All art has an element of the autobiographical. It is not special in this regard. Art has this in common with all fields of human endeavor, in which past experiences influence present actions. A teacher revises his lesson plan based on the previous class’s response, an Uber driver takes a different route because she ran into construction the day before — or a nuclear physicist designs the most dangerous weapon in the history of humankind because his brain is uniquely wired to understand the process, and because his Jewishness and left-wing politics drive home the terror that if he doesn’t do it, the Nazis will. In all cases choice is involved, and the work you make, including creative work, is not simple regurgitation; talent, skill, and imagination all come into play, and can be honed and sharpened to make better work over time. 

So I think it trivializes neither the hard work that artist Christopher Nolan poured into Oppenheimer — nor the grievous actions depicted in the film itself — to suggest that Oppenheimer, too, is reflective of the life of its creator. (He did cast his own daughter as the woman whose face peels off in the title character’s horrific vision of what he has wrought in an admittedly unconscious expression of his horror of the bomb, so I don’t think I’m going too far out on a limb.) Here, after all, we have the story of a brilliant technician, preeminent in his field, successful in ways few of his colleagues can hope to emulate. He is tasked with the completion of a tremendous project that will change the world forever, which he completes with nearly (but not quite—ask Jean Tatlock) monomaniacal furor even when the need that initially drove him to do so subsides. Unleashed upon the world his project is an even bigger success — from the perspective of his bosses, if not that of humanity in general or the people of Japan in particular — than he imagined. And for one reason or another, he will regret that success for the rest of his life.

I wrote about Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan, and the explosion (and implosion?) of the superhero boom for Decider.

But that’s just it: This a documentary about a current WWE wrestler, produced by WWE. That means you’ll be hearing a lot of the bizarre, cult-like lingo developed by Vince McMahon to describe the product he’s been selling for forty-plus years. For example, both the narration and multiple interview subjects, from Cody on down, use the sanitized word-salad phrase “sports entertainment” in place of “professional wrestling”; it’s a McMahon innovation you will never hear a human being not on WWE’s payroll say, unless they’re doing a bit.

Similarly, the adversity Cody faced during his initial WWE stint — bad gimmicks, bad ideas, writers and executives who refused to listen to him — is treated like some kind of natural phenomenon rather than the result of actual decisions made by people with names and addresses. The result is an onslaught of passive verbs that would make reporters about “police-involved shootings” blush, in which Cody is repeatedly fucked over by figures unknown.

But it’s a documentary’s job to make the unknown known, right? Like, when Cody says his demand to revert to “Cody Rhodes” from “Stardust” after his dad’s death “was met very much poorly” — met very much poorly by whom? Elsewhere, Brandy describes the situation that kept her husband down thusly: “Somebody said to somebody, ‘Not you.’” Who said it? To whom did they say it? Who are the somebodies? If “they” wouldn’t let Cody do what he wanted, who are “they”?

The answer, of course, is Vince McMahon himself, the man who for decade after decade has overseen WWE’s creative decisions on the most macro and micro of levels alike. The documentary treats this man like Zeus, a figure of might and legend who occasionally descends from his Stamford Olympus to bestow his blessings upon the worthy. Cody gets there eventually, but the years in which McMahon — who it’s widely believed bore a grudge against his one-time rival businessman Dusty Rhodes to the man’s dying day, even during the periods during which Dusty worked for WWE — kept him down are glossed over.

This is to say nothing of the well-documented series of incidents in which McMahon engaged in illicit sexual conduct with his own employees, then paid millions in hush money to cover it up. Or about how he “retired” when this news broke, then forced his way back into the company to oversee its sale to perhaps the only potential buyer willing to leave him in charge, Ari Emanuel’s Endeavor — which also owns UFC, run by the similarly politically reactionary and personally abusive Dana White. Or about his Succession-like power plays against his daughter Stephanie and her husband, former wrestler Paul “Triple H” Levesque, both of whom hold (or held, in Stephanie’s case) executive positions within the company. 

McMahon’s conduct (and of his years-long track record of creative bankruptcy; whatever juice the guy once had, it dried up 20 years ago) got me to swear off watching WWE shows unless and until he’s gone for good. Stand-up guy though he might be, the same cannot be said of Cody. All of this is worth exploring in a way an official WWE documentary can and would never do, yet it’s exactly this stuff that would make the doc worthwhile.  

I had a grand old time writing about American Nightmare: Becoming Cody Rhodes and the ways it both does and doesn’t escape WWE’s weird gravitational field for Decider.

Time and again, Reubens and company picked up on the kinds of incidents that would haunt little minds well into adulthood. Think about it: However old you are now, do you not remember suffering a humiliation as mortifying as a whole crowd of tourists laughing at you because “There’s no basement at the Alamo”? I sure do! In my case, it involved mistaking a “Chinese yo-yo” on a Memorial Day fair prize table for a bottle rocket, only for an adult I didn’t know to sneer “Firecrackers are illegal!” at me, Jan Hooks–style. God, how I hated that for Pee-wee! How I wanted there to be a basement at the Alamo after all!

In honor of Paul Reubens I wrote about the horror of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure — of its exploration of children’s fears both real and imagined — for Decider. This piece is for former kids who were scared by both Large Marge and the prospect of a bunch of adults laughing at you because you didn’t know there’s no basement at the Alamo.

I’m about to say the most “I’m a professional television critic” thing I’ve ever said, so please bear with me: This week’s episode of Foundation was a hell of a good time, and I have my reservations about that.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Foundation for Decider.

I’ve often said that all I’m looking for when I go to the theater is “a fun time at the movies,” and the same can be said of television. Transcendent experiences are nice, but being solidly entertained by serious people at the top of their craft for six episodes is, as I said above, plenty. It’s a circle I don’t mind standing in.

I reviewed the finale of Full Circle for Decider.

But you want to know what my big hope is for the finale, more so than wanting this or that character to get freedom or justice or their comeuppance? It’s that the deal at the center of the circle never gets fully explained. The way writer-creator Ed Solomon and director Steven Soderbergh have depicted the chaos that followed from it is good enough for me. Some mysteries are best left unsolved.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Full Circle for Decider.

Somehow I was the target demographic for all of these blockbusters, despite the fact that if I’d addressed many of their images and themes to my folks in the form of direct questions I’d have been as summarily dismissed as I was when I first asked if Santa Claus was real. I had discovered a societally sanctioned way to see things I wasn’t supposed to see, hear things I wasn’t supposed to hear, think things I wasn’t supposed to think, feel things I wasn’t supposed to feel. I’d cracked the code. I’d beaten the game. I’d gotten to stay up past my metaphorical bedtime. 

That’s not a phrase I throw around lightly. Watching Sam Malone make preposterous passes at Diane Chambers or Rebecca Howe was one thing; I knew it was just 9:07 P.M. and my dad had his favorite show on and I happened to be watching on my way upstairs to dreamland. But these movies were for me, for us, for kids, even when the material in them wasn’t. Whether because they had faith in our intelligence or blithe unconcern for our moral fiber was immaterial. They were giving us something we needed without knowing how bad we needed it: a taste of the adult, in the form of “Hey, kids! The movies!”

Barbie is a return to this grand tradition. Directed by Greta Gerwig from a script by herself and her frequent collaborator Noah Baumbach, it’s a throwback to the kid-appealing adult blockbusters of yore.

This Ken has no dick: I wrote about Barbie, Ghostbusters, and the era (and return?) of the edgy kinda-but-not-quite-for-kids blockbuster for Decider.

If I were to construct a Prime Radiant based on all my knowledge of all the shows I’ve ever reviewed, I’d gaze into its holographic projection of the future and tell you that if things continue along their current path, there are warning signs for what might happen. It happened to Billions, for example. It happened to The Leftovers. Closest to home of all, it happened to the earlier Lee Pace starring vehicle Halt and Catch Fire. What happened, you ask? (“What happened, O Prophet?” is also acceptable.) What happened was that shaky shows with glimmers of promise in their first seasons became dynamite in their second. If I’m not mistaken, if there’s no intervening Crisis, Foundation is on that golden path. 

I reviewed the new episode of Foundation for Decider.

I think I’ve sussed out what Full Circle is up to. Besides being the quintessential Gripping New Crime Thriller, that is. The show’s fourth episode (“Safe in the Circle”) is like a Jenga tower made of lies, dating back decades from the kidnapping at the center of the show, and the characters spend it pulling the tower apart piece by piece. Everyone lies, as (unfortunately) Morrissey once sang. That’s the big idea.

I reviewed the fourth episode of Full Circle for Decider.

Move over, Transformers: There’s a new “more than meets the eye” show in town. Returning for its second double dose of twisty crime hijinks, Full Circle spends its third episode (“Jared’s Body”) revealing one surprising connection between the players after the other. It does so with minimalist precision, serving up just enough information to get the audience on the right track, confident everyone watching is smart enough to keep up. Personally? I appreciate that vote of confidence. Everyone else seems to be getting in on the investigation; why shouldn’t we?

I reviewed the third episode of Full Circle for Decider.

That Andor, a Star Wars television series on Disney+, received an Emmy Award nomination for Best Drama doesn’t tell you much about Andor. Like all awards shows, the Emmys are ultimately about themselves; following their nominees and winners from year to year is less a way to keep track of what’s actually good and more a way to track the values of the Academy of Television Arts & Science’s values and preferences as they change, or don’t change, over time. For example, the acting on the satirical HBO dramedies Succession and The White Lotus was very good, but please take it from someone who covers this stuff for a living: In no way did these two shows alone contain the eight best supporting actor performances of the year all by themselves, unless they were the only two shows you watched.

Similarly, Andor’s nods for Best Drama, Best Directing, and Best Writing — three of its total of eight nominations — are very nice for Andor, a show acclaimed by nearly every critic from nearly every quarter. But please note that the rote exercise in IP management Obi-Wan Kenobi, aka Ewan McGregor’s Divorce Attorney Needs a New Pair of Shoes, also landed a nomination in the historically competitive Best Limited Series category. Put it all together and what you have is evidence that Emmy voters listen when the Mouse tells them something is For Your Consideration, that’s all. It’s just like how the capture of an entire category by two shows that aired on the same network/streamer in the same time slot on the same night while parodying the same kinds of people tells you more about how Emmy voters like spending their Sundays than anything else.

Fortunately, what Andor’s success in the gold statuette realm really means is that we have another opportunity for us, you and me, to talk about just how good Andor is. 

I wrote about Andor for Decider.

“Rip-roarin’” isn’t an adjective I’d use to describe Foundation, science-fiction godhead Isaac Asimov’s heady tome (is there any other kind of tome?) about a rogue mathematician’s plan to save humanity from itself. I do not mentally associate the novel with the phrase “psychedelic freak-out.” Nowhere in its pages do I recall a chapter entitled “The Emperor Fucks a Robot, Then Has a Fight Scene in the Nude.”

And yet, my friends. And yet!

Bombastic, lascivious, arch, gorgeous — “In Seldon’s Shadow,” the long-awaited return of David S. Goyer’s epic-scale adaptation of Asimov’s magnum opus, is all of the above. Written by Goyer and his fellow genre luminary Jane Espenson and directed with verve and grace by Alex Graves, it indicates that this show learned every possible lesson from its inconsistent but entertaining first season. It leans hard into its strengths, shores up its weaknesses, and provides enough beauty — both science-fictional and human-physical — to leave me as optimistic about this show as I’ve ever been. 

And I’m not gonna bury the lede here: Lee Pace has a naked fight scene in it.

I reviewed the terrific season premiere of Foundation for Decider.

Everyone says you can’t make a good thriller in the age of cellphones. Ed Solomon and Steven Soderbergh just said “bet.” “Charger,” the portentously titled second episode of the duo’s new crime pulse-pounder (is that a word?), bakes ubiquitous smartphone usage into the drama so smartly and organically that you’d be amazed anyone ever considered the devices a problem for stories involving mystery and suspense. Maybe people just aren’t trying hard enough?

I reviewed the second episode of Full Circle for Decider.

The Road Warriors never stayed put. Considered one of the greatest tag teams in the history of professional wrestling, the two muscled-and-mohawked behemoths known as Hawk and Animal brought their Mad Max–indebted brand of post-apocalyptic style and mayhem to wrestling promotions across the country and around the world, never staying in one place for very long. They’d dip in, wreck shop, and bounce. It made them superstars.

At the risk of being the first person in human history to compare Steven Soderbergh to a couple of gargantuan ex-bouncers who entered the ring wearing spiked shoulder pads while blasting Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man,” the director’s career reminds me of theirs quite a bit. Bouncing from genre to genre, style to style, tone to tone, and in this particular case film to television — a medium he visits every few years, directing the shit out some show or other before departing for the movies once again — he’s a journeyman filmmaker in the very literal sense that his filmography is a journey across one boundary after the next. 

Soderbergh’s latest trip to the small/streaming screen, Full Circle, is a reunion with his frequent collaborator, comedy-turned-crime screenwriter Ed Solomon. And based on its trickily plotted, emotionally earnest first episode…well, go ahead and cue up “Iron Man.”

I’m covering Steven Soderbergh and Ed Solomon’s quintessential Gripping New Thriller Full Circle for Decider, starting with my review of the series premiere.

Anyway, does any of this resemble how the music industry works? I don’t have a clue, and I don’t really care. For one thing, I don’t think any of that matters much for visual fantasias about pop stardom. Velvet Goldmine changed my life and I don’t think it was a realistic look at how David Bowie’s management screwed him contractually. For another, realism in this kind of satirical erotic-thriller thing is beside the point: I don’t go to Body Double for a look at the adult film industry of the early ‘80s, which I’m reasonably sure involved fewer Frankie Goes to Hollywood performances IRL. I don’t think Basic Instinct is an accurate portrayal of homicide detectives or novelists, and I wouldn’t want it to be. Once it became clear what The Idol was doing — and that what it was doing was good shit, in the vein of much good shit from days of yore — all I wanted, and what I got, was for it to keep doing it, and doing it, and doing it well, as the song goes. It hit an unpleasant note there at the end, but that’s by design. If it were any more pleasant, they’d have been doing it wrong.

I reviewed the finale of The Idol for Decider. I am not in the prognostication business but I’ve read enough recently from sharp writers to lead me to suspect the tide will shift in favor of this very good show.

I can’t remember the last time a show had me gasping and howling and pointing at the screen the way “Outside,” the finale of Silo’s crackerjack first season, did. Actually, no, that’s not strictly true. I can’t remember the last time a show that wasn’t professional wrestling had me gasping and howling and pointing at the screen the way this episode did. Silo is the most purely entertaining drama of the year, and these drum-tight 40-odd minutes demonstrate why.

I reviewed the season finale of Silo for Decider. What a fun show!

When it comes to The Idol, I think Jabba the Hutt put it best: “This bounty hunter is my kind of scum, fearless and inventive.” It’s smart about its sordidness in a way that leaves me thoroughly entertained. As it shifts from one tone to another, from sledgehammer-obvious satire to genuinely unpleasant psychological horror (nobody says torture porn on my watch) to Skinemax-style erotica, there’s one constant: It’s a nasty bit of business (complimentary). 

[…]

The Idol (which I’ll note for the record is airing during the WGA strike, which the studios could end at any time by paying and treating their writers fairly) has its fairly obvious film antecedents, Basic Instinct and Showgirls and The Neon Demon and Body Double and so forth. But while the vituperative reaction to the show may mask it, it’s not alone in TV land either. Nicholas Winding Refn’s Copenhagen Cowboy and Too Old to Die Young, Nick Antosca and Lenore Zion’s Brand New Cherry Flavor, and even some elements of Paolo Sorrentino’s The Young Pope and The New Pope, not to mention Levinson’s own Euphoria, point in the direction of this visually lurid, tonally fluid exploration of exploitation and glamour. It’s like biting on sexy tinfoil. I’m all for it.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of The Idol for Decider.

Let’s first focus on the man who appeared to be the show’s big bad before Bernard revealed his true nature: Sims, the Judicial commandant played by Common. Actually, Sims is just “Rob” to his friends and family, who from his boss Bernard to his wife Camille (Alexandria Wiley) appear to view him with legitimate love and respect. Of course, Bernard’s willing to look past all that when he reprimands Rob for sending unauthorized guards to escort Camille and their son to his apartment, but be that as it may: The point is that this jackbooted thug is just some guy, a guy with a wife and a kid and a tiny apartment and dreams beyond his station. Kind of like literally everyone else in the Silo, in other words.

It’s up to Common to pull off this contrast, and he does so using the same tools that make him intimidating. Take his black-leather-jacket-and-turtleneck wardrobe, for example. On one hand, it’s secret-police chic. On the other, the cut and styling are reminiscent of the 1970s-indebted clothing often worn by musicians who emerged from the same conscious-rap/neo-soul circles Common himself did as a hip-hop artist back in the day. Scary but sexy, that’s our Sims.

Common’s made two separate careers out of using his voice, and that helps him here too. Like George Clooney, he’s blessed with pipes that make him sound handsome as well as look it, and that mellifluous baritone makes him an attractive figure as well as a convincingly caring parent and spouse. But any guy who can speak that softly and still sound that commanding is a perfect villain from an aural perspective, and that’s a big part of what makes him believable as a guy who will stop at nothing to acquire his target, runaway Sheriff Juliette Nichols.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Silo season one for Decider.

But why is material that’s this much of a live wire present in the grunting-as-he-jerks-off, “cartay blanchay” show? You’ve gotta return to your Basic Instinct and your Body Double for the answer to that. The Idol is a sort of satire you don’t really see much that often, not even on a network as satire-heavy as HBO: the kind of satire that effectively imitates, and thus also functions as, that which it’s satirizing.What do you think? Be the first to comment.

Succession played with the allure of extreme wealth as both a selling point and a plot point, but it’s not like it felt like Dynasty or Dallas at any point; it was satirizing these kinds of people, not those kinds of shows. Same with The White Lotus or The Righteous Gemstones. 

The Idol, by contrast? Well, you know how RoboCop and Starship Troopers lampoon action movies but are also incredibly kickass action movies? For that matter, you know how Twin Peaks’s initial run was both a weird parody of nighttime soaps while also being the best nighttime soap on television? The Idol is doing fucked-up sex shit even as it pastiches fucked-up sex shit. To put it in terms from the show itself, it’s Chaim saying “I fucking love that guy” one minute, and “I think our girl’s in trouble” the next.

I reviewed this weekend’s episode of The Idol for Decider.

The best way I can describe Silo is this: Imagine you’re a baseball player and your thing is that you’re a monster home run hitter, like pitchers are afraid of you, you get intentionally walked a lot, when you take the field they play “Iron Man” by Black Sabbath. You are one home run away from breaking the record. And for some reason, the league has given you a choice: You can take your chances with the best relief pitcher in the game…or you can simply set a tee on home plate, put a ball on it, and knock it out of the park, easy-peasy lemon squeezey.

Silo is a show that always chooses the latter option. It’s not here to impress you with its high degree of difficulty. Why would it, when it’s so much easier to keep things simple and just deliver on what you set out to do, over and over and over?

I reviewed last week’s episode of Silo for Decider.