs neighbors down to their apartment for dinner and they were due to show up within 10 minutes.

Protesting to a degree that a man does when not being informed of something until it's too late after poor communication was displayed. Joe states that if they are coming down then I’m bringing up the “noise.” Angela cringes and visually is embarrassed at the idea. It’s here we learn that the upstairs neighbors can often be heard having “loud, animalistic, disrespectful sex.” This was met from Angela with protest and more embarrassment about bringing up to your neighbors directly to their face that they have sex too loud. Personally, it makes me want to crawl into my own skin from secondhand embarrassment. Angela, not wanting to shame them for having sex, seemingly more often than what she’s been getting recently, proclaims multiple times:

Oof. That one was pointed, and stung through the screen. Joe states “Clearly you know how difficult it is since you brought it up 3 times in this conversation.” The tension and aggression you feel is clearly from a woman you can tell has been orgasm deprived mixed with the dread and embarrassment from a man that knows he hasn’t completed “the mission” in ways that he would have liked in quite a bit of time. Not entirely implausible when you live with a partner for a very long time and things seemingly are consistently contentious. I can imagine Joe not exactly concerned with how hard he can make his wife cum, if on a regular basis he can’t even take his shoes off on his own time when he gets home. Doesn’t exactly set the mood.

Joe and Angela continue to argue with amazing jokes and jabs thrown in (seems to be a bit of a coping mechanism, but both are incredibly good at it) until the doorbell rings where Hawk (Edward Norton) and Pina (Penélope Cruz) are at the door with Flan in hand. Here then ensues some of the most incredible displays of social awkwardness I have EVER seen on screen. I promise that is absolutely meant as a compliment. It’s as if the intrusive thoughts get to win, at almost every moment. Genuinely its fucking incredible. All the shit we want to say to people but don’t say, out of social niceties or to not make people uncomfortable. From the second the couple walks into the others apartment, the typical social contract is ripped up and thrown out the fucking window.

This movie does a great job of depicting the performing you can do as a longtime couple in front of people publicly. The stares, the facial expressions, the covering up for your partner.. Not for the sake of protecting them but really to massage your own embarrassment (which, watching from the outside in, noticing that distinction definitely can sting a little). Speaking of facial expressions back and forth with your partner– The Invite is an absolutely ELITE facial expressions/face acting movie! This movie is rich with amazing dialogue and jokes that will have an entire theater dying for most of the movie but so many little nuances of eyebrow raises and nose scrunching, miming zipping of the lip, and just mouths fucking agape like “holy shit are you ACTUALLY really saying this right now?”

For a film that says quite a bit actually out loud, more than most couples you know would ever say to another. Hell, after the topic of kids comes up and that Hawk and Pina do not have any– Joe literally says “you should probably do that sooner or later… ya know due to age.” To which he’s met back with “Who’s age?” Forcing another instance of the quiet part out loud he says something to the effect of, some men have had kids at 90, so biologically he’s not talking about Hawk.

*** Cue the incredible awkward discomfort of telling an aging woman to her face you’re going to be too old to have kids and it’s going to be your fault… you could feel that one in your seat***

As audacious as the things being said are, to me what is unsaid and shown by facial expressions from both couples to each other puts you in that feeling of when your partner darts you those looks. Incredibly effective at making the audience feel as though they are in every bit of the social awkwardness with them.

And in the spirit of social awkwardness, Hawk and Pina do admit and apologize to Angela and Joe about the “loud inconsiderate sex.” Stating It's been a bit hard for the two of them to keep control lately. Joe, having been praised for his brutal honesty all night, having no qualms about saying shit people just don’t say in social situations, this is the only time he lies and says the sex noises have not bothered him and that they barely hear anything. The social nicety was very short-lived as Joe then hits a breaking point after being outed by a ring camera that he went upstairs banging on the other couples door, in the middle of the night to get them to quiet down while having sex. Imagine you are having a dinner party with your spouse and another couple and being shown an iPhone video of ring camera footage with you banging on the door in the middle of the night knowing the couple was having sex on the other end of that door. I wouldn't be able to live that down for a month.

It is after this we learn the loud sex heard upstairs isn’t necessarily because Hawk is the stallion of all stallions but rather because there happens to be more than two people participating in said sex. Hawk and Pina are fucking, fucking! Couple swapping fucking, like.. i’m going sit in the corner and watch you bend over my girl fucking, like my girl has always been bi-curious FUCKING. Juxtaposed to Angela clearly just yearning to cum “that hard.” After learning of Hawk and Pina’s sexcapades the other couple immediately perks up and goes from fairly combative and awkward to both seemingly just excited to participate in SOMEBODY’S sex life. Angela’s facial expressions immediately move to eager and turned on, wanting to know the process of how these sex parties work and also how one actually gets “an invite.”

We then find out the real reason Hawk and Pina wanted to come to the downstairs apartment revealed by Hawk saying he wanted to have a some food and “maybe fuck a little.” Both Joe and Angela are shocked and giddy, seemingly so happy just to be chosen and feel seen, wanted, desired, appreciated, that they literally almost fumble a couple wanting to have an orgy with them. Boggled down by logistics and organizing calendars to genuine disbelief ..it almost doesn’t happen. The two couples agree to swap, going into separate corners of the apartment. A bit of an awkward start for both. Joe, just happy a woman is treating him like he exists and is a sexual being. And Angela, so flustered she can't even say what she wants until it's answered for her as wanting “the thing that makes Pina scream like that.”

Joe’s lack of coordination and bad back kills the vibe and stops all activity by either party as he falls and hurts himself then crawls into the living room, pants at his ankles. Him and his wife incredibly embarrassed then have the gloves come off again, back to the tension, back to the side eyeing hilarious jokes. Pina who happens to be a psychotherapist and a sexologist (no wonder the orgasms lmao) starts to do an impromptu therapy session.

This is where the film actually starts to get a more serious tone which I think it did masterfully and blended comedy throughout. Some of the thoughts may seem cliche, but I think that’s because they are more common than people want to admit. After some prodding we find out Angela and Joe haven’t had sex in a year. Joe says it’s cause she won’t fuck him. Angela says it’s because he doesn’t try. And then Joe says something I think every man has said when their long-term relationship is going through a rough time. Essentially why would I continue to try, to consistently get rejected from you and embarrass and humiliate myself.. What’s the point?

A woman’s perspective of the man not trying or no longer desiring his partner, to where she feels incredibly unwanted. And the man’s perspective of the woman voicing he never tries, but conveniently never remembers or doesn’t count when he does and how she makes him feel when doing so. As a man who unfortunately can never forget entering the home he lived with the woman he loved and sometimes never even getting a hug, that feeling of saving the humiliation or the embarrassment that you may get from your partner was very resident with me. Unfortunately it can seem like a seesaw with the separate languages men and women speak, they can both have differing theories on who is the chicken and who is the egg and honestly maybe they’re both right. Angela also states its hard to want to fuck Joe when he’s so miserable and then she’s so miserable. That he just woke up one day and decided to be miserable. I would love to be able to say I haven’t heard that before. Seth Rogen plays this beautifully and is a real raw moment I think plenty of men of a certain age can relate to.

Joe was a musician that never made it, lives with his wife in the apartment he grew up in that was passed to him from his parents. Which to him is incredibly embarrassing, and painful, a consistent reminder that he hasn’t amounted to what he’s wanted and doesn’t feel like he’s something or someone to be proud of. Again with the different languages men and women speak. His wife thinks he should be incredibly appreciative, thankful and happy they have a beautiful home, a stable income, and a daughter who adores them (not home on the night of this dinner party).

The woman telling you to appreciate all we have and the man too focused on what he couldn’t give.

What he couldn’t accomplish.

Because so much of society tells men whether consciously or unconsciously, your accomplishments, your achievements, your status, determines your value. Not only to others or potential partners but to yourself. The job you have, the money you make, the car you drive, the home you live in. Do I have what I should have at this age? Did I make it the way my peers did? And if I didn't, how does that seep into all these other areas of my life. This movie ends ambiguously with a “did they or did they not” stay together.

I can’t speak as much to the aging female part of this film, the way I can to the male parts but I felt very seen. I’m sure women do too. To me this is the best performance I have seen from Olivia Wilde. Seth Rogen serves as perfect counterpart to this, speaking through humor saying *some* of the shit all of us want to say but don’t–for fear of getting slapped by our significant other or not having the stomach to sit through some of the awkwardness when dealing with people. Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton I think were also cast perfectly to lean into that awkwardness, whether that be a little bit of a cultural language barrier or just being a bit of a weird eccentric guy. Depending on your relationship status and the state of your relationship, you may or may not want to see this movie by yourself but I pretty much recommend The Invite to anyone who has been in a long-term relationship for basically more than two years. Go see it, support independent movies. You’ll laugh your ass off and hopefully feel a little less alone.

So last week I had said this show is absolutely batshit and uhhh…safe to say that that’s definitely still continuing. I wish I had more words to use than just unhinged and off the rails but Cape Fear of the 21st century is truly and utterly; on one. Now after episode 5 we are at the halfway point of the series and it seems this is a bit of a “your mileage may vary” situation. I haven’t seen as much talk of this online as I’d like, but through a little bit of searching on Threads (my favorite social platform for conversations and gauging things with a true organic algorithm) you can see many people like myself being like: “Holy shit why is no one talking about this show?” or “is anybody else watching this?”

Others also definitely include that the southern accents are abhorrent and are often dropped quite frequently, (specifically Amy Adams) and for some people it has been incredibly hard to get through. Other people pointing out the characters making dumb decisions and “do these characters ever end up getting any smarter?” And that Javier Bardem’s character Max Cady is extremely unsettling on screen which, spoiler alert, is by design. I keep referencing the ‘91 movie if people haven’t seen it, but Robert De Niro is playing that edition's Cady character and (I mean this affectionately) causes one of the most unsettling, queasy, uneasy feeling experiences I have ever had while watching someone on screen in my life. Javier Bardem is not that. And does not play it in that way, but the performance is supposed to make your skin crawl. Although some women have also wondered “if there has ever been a hotter character on television.”

So as stated pretty wide range. So if you don’t mind experiencing a little discomfort and/or screaming at your TV I’d say it’s worth a solid hour once a week.

Episode Breakdown

To open up this episode we have the newly revealed daughter of Max Cady, Nevaeh Valentine (Malia Pyles) going into her mother’s home stealing food out of her kitchen, grabbing some things from the fridge and shoving them in her bag. Mostly canned goods as it appears the Cady spawn (can it be a spawn if it’s a girl?) does not stay there full time as causing chaos around town can sometimes be a bit of a strenuous job. There does seem to be a bit of tension between these two, where the mother Faith, seems a bit frightened by her daughter. I mean who could blame her she certainly does seem to be a bit of a menace. As far as the fridge raid goes, most notably Nevaeh grabs canned fish, which is not my cup of tea, but whatevs. She then proceeds to take what the person who heats up fish in the office break room does and takes that to a whole new level. Homegirl goes to a movie and cracks open the canned fish in the middle of a fucking theater! God I can’t even imagine the smell. That shit had to be disgusting. Not only that, she’s also taking bong rips in her seat out of an alligator bong in between eating what would have at least started out as cold fish. So dank weed mixed with lukewarm to cold fish, so nasty.

I do think this scene is important though as it serves as a bit of an homage to the movie where De Niro’s character Max Cady is in a movie theater laughing kind of like a psychopath. And Cady spawn in fact does the same laugh, maybe even a bit more creepy. De Niro’s character is also smoking in the theater but a cigar with a woman in a bikini lighter as opposed to the alligator bong (I see you Scorsese). At the movie theater we find that Anna (Amy Adams) has followed Nevaeh then sits down in front of her effectively telling her I know your Max’s daughter and stay away from my kids and my family etc. Here we have Nevaeh say a bit of crucial information we’ve been waiting for:

This tells us she knew who her father was and that she in fact has been deliberately targeting the Bowden family and my small question I had in last week’s column of is Nevaeh actually more the villain here than Max may actually be true. The two women end up outside the theater starting a bit of a catfight right after the younger one had also said “ I know who you are and I know what you did.” Anna, scared then tries to intimidate until she realizes that the Cady Spawn is entangled with both of her children and she can in fact confirm that both Natalie and Zack’s nipples taste the same.. Yeah she went there, with a smirk on her face no less. Anna, pretty heated by that point, grabs her by the face before her hand is bitten, then pushes Neveah who slowly stumbles into the street, and then… gets hit by a car. Y’all I thought that bitch was dead. After laying on the ground for half a beat too long she does seemingly get up unscathed and run off. And of course because this is 2026, all of this exchange is caught on video. Then Nevaeh is filed to the police as missing. Doesn’t exactly look good for Anna Bowden, who there is video evidence of an argument where she has her hands on the teenager before pushing her into the street where she then gets hit by a car.

As if Natalie (Lily Collias) didn’t have enough teenage reasons to not get along with her mother. “I would like to know why you tried to kill the first girl I actually want to date” has got to be pretty far up there as far as animosity goes especially when there is video evidence your mom can’t exactly deny. Natalie is informed by her mom that the girl she’s been intimate with is the daughter of her mom’s former client who spent 17 years in prison. Natalie honestly didn’t really seem too phased by it, that she was given a fake name, seduced and that that same girl was talking to and I guess now presumably also hooking up with her brother. I genuinely feel bad for Nat, that is she is so desperate for human connection and to be seen and appreciated for who she is; and accepted for who she wants that almost nothing is a deal breaker. She’s seen later at least quadruple texting “Amber” even after this conversation with her mother. The Cady genes must really give you a knack for sinking your claws into people. Ironically speaking of, there may or may not be a bit of some hypnotizing mind control stuff going on in this show. There does seem to be a bit of religious ceremonies and quite too many candles lit at one time that makes me question if there is uhh a bit more deeper powers at play here. As often said for this show, time will tell.

We find out through a conversation with Tom (Patrick Wilson) and Max at the local bar/lounge that he was aware that he had a daughter or at least had been written to in prison by a girl claiming to be, to which they started having a bit of a relationship through email. Max then encourages Tom to read those emails that are logged in the prison system to prove that Max isn’t behind a master plan to have his offspring just royally fuck with the Bowden Family beyond repair. It is interesting to see Tom and Anna later argue about this in reference to Anna’s recorded fight with Nevaeh. Anna states she got into that fight because she’s dealing with a psychopath who is after their family, to which Tom then says:

I wonder if this quote or theme is going to rear it’s head as the series goes on. Is this about a “we’re not so different you and I” story. A bit of a “the monster is really within.” A commentary on how so many people often point the finger at others while lying and denying things to themselves quite often? That quote may not end up being big but I clocked it.

Also at the previously mentioned bar, later on we have Max Cady having an encounter with what I thought maybe could have been his half sister (still unnamed). Max is initially terrified when she comes up to him sitting down. Who the hell is she?? That someone who has done as much wild shit as Max and did 17 years worth of time is this afraid of? After gathering himself Max rushes her in private to a cigar room of the bar/lounge. It’s clear there’s a history there and its also been made clear that Juliette Lewis’ character hasn’t always been mentally stable. Stating that she now seemingly finally has her meds leveled out. She touches him and he resists but then he eventually melts resting on her as she states she tried to show up in his dreams every night and never stopped thinking of him. Then Max kisses her. This was definitely not the first time they’ve done this. In fact, It seemed like he missed it. But also hated himself for it. Like that toxic relationship you can’t stay away from. She holds him like she’s literally yearned for his possibly murderous hands for 17 actual years. Max pulls her hair and calls her a “disgusting, sick, delusional, freak. That i could never love” then proceeds to kiss her again and spit in her mouth before leaving and saying that if she came near him again he would kill her. So clearly some unresolved tension and issues between these two to say the least. I guess this leaves open the door that this still could possibly be a bit incestious given Cady’s quote. Maybe? Honestly, who knows with this show.

Tom Bowden also may have a little wanted/unwanted crush himself. There has clearly been some advances from one of the associates at his law firm, Lexi (Margarita Levieva). She had already been invited over to the Bowden house to work on one of their cases when Anna was out of town working on Max’s settlement case, where she made multiple moves on Tom. Not to say Tom doesn’t enjoy it but she seems to be the aggressor, initiating trying to make out on his couch, bringing up later that they had unfinished business from that night. Lexi is working with Tom on a high profile murder case and the defendant seems to notice some of that tension between them and requests to have Lexi off her case as she doesn’t want Tom “distracted.” Lexi trying to advance her career by working on big cases is not exactly pleased with this and sort of threatens/not so threatens that if she is removed from the case like this at that kind of client request that may trigger an HR investigation. Little conniving from Lexi if I do say so myself.

Tom and Max have been circling each other a lot this episode ending up at the bar again after this drama with Lexi. Where Tom admits he’s “experiencing a conflict with a colleague, that he wouldn’t call coercion but he’s being pressured.” Never give your enemies useful information! Max does appear to be an opportunist. Max had seen Tom at that same bar/lounge with Lexi prior when they ended up speaking about Max’s connection to Nevaeh and the fact that they had a bunch of prison emails. Even the smallest of details can be noticed and when you already know you have other secrets to hide you’d think particularly lawyers would have more of their ducks in a row.

This episode ends with two things that were a bit shocking (again the show is a bit batshit). Tom goes into what seems to be his bosses office to talk about “something sensitive” and Lexi happens to already be in there stating that she had received some messages from Tom and then proceeds to play a voicemail. The voicemail has Tom saying he knows Lexi is dying to fuck him and that she keeps teasing him and brushing against him and he knows what she wants. Tom denies, saying it's not him and that somebody else did this. Can Max Cady spoof someone’s phone and use their voice to leave a voicemail? If that wasn’t crazy enough, possibly even more wild Anna finds Nevaeh’s mother Faith dead in her bed after going to check on her after they form what seems to be a bit of an alliance after realizing Neveah may be violent towards her mother and she may be scared of her. Well now we have another dead body. Did Nevaeh actually kill her own mother? Did Max feel like he had to get rid of his baby mama? What the hell is going on here? I feel like this column has been a bit all over the place and I apologize but I also feel like that’s because this episode was so all over the place. It’s a journey and thank you for walking it with me if you made it this far cause holy shit!

No future questions for this week again as this got a little bit long and I sprinkled many in throughout, but let me know your theories in the comments if you have any.

So I can’t say this show is getting more and more crazy but I certainly am getting more and more intrigued. A hot, sweaty, summer thriller during a time of year where there is less on tv to capture our attention, some great American philosopher’s (shoutout my girl Joanna) have deemed Cape Fear a “trashterpiece.” And who among us doesn’t love a bit of trashy, (affectionately) guilty pleasure television from time to time. Basically what I’m getting at here is if you and your significant other or just yourself want something to sink into the couch with that may at times be a little absurd, unhinged and slightly off the rails, please fire up Apple Tv and give these first four episodes a shot.

So far we have missing body limbs, emergency room visits, prison conglomerate shakedowns, lesbian awakenings, possible intimate relationships with your attorney, flirts with infidelity and like maybe, MAYBE, a couple counts of sibling/half sibling incest (knowingly or un-knowingly) and oh by the way this all stems from a previous murder trial as the backdrop! Safe to say I think there may be a bit of crossover here for audiences with Apple TV and Bravo, which for the ladies may not at all be a bad thing, along with the fellas who pretend to hate watching that shit, but then yell at the tv as much as their girl does. It’s me, I’m talking about myself.

Episode Breakdown

This show opens with Max Cady (Javier Bardem) doing what appears to be some kind of séance or ceremony seemingly related to his son/unborn child. Then promptly in the very next scene we are shown Max again dressed immaculately. I know we’re not having a wardrobe corner here but my man’s outfits have been awesome: from making sure a chain is on every time he leaves the house ( I can relate), to the double earrings, popping the chest out of his button up shirts– buttoning just the right amount of buttons, the bracelets. The costume department has him looking like every fly middle-aged Latin man and I’m with it. Probably also stealing a few of those looks myself, taking notes on how to still look good and dress well as you age. But Max meets Tom (Patrick Wilson) where they have a bit of a standoff at a bar, both talking about their sons. Zack, Tom’s son who Tom questions the last time Cady was at their house making sandwiches what did he hand Zack outside? After checking slightly dodgy security footage (which has been dodgy and in and out, all show I might add) Tom sees Zack and Max have a hand to hand exchange which Max then states it was actually Zack giving him a drawing he made that is supposed to be a picture of what would have been his unborn son after seeing AI slop videos of what the son may have looked like on TikTok, as Max Cady is a bit of a public figure. As I am writing this now I feel like this episode is a bit about parents and their children and possibly complicated relationships between those children.

Speaking of complicated parent child relationships. We cut to the Bowden’s getting ready for their day in the kitchen which has Natalie (Lily Collias) about to go to soccer practice getting a bit snippy with her mother, Anna (Amy Adams). Seemingly a bit emboldened after her encounter with Miss Nevaeh (Malia Pyles) from last week at the pool party who seemed to plant some seeds about Natalie having to be “little miss perfect” overachiever at home and that she isn’t really respected. Natalie snaps at Anna for not taking her to practice so that she has a chance to drive and get her supervised hours so that she can get her license. Tom, noticing the tension, steps in and offers to let her drive with him on the way to practice. Natalie, not wanting to let her mom off the hook for not keeping her word, has some choice words for Tom: “You’re not the one who said you would do it, don’t be such a cuck”. Surprised as one would be, Anna responds: “Don’t talk to your dad that way”. To which Natalie fires back:

Now this is ironic…Natalie saying Tom or Paul as her dad, what if as stated in multiple previous week’s columns neither of them is actually her father! Still unconfirmed.. For now. But I’m growing more and more suspicious of their being a romantic or at the very least sexual history between Max and Anna. And funny enough, what actually happened with Paul? We haven’t really been given too much info here as to what happened to him or how that previous relationship of Anna’s had ended. The more you watch Anna and Max together the subtle signs of history and just energy between them becomes more and more apparent. Highlighted by the two of them meeting at a park where Anna then tells Max that she needs his help getting information from a witness to help exonerate a former client. Max knowing that she seems desperate leans in like he is about to whisper something and then goes in and kisses her, a kiss that seems to linger for a little bit. Anna doesn’t exactly fight him off and then gives Max a look of anger mixed with “I’m extremely turned on right now and I don’t know what to do with that.”

Max says “I’ve been thinking about that for years, of course I will help you.” I’m sure you have buddy, I’m sure you have. Anna responds with “Don’t do that again” with her voice and demeanor a bit shaky. It seems to me that she doesn’t want, to want him to do that again, but body language and tone of voice makes me think she’s going to be thinking of that kiss for quite a while. It was the body language to me of two people who have either done this before or had always wanted to do that before and stopped themselves. Maybe a bit in between but I am absolutely nowhere near throwing out my theory that Natalie may have been a byproduct of Anna and Max getting a little hot and heavy after debriefing some evidence on Max’s case. Which would make Anna’s: “Don’t talk to your dad that way”– “Which dad? Tom or Paul?” even funnier if neither of those are actually accurate.

One of the questions I had last week was who is the Juliette Lewis character (we still don’t have a name yet) and what is her relationship to Max Cady? Well short answer: we don’t yet. But there have been some theories floated around online that maybe she is Max’s half sister because Max had said his dad did have a second family and Juliette Lewis’ character is aware of his trauma triggers. I posited last week could she maybe be his dead (not so dead wife) haunting him and trying to fuck with him. Remains unclear but the half sister theory does seem interesting.

And ladies and gentlemen speaking of half sisters!

While we’re on half sister watch.

Can I present to you, online crush of Zack Bowden/local drug dealer: Nevaeh Valentine and Natalie Bowden! I know, I know. Back when Anna had her initial encounter with Nevaeh at the local diner she had asked her associate Ray to run her ID and try and get some information on her. Well, come to find out Nevaeh’s mother was a prison nurse that got fired for having relations with a high profile inmate. Max Cady was throwing it down in there, clearly in a way that was worth risking your job over. Not the wildest thing women have done for dick I’m sure, but you’d think there might be a little bit more cause to pause when the thing he got locked up for was murdering the last woman he was sleeping with.

So we essentially have one question confirmed that Nevaeh does in fact seem to be Max Cady’s daughter who I’ll bring up again was making out with and feeding drugs to Natalie Bowden, potentially Max’s other daughter in last week’s episode. I didn’t even get to the fact that in THIS week’s episode she is taking Natalie with her to get a tattoo at the back of a random house as opposed to an actual tattoo shop. Natalie who was only supposed to be there for moral support is immediately peer pressured into getting her nipples pierced. Well one nipple, she draws the smallest of boundaries. So here we have Natalie who is skipping the end of soccer practice, her new crush (who may be her fucking half sister!) sitting on top of her in the back of some shady house she’s never been in piercing her nipple with a needle. As if that wasn’t enough mischief for the sister crushes (Jesus Christ!) Nevaeh takes Natalie to her friend Callie’s house who she had been previously pining over, claiming she didn’t know where they were going (ok bitch, yeah right lol) and lets us know that she has a “wifi jammer”. Nevaeh has a wifi jammer. Which she promptly announces that it “fucks with anything that needs internet, like alarm systems.” Sounds to me like this is why the Bowden’s keep having spotty security footage. The more I’m writing this I’m starting to think, is Nevaeh Valentine more the villain of Cape Fear than Max Cady is?

When you have a wifi jammer to fuck with security systems clearly you use it. So the two girls break in to Callie’s house and go into her room and start trying on her clothes, Natalie lays on the bed while the two of them are being gossipy and giggling, (clearly high) then Nevaeh makes her way to the bed and says “I bet you’ve dreamt about getting fucked in this bed.” Oooo this bitch is sinister. Natalie is definitely nervous, Nevaeh taking the lead. Natalie asks “what if her parents come home?” response: “No problem, we’ll kill them.” Then the two proceed to ACTUALLY fuck in that bed. My brain can’t even handle processing the rest of that right now and the official reveal of Max and Nevaeh wasn’t done til later. But after lingering too long in pillow talk and cuddling, Callie’s father has his keys rustling at the door, the girls rush out of bed and run downstairs hiding behind walls not to be seen. It’s here we see for a brief moment in a quick shot, the evil half sister pull a knife out from her back pocket and pull the blade out as if prepared to maybe actually kill Callie’s father if he catches them in the house. Has Nevaeh actually killed someone before? How down for the cause is she? The girls escape without anybody losing life or limb. The knife gets put away, Natalie never sees nor does she understand the danger in which she’s dealing with. To make it clear despite the half sister jokes we don’t know yet if Natalie is Max’s but even though I’m leaning there. It is interesting though Max who in the opening scenes of this episode when speaking to Tom felt like he missed out on getting to be a father, is at least a father of one and maybe even a father of 2 on an episode released before the weekend of Father’s Day. There’s some serendipity for you.

I’m not going to put any future questions for this week mainly cause I’m not sure my brain can sort through them all at this time but now at the end of this I take back my opening statement that this show didn’t get any crazier from last week. This show is fucking batshit! And I have to keep watching. Like the car crash you can’t look away from. Even if some of the things are a little bit telegraphed, the absurdity of them is still really entertaining.

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So we’re back for week 2 after a double episode drop in week 1 and one of my first thoughts going in was.. “Well there can’t be anything quite as wild as what we all saw last week with missing limbs being forced to float around in a jar.” And depending on your familiarity with the Cape Fear genre or universe that might be true. But somehow the end of this episode still had me scream audibly 'Holy Shit!’ and then after I collected myself I said “Well I need to know what Joanna Robinson thinks at a time like this!” I was confused, and had a bit more questions than answers again so far, but thank you to Joanna for at least sharing my sentiment of “Holy shitness” on “The Prestige TV Podcast.”

This was clearly positioned to be a big reveal at the end of the episode with showing the identity of a character, ( or i guess the performer of said character) to my knowledge there was not a name that was revealed but the dynamic between them and our main villain none other than Mr. Maximiliano Cady I found very very interesting. I suppose part of the beauty with TV adaptations of movies/books is that maybe you can reintroduce people in different capacities as a bit of an homage from time to time. And I’ll remind everybody as I did last week Cape Fear is being produced by the legendary Martin Scorsese who directed the 1991 movie version of this property. I was not initially prepared for cameos from prior iterations of Cape Fear but now I am very very intrigued.

Breakdown

What I will say is, it’s nice to know that no matter how successful you become, we all roughly feel the same about Zoom meetings—A bit of a detest and almost always if the situation permits you to be able: Business on the top (for the camera only) and party on the bottom. Tom Bowden is on a call with a client at his kitchen Island…suit jacket, shirt, tie, AND a pair of shorts. A true “everyman”. His daughter, Natalie comes downstairs to look out the window and asks: “Dad who’s in our yard?” To which we see a man and a woman seemingly both a bit intoxicated…just in the Bowden’s pool! Claiming that they were both invited by the owner “Tommy.” Tom, not amused, had already gone to his bedroom prior to going outside and got one of his guns from his safe (we notice he has four guns in the house.. Possibly useful later? Maybe?) reminding the trespassers that Georgia is a “stand your ground” state, they then knew that was their cue to leave, sparing Tom from having to do a 21 Savage impression and go “John Wick with the stick.” But what were those two doing there? Why were they at the Bowden’s with a bit of a passive aggressive tone at that? And how did they know Tom’s name? And was it purposeful to call him Tommy? Certainly spooked, Tom tells his daughter everything is fine, although him doing aggressive Power Cleans in the garage later on to blow off some steam would say otherwise.

Now heading to the matriarch of the family we find out that Anna has asked one of her associates Ray to make or obtain a “mirror phone” to her son Zack’s phone (which I’m not entirely sure if this can be done for real but I digress) that allows Anna to be able to see everything that is on her son’s phone at any given time without him knowing. Also allowing her to send and delete messages as well. Once the mirror phone is secured, Anna promptly gives her son his phone back which she had taken in the last episode. Promptly one of the first things the boy does is text the girl he has a crush on. Now I posed the question in last week's column-

Was Max Cady catfishing Zack and the one he was actually gaming with online and texting?

Well that question has been answered thanks to Anna Bowden being a bit of an overbearing mom and texting as Zack, doing some detective work. Only to find out that the mystery girl was eating at a local diner close by. So naturally as overbearing moms do… she shows up under the impression that she will find Max sitting at the diner. She does not. Texting the phone once she arrives, she notices the person texting her son, in fact is a girl. A seemingly homeless girl or at least certainly one that's doing a bit of drugs. Which Anna happens to notice in her purse when she takes it to snag a picture of the mystery crush’s ID. Fearful for her son’s involvement with this girl, Nevaeh and Max Cady, Anna tells her to text Zack and break things off which she does after pressure of arrest and blackmail.

Simultaneously with all this Anna has been tasked by her boss Noa, to accompany Max Cady to Atlanta to settle his lawsuit and restitution for wrongful imprisonment. Anna, initially unhappy, ends up agreeing to do so as a part of a “keep your enemies closer” mentality. Before leaving for this trip, Anna while getting dressed finds ex con Max Cady wearing his signature linen in her kitchen making fucking sandwiches with Zack who presumably lost his toe because of him. Not ideal. Also a camera crew in their study waiting for them to be ready to leave because Max Cady’s interview with the Savannah Times went so well its being turned into a 3 part series. So on the road they go.. Anna, the ex-con she told to take a plea deal and a camera crew from the Savannah Times all to get restitution, (which 40% goes to the non-profit SJLP I might add) and you guessed it.. make content about it. I suppose photo-ops have been around for decades, but you get the point.

In most instances people are usually told never to take the first deal. The prison conglomerate initially offers 1.1 million dollars. Max seems pleased. Anna says not enough. Now I can’t tell if Anna just loves sticking it to the people that make millions and millions if not billions of dollars off of prisons as a literal business each and every year; or if this is a ploy for Max Cady’s trust. Or maybe for her these happen to form a bit of a venn diagram. Regardless, Anna says in a southern belle way that I’ll rephrase in a New York way as “Fuck out of here, don’t play with me” and gets that $1.1 million in restitution to $4.2 million in restitution for Max. And by my math that’s $1.68 million to SJLP. I think Noa is happy.

Back at home in Savannah we find Natalie who can’t wait to go to a pool party to impress what seems to be her crush Callie, with a vintage dress out of her mom’s closet. From what’s been shown we gather that at the very least Natalie seems to be Bi and a bit jealous when she states later at the party that her friend Callie is “not as straight as she thinks she is” when she sees her hugged up with a guy. Somehow half the party gets sent a video that had been taken with a drone of Natalie in her backyard doing yoga, the men at this party start making fun of her for it and in comes our mystery girl Nevaeh to toss one of the guys phones in the pool. Who is this girl really? And why does she keep ending up around the Bowden kids? Feeling elated that someone stood up for her, Natalie starts to befriend our mystery girl, and it should be noted gives a fake name. Calling herself Amber. Next thing we know “Amber” is shoving powder in Natalie’s mouth and they’re making out by the pool as it gets dark. Shortly after this they’re both in and out of consciousness in a field. Clearly nobody in this family knows how to stay out of trouble.

As mentioned in last week’s column I wondered what exactly happened with Max and Anna? Did they cross some attorney-client lines and fuck? Did they develop feelings for one another? Is Max Natalie’s father? After winning the restitution battle they do go downstairs of the hotel where they are staying and share a coffee together and it feels like a little more with these two than just one defended the other on a case. Anna mentioned a woman came to her room looking for Max, presumably looking to sleep with him as he in a 2026 world is a bit of a True Crime celebrity having “wrongfully” been convicted of killing his wife.

After the Atlanta trip, Max returns home to his dog and he notices a back door open along with an 19in or so tv/vcr combo circa 1993 on his coffee table with an envelope. Attached to the envelope is a note and remote that says “Hi Max, Play me”. Then there on the Tv appears the woman who showed up at Anna’s hotel room looking for Max who had been wearing a mask at the time then removing it… to which we discover underneath the mask is none other than actress Juliette Lewis. And if you have seen the 1991 Cape Fear movie then you know Juliette Lewis originally played the 17 year old Bowden daughter. First words out of her mouth: “Hey Max, heard you got out.” Max watching the video is visibly uneasy, as Juliette Lewis’ unnamed character starts to sing a song. The singing continues. The ex con who presumably killed his wife goes progressively from uneasy to losing his shit. This for some reason is a trauma trigger. The song mentions a dog collar which happened to be in the envelope delivered with the tv– Max’s dad was a dog trainer. In flashback scenes it has appeared there was some abuse there, with a young Max Cady looking like he had been locked in a dog cage. Max wilts in the fetal position before angrily smashing the miniature tv with a firepoker, over and over again like all he needed to do was make that bitches voice stop.

Future Questions

Who is Juliette Lewis’ character and what is her relationship to Max Cady?

Is she Max’s mom? Is that how she knows his trauma trigger? Is she Max’s wife and did she not really die? Faked her death to escape him? I have so many thoughts and so many questions. I think the homage and nod to the previous movie is cool, I mean Juliette Lewis was literally nominated for an Oscar for it. But I have absolutely no idea where this is going and who else could show up? Do we get a Jessica Lange appearance? Nick Nolte? Dare I say the Gawd himself, OG Max Cady, Robert “Bob” (according to Scorsese) De Niro? I’m focused to see what goes on here. Let's say that.

Who is Nevaeh really and what does she want?

Why did she befriend Zack? Why was she presumably giving him drugs? Why did she definitely give Natalie drugs? Give Natalie a fake name and take advantage that she was a heartbroken girl wanting someone who didn't see her that way? I’m curious if Nevaeh’s real play is the Bowden family but I don’t why. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence though getting close to both kids. Does she know who Max Cady is and are they working together? Is Max HER father? Again way too many questions. We’ll see if next week is even more unhinged than getting over 30 year old technology delivered to your living room and smashing it repeatedly with a firepoker. Something tells me Javier Bardem will be on one.

When you hear that a TV series produced by two of the GOATS Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg is coming to Apple Tv your ears perk up. Then when you find out a little more and realize that the series is not only produced by the two of them but is based on a movie from 1991 that had both of them in some capacity attached and starred quite literally the GOAT actor of a generation in Robert De Niro.. Naturally your ears perk up even more. Cape Fear was a movie that I had heard of, I think thanks to “The Rewatchables” podcast and Bill Simmons, Sean Fennessy, and the man, the myth himself, Chris Ryan. IYKYK. I had listened to this pod when it was released and I’m sure was very entertained by the Big 3 of The Ringer, but admittedly it was 3 years ago and I hadn’t remembered much about it. Absolutely worth a listen once you have seen the movie!

So in preparation for Cape Fear the television series and wanting to cover it, I gave Youtube $3.99 last week and decided to acquaint myself with one of the more iconic performances from one of Hollywood’s greatest actors: Robert De Niro playing Max Cady, an ex-con who has been released from prison with a bit of an axe to grind to say the least. This movie hit me so hard and was so much darker than I expected, I’m still a little thrown off a week later and don’t entirely know how to talk about this movie which I intended to write a column on (unfortunately why there was no piece last week). The movie really is very well done with incredible almost unrecognizable performances (meant as a compliment) but a difficult watch. And I’m glad the boys did the podcast cause when it was over I needed to hear some discussion on it aside from my own thoughts, but I don’t think I will ever watch Cape Fear-1991 again.

On to the episodes

The show opens with our main characters, both lawyers: Anna Bowden (Amy Adams) and Tom Bowden (Patrick Wilson) having a family get together for the 4th of July. A gender swap from the movie Anna plays the former Defense Attorney for our antagonist Max Cady (Javier Bardem). Anna now works as part of a nonprofit SJLP which ironically helps try to get the wrongly accused released from prison. Max Cady had been put in prison for the murder of his wife (changed from the movie but works) but had been released after 17 years behind bars when it came to light that Cady’s mistress had left a suicide note, that depicted that she in fact was the one that murdered Cady’s wife and unborn child almost 2 decades earlier, with the murder weapon right beside her note. There is an interesting phone call that takes place which may allude to this note and suicide being coerced at this point not enough has been revealed there to know, BUT I am definitely keeping my eye out for more on that.

Anna, due to working for such a nonprofit organization often has to be fairly performative and do the schmoozing and speeches, and many a gala dinner with fancy dresses and fancy suits to get donations- presumably going to legal fees to help the wrongfully accused and appeal their cases. It is before one of these galas that Anna is confronted by her boss Noa Toussaint that Max Cady has been released from prison on provisional release. My read on Noa so far is that she doesn’t exactly seem to be aware of or care about some of the dangers that may come along with dealing so intimately with people that have been accused of, or to some degree at least been adjacent with some truly heinous crimes. Stating things like: “When these rich white folks get their pictures taken with a real live exoneree, they write bigger checks.” And then later when referring to Max Cady, a man who may or may not have been a murderer to his wife and unborn child and who also may or may not have influenced his former mistress to unalive herself so that he could be released from prison; states that “that man is a gift from the nonprofit gods” with a legitimate smile and smirk on her face. While Anna, his former lawyer, seems fairly terrified.

Max Cady does in fact show up to the Gala Dinner dressed in a linen suit and goes up towards the stage where Anna is giving a speech and certainly makes his presence felt. It had been revealed when the news of Cady’s release broke, that at the time of his trial his lawyer Anna Bowden was not actually a Bowden at all and was very much pregnant by the end of the trial. Also that the prosecutor's name during the Cady trial just so happened to be Tom Bowden. That yes, the defense attorney in a high profile murder case later married the prosecutor on said case shortly after being pregnant with another man’s child. News in particular that Cady wasn’t exactly fond of. Faced with the fact after having been pushed to submit a plea that you did in fact kill your wife and unborn son, learning the woman who was supposed to do her job trying to keep you out of prison for a crime you originally state that you did not commit; ends up marrying the man whose task it was to put you away.

Cady now having taken the microphone from Anna precedes to give not quite a menacing speech which I may have expected but certainly an eerie one in front of a crowd of mostly hoity-toity rich white folks, talking about dying a death of a thousand cuts. “First they cut off a finger, then a toe… I died 6,222 times. One for each day I was in there.” Then once the Bowden’s get home from the Gala they find a wild Puma outside in their backyard and Max holding a purse stating he was there to return it while also referencing the Bowden’s son Zack who had been missing for close to 24 hours and happened to appear at the front door not far from Max stumbling toward his family in the backyard appearing to be drugged. Once gotten in the house and finally sat down Zack’s father Tom noticed his foot was bleeding through his shoe. Tom takes Zack’s shoe off and sees his entire sock is soaked in blood. Terrified of what might be coming next, the sock is removed and you guessed it.. Teenage son Zack Bowden has four toes.

Zack’s whereabouts that day were incredibly confusing and interesting to note as a viewer. His parents looked for him in the morning that day where he was not in his room and was gone from the house– they noticed on security footage that he had walked out of the house at about 5am. And then the Bowden’s seemingly just all went about the rest of their day barring sending a few talk-to text messages to their son. Fast forward less than 24 hours later Zack seemingly was drugged and has an ENTIRE missing toe which he later in the ER throws up and spits out of his mouth into a nurse’s hand. Nasty. All of this after hearing the death of a thousand cuts: “first a finger and then a toe” Zack miraculously appears back at the door when Max also shows up at the house unannounced. Hardly seems like a coincidence.

I think I had expected using the 1991 movie as a reference to the Max Cady character that he would appear far more menacing and truly terrifying in this TV version. But it seems like at least through the first two episodes that have aired to date that Javier Bardem seems to be playing this character a bit quieter, a bit more suave and smooth, and maybe purposely to those around him a bit calmer than the Robert De Niro version. Admittedly this threw me off a bit to start because the De Niro performance is so unsettling and truly menacing. I almost felt like I felt a little too at ease when Javier Bardem was holding the screen. This 2026 version may come with a bit more charm that throughout 10 episodes may appear to be just as unsettling as the most recent movie version, however for now that remains to be seen. I do wonder if the updated Max Cady at least initially is meant to leave you a bit unsure how to feel, almost to lure those around him in because he seems at least somewhat safe to then have an even more devastatingly evil effect later on.

Leading into episode 3 we’re left with a few questions.

Future Questions

Is there any way Max can know about what we did?

This being a question posed from Anna to her husband Tom– Well what did Anna and Tom do exactly? At this point we don’t know.. We do know that Anna was heavily pregnant during a long trial defending Max Cady and that Tom her now husband was the prosecutor trying to put Cady away, and that supposedly during that trial Anna started giving birth and Tom ran across the aisle to help her and help get her to the hospital which according to her is where she fell in love with him. Did the two of them find out that Cady’s mistress actually committed the murder and had him enter a guilty plea anyway? Were the opposing lawyers having an affair during the trial, which compromised a defense? And if so for how long?

Is Max Cady the father of Anna’s first child Natalie Bowden?

By no means is this explicitly said nor am I sure but my antennae were definitely raised in a bit of a chilling scene between Max and Anna, the two of them alone outside by her pool, where Max asks her “Are you afraid of me?” and then says:

My immediate thought after seeing this was, is Max the father? As opposed to this man from a previous relationship named Paul mentioned earlier in the episodes. What did happen between this defendant and his defense attorney? Did THEY have an affair? The Trial was mentioned that it went on for a very long time, could it have been over 9 months? If they didn't have the affair, did the defense attorney and the prosecutor have an affair and Natalie actually is Tom’s daughter? And if Max and Anna did not sleep together, then what exactly did happen between them that Max dare not utter a word about? Oh what a tangled web we weave..

Has Max been multiple steps ahead for some time now and has he been catfishing Zack Bowden pretending to be an online gamer girlfriend?

Truthfully I thought this to be a small subplot that I wasn’t seriously concerned with. Zack Bowden has been spending some time doing some gaming as teenage boys do. His sister Natalie and the rest of his family typically thought it was often with a neighborhood friend til it had been revealed by said friend that Zack had been spending quite a bit of time gaming with a new girl that he liked. After the toe incident with Zack, Anna had taken his phone and discovered messages with this mysterious gamer girl. After Max Cady soaking up every bit of being the hot topic of conversation around town decides to do an interview with The Times on SJLP’s behalf he makes a statement in that interview that reminds Anna of the messages found in Zack’s phone. A very careful choice of words at a very specific time which we’ve already seen with Cady’s toe foreshadowing that he is certainly not above that. The last scenes we see with Anna and Tom it appears they are starting to wonder how deep does this web run with this ex-con/former client and how much already is he integrated and interwoven into their lives?

Typically thrillers are my jam. Throw in British spies and I’m usually sold from there. However 2025’s Black Bag from Steven Soderbergh, I think I’ve settled on is a solid film but not a great film. I had initially seen the trailer last year while seeing another movie with a friend and just honestly had never gotten around to seeing the movie. The film’s main lead Michael Fassbender, someone I really like and I thought was amazing in Netflix’s 2023 movie The Killer, plays great as someone who needs to feel very stonewall on screen and appear a bit dead inside ( great for playing an intelligence spy or a hired assassin). Black Bag also features Marisa Abela, one of my favorite young actresses from Industry fame. Tom Burke from a great show that I think got overlooked on TNT with two seasons called The Lazarus Project. Cate Blanchett, Regé-Jean Page, Pierce Brosnan (speaking of English spies). Genuinely this cast is loaded. Plus original stories and movies made for grown ups is what I want more of. Yet for some reason I liked this movie, not loved it. And I really wanted to love it. Truthfully I considered whether or not I should even write this piece given not having super strong feelings on this movie, however in the spirit of a thought exercise, of consistency and continuing to write when even you don’t feel called to. And learning how to better cover and write about things that were not maybe what I anticipated or things that I didn’t respond as well to as I would have thought, I felt this was still worth doing.

This movie as mentioned has great casting and fairly good acting, it’s a bit of an espionage story, has people sworn to secrecy on certain topics due to their jobs, client privilege, successfully fooling polygraph tests by tightening their sphincter muscles, a little bit of cheating and stabbing a partner at a dinner party. Honestly all things on their face I kinda like but I guess I was expecting maybe a little bit more action in this movie or for lack of better word, a little more thrill in the category of “spy thriller.” I will say I was entertained watching this movie. I think I just expected there to be a little bit more action, a little bit more running, a little bit more shooting, sort of Jason Bourne-esque and the movie just isn’t that. Black Bag seems much more concerned with telling and showing some of the more interpersonal stories of people with these high stress, tense, largely secretive jobs. And listen I’m all for character studies, I genuinely love that shit. It just kind of seemed like the Intelligence operations part of this movie is more just to provide a reason as to why it is hard for these people to be trusting and why and how a lot of them have practice and experience with manipulation etc. as opposed to the film being very much interested in the actual “spy parts.”

The film gives some inside baseball on relationships and marriages with people working in Intelligence, or really any job where you have access to classified information. Marisa Abela’s character Clarissa has a great quote that stuck out to me:

And to me that’s really what the film is about and the more interesting part, cause damn. I’m certainly not a spy but as a person with their own trust issues I felt that. And Marisa is incredible with hard hitting dialogue if you know anything about Yasmin Kara-Hanani. Clarissa feels that quote so deeply and the struggles of dating and finding love given the job that she has, that she is still continuing to date someone after it was confirmed he was having an affair every Monday and Thursday because it coincided with department meetings and then in response to getting confirmation of this, she stabs his hand with a knife at a dinner table with multiple coworkers. Slightly toxic I’d say, sex might be great though. Michael Fassbender (George) and Cate Blanchett (Kathryn) play a married couple both “on the inside” who due to clearances and operations have varying degrees of work related things they can share with each other, the phrase “Black bag” a safe word if you will [Hunny that is privileged information that I am not at liberty to discuss with you at this time] gets used quite a bit between these two who otherwise seem to have a good relationship, but when your spouse is a spy how good can your relationship be really? Trust doesn’t seem to run very deep at least at the surface and I mean how could it?

Swapping you and your wife’s work badges so you can sneak into her office to check her calendar and find out where she is traveling to in the upcoming week; because when you asked her you got the all too predictable answer that refers to a dark colored duffle, is just I guess sometimes what you have to do. Then of course you have to bribe a data analyst who tracks satellite feeds with blackmail so that you can spy on the exact coordinates where your wife will be because you’re slightly convinced that she may be a mole to a foreign government. And as it turns out George is not an overbearing paranoid husband, actually the opposite. That man is a ride or die. Telling the data analyst (Clarissa) that struggles finding love: “I watch her, I assume she watches me. If she’s in trouble even of her own making, I will do everything in my power to extricate her… it’s the only way”.

So it’s not a blind trust if it involves this level of keeping tabs, but it is an admirable level of commitment to one’s partner–the nature of what we do is so intense, so high stakes that I will hack into satellites to find out what is needed so that I can be armed to protect you. When instincts and rules tell you to trust no-one, we have an unspoken bond that we will do whatever is necessary to protect the other even if we can’t directly divulge it. Almost like the ultimate level of trust while simultaneously also being in a constant state of paranoia. Those two things don’t typically go hand in hand, but for Kathryn and George they seem to work. Maybe trust is an illusion? Maybe the point is to show you can possibly have the ultimate trust without truly having any trust at all? Maybe there is a flipside to that, to have someone seemingly you know you can trust and confide in but maybe has limits to the lengths they will go to for you and your safety? Maybe this film questions: which is more important, trust or knowing your partner will do anything to make sure that you are safe and taken care of? And are those things mutually exclusive? All interesting themes and I think very worthy of being explored. I just don’t know if they needed a spy story as the backdrop.

Season 2 of Lee Sung Jin’s latest work was quite a ride for me to watch. For me the most interesting stories to spend time in, tend to be character studies. Or at the very least common life themes that maybe other creators and writers may have more valuable insight than me. I think that can be the one of the greatest things we can all learn from art, whether that be television, movies, or music. A perspective, thought process, or idea conveyed and packaged in a way that most people may not even immediately digest the message at least consciously. For me Beef is no exception. A show that through the first few episodes I thought was about one thing and after completing the season I actually think that’s just a small subplot on how Lee Sung Jin may think of how a lot of people move through relationships. The first few episodes had me think this show was about leverage. And now I think the show is about relationships themselves, (which I did mention in the earlier piece but at that time I think I had their level of emphasis flipped) marriage and love and how they can manifest and how the way we look at them can change at different stages of life.

The central “Beef” around this show that kicks it off; is a fight that occurs with a 40 something couple, Josh (Oscar Isaac) and Lindsay (Carey Mulligan) that has been together over 15 years. This explosive fight between the two was witnessed by Austin (Charles Melton) and Ashley (Cailee Spaney), a late 20s couple who had just gotten engaged. The piece of leverage comes in when the fight is videotaped I think for safety reasons initially, until later on after a health scare it bears out that when you catch your boss– the general manager of the country club you work at, having a golf club raised at his wife, you may just be able to use that to get yourself a full time position with health insurance to help cover a surgery you would later need that could cause you to lose an ovary. Ashley has dealt with abandonment largely most of her life with both her parents divorcing while she was young and starting new families. So when she then has health complications with cysts on her ovaries the hope of her being able to start her own family starts to feel fleeting. Even more so when you see between you and your fiancé you now have $27,795 in debt thanks to additional charges from your lifesaving surgery. Due to connections at the wealthy country club of Monte Vista Pointe when Ashley is told that she can be put in touch with one of the best fertility doctors in the country by Lindsay she jumps at it. However Lindsay isn’t kind without motive. She knows that Ashley still has a backup video of her and Josh’s fight and now Lindsay wants that video to use as leverage.. Because drumroll after over 15 years together, she now wants a divorce. So now we have one couple steamrolling ahead to marriage and another realizing that maybe they never should have done it in the first place.

This closer friendship between Ashley and Lindsay started out by a later admitted agenda from Lindsay although honestly it appeared that the millennial developed a bit of a soft spot for the Gen Z, perhaps seeing a bit of herself in her younger counterpart. I’m sure what can be a pivotal bonding moment between women took place on screen. While sitting down on a curb with Lindsay smoking a cigarette, the two have a conversation in regards to having a child, IVF and the struggles of pregnancy. Ashley asks “Did you and Josh ever try to have kids?” Lindsay says “We did get pregnant once… but it didn’t stick. We were meaning to try again but I think deep down we both knew, it was a temporary bandaid… for the immense pain of knowing that you picked the wrong person.”

That line made me pause my tv. I felt like I needed a cigarette and I have never smoked one a day in my life. So real, so raw. And sadly, so honest. As I get older and become even more observant to the world than I was when I was younger (which in itself says a lottt) it makes me wonder sometimes:

What are the lies we all tell ourselves? The ones we have to, to get through, the ones that are easier to try to convince ourselves of then deal with what is actually in fact the reality of our lives and how we truly feel. What are those dirty secrets about adulthood that no one tells you? Either consciously to protect you or subconsciously cause the people that would tell you don’t even have the stomach to face those dirty secrets of adulthood themselves. I find myself smack in the middle of these couples' ages in my mid thirties and I think you learn sadly there are a lot more kids in this world born as temporary bandaids or as a yearning for a family to escape your own abandonment. As you get to an age of your friends divorces and second divorces or marriages that may not have been a good idea to begin with. You start to question love and what does finding a life partner really mean anyway? Is it actually love or is it security, or is it a way to pour yourself into someone else full time so that you never have to deal with yourself. Or frankly, is it something else entirely. As a mid thirties never married that talks to people and listens you start to learn most things are never ever what they seem publicly.

What does finding a life partner really mean anyway?

I think this might actually be the biggest thing I take away from this show, seeing in so many ways in which this can play out and really doing somewhat of an audit of how I try to look at love based on my experiences and those I’m close to around me. But this one really did a number on me and apologies if I have more questions here then answers. The oldest couple in Beef is Chairwoman Park and Dr. Kim. Chairwoman I believe in her 70s, the Billionaire owner of the Monte Vista Pointe Country Club and Dr Kim her younger 2nd husband. Dr Kim an accomplished surgeon in his own right who probably shouldn’t be practicing any more but feels like he has to as a sense of security for himself to still have an income if his wealthy wife ever decides to leave him, has an interesting quote to Austin of the younger Gen Z couple:

Dr. Kim never entirely felt the chairwoman was actually in love with him, and she essentially did in fact say as much to some of her staff– stating something to the effect of “I married him because he was fun, if I knew it would have been this stressful I would have stayed with my first husband.” As a man who would love to find love again before he dies; things like this really do make me wonder are some of us all so fucked up, that we have so many other motivations or reasons of being in or staying in relationships with people? Or am I the one that is naive? And if so, are you supposed to grow up and grow out of that by 35? On a personal note that no one asked for I have had multiple women tell me directly to my face and another couple to my phone- that they love me more than someone else, that they care about me more than them, that they are more attracted to me than them and that I make them feel things the other does not. Even with that, still choosing to stay or go back to the other man when you can blatantly tell someone else deep down you’d rather be with them instead. I have had multiple women tell me straight out, “it is easier to be with him because I don’t love him as much and my feelings are more manageable and I don’t have to worry about getting heartbroken.”

Back to the dirty secrets of adulthood that no one tells you: is this just way more common place? Do we all just make concessions and compromises in the name of self preservation and companionship? Did some of us just happen to get that memo and some of us not? A follow up to Dr. Kim’s quote: “Life will always reveal its true self, “If she married me because she loved life not me.. what happens when life turns on her?”

Spoiler alert**

She has him killed to tie up loose ends and save herself from getting turned in for money laundering and embezzlement. Which may have been done originally out of some kind of love trying to keep Dr. Kim out of jail for accidentally killing a patient but nonetheless. She had her second husband executed to save herself. A bullet right to the head. Self-preservation. Makes me question: are the rest of us playing a different game than everyone else? And is maybe that why it feels like we’re losing?

Austin realizes and says directly to Ashley- “You don’t want me, you just don’t want to be left by me.” Oof another one right to the gut. The writing in this show knows how to sting. “You don’t actually love me, all you want is to be put first by someone, anyone.” A fact that in truth I think is true. Even if Ashley walks through life with so much underlying anxiety that she can’t even see that. It would be too much for her to admit, too much for her to face. I wonder how many “Ashleys” are out there. Austin realizes partially due to this and some other lying and distrust (not to be focused on here) that he is no longer in love with her. And in fact developed feelings for a Korean girl who works for Chairwoman Park that he has grown close to and he feels a semblance of extra closeness through shared heritage. He tells her (Eunice) that he is in love with her and had been for a bit of time now to which she also said she had feelings and although struggling to admit also loves Austin too. Austin seemingly about to make the decision to turn Chairwoman Park into the authorities and then to see Eunice to try and further their relationship and see what it could be, tells the driver of the cab he’s in that he’s changed his mind and wants to change his destination.

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Not to go to the authorities. But to go to the chairwoman herself, with the evidence he had to convict her and to bargain.. as she owned the country club. The show fast forwards eight years in its ending scenes and takes us to Austin not with Eunice: the woman he admitted that he loved and could trust.. but with Ashley and their son (around 5-7 years old). The two on stage at a fundraiser for the country club they once started as low level employees, now with Ashley as the General manager. The two now in their mid to late thirties bear an eery resemblance to the previous couple that was Mr. and Mrs. General Manager of Monte Vista Pointe Country Club.

Austin chose the life. At a cross roads with a woman he loved and a woman he couldn’t trust who he knew didn’t truly love him; he chose the history, he chose the life that already had path laid- engagement ring already accepted, viable embryos as a part of successful IVF procedures, and a woman who desperately wanted to be a mother and a wife. The man chose a woman who he’d seen blackmail and be a known liar not just to him but to others and who he knew that their love actually really wasn’t about him. He was the “anyone” who put her first. And for her, he was the one she didn’t really love but the one willing to put her first after seeing her worst. The one to give her the life she always wanted and had never gotten. And I guess for the both of them that was good enough. How many marriages are just like theirs? Is long-term partnership really just self-preservation and concessions? Is that really the secret that no one tells you?

A24 is one of my favorite studios that puts out work with a tone that fits my personality and makes my dark soul feel seen. That said, I haven’t had as much familiarity with their television department as I have with their movies. So when I discovered that Beef was an A24 production that was certainly a nice surprise. “We had dinner with Bono!” one of the first quotes that stuck out to me from the early episodes for character Josh (Oscar Isaac) saying to his wife Lindsay (Carey Mulligan) mid fight as you can clearly see there has been some tension in this relationship which then closely was followed up with “we haven’t had sex in a year” from Lindsay. It’s clear these two have largely been keeping up appearances as they did earlier that night at a fundraiser for the country club the both of them work at, but behind closed doors it appears to be a bit distant and volatile.

Lack of intimacy, sexual frustration, attempting to find intimacy elsewhere, financial troubles, a recently deceased mother with debt, all seem to contribute to the strain which causes the central “beef” between the couple that kicks off the show. That beef involved golf clubs, smashing art on the walls with said golf clubs and screams so loud it drew enough attention from two country club employees that happened to be at the front door, to further investigate. The two thought it may be a good idea to have their camera open in case evidence may have been needed for anything. A video taken by country club employee Ashley (Cailee Spaeny) is the first example of what I think seems to be one of the themes of Beef: leverage. How can you gain it, what can you do once you have it, and what lengths are you willing to go to to get it? Unsure of whether she should tell the police that she saw her boss Josh in what seemed to be a pretty hostile fight with his wife, she turns to her Fiancé Austin (Charles Melton) who witnessed this right beside her and states that having to see Josh everyday as a full time employee she didn’t feel comfortable doing anything, but decided to keep the video. Leverage. Which at the time she didn't know she was going to need.

This show so far seems to be an interesting mix of commentary on haves and have-nots, race and class, relationships, leverage, and difficult choices. From Billionaire owners of country clubs to 40 somethings who on paper have the beautiful house, the nice cars, the aspiring bed and breakfast, the adjacency to famous and powerful people; (again “We had dinner with Bono!”) but underneath are actually pretty broke and upside down if you peel back the curtain. Then comes the late 20 somethings that live in a bit of a dingy apartment, certainly compared to the rest of the scenery in this show– a gorgeous country club with a 300k initiation fee and the 40 somethings home to be made into the bed and breakfast.

Our first instance of using leverage comes after 26 year old Ashley collapses on the golf course of the country club after having quite an awkward slightly intimidating encounter with her boss Josh. After collapsing she then throws up. Fast forward to her in a doctors office where Ashley learns that she had a cyst on her ovaries causing complications that would require surgery to avoid having an issue where the blood flow to her ovaries could stop which would be fatal. It is then revealed that she does not have health insurance. Which could be a bit of a problem when having to pay for a major surgery so ya know.. she doesn't die. (Commentary on the American Healthcare system, who knows.)

In finally telling fiancé Austin this, we learn that not only does Ashley not have health insurance she also doesn’t have a high school diploma. And Austin doesn’t have a full time job, he’s a fitness trainer currently with no clients. This leads to the two of them commiserating about wealth disparity in this country which is a conversation all too familiar for millennials and seems to be being passed down to Gen Z. Ashley and Austin decide to bake some chocolate chip cookies and pay a visit to their boss’ home for a little late night chat.

Josh, their boss– General manager of the Monte Vista Point Country Club has something Ashley wants: the key to her getting health insurance.. To essentially get a surgery so that she can be able to live. Josh and Lindsay know they were spotted by the Gen Z’s from outside their home; what they do not know until a moment where Ashley is denied a possible expanded role at the country club is that the Gen Z’s have leverage. Ashley quietly pulls out her phone and hits play on footage of Josh with a golf club in the face of Lindsay and cursing at her looking fairly violent and caught redhanded. The younger couple leaves the older couples house with a job for 45k, ten days PTO AND… health insurance. What a world we live in where you have to blackmail and extort for literally one of the most unsexy things on the planet. Fucking Insurance. Eww. And keep in mind that job was for 45k when members of that country club can’t even get in for less than over 6 times that.

The show then follows the 40 somethings (well Lindsay actually 39) looking to start a bed and breakfast out of their home which seemed to be something of a dream of Lindsay’s (Carey Mulligan). The couple fairly broke spending most of their money either covering medical expenses or debt of Josh’s mother needed a way to be able to get more money in an attempt to fund and start operating this B&B out of their home. And what does one do when you work as a general manager at a ritzy country club and can barely afford your mortgage… obviously take advantage of the fact you have the power to sign off on the company's invoices of anything under $5,000. I mean of course. All of us with such power would absolutely sign off on miscellaneous payments from our employers business accounts in the amount of $4,999 to go into accounts of our dead mother for us to later then use ourselves would we not? I mean purely, the absolute logical choice. Along with leverage, desperation and by any means necessary seem to be constants in this season's first few episodes. It’s funny I started to get feelings of this show kind of reminding me of one of my favorites: HBO’s White Lotus with one crucial piece kind of missing. That is until the start of episode 3.

Now we have a dead body. Similarities continue, dare I say Diet White Lotus? Something I had written down initially when watching. The dead body is caused by a botched surgery back in Korea which seems to have been committed by the new owner of Monte Vista Point’s husband after insisting on continuing to be a practicing surgeon despite having major tremors with his hand (mind you- this being the case while this man is married to a billionaire who is said to be responsible for 2% of Korea’s entire GDP). “A patient is dead” Dr. Kim says to his wife knowing that he would need her to help clean up the mess. “Send the payments through one of our shell companies” Chairwoman Park tells one of her lawyers looking to find a way to pay off or silence anyone who may need to be hushed to keep the news from the accidental murder from getting out. It is here the chairwoman is met with a bit of a problem. Due to tax evasion allegations all of her and her business accounts are under heavy scrutiny from the Korean government.

A problem like this could only be solved by a General Manager of a country club that was stupid enough to skim money through signing off on invoices to his dead mother’s accounts. Josh was caught. After ironically enough Austin, the out of work personal trainer was helping Ashley look at some of the club’s invoices as part of her new role and he noticed some “irregularities”. Josh who was due for a contract extension receives a calendar invite to discuss with the Chairwoman the finer details of whether or not his contract with Monte Vista Pointe will be renewed. During this call Chairwoman Park outs Josh for paying himself money from the clubs accounts and after getting confirmation states that she “feels much better now”. Chairwoman proceeds to offer Josh a 3 year contract extension to stay on as General Manager at the same pay. “From now on, I tell you what to do and you do it. No questions.” Josh got to keep his job and his pay, but now the billionaire chairwoman has something far more valuable– cue the broken record again. Leverage.

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Movies for adults! My immediate thought leaving the theater on Easter Sunday after seeing The Drama. In the year of our lord 2026 it seems less and less common to just get a good old fashioned original movie for adults now. A shift might just be happening now, but god it was a tough stretch for a while with most movies in popular consciousness being so centered around IP or people wearing capes. After seeing the movie it had been reported that the budget was around $28 million. My subsequent thought was there is no real reason that there can’t or shouldn’t be at least 5-6 of these types of movies every year. As a kid born in the early 90s this gave the vibe of what I’m sure a lot of 90s movies would have felt like to my parents or aunts and uncles. Which may be a project that I’m thinking about doing– going back and exploring movies that were released when I was a kid in the 90s and early aughts that maybe I was vaguely aware of but was not the target demo and watch them now as an adult. It’d be interesting to see what perspective can be learned while enjoying some entertainment from what many would consider “simpler times.”

Now this movie has certainly received some criticism and seems to be a bit of a mixed bag in terms of the online discourse. Both of which, to some degree I can understand and I suppose that’s a bit of the beauty about consuming art is that there can be many ways to interpret certain things and even sometimes after further analysis and a revisit how you view something can change. This is a movie where I have already seen some people come out and say “Upon further review” and have changed their mind on a character or a perspective. I think no matter how you slice it, The Drama is a movie that evokes tremendous emotion and causes plenty of tension in the theater, so much so that as I was leaving a theater that had maybe 15 people in it on a holiday, a girl turned to her friend and said “God that movie stressed me the fuck out!” And honestly I think that was the point. Your mileage may vary on how uncomfortable you want to feel when looking to enjoy something for entertainment (understandable of course) but to me creating is about trying to make people feel something. And strong or visceral reactions are an indication that it did what it was supposed to do. Whether or not some of us enjoyed that visceral reaction or not is up to you, but I don’t think the film is concerned with that nor do I think it should be. Not to bury the lead here but The Drama is my favorite movie I’ve seen in a couple years.

Breakdown

In a nutshell this movie is about an engaged couple Charlie and Emma played by Robert Pattinson and Zendaya respectively and follows them the week leading up to their wedding and tells the story of their relationship and significant moments through flashbacks– their first meeting, their first kiss, memories with each other in their apartment etc. The movie also includes what seems to initially be Charlie’s friends, Mike and Rachel who later also become friends with Emma as well, which could later on be debated but not much I’ll personally get into here. I don’t know if this was planned or purposeful from the writer/director but it should be noted both sets of couples are interracial– one black male, white female and our main characters.. black female, white male. There has been much online discourse about race in this film which as a product of an interracial relationship myself along with the lead actress I feel like I can have a unique perspective on this as well as she.

It had been discussed that the role of Emma played by Zendaya had initially been written for a white woman and that nothing had been changed in the script when it was cast with a black actress essentially because of a major plot point. Threads had A LOT to say on this. Whether the plot point would have been different or the same with a white woman I cannot speak to, however I will say in my eyes the fact that it did have a black actress and a black character in this role, further leaned into the point of the movie which many people disagreed with. However it was incredibly refreshing to read black women’s perspectives that agreed with this and also felt like it actually played into the story.

Spoiler warning*

The main turning point in this film which I thought was MASTERFULLY shown in the trailer (following a common theme here, your mileage may vary) is when the two couples are at a tasting for Charlie and Emma’s wedding having had way too much wine and seemingly not nearly enough food. Rachel (white female) who seems to be a bit of an instigator talks about her relationship with Mike and that before they got married one of the things that they did was ask each other: “What’s the worst thing you’d ever done?” (author note: don’t try this at home, please. I know you’re going to want to turn to your partner after this movie and ask, don’t.) Mike (black male) stated the worst thing he had ever done was use an ex-girlfriend as a human shield when a wild dog had attacked them in a foreign country. There was so much race talk about this film online that many people had insinuated that the ex girlfriend he did that to must have been a black woman because look at how he treats this white woman he’s married to ( the film makes no reference to the race of his ex nor do I think that’s relevant to the story). Rachel says her worst thing is that she went into the woods with a kid with a developmental disability and locked him into what seemed like a closet of a trailer. (Awful human being) She had said he was found which some speculated if it was dead or alive. Again incredibly awful. Then it pans around to Charlie and Emma to which Charlie struggles to come up with something at first and then states that he used to be a bit of a cyber bully and then gets effectively “yada yada’d” by the rest of the table. It then moves over to Emma visibly nervous which Zendaya I think is absolutely incredible in this movie and its clear she is drawn to characters with depth that are a little fucked up. Right up my alley and maybe unfortunately for me some of the types of women I’m drawn to in my personal life lol. Emma states that the worst thing she had ever done was plan a school shooting when she was fifteen, emphasis on “plan” but got an absolute jaw drop, gasp and shock in the theater! Which as I said earlier, I think was the point.

The trailer alluded to a very shocked and “ what the actual fuck??” response from everyone at the table about Emma’s worst thing she had ever done but strategically cut out what she had said. You could have given me a thousand guesses before I would have said Zendaya’s character is going to say she planned a school shooting, with a weapon available to her AND practiced for it. So much so she had caused herself to go deaf in one ear from shooting a rifle with it too close. I truly think all of that was purposeful. Representation and race is so incredibly important on screen and a lot of pushback I noticed came from people saying the idea that a black woman would do a school shooting is absurd with countless pointing to statistics, which by the way I agree with: It IS absurd! And I think it should be noted she did not actually go through with the shooting and no one had been harmed. In fact I think an important point was shown when a tragedy had taken place involving where a student did die, Emma had for the first time received support and felt acceptance from her peers and kids at school. Which I think deep down was the only thing she actually really wanted. And that’s when you got to see her personality start to shift a bit and she had started to become an activist. With that said, I think people took this movie much too literally and could not see the “forest through the trees.”

I truly don’t believe that this film is about school shootings at all. Or about race in America, interracial relationships or any of that. To me this felt like a classic “put yourself in their shoes” movie. And I don’t mean quite literally what if your fiancée told you at dinner with 2 of your closest friends while you’re all drunk that they wanted to shoot up their school would you still marry them? But I do mean take something else with the same level of wow factor, the same level of “holy shit you absolutely cannot be serious” as the worst thing they had ever done and how would you sit with that for the next 5-7 days? Knowing your venue is paid for, you have relatives flying in from across the pond, you just fired your wedding DJ. And all the things that come with “I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with this person. What the hell do I do now?”

To me this film begs the question, how well do we really know the people around us? How many secrets from dark pasts are buried never to be spoken about? Are you or are you not necessarily safe with the person you’re sleeping next to? I don’t think this movie is interested in the hot button issues it touches on, at least in a direct way. Some may say that’s a shitty perspective to have or that I don’t get it. Or that school shootings are very sensitive or that race is an undertone in everything in this country which believe me or not I actually agree with.

But I also believe in metaphor. I also believe in letting adults be adults and form and come to conclusions themselves. That audiences are hopefully smart enough to peel back initial layers and shock value to understand deeper meanings and messages that may apply to more things than what is initially revealed on the surface. Give people credit. Not all things have to be liked. Not all characters have to be good people, not everything has to be spelled out and spoon-fed to an audience– this person is good or this person is the real villain. Treat people like they are intelligent or at least have the power to be. Touch on touchy subjects not avoid them like the plague so as to not make anyone uncomfortable. I think taboo subjects are ok because they’re real, raw and actually authentic to a snapshot of how real life is and can be (unless you zoom in too hard and say a black woman wouldn’t authentically plan a school shooting). And isn’t that what we want in our stories? With so much going on in the world that seems fake whether that’s AI or influencers, filters, or manufactured public image. Going into a world that puts you into what feels like a situation that could happen to you or something that could maybe make you re-evaluate your own life situations isn’t that better than the mindless scrolling that so many of us spend too much of our time doing?

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To reiterate this movie has INCREDIBLE performances: Zendaya did amazing as previously stated, Pattinson I think this is some of his best work even if you disagree with some of his choices in the film. Alana Haim if you let the internet tell it may be the “Bitch of the year” which to me says she absolutely did her job as an actress because every woman I know at some point has had a friend like her if not currently. The score stuck out at creating that tension I talked about earlier leaving you repeatedly uneasy- which some people have an aversion to but I think as a storytelling mechanism was incredibly effective. Audiences can not like ruffled feathers but I think if we want interesting stories I don’t think we can always be worried about playing it safeish. Adult themes, adult situations, Adult problems. Show it on screen. Give great performers shit to do that not only makes us feel something but makes them feel something as well. I hope more low to mid budget movies like this get made, my fear is some of the response to this film may cause studios to be less willing to do so. If it's going to be done though I think it will still be with A24 or maybe with Warner Bros. new sub label Clockwork. I just hope they realize that reaction, emotion and discourse means you did your job. And I hope if some of you didn’t enjoy the film, maybe on a second viewing it can be appreciated a little bit more.

So I’m writing again. Or at least I want to be. It’s been a long road and life is really funny sometimes. My name is Michael and I first started writing when I was 12 years old. Bowie, Maryland. I still remember the first time I picked up a pad to write something for myself that wasn’t school related. My mother’s house, visiting on some sort of school break probably in the summer. I even remember what the pad looked like, a distinct sky blue notepad with Winnie the Pooh in the top left corner. Lord knows why my mom just didn’t have a regular white or yellow pad lol. But writing on her couch with MTV on in the background during an episode of “Making The Band”. We don’t have to talk about the host, awful human being and a piece of shit but I digress.

My first personal foray into writing was me taking my own shot at doing what I saw the contestants on the show do: sit in a room and write a song, which trust me for like the first year and a half or so was absolutely awful. But as a kid from New York the early 2000s was a time for HipHop. And thus that began a 10 year journey to a failed rap career that I don’t know if I ever really had the stomach for. But I knew that time alone in my room exploring my thoughts, discovering my feelings, learning others perspectives, it was like food for my brain. It was when I felt most productive, felt like my brain was being exercised.

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In those 10 years I developed a strong love/hate relationship with music. I loved Hiphop, I loved locking myself in my room at my dad’s with an instrumental playing on my laptop. It’d be on an incredibly annoying loop to anyone’s ears but my own—seriously try writing a verse just once in your life and see how often and how quickly you start a beat over, however in 3 hours I could have an entire song finished from idea, to final recording. (shoutout to guitar center for USB Mics and Acer being my first laptop) I loved that shit. But I took it too deep. My creativity and exploring it was one of the things that most gave me life, but constantly choosing to place yourself into that introspection would bring me to what most felt like death, or at the very least if not knocking at its door; at least looking through its window.

So I left music alone. That rabbit hole can be a dark place that just has you in an over-analytical prison of your own mind. But also in that time period I also tried to flex my writing muscle by writing for the school newspaper in my senior year covering sports. Then later having a brief and I mean very brief flirtation with Journalism while attending community college. It was there I realized I didn’t necessarily want to be a journalist or reporter, I more so wanted to write how I felt on subjects that I was interested in. Basically like having a column or ironically a Substack. There was blogspot back then, which over the past few weeks I’m mad at myself that I didn’t take advantage of using. Then realizing that back in 2009 shortly after being put on academic probation that I was too busy working on completing an independent album entirely by myself to go ahead and really explore the different ways that I could write without reporting. But hey, I did make about $1.50 off that album though!

Time goes on, life happens. Suddenly you find yourself with a full time job and a relationship with music which you once loved, now has too much control over your mood so you just stop listening to it. Unless you’re in the gym cause lord knows the clangin and bangin of weights and plates plus people grunting constantly (myself included, do some sets to failure big dawg) will drive anyone insane! The appreciation of art is still there but I needed a different medium and I think I just woke up one day and was like “ ohh I really like dark television and movies, that have something to really say or that have people that are a little fucked up.” (Maybe a bit of meta commentary on myself) For example Industry may be my favorite show this decade and I think you can do a character study there on basically all the characters IYKYK. Harper Stern I love you.

So I suppose as I try to move forward in a new phase of my life now in my mid 30s, prestige television and movies has become my new “music” and writing articles and pieces on them: my thoughts, takeaways, strong emotional feelings and so on I hope to become my new songwriting, my new recording a 16, my new “I’m bored and I gotta keep the pen sharp”. So that’s my goal for “UnderExposure” to consume more art in the style that I enjoy.. A little dark (a photo underexposed) and examining it, discussing it, exposing its thoughts and themes…Listen just cause I don’t make use of a mic any more I still had to get in a double entendre! (Honestly I think I could stretch to a triple entendre but no need to bore you guys) So if you have an affinity for David Fincher, A24 movies, prestige tv in general, maybe even a little New York basketball just to throw in as a palette cleanser please consider subscribing. I look forward to having all willing to be on the journey with me.

Now go enjoy some ART!