Month: July 2023

‘The Baker’ is a stale vigilante story despite some curious ingredients

Jeff Mitchell

“The Baker” (2022) – “So, who are you?  Are you some special forces guy or something?”  “I’m just a cook.”  – “Under Siege” (1992) “Are you a cop?”  “I’m a baker” – “The Baker” (2022) The aforementioned 1992 action film is arguably Steven Seagal’s most memorable movie.  Casey Ryback (Seagal) is a cook on a United States battleship, the USS Missouri, when mercenaries take over the boat.  However, Ryback is no ordinary cook.  He’s a former Navy SEAL, so look out, baddies. In director Jonathan Sobol’s “The Baker”, Ron Perlman…

‘Oppenheimer’ works but not without misgivings

Jeff Mitchell

“Oppenheimer” (2023) – “It worked.” It did.  J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) was a physicist teaching Quantum mechanics at the University of California, Berkeley when United States Army Corps of Engineers Major General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) taps him to lead The Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, N.M., a mission to develop the first working nuclear bomb in a race against the Nazis during WWII.  History proved Oppenheimer was successful, as the U.S. first crossed the ominous finish line with the plutonium-based Trinity Test on July 16, 1945.  Less than…

Movie of the Week: Owning Mahowny

Jeff Mitchell

Philip Seymour Hoffman would’ve been 56 years young today, July 23, 2023, so let’s feature one of cinema’s greatest actors with one of the man’s very best performances. “Owning Mahowny” (2003)  – Philip Seymour Hoffman is mesmerizing as Dan Mahowny, an ordinary Toronto bank executive with an extraordinary gambling problem. Director Richard Kwietniowski leads us down a torturous path as we watch Mahowny cause his own problems solely through his addiction. While witnessing his painful descent, you’ll literally scream at the screen for Mahowny to snap out his constant and never-ending hunger to…