‘Him’ Attempts to Turn Football Into a Waking Nightmare

September 18, 2025

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HIM… and Him, too (CREDIT: Universal Pictures)

Starring: Tyriq Withers, Marlon Wayans, Julia Fox, Tim Heidecker, Jim Jefferies, Naomi Grossman, GiGi Erneta, Norman Towns, Maurice Greene, Guapdad 4000, Tierra Whack, Don Benjamin

Director: Justin Tipping

Running Time: 96 Minutes

Rating: R for Odd and Grotesque Behavior, Athletic Nudity, and Questionable Performance Enhancement

Release Date: September 19, 2025 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans) is indisputably the greatest quarterback of his generation and possibly all time. But rumor has it that he’s retiring soon. That’s where Cam Cade (Tyriq Withers) comes in: he’s been worshipping Isaiah his entire life, and everyone around has been pretty much grooming him to be the next GOAT. He lives up to that promise in college, and he’s all set to fulfill his destiny in the pros, but then a mysterious masked figure whacks him on the head. His draft stuck plummets as he recovers from this traumatic injury, but then he’s given a second chance when he’s invited to train at Isaiah’s private desert facility. However, that’s when it becomes inescapably clear that football stardom is a lot weirder, freakier, and more cultish than he bargained for.

What Made an Impression?: Would Roger Goodell Like This?: I’m pretty sure the National Football League wants absolutely nothing to do with Him. Or at the very least, they want it to be clear that this is NOT set in the NFL. Or the makers of Him assumed that’s how they would feel. Which means that instead of playing for the Patriots or the Cowboys or the Chiefs, Isaiah White is instead the QB for the San Antonio Saviors of the (kind of hilariously) fictional United States Football Federation. Ergo, we’ve got an alternate universe where the NFL is replaced by the USFF, but just as obsessively beloved. So if you follow the gridiron religiously in real life, you’ll find Him to be an uncanny mix of deeply familiar and outright foreign.
That’s the Way It Goes…Or Is It?: Let’s go ahead and identify the central metaphor: it’s all about how becoming the Football GOAT (or a sports superstar in general) is about fully sacrificing your sense of self. You may seem like one of the most powerful people on the planet, but truthfully it’s the hangers-on and team ownership and all of society that have a piece of you and won’t let go. But director Justin Tipping doesn’t always emphasize this point as clearly as he could. He’s made the sort of movie that’s more likely to make you go “What the hell’s going on?” rather than “Oh, I get it.” That’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially when you’re working in the horror milieu, but I would’ve recommended a more cohesive vision.
Never a Boring Day: But let’s talk about some of those more bizarre flourishes. A man decked out in body paint screams “Baa!” A superfan of Isaiah’s spits in Cam’s general direction. Major collisions give way to X-ray style views of the player’s skeletons. Plus, the supporting cast is delightfully demented, especially Tim Heidecker as Cam’s deceptively presentable agent and Julia Fox as Isaiah’s erotic stone-hawking influencer wife. The point is, Him doesn’t lack for memorable details or visual flourishes. It probably won’t make you re-evaluate everything about a particular sports league, but it could stick with you here and there.

Him is Recommended If You Like: Comedians Going Dramatic in a Cuckoo Way, Bloody Smiles, Pagan-Style Cosplay

Grade: 3 out of 5 Head Injuries

‘Air’ Soars Across the Court

March 29, 2023

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They’re sailing through the air! (CREDIT: Ana Carballosa/© Amazon Conten Services LLC)

Starring: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Viola Davis, Jason Bateman, Chris Tucker, Chris Messina, Matthew Maher, Julius Tennon, Marlon Wayans, Jay Mohr

Director: Ben Affleck

Running Time: 112 Minutes

Rating: R for Big League Potty Mouths

Release Date: April 5, 2023 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Nowadays, Nike stands victorious in pretty much every sector of the athletic shoe market. But there was a time when that wasn’t the case! So Air takes us back to 1984 to reveal the story of When Nike Met Mikey. As Michael Jordan was headed to the Chicago Bulls out of North Carolina, it wasn’t immediately obvious what sort of transcendent figure he would become. But there were a few folks who recognized something unprecedented, including Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), the Nike executive who bet the company’s entire basketball division on a whole new paradigm with the introduction of the Air Jordan sneaker. What emerges is a story about not just peeking into the future, but also taking what’s yours and shaking off exploitation.

What Made an Impression?: Air is one of those movies that is just perfectly cast. I’m enthralled by everyone’s introductory scene, and I’m excited for them to return when they’re not on the screen. Damon slips right into Sonny’s everyman hustle, while the rest of the Nike office is rounded out by Chris Tucker’s indefatigable motormouth and Jason Bateman’s charming frustration. Matthew Maher is an absolute treat as Pete Moore, the excitable designer tasked with realizing the Air Jordan vision. Chris Messina is a hoot as Jordan’s egomaniacal agent, while Viola Davis brings it all home in an unsurprisingly commanding performance as Jordan’s mother Deloris. And of course, we can’t forget Ben Affleck directing himself as Nike founder Phil Knight with a mix of desperate world-weariness and lingering idealism.

With a movie about fairly recent history, you can have a lot of fun with 20/20 hindsight wisdom, and Air makes the most of it. Did Nike execs really doubt the cultural viability of Charles Barkley, who went on to become one of the most telegenic players and broadcasters in NBA history? Maybe, maybe not, but the folly of that massive misread is still worth plenty of snickers regardless of accuracy. Much more believable, at least from my vantage point, is the lack of awareness about Gonzaga University in the years before they became a college basketball powerhouse.

After all the fun and the bluster, Air ultimately reveals itself as a tribute to the importance of workers’ rights. It may seem counterintuitive to pin that message on a billionaire like Jordan, but those massive riches he accrued were never a guarantee. And the film makes a compelling argument that the highly individualized Air Jordan deal set a precedent that the workers of the sports world – i.e., the players – deserved autonomy and security, no matter how vast or pitiful their base compensation. If a sneaker can look cool AND make the world just a little bit better, then the human race is doing something just a little bit right.

Air is Recommended If You Like: Tracksuits, Car phones, Poring over game tape

Grade: 4 out of 5 Sneakers

How Much and in What Ways Does ‘Respect’ Respect Aretha Franklin? Let’s Find Out!

August 8, 2021

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Respect (CREDIT: Quantrell D. Colbert/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures)

Starring: Jennifer Hudson, Forest Whitaker, Marlon Wayans, Marc Maron, Audra McDonald, Tituss Burgess, Saycon Sengbloh, Hailey Kilgore, Tate Donovan, Mary J. Blige, Gilbert Glenn Brown, Skye Dakota Turner

Director: Liesl Tommy

Running Time: 145 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Abusive Relationships and Racial Tension

Release Date: August 13, 2021 (Theaters)

Aretha Franklin biopic Respect keeps harping on the idea that the Queen of Soul didn’t start having hits until she focused on her own original efforts, and I kind of wish the movie had taken its own advice. Now, it obviously couldn’t be a completely thorough original. It is a biopic, after all. But Jennifer Hudson is talented enough to make me think that this movie isn’t really going to sing until she’s allowed to break free and offer her own unique interpretation. The most rousing moment of the whole film comes during the end credits when we get to see the real Aretha bring the house down at the 2015 Kennedy Center Honors with a rendition of “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.” (President Obama was having a GREAT time.) To be fair, Hudson and the makers of Respect are more interested in exploring the behind-the-scenes of Franklin’s story, but it is telling that they never quite achieve something as triumphant as the real deal.

The challenge of so many music biopics is combining idiosyncrasy with reverence. Those two impulses don’t really mix, and oftentimes biopic makers are much more interested in the latter than the former anyway. The title of Respect indicates that that’s very much the case here. That’s especially clear in one scene when Aretha attempts to perform a song by family friend Dinah Washington (an intensely regal Mary J. Blige) while Dinah is in attendance. It absolutely does not go so well, thanks to Dinah’s insistence that you don’t play the Queen in front of the Queen. That deference marks the entire movie. Within that boundary, Hudson is able to successfully explore Franklin’s trauma and resilience, but she doesn’t have room to leave her own inimitable signature.

I found the portrayals of the main men in Aretha’s life much more compelling, perhaps because their public personas are much less set in stone and thus the actors don’t have to feel beholden to icons. I’m talking Forest Whitaker as her iron-willed minister father C.L., Marlon Wayans as her controlling and abusive manager-slash-husband Ted White, and Marc Maron as Jerry Wexler, the producer who’s actually committed to letting Aretha be Aretha. Respect gives us a full picture of all the big, often controlling personalities in Aretha’s life, and so it works in painting that picture and in that way it fulfills the promise of its title. If you’re in the mood for that sort of contextualization, you might be satisfied, but don’t expect the house to be brought down the way that Aretha so often did.

Respect is Recommended If You Like: Behind the Music, Deferential covers

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Chains of Fools