sonnybunch.bsky.social

"We’re off to the races. Here are a handful of movies I have circled on my calendar as we hit the meaty part of awards season." ICYMI @sonnybunch.bsky.social:

Awards season is heating up, and the race for Hollywood's biggest prizes is taking shape. Which films are worth the hype and what should you actually make time to see? @sonnybunch.bsky.social on the must-watch movies of awards season. lnk.thebulwark.com/4jz6fud?utm_...

Awards season is upon us, which means that we're about to get hit with some of the best movies of the year. I myself am most looking forward to WILD HORSE NINE, which looks like a CIA-inflected IN BRUGES starring John Malkovich. What's not to love? www.thebulwark.com/p/the-must-w...

Netflix's new documentary, THE TALE OF NORM MACDONALD, is kind of amazing, both in terms of its content (lots of Norm!) and its form (it recreates going down a video rabbit hole amazingly well). I talked about it with Norm chronicler Geoff Edgers: www.thebulwark.com/p/the-tao-of...

FJORD is one of the best movies of the year. Provocative without devolving into trolling, yet still genuinely subversive. Stan and Reinsve are amazing. Go see it this weekend if you can! www.thebulwark.com/p/fjord-review

"Maybe this is all over-intellectualized mumbo jumbo and You Can See Everything is, simply, a portrait of a crazy-eyed con woman engaging in a new con with a crazy-eyed con man at her side." ICYMI, @sonnybunch.bsky.social reviews:

YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING is the movie of the year, maybe. I tried to work through its many layers of meaning with Alyssa and Peter on this week's Across the Movie Aisle. Or as many layers as we could in the time allotted. movieaisle.substack.com/p/you-can-se...

I am not a fan of the FCC under Brendan Carr. www.thebulwark.com/p/brendan-ca...

I really enjoy the Netflix animated show HAUNTED HOTEL and love talking to its creator, Matt Roller, about the show's fandom (it's intense!), when we might see season three (hopefully soon!), and why Candlehead is the show's best character (candles!) www.thebulwark.com/p/book-a-roo...

"Maybe this is all over-intellectualized mumbo jumbo and You Can See Everything is, simply, a portrait of a crazy-eyed con woman engaging in a new con with a crazy-eyed con man at her side." ICYMI, @sonnybunch.bsky.social reviews "You Can See Everything":

It's hard to describe WHALEFALL, a movie I liked, because the phrase that keeps coming to mind is "goofily earnest torture porn." But ... it works? The movie works! Very tense! Incredibly earnest! The world needs more earnestness. I dug it. www.thebulwark.com/p/whalefall-...

"'You Can See Everything' is a lie. Full stop. We can’t see everything; we can never see 'everything.' We do not possess third-person omniscience, and everything Fielder does is an effort to remind us of that." @sonnybunch.bsky.social reviews:

I don't really know how to describe YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING except to say it is a.) kind of enthralling and b.) an extended argument that nothing you see on a screen can be "true." Nathan Fielder is some variety of mad genius. www.thebulwark.com/p/you-can-se...

Is THE SOCIAL RECKONING as good as THE SOCIAL NETWORK? Well ... no. But it's a difficult story to dramatize told well, with fine pacing and plenty of humor. And lots of overlapping dialogue. Hey: it's an Aaron Sorkin movie. www.thebulwark.com/p/the-social...

It's awards season, baby! I asked Katey Rich and Christopher Rosen to weigh in on Tom Cruise's Oscar chances for DIGGER, if THE ODYSSEY can be beaten, what Inde Navarette's chances are against Julianne Moore, and what you should be looking forward to seeing! www.thebulwark.com/p/let-the-os...

"It's hard to imagine two memoirs more different in tone, style, or substance." But here they both are. @sonnybunch.bsky.social reviews "My Thirty Years at the Happiest Place on Earth" by Bob Chapek and "Roll the Calls" by Ari Emanuel:

Look, did I write this entire review of Bob Chapek and Ari Emanuel's memoirs so I could implicitly compare Emanuel to Judge Holden from "Blood Meridian"? Not consciously, no. But subconsciously? Maybe! www.thebulwark.com/p/the-knifem...

In which DIGGER inspires Alyssa to finally tell the truth about Peter. This was a fun episode! Entertainingly contentious! The best kind of contentious! movieaisle.substack.com/p/the-first-...

We live in an age of antiheroes and wonder why everything is so messed up. (Corrected to reflect the century this list covers. Small thing, that typo. What's a hundred years between friends?) www.thebulwark.com/p/the-age-of...

My face when I learned the director’s cut of MIAMI VICE is now referred to as the “Original Alternate Cut” and the new cut is “The Final Director’s Cut,” necessitating yet another $60 expenditure on 4K discs.

DIGGER has one of the best scenes of the year—and also the rest of the movie. Kind of a mess! Amazing commitment to the bit by Tom Cruise, our last movie star. An interesting failure, and I'm honestly not sure which of those words to stress more. www.thebulwark.com/p/digger-rev...

If Congress passes a new law giving film productions tax breaks as part of an effort to get them to shoot in the United States rather than abroad, does that mean presidents will have some say over what films get made? Our @sonnybunch.bsky.social finds out: www.thebulwark.com/p/a-bipartis...

There's a chance that, for the first time, a federal film credit will pass. If it does, and if California OR New York expands their tax credits, it will have consequences for Paramount-Skydance's settlement with the AGs. I explain why in my newsletter: www.thebulwark.com/p/a-bipartis...

I think V FOR VENDETTA is much more relevant now than it was during the War on Terror years for reasons I got into with director James McTeigue on this week's Bulwark Goes to Hollywood. Interesting movie to look at 20 years later! www.thebulwark.com/p/how-v-for-...

"The obvious reference point for Primetime is Nightcrawler. But as Lance Oppenheim’s jarring feature crashes to its climax, my mind was drawn back to another, entirely different film: Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer." ICYMI @sonnybunch.bsky.social reviews:

@sonnybunch.bsky.social reacts to the Paramount deal, which keeps CNN and CBS under one roof while doing little to stop the consolidation state AGs were fighting in the first place.

PRIMETIME reminded me, weirdly, less of NIGHTCRAWLER than of OPPENHEIMER, in that they're both movies by people desperate to build a thing they don't fully understand and come to regret it after the fact. www.thebulwark.com/p/primetime-...

The movies are back, baby!

SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY is now the highest-grossing film of all time, domestically. So I had cowriter Chris McKenna on the pod to discuss, for the first time, some of the blind alleys they went down writing it, securing Jean Grey from Marvel, and more! www.thebulwark.com/p/breaking-d...

"I don’t know that anyone will confuse Zach Cregger’s new take on the series with high art either, but Cregger is attempting something relatively audacious." ICYMI, @sonnybunch.bsky.social reviews "Resident Evil":

*Very* special Across the Movie Aisle this week: Peter, Alyssa, and I talked to Richard Kelly about his masterpiece, DONNIE DARKO (in theaters Oct. 2-4!), and that film's forthcoming novel sequel ... with a SOUTHLAND TALES chaser! movieaisle.substack.com/p/richard-ke...

"Director Zach Cregger has put together a film based on a video game that feels pretty explicitly like playing that game." In a good way. @sonnybunch.bsky.social reviews "Resident Evil":

"We're gonna be talking about sex and violence and 'The Odyssey.'" @sonnybunch.bsky.social joins @monacharen.bsky.social on this month's book club, discussing "The Odyssey." Watch their discussion live today at 1:30 p.m. EDT.

The new RESIDENT EVIL is incredibly fun (and funny). It is also, alongside EXIT 8, is one of the few video game adaptations to make the mechanics of gameplay feel cinematic and integral rather than tacked on. www.thebulwark.com/p/resident-e...

"Two separate but concurrent factors drove much of the mood at the midterm convention: the complete lack of accomplishments in the present and a deep uncertainty about the future." ICYMI, @sonnybunch.bsky.social on the GOP's convention floor:

Real people are going to suffer because Donald Trump would rather shut the Kennedy Center down than allow it to operate without his name garishly plastered on its side. It's practically the definition of malignant narcissism. www.thebulwark.com/p/a-day-and-...

The RNC didn't want to let the Bulwark attend Trump's midterm conventions. @sonnybunch.bsky.social went anyways.

"I would not recommend giving them credentials." The GOP's media team tried to keep The Bulwark out of Trump's midterm convention. @sonnybunch.bsky.social got in anyway. His dispatch from Dallas:

The funniest thing I saw at the midterm convention, btw: A gold Trump car signed by Donald *and* Eric Trump. One imagines the owner just being like "...yeah, sure, go ahead" when Eric asked if he could sign it too.

At the midterm convention it became painfully clear that Donald Trump, the memory of Charlie Kirk, and fear of Democrats are the only thing holding the party together. But the Iran War looms as a wedge that could split the whole thing apart. www.thebulwark.com/p/fear-and-l...

I realize there's no point in pointing out that Trump's a liar but he's just a liar! This is an easily disproven lie!

I went to the Dallas midterm convention, an event that mostly focused on how bad Joe Biden was despite two years of unified GOP control of the federal government. Trump really wanted to drive home one thing: he is on the ballot! And the crowd loved it. www.thebulwark.com/p/dying-insi...

HOPE is maybe the best pure action movie of the year, one wrapped up in an appropriately goofy (and *deeply* funny) monster flick. Some dodgy CGI rarely distracts from the best-choreographed set pieces I've seen this year. www.thebulwark.com/p/hope-movie...

The proto-Effin’ Birds was my Tumblr “Swear Trek”. It opened a lot of doors for me and I wouldn’t be where I am today without it. I don’t have plans to revive it (one daily comic is enough work), just wanted to thank it for getting me here on this 60th anniversary of Star Trek.

Very few people have spent as much time as Sarah Longwell has with actual voters, talking with them about what they actually want. As a result, very few books will be as *actually* informative and useful as this. You're missing out if you don't read it. www.amazon.com/How-Eat-Elep...

For months, I’ve been hearing that congressional Republicans were waiting for Trump to post in favor of a federal film tax credit before they could support it. Whether Trump has the juice to sell this to a skeptical base is another question. www.thebulwark.com/p/will-repub...

The federal tax credit for film production can't pass without Republican support. Will Donald Trump's say-so be enough to get them over the line? www.thebulwark.com/p/will-repub...

There's an argument to be made that Dolly Parton was the greatest living American, just the embodiment of talent and hard work creating a fortune that was, in turn, used to better the lives of millions. RIP. May her library carry her name into the future. www.thebulwark.com/p/dolly-part...