Prime Time: The Smashing Machine (2025)

It's all well and good having a performance from Dwayne Johnson that surpasses anything else he has done on film to date, but there should still be a good enough film around that performance. The Smashing Machine isn't very good. It's not actually bad, but it certainly isn't as good as it should be, considering the footnote that basically reminds viewers of the impact that people like Mark Kerr (the character played by Johnson) made on the sporting landscape. 

Essentially telling the story that many think was told well enough already in the documentary of the same name, this shows Kerr struggling to deal with the inevitable aches and pains that come from a career made in the world of wrestling and other styles of fighting. Those aches and pains lead to increased reliance on pain medications, which cause Kerr some big problems. He also has some problems in his relationship with Dawn Staples (Emily Blunt), but at least has the constant support of Mark Coleman (Ryan Bader), a man who has been his trainer, could occasionally be an opponent, and is always a good friend. 

Written and directed by Benny Safdie, this is another recent biopic that seems content to deliver nothing more than superficial storytelling moments, instead of actual insight and substance. It's about a nice guy who makes a living in a way that doesn't look very nice, and there's also some relationship drama to go along with that, but that's really all. Which doesn't feel like nearly enough to justify the 123-minute runtime.

I don't want to take anything away from Johnson though. His performance here is great. It may not be as big a stretch for him as it would be for a non-wrestler, but he keeps trying his best to act and move exactly like Kerr. Blunt is given the less rewarding role, but she manages to make it work. Just. Bader is very good, helped by the fact that his own storyline develops nicely on the way to the final scenes, and there's a solid turn from Oleksandr Usyk that allows him to play a very worthy fighting opponent without turning him into a pantomime villain.

There's certainly a feeling throughout this that Benny Safdie clearly thought the story of Mark Kerr was one that needed shared with others via a feature film. The end result, however, falls down. Did I like Kerr by the end of this? I did, but not really any more than I liked him at the beginning. It didn't feel as if I'd been on a journey, none of the rare big moments here felt as if they had the weight they deserved, and it was only when some text came up at the very end of the film that I really understood the extra motivation for the telling of the tale. That underlines how disappointing and ineffective a lot of the film was, although others already armed with some knowledge of the people involved may react to it a bit more positively. 

4/10

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Netflix And Chill: Happy Gilmore 2 (2025)

If you ask any Adam Sandler fan what their favourite Adam Sandler movie is then you will likely get a variety of answers, depending on whether or not that person likes his comedy work or his more dramatic performances. But most would at least mention Happy Gilmore as a contender, which makes this a belated sequel with no small amount of pressure on it.

The years have passed, a tragic golf-related accident has caused the death of Virginia (Julie Bowen), and Happy Gilmore is left with a bunch of children and a whole load of debt. And a drinking problem. His years of golfing success are far behind him, but getting back on the fairway could be the solution to all of his problems. If he can stop drinking and return to the form of his glory days. He's older now though, although not necessarily any wiser. 

Where Sandler used to get his friends together and film something in a sunny and picturesque environment (making it a bit of holiday time alongside the filming), he now tends to make films that have roles available to his family members. At least four of them appear here. His wife, Jackie, his daughters, Sadie and Sunny, and his mother, Judith. They don't spoil the film, generally doing great work, but it's worth noting because of how many times the Sandler surname pops up throughout the cast credits. Thankfully, the 114-minute runtime allows for a whole range of eclectic supporting players (sometimes literally), from a number of real-life golfers all joining in with the fun to returning favourites like Ben Stiller and Christopher McDonald. Benny Safdie has a blast as Frank Manatee, the douchebro looking to take golf somewhere new and exciting, Bad Bunny is a lot of fun as a waiter-turned-caddy named Oscar, John Daly plays a fictional version of John Daly, and Haley Joel Osment proves to be formidable competition on the golf course. I wouldn't have the space here to name everyone else onscreen, but some of the more memorable cameos come from Margaret Qualley, Eric André, Post Malone, Steve Buscemi, Eminem, Nick Swarsdon, Jon Lovitz, Boban Marjanovic, Ken Jennings, and Guy Fieri.

Although Tim Herlihy and Sandler are back on the writing duties, Kyle Newacheck is in the director's chair this time (with Dennis Dugan, director of the first HG movie, joining the names I just mentioned to have some fun in front of the camera). Newacheck does a decent job, delivering what is his best feature so far, but it feels like an easy gig. Once the screenplay was written, knowing how much of the film relies on goodwill and nostalgia, all Newacheck had to do was ensure that he had plenty of coverage while everyone was enjoying themselves. The jokes here are obvious and silly, but they're nicely in line with what we got the first time around. In fact, admittedly, many of them are just the same jokes, maybe slightly reworked, with flashbacks to remind people of what they laughed at the first time around.

I'm not going to waste time rating the various performances of everyone in the cast. Some do much better than others, but the film is anchored by Sandler doing his very familiar schtick. You'll already know if you want to watch it or not. Highlights are definitely Safdie and Bad Bunny though, but McDonald is very welcome whenever he appears, and I was surprised by how much I was able to laugh at lines delivered by the likes of Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler. Scheffler may well be the ace up the sleeve for the third act of the movie, which is something I never expected.

There are a number of expected montage sequences, the soundtrack has the energy required to accompany the standard "underdog comes good" plotting, and if you're surprised by anything that happens here then I would have to assume that you forgot everything that happened in the first movie. There are times when I want something new, or something thought-provoking. This wasn't one of those times. I just wanted some more silly jokes about someone rough-around-the-edges being unexpectedly good at whacking a golf ball. I just hoped that it wouldn't disappoint those, like myself, who rated Happy Gilmore as one of Sandler's very best comedies. I wasn't disappointed. This was everything I wanted it to be. It was familiar, comfortable, and, most of all, it made me laugh. I'll still rewatch the first film more, but I would happily make time for this again whenever I'm in the mood for some crazy golf.

7/10

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Prime Time: Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. (2023)

Based on a very popular book by Judy Blume, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. might be aimed more at girls of a certain age, and all the women who can remember what they were going through at that time, but it should also appeal to everyone who has gone through their own awkward moments as they navigate the path through childhood into the turbulent teen years. Anyone unable to empathize with the events that unfold here is someone you should probably give the side-eye to.

Abby Ryder Forston plays Margaret, a young girl who has her life turned upside down when her parents (played by Rachel McAdams and Benny Safdie) move from the city to the suburbs. Margaret misses her grandmother (Kathy Bates), but she quickly makes one or two new friends (mainly Nancy, played by Elle Graham). Attaching your loyalty to someone so fully though, as children are wont to do, can lead to problems when you realise their imperfections. To make things a bit more complicated, Margaret is also starting to wonder about her potential religious faith. Her mother is Christian, her father is Jewish, but neither pressure Margaret into making a choice. It feels like something she wants to explore though. When she’s not thinking about boys and the strange experience of wearing a bra.

Directed, and adapted from book to screen, by Kelly Fremon Craig, this is a delight from start to finish, thanks to the warm and rounded characterisations, the identifiable life events used as main touchstones, and the full journey that we watch the main characters take.

It helps that the cast is so perfect, giving the kind of performances that either establish firm love for well-known faces or create an instant fanbase for the relative newcomers. While it’s odd to see McAdams now playing the mother figure, she’s great at being an understanding parent who tries to maintain a balance between being cool and being a reliable role model. Safdie has a bit less to do, but pairs up brilliantly with McAdams to provide a picture of an enviable marriage. Bates has the easiest role, she’s the gran who agrees with her granddaughter that the change in circumstances isn’t good. Forston is a delight in the lead role, playing her part with a natural style that would have been far too easy to set aside in favour of exaggerated emotions. There are exaggerated emotions, because everything feels life or death at that age, but Forston presents them exactly as any young girl would in real life. Graham is also very good, and becomes part of a talented ensemble of younger actors including Amari Alexis Price, Katherine Mallen Kupferer, Aidan Wojtak-Hissong, Simms May, Zack Brooks, and Isol Young.

While I am not familiar with the source material, unlike so many others who will be keen to see the movie, I appreciate that Craig made something that strings together a number of vignettes into something that feels so focused and still containing a firm narrative arc. A lovely soundtrack helps, there’s a nice selection of period detail in the fashions and furnishings, and the whole thing is just like a big hug, something I wasn’t sure I actually wanted until I was smiling while in the midst of that cinematic embrace.

8/10

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Netflix And Chill: Good Time (2017)

Love or hate the Safdie brothers, and I definitely lean more towards the former, an interesting thing about them is seeing their natural and unrelenting growth as they have moved from short films to small features, eventually getting themselves to a position where they can work with people such as Robert Pattinson and Adam Sandler. There's a connective tissue running through their filmography, it's there in the types of characters that they are most interested and in the way they can build massive amounts of tension from a chain of bad decisions and misfortune, but each work is a building block to create what has ultimately become a very impressive little filmography. Daddy Long Legs is good. Heaven Knows What is better. Good Time and Uncut Gems are tied as their best yet, although both have elements that lose them a couple of points, in my view.

Connie Nikas (Pattinson) embarks on an ill-advised robbery with his intellectually disabled brother, Nick (played by Benny Safdie). Things inevitably don't go too well, leading to Nick being put in prison, and eventually in hospital. Determined to free his brother, Connie comes up with another poor plan. It goes as well as you'd expect. To turn the situation to his advantage, hopefully, Connie starts working with a man named Ray (Buddy Duress) to retrieve a valuable bottle of liquid acid (as in LSD, not the flesh-burning kind) and some stolen money.

Although he has, much like his female co-star, built up an impressive and diverse selection of performances away from the Twilight series, Pattinson does what I think is his very best work here. He's a dangerously dumb guy, taking any small bit of knowledge and figuring out how he can use it to his advantage. Manipulative, weak-willed, and growing increasingly desperate with every wrong turn, he's an unsavoury character who Pattinson manages to keep you rooting for, mainly thanks to his performance and the fact that a lot of his actions are motivated by the need to save his brother. Safdie is equally excellent in his role, a child in a man's body, dangerously unable to change his behaviour even when a threat starts growing around him. Duress is a different energy level, a crook who hopes to make the most of some unexpected good luck, and he helps the film start to gather momentum towards a riveting finale. Jennifer Jason Leigh is wonderful in her small role, a woman that overlooks the worst in Connie because she believes they're both in love with one another, and Taliah Webster excels in her first feature role, playing a young woman named Crystal who ends up helping Connie and Ray.

As well as the spot-on directorial work, Josh Safdie has once again crafted a cracking little script with regular co-writer Ronald Bronstein, but that structure was put in place to allow the actors to improvise their way through numerous scenes. What the film does best is sketch out a kind of criminal underworld that we don't see too often on film. These main characters aren't smooth gangsters or determined professionals. They are people trying to make the most of small, sometimes out-of-the-blue, opportunities. They know enough people connected to others in positions of power, but they will always be very near the bottom of that particular social strata.

There's also another great score by Daniel Lopatin (credited as Oneohtrix Point Never) and the cinematography from Sean Price Williams gives the Safdie brothers the perfect atmosphere throughout their movie. They seem to inspire everyone to have faith in their vision, and that faith hasn't been misplaced yet. It may have taken me too long to get to this one, although I didn't wait when I had the chance to see, and enjoy Uncut Gems, but I'll be trying to prioritise whatever they give us next.

8/10

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Netflix And Chill: Uncut Gems (2019)

Written and directed by the Safdie brothers (Benny and Josh, with Ronald Bronstein once again collaborating with them on the writing of the script), Uncut Gems is another superb film for those who have already warmed to their particular style, a kind of paradoxically slick and polished roam through some grimy environments alongside down-on-their-luck characters the brothers seem to find fascinating. It's also, as I'm sure you're already aware, the best that Adam Sandler has been in years.

Sandler plays a jeweler named Howard Ratner. He's in an unhappy marriage to Dinah (Idina Menzel) that they're close to bringing to an end, he has an apartment that he uses to spend a lot of time with his girlfriend, Julia (Julia Fox), and he owes money to various people, not least Arno (Eric Bogosian), who keeps using some tough guys to hopefully scare Howard into paying up. But Howard knows his time is about to come. He's ordered a stone that contains some valuable uncut gems, he's developing a rapport with Kevin Garnett (played by, well, himself), and he's just one audacious bet away from a big payday. But nobody will really support you waiting for that big payday if you're gambling away all of their money to try and get it. And Howard is certainly happy to bet big.

Uncut Gems is a tough movie to watch. There's no major respite from the tension as events conspire against Howard, whether it be in the shape of a lower-than-expected auction valuation for an item he wants to sell, a number of arguments with an associate named Demany (LaKeith Stanfield) who is also the go-between for Garnett, or his continued attempts to delay paying back money to people who want to physically harm him. Whether it is Howard himself or the camerawork, it feels like a constant bob and weave from one desperate moment to the next, all accompanied by a fantastic score from Daniel Lopatin.

You can choose to like or dislike the movies that the Safdie brothers make, they're definitely happy to stay in a certain wheelhouse at the moment and not everyone will enjoy spending time there, but you can't deny that they bring characters and situations to life with a magic combination of realism and cinematic finesse. They sugar-coat the pill, but only to allow themselves to make the core even more bitter.

Sandler has received a lot of praise for his performance here. It's good. Very good indeed. All I will say, to temper some of the hyperbole that has inevitably appeared in the praise for him, is that his banter and constant need to talk over people, hoping to keep himself in the right by simply repeating whatever point he thinks will help him at a higher volume, is not a million miles away from many of his other performances. It's just that this one is within the context of a drama. I am surprised that I haven't seen more praised aimed at Fox, making her feature acting debut with a pitch-perfect performance, and portraying a character who could easily have unbalanced the tone of the film on a number of different occasions. Menzel does very well here, in a live-action and non-singing role that I hope she does more of in the near future, and both Stanfield and Garnett are good additions to the heart of the film. Keith Williams Richards and Tommy Kominik are believable heavies, Bogosian steals a couple of scenes with the kind of turn that immediately makes you wish he picked more movies to star in, and the few minutes of screentime that Judd Hirsch has helps with that sugar-coating I mentioned.

As a stupid child, I would often raid the tubs of chocolate that we would get in our household for Christmas. My mother would remind me to just have one or two a day, I would always have way more, and I would place the empty wrappers back in the tub as a decoy, somehow thinking that I would use my pocket money to buy a smaller packet and refill the tub. That never happened. My mother eventually opened the tub to have a sweetie, immediately seeing red when she picked up a handful of empty wrappers. The game was up. If you ever tried the same thing then you'll know what I mean when I say that watching Uncut Gems will give you a sensation akin to watching that tub, counting down to the time when you can either refill it or you get busted. If you haven't tried that same thing then just know that Howard is the child who has filled the tub with sweetie wrappers, and the runtime of this movie is spent seeing if he can replenish the container before other people put their hands in.

8/10

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