‘Digger’ Review: My God, What Have They Unearthed?

September 29, 2026

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Dig, baby, dig! (CREDIT: Warner Bros./Screenshot)

Starring: Tom Cruise, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons, Robert John Burke, Emma D’Arcy, Burn Gorman, Sophia Wilde, Piper Torrens, Mercedes Hernández, Danny Kirrane, Corey Johnson

Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Running Time: 129 Minutes

Rating: R for A Bunch of Hot Air (I.e., Profanity)

Release Date: October 2, 2026 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise) is a wealthy oil tycoon and essentially the most powerful man in the world. He’s also a little eccentric, if you know what I mean. But that eccentricity is definitely not what the planet needs at the moment, as a drilling expedition he’s overseeing in Greenland is threatening to cause an apocalyptic climate disaster. But instead of focusing on preventing that, he’s much more concerned about indefinitely extending the life of his beloved, grotesquely ill cat. Eventually, though, he is convinced that he must work alongside the President (John Goodman) and his war room to actually propose some sort of solution. Meanwhile, another story is brewing underneath this catastrophe.

What Made an Impression?: Cover Up Those Holes: To paraphrase the Immortal Bard, Digger is a whole lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. I’m happy to see Tom Cruise fully committing himself to a new role, but every calorie of energy he expends makes for a thoroughly exhausting viewing experience. On top of that, President Goodman has to make do with a terminal medical diagnosis in a sensitive area, which is worth a chuckle before it just adds to the tidal wave. Even the relatively restrained performances (emphasis on relatively) from the likes of Riz Ahmed (as Ganesh, a scientist running point for Digger) and Sandra Hüller (as Digger’s sister Emma) just get subsumed into the extremity.
What Might Have Been: Starting around a half hour into the runtime, there are punctures in Digger’s world that reveal a parallel storyline. At my screening, we were requested not to spoil any major reveals, although I have seen other reviews go into detail about this element. So feel free to consult those takes if you want to sate your curiosity ahead of time, but I’ll keep things vague for my analysis. At first I thought this aspect was intriguing enough to pay attention to, but then it started to get about too cute by half. Ultimately when it all clicked into place, I appreciated the fuller picture it provided and wondered why it couldn’t have taken the place of Digger’s antics even earlier.
What If It Were Called “Kenny” Instead?: The one piece of Digger that I’m willing to recommend without reservation is the performance of Jesse Plemons, who’s quickly becoming one of my favorite actors. He plays Kenny, an operator in the margins with a mysterious connection to Digger. With his scraggly, curly mop-top and oddly precise speaking voice, he cuts an inimitable figure, oddly disturbing but also sort of comforting. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the whole film should have been redesigned around him, because a big part of his success has to do with emerging from the shadows. But I do wish that much more of Digger had embodied his offbeat unpredictability.

Digger is Recommended If You Like: Don’t Look Up

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Glaciers

Does ‘The Phoenician Scheme’ Have What We’re Looking For?

May 27, 2025

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A couple of schemeers (Credit: Courtesy of TPS Productions/Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved.)

Starring: Benicio del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera, Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Mathieu Amalric, Richard Ayoade, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rupert Friend, Hope Davis, Bill Murray, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Willem Dafoe, F. Murray Abraham

Director: Wes Anderson

Running Time: 105 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Gunshots, Plane Crashes, and Mid-century Tobacco

Release Date: May 30, 2025 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: It’s 1950, and businessman Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro) is at an impasse. He’s trying to complete a major infrastructure project, but he finds himself the victim of several assassination attempts and a consortium of rival tycoons trying to box him out from all of his moneymaking endeavors. Sensing that his demise may be imminent, he summons his nun-in-training daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton) from the convent to inform her that he’s making her his sole heir. Then the two of them journey off along with his sons’ tutor Bjørn (Michael Cera) to close the funding gap for his project and maybe also discover who killed Liesl’s mother years ago.

What Made an Impression?: Is Redemption Possible?: Zsa-zsa is introduced as a ruthless capitalist who pretty much deserves to be assassinated. He might have even also killed Liesl’s mom! But does this rapscallion have the capacity for change? I must say, it’s hard not to notice some softening. Maybe it’s the visions of pearly gates, maybe it’s Liesl’s pious but nonjudgmental influence, but somehow someway he’s inching towards respectability. By the end, there are still plenty of grievous missteps on his ledger that he must accept responsibility for, but I mostly bought the redemption.
They Shoot, They Score!: My favorite scene in The Phoenician Scheme features Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston as a pair of brothers playing basketball against Zsa-zsa and Riz Ahmed’s prince character. They call it 2-on-2, first-to-5, but it’s really a round of H-O-R-S-E. But who cares about technicalities when H&C relish tossing the rock this much? They might be AARP-eligible, but they’re looking more athletic than they ever have.
Silly Voices and Such: I’m not a super-fan of Wes Anderson, but I enjoy him well enough to consistently appreciate his fastidious eye for detail and ability to ground over-the-top fashion and quirky architecture. That works best in this feature in terms of the ridiculous accents that are occasionally revealed as put-ons for outlandishly simple disguises.* I chuckled heartily. (*Richard Ayoade, in contrast, deploys what I believe is his adorably natural voice as a communist revolutionary.)
A Star Takes Her Vows: Del Toro may be Number 1 on the call sheet, but I suspect that Threapleton will be enjoying the majority of the buzz. She’s the daughter of Kate Winslet and Jim Threapleton, so gird yourself if you have an aversion to nepo babies. But regardless of her heritage, she sets herself apart as a unique screen presence as she pulls off the neat trick of making us fall in love with a bride of Christ. Or maybe that’s actually the easiest task in the world, because of the taboo aspect of it all. Either way, she nails it.

The Phoenician Scheme is Recommended If You: Have an Endless Wes Andersonian Appetite, Forever and Ever, Amen

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Hand Grenades

‘Sound of Metal’ Review: Riz Ahmed Fights to Retain His Hearing and Sobriety

November 18, 2020

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Sound of Metal (CREDIT: Amazon Studios)

Starring: Riz Ahmed, Olivia Cooke, Paul Raci, Lauren Ridloff, Mathieu Amalric

Director: Darius Marder

Running Time: 130 Minutes

Rating: R for Language, Mainly

Release Date: November 20, 2020 (Theaters)/December 4, 2020 (Amazon Prime Video)

The premise of a rock ‘n’ roll drummer rapidly losing his hearing offers plenty of storytelling possibilities. But when you also throw in prior drug addiction, well then, it’s pretty much a guarantee that the story is headed in one particular direction. In Sound of Metal, Riz Ahmed plays Ruben Stone, the drummer in question, who is robbed of his most important sense suddenly and instantaneously. His bandmate girlfriend Lou (Olivia Cooke) is worried about him, but she’s more freaked out when he steps out to smoke a cigarette, as it could portend a relapse into something a lot more fatal. Ruben soon finds his way to a sober living program for deaf people, run by Joe (Paul Raci), a Vietnam veteran who lost his hearing from a combat explosion and then chased away his family with his alcoholism.

At the core of Sound of Metal is a question of trust, or rather, several questions of trust. Can Ruben buy into the system he suddenly finds himself thrust into? Can Joe accept into his fold someone who’s so resistant to his program? Ruben is clearly more interested in fixing his ears than his head, while Joe’s agenda is very much the inverse. But with a cochlear implant costing tens of thousands that Ruben doesn’t have and no other deaf-targeted sober programs anywhere, he doesn’t have any other good options. Eventually, a moment comes in which Joe tells Ruben that he’s irrevocably broken his trust, and while I believe that Joe sees it that way, I have my doubts that Ruben deserves the full blame, as the strict standards were never the best fit – or any fit – for him.

If you choose to see Ruben and Joe as two reasonable people who just aren’t working together (as I do), then Sound of Metal‘s conflict becomes less about the untrustworthiness of the addicted mind and more about how water and vinegar may not mix, but they can co-exist. Ruben’s ending is so surprisingly happy that I initially thought I must have missed something. He recovers his hearing as best as he can, he and Lou remain together, and Lou reunites with her semi-estranged father (Mathieu Amalric). It’s almost like they’re a perfectly happy and healthy family! But it’s not quite perfect, or at least it’s not as natural a fit as it once was. The music career is in flux, and while Ruben’s hearing may not have disappeared completely, he does have to learn how to adjust it to a new reality. It’s an askew conclusion because it’s actually an awkward beginning

Sound of Metal is Recommended If You Like: Navigating thorny life crises

Grade: 3 out of 5 Decibels

This Is a Movie Review: Venom

October 28, 2018

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CREDIT: Sony Pictures

How do you make a gelatinous black alien goo-villain like Venom the hero of your movie? As the makers of Venom have decided, you have it (him?) fall in love with Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy). Although, it’s not so much love as it is deep platonic friendship. But maybe developing a deep platonic friendship is a kind of falling in love? Whatever you call it, it works.

Overall, this movie is filled with delights because of its unerringly playful approach. That applies to the action scenes, with Venom’s fluid presence shooting out in unpredictable directions. It of course applies to the back-and-forth repartee between Eddie and Venom inside his head. (Wisely, a few other key characters are aware of what is going on during these conversations, but that doesn’t make them look any less insane.) And it absolutely applies to Eddie/Venom’s constant attempts to figure out how to feed their ravenous hunger. And then there’s that tongue. Oh yeah, that tongue. We could’ve used more of the tongue, honestly. But Venom, and Venom, is more than just that tongue, and it’s better for it.

I give Venom 400 Tater Tots out of 500 Host Bodies.

This Is a Movie Review: ‘The Sisters Brothers’ is the Ultimately Charming Tale of Two Fraternal Wild West Hitmen

September 17, 2018

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CREDIT: Magali Bragard/Annapurna Pictures

This review was originally posted on News Cult in September 2018.

Starring: John C. Reilly, Joaquin Phoenix, Jake Gyllenhaal, Riz Ahmed

Director: Jacques Audiard

Running Time: 121 Minutes

Rating: R for Wild West Gunfire, Saloon-Based Vices, and the Aftereffects of a Spider Crawling Into Someone’s Mouth

Release Date: September 21, 2018 (Limited)

John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix have teamed up as a couple of brothers whose last name is “Sisters.” Reilly is Eli and Phoenix is Charlie. They’re killers-for-hire out on the frontier in the middle of the 19th century, but eliminating their marks just is not their preferred way of spending their time, plain and simple. Charlie is too busy drinking and whoring, while Eli has too much of a conscience to last too long in this business (and honestly so does Charlie). There are plenty of people who don’t like their jobs, and plenty of movies about that predicament. Certainly, “the hitman who wants to get out of the game” is a tried-and-true trope. But this is different from your John Wick‘s or your Sexy Beast‘s. Eli and Charlie aren’t hard-bitten, they’re just tired and would prefer to find something to be happy about.

The Sisters’ target is Hermann Kermit Warm (Riz Ahmed), a chemist who has devised a new method for discovering gold. It seems a little fantastical in theory, but Warm sounds like he knows what he is talking about. So when Eli and Charlie catch up to him, they decide they would much rather collaborate than kill. Same goes for Detective John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal), who was supposed to be aiding the Sisters in this assignment but instead becomes drawn into Warm’s machinations. (This team-up is miles away from Gyllenhaal and Ahmed’s partnership in Nightcrawler, with the two giving performances that barely share any DNA with those earlier roles.) It’s heartening watching this quartet work together, for while riches do play a motivating factor, they are really more after a more general sense of fulfillment. The menace of the boss coming to collect is always lurking, but the moments of finding a mutual understanding (along with Alexandre Desplat’s surprisingly jazzy score) are enough to convince you to focus on life’s pleasures where you can find them.

The Sisters Brothers is Recommended If You Like: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix When They’re a Little (But Not Completely) Goofy

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Gold Sifters