Tony

Posted on August 12, 2026 at 4:48 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for pervasive language, drug use, and sexual content/nudity.
Profanity:	Constant very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol and drug use, casual and to excess
Violence/ Scariness:	Scuffles, fire
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	August 14, 2026

“Tony” begins with a quote from the late author and chef Anthony Bourdain describing himself at age 19: “a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, badly in need of a good ass-kicking.” Add in depressed, arrogant, angry, terrified, and desperately crushing on a girl he has no possible capacity to attract, and you’ve got the anti-hero in this, I have to say, delicious new film about a pivotal summer when Bourdain was 19.

Dominic Sessa (“The Holdovers“) gives one of the best performances of the year as Bourdain, still called “Tony.” As the film opens, he is explaining with great confidence but very little substance to an academic committee why he should receive a writing grant for the summer. He is so certain his proposal cannot lose that he tells everyone, including his family, that he has won it. But he has not. With no money, no plans, and no idea what to do, he decides to follow a girl who has shown pretty definitively that she is even less impressed with him than the committee. She mentioned she was spending the summer in Provincetown, on Cape Cod, so that is where he goes, with no job, no place to say, and very soon, no money.

I really appreciate the new style of biographical films that pick one pitival moment instead of trying to cram an entire lifetime into two hours, skipping from some trauma in childhood to meeting a series of significant people to being discovered to letting down people who care about him, etc. etc. Here, Sessa keeps us on the side of Bourdain, still being called by the diminutive “Tony,” behaving very badly, making many mistakes, hurting other people, but, in truly thrilling fashion, getting a glimpse of a future where he will become fully himself, fully “Anthony.”

Screenwriters Todd Bartels, Lou Howe, Matthew Miller, and dirctor Matt Johnson sensitively adapted from just a few dozen pages in Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, capturing the reality of the emotions and reactions instead of being overly didactic about the details. This means that three years are encapsulated into one summer and the characters other than Bourdin are composites adjusted for dramatic purposes. In the film and in reality Bourdin worked at a low-end Provincetown restaurant called The Flagship. In the movie, he gets drunk, insults the waitress, gets thrown out, and gets robbed. Then the owner (Anonthy Banderas as Chef) takes pity on him, and lets him sleep on his hammock — waking him up every morning by throwing cold ocean water on his head, and then gives him a dishwashing job in his kitchen. It is unlikely any of that really happened.

But that set-up is just a way of making palpable what is going on internally. Leo Woodall, fast becoming one of the most sought-after actors in Hollywood, gives another outstanding performance as Sal, the louche, amoral sous-chef who carves a chip out of the doorway every time he has sex with a woman so he can keep them as souvenirs of his conquests. Chef is someone the Bourdin we meet at the beginning of the film would have dismissed as simple and uninteresting. But like a cartoon character with a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other, Sal and Chef present two choices that Bourdin will continue to struggle with until his sad death at his own hand in 2018. It is a tribute to the screenwriters and the performers that the film hits the usual notes of a three-act coming of age story and yet every minute is fresh and specific. So it is fitting that the movie ends with one of Bourdain’s real-life friends from the restaurant world, Eric Ripert, playing an instructor at the Culinary Institute of America. We know what happens next. But the part of Bourdain’s story he dismissed in his book as “the less said about that part of my life, the better, believe me,” makes a very fine film.

Parents should know that this film has a lot of adult material and bad behavior including nudity and sexual references and situations, alcohol and drugs used casually and to excess, and very strong language.

Family discussion: How did Tony’s ideas about what he needed to be happy change over the course of the summer? Why? What food tastes like the future to you? If not food, what does feel like future to you?

If you like this, try: Bourdain’s books and television series and “Julie & Julia”

Movies for Memorial Day 2026

Posted on May 24, 2026 at 10:28 am

Memorial Day is more than the beginning of summer; it is a day to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice. I hope you can take some time to think of those we have lost. Turner Classic Movies has an excellent line-up of classic films. Some more movies to pay your respects:

The Outpost was on my top ten list for 2020, a movie that was sadly overlooked because it came out in the early weeks of the pandemic shutdown. It is based on the book by Jake Tapper. There are war stories that are about strategy and courage and triumph over evil that let us channel the heroism of the characters on screen. And then there are war stories that are all of that but also engage in the most visceral terms with questions of purpose and meaning that touch us all. “The Outpost” is that rare film in the second category, an intimate, immersive drama from director Rod Lurie, a West Point graduate and Army veteran who knows this world inside out and brings us from the outside in. His next film, coming out this summer, is “Lucky Strike,” based on the true story of a WWII soldier trapped behind enemy lines, starring Scott Eastwood.

The Blue Angels Glen Powell, who played a pilot in “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Devotion” is also a real-life pilot who has flown with “the best of the best,” the Navy’s Blue Angels. He produced this documentary that takes us behind the scenes and into the sky, even “inverted” (upside down!) with the Blues.

Air Force Elite: Thunderbirds This 2025 Netflix documentary takes us through the history and training of the legendary flight squadron, produced by Barack and Michelle Obama.

Gardens of Stone James Caan and James Earl Jones star in a film about the 1st Battalion 3d Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard) at Fort Myer, Virginia, the U.S. Army’s Honor Guard. They conduct the funerals of fallen soldiers and guard the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. Francis Ford Coppola directed this touching, elegiac story.

Hallowed Grounds This PBS documentary explores 22 overseas military cemeteries, with stories of the soldiers who are buried there and the people who keep their memories alive.

Taking Chance An officer (Kevin Bacon) escorts the body of a young Marine killed in Iraq. Each stop along the way is meaningful.

Mr. Roberts is a WWII story about a Navy cargo ship, based on the experiences of author Thomas Heggen. Henry Fonda stars in the title role or an executive officer who tries to protect the men from a tyrannical captain. Broadway, and the outstanding cast includes William Powell, James Cagney, and Oscar-winner Jack Lemmon.

Band of Brothers is the extraordinary series from Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks about ordinary men who came together to do extraordinary things as soldiers in Easy Company in WWII.

Red Tails is the story of the Tuskegee Airmen, the legendary heroes who risked their lives for a country that did its best to hold them back.

Michael

Posted on April 22, 2026 at 12:04 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some thematic material, language, and smoking
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Smoking
Diversity Issues:	Child abuse, parent whips a child with a belt
Date Released to Theaters:	April 24, 2026

To understand what kind of movie this is, you need to know that most, but not all, of Michael Jackson’s siblings and most, but not all, of his children were producers. His lawyer, John Branca, also produced and is played by Miles Teller.

Janet Jackson, Michael’s sister and a musical superstar of almost equal prominence, who did not produce, is erased from the story. So his non-superstar sister Rebbie. So is any possible fault or flaw in the title character, and any effort to give the rest of the characters any depth or personality. What it does find time for is way too many scenes of ecstatic fans at concerts and Michael visiting sick children. The movie has its entertaining moments, mostly when Jaafar Jackson replicates some of his uncle’s most iconic performances, but the dramatic sections are weak and sanitized.

The late self-titled “King of Pop” is played by his real-life nephew, Jermaine Jackson’s son, Jaafar., who evokes the memory of his uncle with his look (before and after nose job) and moves. Colman Domingo is powerfully crafty and brutal as Joseph Jackson, the cruel factory worker who was determined to make his children his ticket out of Gary, Indiana, and did not hesitate to pull out his belt to whip them if he felt they were not paying him enough respect. Nia Long is warm and empathetic as Katherine Jackson, whose quiet support for Michael gives him something to hold onto and whose mild protests get less mild after Michael’s success.

A stand-out here is Juliano Valdi as young Michael Jackson, both in his ability to show us the then 10-year-old (but claiming to be 8) as an already-electrifying performer. (I well remember how dazzling my sisters and I were by the Jackson 5’s first national television appearance, introduced by Diana Ross.)

The Michael of this film is a 20th century Peter Pan and we are constantly reminded of how he identified with that character, writing his father’s name next to a depiction of Captain Hook. He is portrayed here as a gentle, almost angelic, innocent who considers his pets (including a giraffe, a llama, and Bubbles the chimp) as his only friends and who loves to be swept away by classic old films. His bodyguard, Bill (KeiLyn Durrel Jones) is sympathetic. But he seems to have no relationship with anyone in his family except his mother, and in the most simplistic and superficial terms the movie suggests that the only issue is learning how to stand up to his father. We learn little about what inspires his music and what performing means to him. There’s nothing here about “We Are the World” and the controversies over his marriage, his children, his mutilating surgeries, and the allegations of abuse.

The question you have to ask yourself about a musical biography is whether it has something to say beyond what we get from watching archival footage of the subject. The answer here is no. Weirdly, we see Michael tell director John Landis to shoot the dance in the “Thriller” music video the way Fred Astaire insisted his dance numbers should be shot: a steady camera showing the full bodies of the dancers, but the dance numbers here do not follow that good advice. They are dynamic but they cut away from what we want to see.

And the portrayals are paper-thin. We do not learn anything about Michael’s relationship to his siblings, what any human friendships he had were like, or what inspired his music. The movie is clear about Joseph’s exploitation of Michael, trying to control him to continue to do what is best for the family (meaning money and attention for Joseph), with no commitment or even recognition of what might be best for Michael. Joseph wants him to continue to perform with the family, making solo music only on his off hours. We are supposed to cheer for Michael when he gets a lawyer to stand up to Joseph and then stands up for himself. But it is hard to see this film as anything but continuing the family’s efforts to make money from Michael’s talent. At the end we wonder whether he would see this as just another attempt to profit from his legacy.

Parents should know that this film includes child abuse, smoking, body dysmorphia, and a scary accident when Jackson is badly burned. He also visits very sick children and patients.

Family discussion: Is this a fair representation of Michael Jackson? What more do you want to know? Why was he so beloved?

If you like this, try: “The Jacksons: An American Dream,” “This is It,” “The Jacksons: Road to Victory,” and clips of Michael Jackson singing and dancing

Song Sung Blue

Posted on December 24, 2025 at 9:27 am

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for Rated PG-13 for thematic material, some strong language, some sexual material and brief drug use
Profanity:	Strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Pharmaseutical abuse, character is a recovering alcoholic
Violence/ Scariness:	Offscreen serious injury and recovery
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	December 24, 2025

First there was Neil Diamond, one of the foremost singer-songwriters of the 1970s-90s. And then there was a Milwaukee couple billed as Lightning and Thunder who described their act not as a Neil Diamond tribute act, but a Neil Diamond experience. (“Experience” in this case meaning a fog machine and a leaf blower to blow back their hair.) Then there was a documentary named “Song Sung Blue” about Lightning and Thunder (real names, Mike and Claire Sardina, about the success of their act but also about their setbacks and challenges, about the music and about their love story. And now, like the infinite regression of the girl on the ketchup bottle we have two huge Hollywood stars, very slightly dimming their imperishable glamour to star in a feature film of the same name, and it is one of the most purely enjoyable films of the year, with heartfelt performances and joyous music.

Jackman plays Mike, a divorced Vietnam veteran in recovery from alcoholism who has a teenage daughter. He is passionate about performing (a character astutely observes that a recovering alcoholic will find something else to be addicted to and his is music), and he is very specific about what he wants to do. His stage name is Lightning.

He first sees Claire (Hudson), a divorced mother of a teenage daughter and a younger son, when she is performing in a curly black wig as Patsy Cline. Back at her house, they start singing together and it is instant magic. Their chemistry as performers and as a romantic couple shines from the screen. Soon they get married (at the Wisconsin State Fair) and blend their families. One particularly nice scene is when the two teenage girls get together and form their own instant connection over their family upheavals and some weed.

There are some setbacks along the way, including a mistake in booking that has them performing their first gig not, as they thought, for a motor home convention but for a motorcycle club gathering. But soon, with the help of friends, their crowd-pleasing appearances lead to an enthusiastic local following. Those friends include characters played by Jim Belushi, as the gentle, very sincere tour bus driver who signs on to book their gigs, Michael Imperioli as a devoted friend and Buddy Holly impersonator who is thirty years older than Holly ever got to be, and Fisher Stevens as a dentist so on board he gets Lightning a replacement tooth with a bolt of lightning on it. All three give endearingly open-hearted performances. Lightning and Thunder sing the Neil Diamond songs like they are brand new, with superb musicality. We can see that they are most alive when they are on stage.

“I just want to sing and be happy and feel loved!” Claire tells her daughter. “I will be Neil Diamond, but I’ll also be me,” Mike promises. “He’s…artistic,” says Mike’s daughter to Claire’s daughter, meaningfully. “Most alcoholics trade one addiction for another. Music is that for Dad.” Those comments, along with impeccable work by production designer Clay A. Griffith and costume designer Ernesto Martinez tell us what we need to know about Mike and Claire. But writer/director Craig Brewer is also telling us a deeper story about the healing power of performing music to lift the spirits, bring people together, create a sense of meaning and purpose, and just make us feel good.

Claire is badly injured in a freak accident. Mike has heart problems. But they love each other and the audiences love them. And then they get a call from Eddie Vedder, who wants them to open for Pearl Jam when they play at a huge music festival in Wisconsin. (A terrific performance by John Beckwith as a slightly laconic but enormously decent Vedder and be sure to check out the footage of that real-life performance.)

Thanks to Brewer, the movie never condescends to Mike, Claire, or their friends. It takes the same joy in their performances that their fans do. Jackson is excellent as Mike and Hudson is a revelation here, never better, with a perfect Wisconsin broad A, exquisite harmonies, and so much joy on stage we cannot help but bask in it. As Claire recovering from her injury, depressed and knocked out on painkillers, she is raw and heartbreakingly vulnerable. We know she cannot give up the music, and seeing her back on stage, reconnecting with the pure joy of the music and the audience, connects us with all of that and with the love story, too.

Parents should know that this film has strong language, a recovering alcoholic, a serious injury and painkillers, and a teen pregnancy.

Family discussion: What’s the best Neil Diamond song? Were you surprised that Eddie Vedder invited Mike and Claire to open for Pearl Jam? If you were in the audience, how would you have responded?

If you like this, try: The documentary of the same name and of course the music of Neil Diamond

Nuremberg

Posted on November 6, 2025 at 5:51 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for violent content related to the Holocaust, disturbing images, strong language, and themes including suicide, smoking, and brief drug use
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol, drugs, and smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Wartime and Holocaust references, archival scenes from concentration camps
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	November 7, 2025

Those who have studied 20th century history know that after WWII the Allies did something no governments had ever done after a surrender. They held a formal trial, not about Germany’s acts of war but about the “crimes against humanity” that tortured, imprisioned, stole from, and murdered its own people, and tried to eradicate citizens based on their religion, disability, and sexual orientation. They were known as the Nuremberg trials.

But even those who have studied that process may not know that the American military also assigned its own psychiatrists to interview the first 22 German officers and political leaders. It was not, as in an ordinary criminal trial, to determine their ability to understand the proceedings and in some cases their culpability for their decisions, but to try to understand what kinds of minds would create what we now call the Holocaust. Those questions have continued to confound us for 80 years, and continue to be explored by historians and filmmakers, including recent documentaries like “The Last Days,” “Shoah,” and “The Grey Zone” and narrative films like “The Zone of Interest” and “A Real Pain.”

“Nuremberg,” based in part on the book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist by Jack El-Hai, follows three intersecting stories, the efforts of Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson (Michael Shannon) to get the Allied countries together to agree on the trial, the charges, and its proceedings, the interviews military psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) conducted with top Nazi official Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe), and Howie Triest (Leo Woodall) a young military officer assigned to Kelley as a translator.

Jackson’s plan seems impossible, “a logistical nightmare.” “What you’re talking about is trying them in some sort of legal limbo that doesn’t exist using laws that haven’t been written yet,” he is told, and reminded that Germany never attacked the US. He would have to get the involvement of all of the Allies to participate, including the USSR. He insists, “The world needs to know what these men did.”

There is an optimism behind it, an idea that if the top Nazis were both convicted and diagnosed, it would help make sure that nothing like the Holocaust would ever happen again.

The essence of the film is in the interviews/conversations between Kelley and Göring, and the two Oscar-winners and writer/director James Vanderbilt’s script make them among the most riveting screen moments of the year.

Vanderbilt is superb in revealing the complexity of the moral and legal issues. Kelley is trained to give therapy, with patient confidentiality. Jackson wants him to use his sessions to find Göring’s vulnerabilities, to help with the prosecution. General Eisenhower insists that there be no executions without a trial, giving the men the opportunity to defend themselves. The risk of failing to find them guilty is the risk of making them martyrs, allowing atrocities to happen again. Jackson and the military are also very aware that the humiliation Germany suffered at the end of WWI played a big part in Hitler’s rise. Göring tells Kelley why he followed Hitler: “Along came a man who said we could reclaim our former glory. Would you not follow such a man?”

Jackson reminds us that the war “started with laws,” and should end with them. They have to create a sense of fairness and justice without repeating the mistakes of the post WWI Paris Peace Conference that divided up German’s territories.

The movie is well paced, as a thriller, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of history and the human capacity for evil and for good. It is never didactic or heavy-handed. There are moments of humor and excellent performances by all.

Vanderbilt has a gift for telling details like Göring ripping the lace-edged hem of his wife’s slip to make a white flag of surrender as his car reaches the Americans, and then casually telling them to get his luggage, as though the American soldiers are baggage handlers.

When the military thinks Kelley is too sympathetic, they bring in another psychiatrist (Colin Hanks), who is clear that he is there to write a book about it. Kelley is disturbed by this unabashed acknowledgement of self-interest. The film lets us know that Kelley did himself write a book, though, 22 Cells in Nuremberg: A Psychiatrist Examines the Nazi Criminals. It is hard to find but well worth reading, especially its conclusion, calling for the same commitments we are still trying to achieve today. It is impossible to watch this film without being chilled by what happened in Germany. It is impossible not to think about the lessons we have failed to learn.

Parents should know that this film includes references to wartime violence and the Holocaust, with real archival footage of concentration camps. There is some strong language and characters drink, smoke, and use drugs.

Family discussion: Compare the Nuremberg trials to a later version, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Which is better? When the current global conflicts are resolved, how should we treat those involved?

If you like this, try: “Judgment at Nuremberg.” a 1961 film about the later trials, with waning interest in pursuing the Nazi judges, exploring the issues of responsibility for those in lower-level roles. and the American Experience documentary, “The Nuremberg Trials“