Actresses We Lost Too Early

Posted on April 5, 2026 by Mark DuPré

The loss of a talented film actress is tragic in many ways. Of course, there is the immediate mourning of a friend or family member. But there is also the heartbreak of what they could have done, what great performances they might have given, and even what impact they might even have had on cinema itself. There are those who passed away naturally, and some whose acting careers died before their time. Here are 12 actresses that film has sorely missed.

Dorothy Dandridge

Dorothy Dandridge was a beautiful and talented singer/dancer/ actress who was the first Black woman to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Actress (1954’s Carmen Jones), and for those old enough to remember, she performed the definitive version of “Chattanooga Choo Choo” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTwy8ruyY40). She was married to Harold Nicholas for a time (he was half of the greatest male dance duo with his brother Fayard). Rumor had it that she was the first choice for 1963’s Cleopatra, a role she lost to Elizabeth Taylor. She might have continued to break many of the racial barriers of Hollywood and the public if she had lived, but she struggled with manic-depression, and died (officially) at age 42 of an accidental overdose of an antidepressant.

Ellen DeGeneres

But wait, she’s still alive. Only technically. DeGeneres was known in the 1980’s as one of the country’s most original and funny stand-up comedians—back then my wife and I considered her a real find, and she quickly became our favorite. She had a dry style based on the absurdities of everyday life. Her film debut was in the 1996 romantic black comedy Mr. Wrong, which, though she was surrounded by world-class actors, failed miserably. In hindsight, it isn’t surprising that her so-called “chemistry” with Bill Pullman didn’t take off. Of course, she is fondly remembered for her expert voicing of Dory in Finding Nemo and Finding Dory. Her television show gave her the reputation of being funny, kind, and generous, until it didn’t. She moved to England in late 2024 ostensibly because of the election of President Trump, though there are rumors of other and darker reasons. In any event, her acting career is likely at an end.

Jane Fonda

Yes, Jane’s alive, as is our next actress. In the early 1970s, following her performances in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? and Klute, she was considered the greatest young American actress. But her dedication to acting began to waver as early as Klute, when she started to become self-conscious about her role as an activist. This became ever clearer as she continued her career, with Julia, Coming Home, The China Syndrome and On Golden Pond containing strong performances with a whiff of “I’m doing something important here”. She was hailed for a kind of “comeback” with The Morning After, but it was clear by then that we not going to get the promise of her 1969-1971. Her mind and heart were somewhere else and have remained so even as she has continued acting. Yes, she’s a legend, but the work she should be best remembered for is more than 50 years ago.

Whoopi Goldberg

Whoopi is still alive of course, but has been transformed. She began as a stand-up comedian, then moved into drama (1985’s The Color Purple, Oscar nomination for Best Actress) and then peaked with her Oscar-winning performance in 1990’s Ghost. She’s done some good work since then (Sister Act movies and as an MC for various awards shows.) But in perhaps the saddest loss for cinema and for anyone watching “The View”, she has turned into an intelligent but unthinking, rather dominating, and harsh person with a serious case of TDS.. (Self-importance combined with the dominating makes for a particularly unpleasant brew). While the studio audience lends their virtue-signaling applause to her every word, she has become increasingly entrenched in her echo chamber and has fallen further and further away from the kind of self-understanding that makes for a good actor. A loss indeed for what we might have had, and sadness for what we currently experience.

Jean Harlow

Jean Harlow was the first “blonde bombshell”, and Marilyn Monroe based her look and much of her personality on Harlow. She dominated the early 1930’s with first sexy and then comedic performances that delighted while suggesting even better things to come. She made popular films with Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, and her lover William Powell, who might have married her if she’d lived long enough. My favorite of her performances is in the very-close-to-her-real-life film Bombshell, where she shows top comedic skill with a  facility for hand rapid dialogue. She died at age 26 of uremic poisoning connected to acute nephritis. Her films still hold up, but always carry the tinge of what might have been.

Elizabeth Hartman

The greatly talented, vulnerable actress was practically an overnight success in films, after the briefest of careers on Broadway, as the blind and uneducated white girl who falls in love with Sidney Poitier in 1965’s A Patch of Blue. This first film role won her the Golden Globe as Most Promising Newcomer as well as Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for Best Actress. She made a few other films, but none with that cachet or personal success. She had a few smaller parts in such A-list films as You’re a Big Boy Now, The Beguiled, and Walking Tall, but never achieved her earlier success. Unfortunately, she was never to overcome her struggles with depression, and she jumped from the fifth floor of her building to her death at the age of 43. She had a deep talent and could easily have gone on to great roles and awards, and her loss is a great one for film.

Barbara LaMarr

Barbara LaMarr (yes, Heddy Lamarr was named after her, sans the capital letter) was a silent film actress whose short career spanned from 1920 to 1926. She was known as “The Girl Who is Too Beautiful,” and starred in such popular films as The Three Musketeers and The Prisoner of Zenda, all the while also becoming a successful screenwriter. But she was apparently more interested in late-night partying than in advancing her career, and took more than her fair share of drink and drugs. Ultimately, she died of tuberculosis at only 29.

Carole Lombard

Carole Lombard was one of the best comedic actresses to ever step in front of a camera. She was married to William Powell and Clark Gable, but it was her talent that led to a dazzling if short career. Nominated for Best Actress for 1936’s My Man Godfrey, she showed what she could in Twentieth Century with John Barrymore, Nothing Sacred, Made for Each Other and her final film, To Be or Not to Be. She was pretty and vivacious, but it was her wit and intelligence that set her apart. She was destined for a long and successful career that was cut short when her plane crashed in 1942 as she returned from a World War II War Bond drive. There was no one quite like her, and she had decades of great work in front of her.

Marilyn Monroe

It seems as if adding Monroe’s name to this list is foolish, as we have so many shining performances to look back on: Asphalt Jungle, All About Eve, Don’t Bother to Knock, Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Seven Year Itch, Bus Stop, The Prince and the Showgirl, Some Like it Hot, and The Misfits. Her life as the great mid-century sex symbol, her many affairs and husbands, and her dumb-blonde persona are unfortunately what remains in the public memory. But she was working hard on becoming a serious actress, and according to her acting coaches, had great talent and great promise. She also had some various drug addictions and struggled with depression. It is said that she committed suicide at the age of 36. But her relationships with powerful political men who would have been greatly compromised by her revelations casts a shadow of doubt over that analysis. Even with a singular comedic talent and a drive to improve herself personally and as an actress, she will unfortunately be most remembered as the great “blonde bombshell/sex symbol”.

Rosie O’Donnell

O’Donnell is now best known as a TV host and gay activist. But there was a time when she was an excellent comedic actress in such films as A League of Their Own and Sleepless in Seattle, where she occasionally steals the films from Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. She has worked consistently since then, especially in television, but has left her focus on a legitimate comedic actress for her work with LGBTQ activism and as a serious victim of TDS. She has made her mark in political “discourse” and crusading, but we have lost someone with great potential in film comedy.

Gail Russell

Russell was another young woman led into film acting via pushy parents and her own beauty. Russell did her best work in the 1940’s, often with friend and mentor John Wayne. She is probably best remembered today for two films from 1944: The Uninvited with Ray Milland and Our Hearts were Young and Gay with Wayne. Her talent was evidently real, but she had a crippling self-consciousness and anxiety that made filmmaking difficult for her to the point of breakdown. She self-medicated with alcohol until she passed away at the age of 36 from liver damage.

Sharon Tate

Tate is best known today for her horrific murder at the hands of Charles Manson’s “family.” As many did, she first became known for her looks and was often referred to as “the most beautiful woman in Hollywood.” She made several second-rate films in the 1960’s, culminating in the firm version of the hugely popular book, Valley of the Dolls. She was praised for her looks, panned for some of her acting, and eventually noticed as an ingenue with talent and potential. Her death is one of the most shocking events of its time, and despite the re-imagined storyline of Once Upon the Time in Hollywood, she did indeed tragically die.

Thelma Todd

“Hot Toddy” was another victim of her own beauty and a mother who pushed her out of teaching and into beautify contests and then films.  (Becoming Miss Massachusetts 1925 gave her a good start.) She began her careers in the late silent period and moved easily into sound films. She worked with the Marx Brothers, Gary Cooper, William Powell, Richard Dix, Buster Keaton, Jimmy Durante, Laurel and Hardy, Buddy Rogers, Cary Grant, and ZaSu Pitts, and was featured in the first Maltese Falcon film (1931).

Todd was also a shrewd businesswoman with a nightclub/restaurant. Unfortunately, her business and her life were compromised by the presence of shady underworld men, and after 115 films and a promising start, she died mysteriously at the young age of 29. Her carbon monoxide demise is still one of Hollywoods’s greatest mysteries.

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Dark Victory (1939)

Posted on March 27, 2026 by Mark DuPré

Melodramas have a bad reputation, as if this were a lesser genre than say, the musical, action/adventure, the biopic, the suspenseful thriller, and horror. But Gone with the Wind was a melodrama, as was Titanic. More recently, Manchester by the Sea, The Whale, Emilia Perez and even The Iron Claw can be counted as among that lot. It’s true that some melodramas are overacted and reek of schmaltz, and some are downright laughable (no examples—I’ll be kind).

Dark Victory does double duty for the modern viewer as a shining example of a classic melodrama and a model specimen of a well-made Hollywood studio film. The story—don’t worry, the film basically opens with the central issue—is of Judith, a rich and spoiled party girl who has a terminal brain tumor. Will she be told of this by her doctor? Will she fall in love with said doctor? The plotline provides some element of suspense and romance, but that’s not the point. One point is Bette Davis in one her best performances and the other is the solid direction by Edmund Goulding (Best Picture Grand Hotel, The Old Maid, The Great Lie).

Davis is intense as always but reveals moments of heartbreaking vulnerability. She sweeps through the film, adding her own energy to every scene. Even when the director chooses to shoot her from behind, her dynamism is palpable. Yes, this is the intelligent, clipped, and direct Davis we all know and some love, but Goulding keeps her contained so that her gradual realization of her condition, her first response to it, and then her final response are all of a piece with a minimum of mannerisms and a great deal of depth.

Davis had just won two Oscars for a 1935 film (Dangerous, a consolation Oscar for her ignored Oscar-worthy performance in 1934’s Of Human Bondage) and for Jezebel in 1938. Were it not for the Oscar juggernaut Gone with the Wind and the dazzling performance of Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara, Davis would have won her third Oscar for this, as we know that she came in second in the balloting. Just one viewing demonstrates why.

Geraldine Fitzgerald in two supporting roles had a great 1939, with this film and Wuthering Heights released at practically the same time. She won acclaim for the former, and an Oscar nomination in the latter. Rumor has it that she was a difficult performer to work with, which might explain why a career with such an auspicious beginning didn’t achieve greater heights. In Dark Victory, she is Judith’s best friend, and her tender characterization and its stabilizing influence on Davis (as actor and character) is part of the film’s strength.

The film also features three male performances that are fascinating for different reasons. The leading man, George Brent, made a total of 11 films with Davis, and reportedly began a long affair with the on-the-verge-of-divorce actress around this time. One can see why Davis so enjoyed having him as a leading man; he is on the cusp of being generically handsome in a way that never detracts from her, and his acting is solid enough to handle the tornado that was Davis. He’s fine, does solid work, and is instantly forgettable.

Version 1.0.0

Then there are the other two, who have smaller roles. One is a party friend of Judith who appears here and there, and. mostly at least two sheets to the wind. He’s played by a relatively new Warner Brothers actor named Ronald Reagan, pre-Knute Rockne, All American and King’s Row, where he did his best work. He’s fine here, but nothing special. The other is an oddly cast Humphry Bogart as an Irish stable hand. His character is tangential until it isn’t, and he ultimately earns the viewer’s respect and admiration. His Irish accent varies so wildly that that can be distracting if you let it. But watch when he appears. He owns the screen in spite of the secondary nature of this character, and leaves a greater impression than either Brent or Reagan. Bogart had made a strong first film appearance in a film that starred Davis (Petrified Forest), and he was just a short time away from becoming a star with The Roaring Twenties, High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon.

Davis’s favorite cinematographer Ernest Haller was on duty for the film, as he had been for many of her films, e.g., The Rich are Always With Us, Dangerous, Jezebel (his first Oscar nomination), as well as his future work with her in In This Our Life, All This and Heaven Too, and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? MazxDavis prized him for knowing how to photographer her “difficult” face.  Note: Joan Crawford grabbed him for her Oscar-winning turn in Mildred Pierce—for which he received a nomination, and oh, yes, his work on Jezebel brought him to his Oscar-winning work on Gone with the Wind. He not only knew how to photograph his female stars to their best advantage, but he could create the kind of sharp imagery that Warners was known for and at which MGM would be appalled. No Vaseline on the lenses here, and no soft focus until the last shot.

The legendary Max Steiner did the music and was nominated for an Oscar for his work here. He also happened to do the music for Gone with the Wind that year, but despite that film’s legendary and memorable music, he wasn’t nominated for that. (In either case, the award that year went to The Wizard of Oz.) Steiner won his Oscars for The Informer (1935), Now, Voyager (1942, and another Davis vehicle), and 1944’s Since You Went Away. But he also received nominations for Jezebel, The Letter, and Beyond the Forest—two great Davis vehicles and the one that nearly destroyed her career. Beyond his work with Davis, he was nominated for The Garden of Allah (1936), Casablanca (1943), Life with Father (1947), Johnny Belinda (1948) and The Caine Mutiny (1954). Quite the career.

Yes, Dark Victory is a three-hankie film for many folks, and unashamedly so. But melodrama in the hands of great actors such as Davis, technicians like Haller, and no-nonsense directors like Goulding can yield remarkable examples of the genre. Many films are hidden melodramas, but Dark Victory takes evident pride in being a grand example of a story that is unfailingly emotional. If there is corn, it is practically drowned out by great acting, brisk Warner Brothers pacing, and crisp cinematography. The film is primarily remembered for Davis, but there is so much more to enjoy.

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Quick 2026 Oscar Show Response

Posted on March 17, 2026 by Mark DuPré

Although the numbers watching the Oscars telecast has been inching upward these past few years, remember that more than 25 years ago, 57 million folks tuned in. Now it’s just a bit more than 20 million. Many reasons for that, but that’s for another time.

Let’s take a quick look at the results and the show itself:

THE AWARDS

One Battle After Another unsurprisingly took home awards for Best Picture, Director, and Supporting Actor, to name a few. History will show that this wasn’t the best film, and that at on the artistic side, Sinners should have won. Director Paul Thomas Anderson finally got his Oscars for Best Adapted Screenplay and Director, as well as winning as one of the film’s producers. But he should have won this—and the film as well—for the 2007 There Will be Blood. I loved No Country for Old Men and applauded its Best Picture win when it happened, but on retrospect, There Will be Blood is the finer picture. But I’m glad to see PTA finally get an Academy Award. And it was historic to see the first female cinematographer win for that film, the very talented Autumn Durald Arkapaw.

Note: One Battle is expected to lose about $100 million. That suggests a lot of things, none of which will be posited here. Sinners broke well into the black, and F1 made twice that, becoming the most financially successful films among the nominees. Things that might make one go “hmmmm…”

Other thoughts: The Amy Madigan win for Weapons (Best Supporting Actress) was not unexpected and started off the show with good deal of humor and energy. Best Actress Jesse Buckley (Hamnet) finally got the ultimate prize after winning nearly everything else this season. Her tender tribute to motherhood stood in sharp contrast to Michelle Williams’ win at the 2020 Golden Globe Awards, where she extolled the joy of being able to destroy her children in the womb before they became a life-and-career-changing inconvenience.

The Timothée Chalamet issue was settled once and for all with the win for the much more liked Michael B. Jordan. Jordan is great and was excellent in that film, but I think Chalamet should have won—as he should have won for his previous two nominations.

Best Supporting Actor went to Sean Penn, a difficult and divisive actor playing a difficult and divisive character. Yes, the role in One Battle was flashy and it (unnecessarily) burned a hole through the film, but all things considered, I wish anyone else had won.

There were no undeserving winners in the rest of the categories, and the tie for Best Live Action Short Film (The Singers and Two People Exchanging Saliva) added some spice and energy to the show.

THE SHOW

I can’t understand the praise for host Conan O’Brien. He wasn’t particularly funny, his opening went far too long, and he demeanor and comments as the show went on were a bit off. The inane chatter continued throughout while pairing up some celebs, which was usually awkward, unfunny, off-putting and even embarrassing. When two talented folks went up to the mike and clearly respected one another and the moment, briefly connecting one with the other, the show showed intelligence and grace.

Of course, it was all too long. The Academy made the smart decision to not play out all five song nominees, which was a relief. But Best Song winner “Golden “was cut too short. At least the “I Lied to You” segment from Sinners was given a chance to be played out and was performed beautifully.

The show’s various “bits” were mixed. The Bridesmaids and The Devil Wears Prada bits were humorous and genuine (the former going on too long, however). but most of the banter between presenters was painful, and TBH, kinda stupid. (Note: I’d be happy to do some of that writing….) Any delving into film presentations or film history is always welcome. The show could use so much more of this. The undergarment theme of Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans bit was tactless, and Adrian Brody couldn’t pull off a self-satire that should have been easy to pull off.

The In Memoriam Sequence is always one of my favorites, and the decision to occasionally include two folks on a screen instead of one made sense. This year was particularly painful with the loss of Rob Reiner, Robert Redford, Catherine O’Hara, and Diane Keaton. But (he wrote in a no-win observation), the tributes were heartfelt but too long and slowed the show down too much. And why were James Van Der Beek, Eric Dane, Brigitte Bardot, and Bud Cort left off? Yes, choices must be made, but I would love to know what thinking went in to making those choices.

And I write this with sadness and regret: Barbra (Streisand), please don’t sing live anymore. You can’t pull off the runs and the vibrato is really getting up there. Don’t ruin our memories of The Way You Were.

So…let’s keep starting the show at 7:00, let’s move it to an earlier day on the calendar, let’s continue to pay more attention to non-stupid tricks, bits, and banter. And please, let’s do some rethinking of how and when to shut off the sound of the winners. As a viewer, I really don’t need to hear three people take the mike for one award, but on the other hand, the time the producers might feel the winners are taking up could be easily balanced by major slimming measures in the rest of the show.

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Oscar Predictions 2026

Posted on March 12, 2026 by Mark DuPré
Oscars 2026: Everything to know about the 98th Academy Awards - ABC News

This year is one of the most—and least—predictable Academy Awards seasons in history. I’m not entering a contest this year and therefore have little investment in who ends up with the gold statue. But since some folks ask, here we go with my predictions (not my preferences):

Best Picture One Battle after Another

Spoiler: Sinners

Best Director Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another

Best Actor Michael B. Jordan, Sinners

Performance that should have won, and that I hoped would have if the lead wasn’t acting like such a [you fill it in]. …. Timothée Chalamet in Marty Supreme

Best Actress Jesse Buckley, Hamnet (this one is locked up)

Best Supporting Actor and Actress are what make this such a confusing race.

Best Supporting Actor Sean Penn, One Battle After Another

Note: I hate his character in the film, and don’t like the actor very much either, but it looks like it’s going to give him his third Oscar. I am hoping for an upset from Stellan Skarsgärd for Sentimental Value.

Best Supporting Actress Amy Madigan Weapons

Best Original Screenplay Sinners

Best Adapted Screenplay One Battle After Another

Best Animated Feature KPop Demon Hunters

Best Song “Golden” from KPop Demon Hunters

Best Casting (the new category] Sinners

Best Score Sinners

Best Cinematography One Battle After Another But I’d be happy with a win from Sinners or

Train Dreams.

Best Editing One Battle After Another

Best Costume Design Frankenstein

Best Production Design Frankenstein

Best Makeup and Hairstyling Frankenstein

Sound F1

Best Visual Effects Avatar Fire and Ash [duh…]

Best Documentary Feature The Perfect Neighbor

Best International Feature Sentimental Value

I don’t really care about the other ones…(sorry, not sorry)

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M

Posted on March 3, 2026 by Mark DuPré

A child molester-murderer is on the loose. A city is terrified, and mothers are keeping children close. Police, who are too many times lazy and distracted, finally focus on the case. The underground syndicate also wants to find the murderer, not because of his crimes but to get the policemen back to a previous level of  ineffectiveness. A dedicated manhunt ensues, with the police, the populace, and the underground all wanting him found.

Paranoia grips the streets. Anyone speaking to a young girl, even innocently, is suspect. Suspicions abound. Modern technologies are used as much as possible, with—eventually—a narrowing down of who he could be and where he might be found. A good deal of time is spent on his planning his capture, while we also find him still looking for prey.

The criminal underground grabs him first and put him in front of a makeshift tribunal of angry men and women. After first declaring his innocence, he has to face conclusive evidence of his actions. But while the crowd screams for his death, things take a dramatic turn. He breaks down emotionally, not only because things have come to this point for him, but because he cries and rages, credibly, that he is under a compulsion to do these heinous deeds, and that he simply can’t help it. It’s clear that this is not an evasive tactic, but a declaration of a man with demonic urges that are no longer under his control.

Then the film winds down and comes a devastating conclusion.

This is a serial killer movie, a family drama in miniature, a police procedural, a suspense thriller of the highest order, an indictment of policemen, a stunning looking film noir, an exploration of psychiatric illness, a look at mob mentality, and a springboard for one of the greatest film performances of all time.

The film is German, it was made nearly 100 years ago, and it feels as current as anything produced today, but with greater artistry. It’s 1931’s M, by director Fritz Lang, and it’s as thrilling and exciting a piece of entertainment and art as you will find.

I’ve been aware of this film for decades, saw it first a long time ago, and have used the opening sequence in my film class for years as a demonstration of the use of sound and space. That sequence is an amazing, gut-wrenching piece of work, and that’s just the beginning. It sets the tone for the rest of the film: it starts off surprisingly dark (children recite a gruesome nursery rhyme while playing), introduces a moment of black humor, then turns emotional and ends up with one of the most powerful shots I’ve ever seen—not because of what it shows, but because of what it doesn’t.

Reams could be written about its use of lighting, staircases, camera angles, camera movement, and use of slick streets. There is also an incredible use of space, not just to establish location, but to advance the mood as well as the story. The first sequence itself demonstrates this: We see that group of singing children from above as they sing their grisly song, obviously incapable of understanding the import of their words. Then the camera moves up to bring us to the first level of an apartment building. Then there are stairs, stairs that bring a challenge to anyone carrying laundry. Then we are inside the apartment of the Mother preparing lunch for her daughter.  When the Mother begins to worry about her daughter not coming home for lunch when the rest of her friends do, she looks down the central staircase in the apartment in a pre-Vertigo shot that is almost as dizzying as Hitchcock’s backtracking/zooming in shot.

The film cuts to few shots of a young girl being spoken to on the street, then being gifted a ball and balloon by this same man. As Mother continues to grow in concern and shout her daughter’s name out of the window, we first see the emotionally charged staircase. Then, while Mother continues to shout, the camera takes us to what is obviously an open attic space where folks hang their laundry. That open space should have her daughter playing there, but no. Then we have one of the best one-two punches in all of cinema. We are shown a space in the apartment that is tragically empty, and then, using two visual representations of the young girl, we are indirectly shown outdoors what happened to her. Masterful filmmaking.

Even though this was Lang’s first sound film, it’s as creative in its use of sound as any Hitchcock film. From the sound that continues to establish space even while the camera is moving away (opening shot) to the all-important whistling leitmotiv of the murderer to the early use of overlapping dialogue, Lang uses sound better than most current directors. His camerawork is masterful, from tracking shots to deeply meaningful camera angle—including the film’s jarring and controversial “crotch shot”.  And unlike American films of the same era, Lang doesn’t fill the movie with talk, talk, talk, but allows silences that ratchet up the tension while using still shots that simultaneously expand the film’s spaces and continue his use of negative space. (Perhaps the best modern comparison is No Country for Old Men.) M also sets the standard for intelligent sound and production design, which is better enjoyed than described here.

There is all most too much to write about with M. It sets the standard for this kind of film. It’s one of the first German sound films, following the Depression and coming right as the Nazi’s are rising in power. In hindsight, one can almost hear the raspy and high-pitched shouting of the Fuhrer in the way so many characters speak in the film. It’s as if Lang were lighting a long use that would eventually explode in Germany and then all over the world.

The highlight in an already great film is the stellar performance of lead Peter Lorre, best remembered as Ugarte in Casablanca and as a regularly caricatured actor in the Looney Tunes shorts. This is a great performance by an actor of immense talent. Lorre was limited by his accent, his bulging eyes, multiple health and drug issues, and the disturbing persona that M gave him; he never found the opportunity again to demonstrate his talent on this scope. The Academy has generally given scant attention to foreign actors—the first Oscar for a foreign-language performance didn’t come for another 30 years when it was given to Sophia Loren won for 1962’s The Women. But as good as Lionel Barrymore’s Oscar-winning performance is in 1931’s A Free Soul, Lorre’s performance is one for the ages and would have/could have won that first Oscar for a foreign-language performance. It’s agonizing to watch him try to tamp down his compulsions in the middle of the film, and even more heartbreaking to experience his bravura demonstration of anger, angst, regret, internal torture, and accusation that comes near the end. It’s a multifaceted scene that folds in confession with accusations that raise the issue of how and under what conditions we judge others, personally and as a society. The scene also includes one of the most arresting reverse shots—combined with a devastating pan—that you’ll ever see.

M is a treasure that everyone interested in making films should see; there is almost too much to learn. And if psychological thrillers are something that folks find interesting, I defy them to start watching and then giving up because there isn’t enough noise and color. That would be almost impossible.

 M is for “murderer”. But it’s also for masterpiece.

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Oscar Show Wishes

Posted on February 26, 2026 by Mark DuPré

Every year the Oscar show leaves me wondering why, again, they forgot to ask me how to make it better (lol). Of course, I realize the show’s structure for this year is locked in at this point, but in the interest of spitting into the wind one more time, here are my suggestions for a better show in the future.

Bring down the number of Best Picture nominations to five. Keep focused. You can do this if you try.

Start earlier in the evening. Not every viewer lives on the West Coast—you know that, right? If you do that, everyone who hasn’t eaten in three weeks can get their coveted meal a little sooner.

If someone attacks the MC or a presenter on stage during the show, for heaven’s sake, take them out immediately.

For heaven’s sake, move up the ceremony to earlier in the year. Having it in March is just too late. If the idea that having it come last in the awards lineup makes it a kind of culmination, it also puts it dangerously close to “how cares?” territory.

Keep the opening number/presentation. Whatever Bob Hope, Johnny Carson, or Billy Crystal did, study their openings and see what they did that succeeded. It’s OK to bring in a genuine comedian, but don’t alienate half the country just as things get started.

Please, please, please keep the stupid banter to a minimum. The exchanges, with the exceptions of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, are insipid. A single great comic might work for a moment, but the duos are generally painful and embarrassing. Just have the two presenters show respect for one another and get on with the award. Have some dignity.

Keep the film clips. Do even more of them. People love them, and they are generally the best thing in the telecast.

The now-infamous 2024 In Memoriam number

The “In Memoriam” number. Love that every year. But…do your homework and anticipate who might be omitted. And please, don’t make this a live vocal performance. The focus should be on the folks who passed, not the wonderful singer looking up at the screen occasionally. I am a singer and love beautiful voices, but a talented performance is distracting and disrespectful here, no matter how lovely the lighting.

Consider more historical footage to highlight the history of the Oscars, especially since the 100th is coming up soon. Consider giving a posthumous Oscar to one of the many worthy ones.

Sorry, Diane Warren. This isn’t going to be your year either!

The show producers would never go for this, but the five nominated songs should be combined into an energetic and/or tasteful musical mélange (as I’ve said for years). I hate to break it to those putting the show together, but most people aren’t being drawn to the show to see famous performers. Maybe that worked yesterday, but it really won’t affect you future audiences that much. If you want to save time and money, and get on with things, drop the “we must present all five songs” idea. We’re way past that time.

Maybe this doesn’t need to be mentioned, but never, ever, ever leave an acting presentation to the end of the show. We know, in spite of all the denials, that you were hoping for that Chadwick Boseman win to wring tears and end on that high and sad note. Embarrassing and awkward. Stick to the program.

Winners: Tell your friends in advance that you won’t hugging them and five others on the way to the podium. That’s why I record the show partway through and turn it on at the end of the first hour. Way too much time taken here.

“To Dream the Impossible Dream”: Dear Every Nominee—you might actually win, so prepare something—anything. Make it meaningful and if possible, witty as well. Try to keep things focused and short. (Can the academy make it a rule not to mention more than 27 names of producers, friends, agents, etc. that helped you get to your win?) How about limiting mentions to just a few folks? Maybe that could be the start of a trend. (I can dream, can’t I?)

Winners, two other things: One, you are going to have your speech on replay for the rest of time. Don’t you want to make something we can all connect with, not just now, but years from now? I know you’re excited and in the moment, but note that the most memorable thank you speeches didn’t mention all those names.

Two, remembering that your speech is going to be there forever, drop the political speeches, especially the jabs. They don’t play well now, and they will play even worse over time. It comes off as virtue-signaling when the rest of America is stick of that, and worse for you, you come off as an arrogant and ignorant know-it-all. With many of the folks in the room, you all may enjoy the noise of the echo chamber, but that noise cuts out at midnight. Don’t embarrass yourself; your sharp comments become dull and stale as yesterday’s bread.

OK, one more thing: There is a lot of insufferable inbreeding on display. Remember that most folks don’t know the big stars personally or have your intimate connection with them. I get that half the applause coming from the audience is really about celebrating themselves rather than the winners. (I imagine that physical therapists and chiropractors are always busy the day after the ceremony with so many folks patting themselves on the back.) Try to occasionally recall that your tight relationships and in-jokes can be alienating to a good portion of your audience. There is a big audience out there, remember?

Create a Hall of Fame and have fun with the entries year after year.

Just a thought: The Academy was originally aimed at promoting and celebrating American and English-speaking films. I’m not being xenophobic here, but the Academy doesn’t yet have a handle on where things are going with celebrating international cinema. It’s not a major problem now, and it will be hell to pay to pull back even an inch. But we’re getting closer to facing that issue.

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“Wuthering Heights” (2026)

Posted on February 20, 2026 by Mark DuPré

“Wuthering Heights” is a gorgeous looking fetid fever-dream that takes one too many turns toward the twisted and perverse in a story already full of darkness. It’s a spicy paperback come to pulsating and regrettable life. Think gilding the lily, but with darkness, hate, and degradation instead of gold.

Much has and will be written about how it is faithful or not to the novel. The hint that this isn’t an aim is found in the pair of parentheses around the title—a bit affected but telling. This is co-writer/director Emerald Fennell’s take on the famed story of two doomed lovers, and she sure takes it. It’s best to come into the viewing of this with no thoughts, or especially no particular affection to the novel.

The film is a wild ride, almost as wild as Heathcliff’s mad gallops among the moors. Everything is in italics, starting from the rocky, isolated Wuthering Heights farmhouse to Martin Clunes’ performance as Cathy’s father, Mr. Earnshaw. His journey is from mean dad (very mean dad) to out-of-nowhere adoptive father to a miserable drunk living in squalor. The vehemence of his anger in the beginning isn’t explained well, and his introduction of Heathcliff into the family makes even less sense. Why would a selfish, nasty person suddenly reach out to an orphan and make him a (second-rate) part of the family? His journey downward to his degenerate state just makes him of a piece with the rest of the film.

There are two great elements of this film. One is the slightly overwrought but dazzling cinematography. It’s anything but subtle, and it’s hard to forget the Gone with the Wind red-drenched where Heathcliff escapes his pain. Photographing beautiful people in stunning surroundings in beautiful homes is helpful, but the film’s look is far more than that, and it already has a guaranteed Oscar nomination for next year.

The other highlight is Hong Chau (Best Supporting Actress nominee for The Whale), who gives the best performance in the film. It’s quiet and often completely internal, which stands in great contrast to all the yelling, heavy breathing, and pearl-clutching of the other characters. But still waters run very deep here; she anchors the film and provides the only and very welcome moments of sanity in the film. She is missed every moment she is not on camera.

Of course, all the attention is being paid to its beautiful lead actors, Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. If all one wants is great-looking people, then go no further. But there are significant problems even here, and unexpected ones. Robbie is a favorite of mine, but she is miscast and can’t lock her character down. She is seven years older than Elordi and looks it. That’s not a criticism; she might be the most beautiful actress working today. But she looks much more mature than Elordi when they are supposed to be the same age. And then there is the performance itself. Yes, Cathy is supposed to be 16 when her first big fight with Heathcliff drives him away and drives her finally into the arms of the wealthy but (of course boring) Edgar Linton. There were clearly directorial and thespian attempts to present an age-appropriate Cathy. But I kept hearing a middle-school spoiled brat in a performance that was artistically inconsistent and out of alignment with the lovely mature woman (who is technically old enough to be Cathy’s mother) we see on the screen. I was reminded of Norma Shearer in 1936’s Romeo and Juliet, where Shearer was 38. (Of course, Leslie Howard as Romeo was in his early forties, and John Barrymore’s Mercutio was 54. Of course they were all teens in the original play.)

Elordi fares better. He’s able to better lock down on his ultimately unpleasant character, giving it his all as his character goes from intriguingly dark to pitch black to revolting. He is also able to navigate the aging degrees more easily.

Costumes and design are as extreme as the emotions here. Wuthering Heights is smaller, darker, and drearier than it needed to be; why Heathcliff would want to go back there is a mystery, one they try to explain to no avail. When Cathy leaves to marry Linton, her new house is more grand(iose), more pink, more sparkly, and unrealistically colored than is believable; at times it bordered on the phantasmagorical. (The dollhouse metaphor is just too on the nose.) It reminded me of a more adult version of what Sofia Coppola was doing with 2006’s Marie Antoinette, sacrificing authenticity for the sake of dreamlike teenage fantasy.

Fennell has a way of darkening what she writes and directs. Promising Young Woman ended on a rather shocking dark and hopeless note. Saltburn took several perverse turns before its bizarre final scene. Here she has a dark and twisted novel that gets darker and more twisted in her hands.  What is suggested and therefore more powerful in earlier versions is made explicit, hence less powerful here. What happens with Isabelle (Alison Oliver) literalizes the phrase “treated like a dog,” and unnecessarily so. Fennell creates and then mercifully undermines an earlier BDSM scene (again, unnecessary) by having Heathcliff clasp his hands over Cathy’s eyes so she can’t see what’s going on. A good move by director and the character. I foolishly thought that this might provide deeper insight into Heathcliff’s protective affection for Cathy. It did, but only temporarily.

It’s hard to make a film where nearly every character is terrible. Only Hong Chau’s Nelly remains unscathed, while Isabella moves from a likable but naïve young woman to an obsessed victim of her own horrible choices. Linton is pleasant but in that thankless, sexless role assigned to the second male lead who in every way has to make the male lead looks great…OK looking, ill-defined as a personality, and with only half a backbone.

While the story of Wuthering Heights here is about repression, this film explores that only for a while, and when Heathcliff and Cathy connect sexually, they become fully clothed Yorkshire rabbits; the only skin is a shirtless Elordi earlier in the film. We are supposed to applaud the great sex between beautiful people, but everyone is making bad decisions that ruin themselves and others.

There is a small story in the film that works, however, and that is of the young Cathy and Heathcliff, played expertly by newcomer Charlotte Mellington and Owen Cooper (TV’s “Adolescence”). Their story is more touching and believable than their grown counterparts’, and the tenderness and complexity of even their young relationship ends up being the most interesting in the film. If only the film had built on that….

The classic story is nearly impossible to be made into one film. There is too much to cover, from the central “love” story to class structure to possible racism to the role of nature to the dark recesses of the human heart. This film covers that last two themes in strongly contrasting ways. The moors have never looked more wildly beautiful, and the people inhabiting this story have rarely looked this selfish, cruel, and perverse.

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Blue Moon

Posted on February 18, 2026 by Mark DuPré

Blue Moon is a 2025 small, focused film that addressed that great musical theater moment when “Rodgers and Hart” died, and “Rodgers and Hammerstein” was born, and its effects on Hart. We’re talking the great composer/lyricist team of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, which was replaced by the even more successful team of Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II.  Thankfully, this isn’t an autobiography of Hart, which was dreadfully done in the most compromising way with 1948’s Words and Music with Mickey Rooney as Hart and Tom Drake as Rodgers. This film takes the concept of pulling out a portion of a person’s life to explore (think Ferrari, A Complete Unknown, Maria, and Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere) and brings the microscope down to just one evening.

But what an evening! It’s the party after the opening of 1943’s Oklahoma!, the first work with Rodgers and his new creative partner Hammerstein that changed the American stage musical forever, and the start of a run of classic musicals: Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music. The alcoholic, tortured, vicious, and brilliant lyricist Hart had rightly established himself with Rodgers up to this point as an articulate talent that had been nearly impossible to work with. Hart knows deep down that with the success of his musical partner’s Oklahoma! that his old world is over, and that all his successes are behind him. The film captures the moment when even the most self-delusional of performers realizes that their time is up.

The concept is sharp, and every aspect of Lorenz’ difficult life, self-hatred, poor life and business decisions, creatively overbearing personality, and self-sabotaging actions are displayed during the course of the film. Consistent with many of writer/director Richard Linklater’s works (e.g., Before Sunset, Before Sunrise, Before Midnight), this is as much of an all-talking, nonaction film as one is bound to find this year.

But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a lot going on. Every conversation brings out a different facet of this sparkling diamond of this great writer and his anguished existence. With Sardi’s bartender Eddie (Bobby Cannavale), Lorenz is as honest has he can be in the film, and the performative aspect of his personality is kept to a minimum. That relationship forms the frame of the film. In the background is a solid Jonah Lees as Morty, who plays an easy piano, understands Lorenz’s gifts and weaknesses, and provides a continuous flow of mid-century show tunes that help link the different conversation partners and wildly varying emotional states that Lorenz is experiencing. It’s a quiet, almost unnoticed bit of work that adds greatly to the film.

Of course, there is Rodgers himself, arriving fresh from his success at the theater and awaiting the triumphal reviews to come in a few hours. Lorenz works hard to be professional and, as much as he can muster, at least politely supportive of his former partner. The rest of the time, he spews equal parts jealousy, disdain for Rodgers’ new creative direction and the lyrics of Hammerstein. After all, his many personality weaknesses aside, he was one of the great lyricists of the 1920s and ’30s, with many glittering successes such as “Where or When”, “My Funny Valentine”, “The Lady is a Tramp”, “My Heart Stood Still”, “Ten Cents a Dance”, “Dancing on the Ceiling”, “Falling in Love with Love”, and of course, the emblematic “Blue Moon”, the one he regrets composing for its straightforward and simple lyrics, its emotional accessibility, and darn it, its consistent popularity. Here is where his insecurity, childishness, and peevishness are on full display, especially as he tried to hide them. Hart was right in that his dazzling, inventive, sophisticated lyrics with its many internal rhymes were unequaled. Rodgers was right, however, that it was time to move on to something more homey, less sophisticated, and more directly emotional.

Rodgers is played beautifully by Andrew Scott, who has won some awards for this supporting performance. He is patient, kind, full of pity, and needing to move on with his life. Their oft-interrupted conversation is the most heartbreaking and revealing.

Hart also has quick exchanges with Oscar Hammerstein, and an up-and-coming young man named George Hill (later George Roy Hill) who wants to be a director…and went on to direct Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and win an Oscar for his direction of The Sting. And then there is a very young and snarky Stephen Sondheim, (Hammerstein’s protégé) who was bold/rude enough to honestly answer Lorenz’s questions about his work.

Author E.B. White magically appears to provide more insight into Lorzenz’s creative process, and provides more connection with Lorenz intellectually than any of the characters genuinely in his life at the time.

The greatest emotional connection, however, comes with a woman who apparently didn’t exist at all, or at least not in the film’s incarnation of Elizabeth Weiland.  The film’s Elizabeth is a very young woman who apparently had a platonic weekend with Hart and has kept in touch ever since.  (The real Elizabeth may simply be a woman who wrote Hart a series of letters…or not.) She exists as a real friend here, but also as a romantic aspiration for Hart, who continues to express his undying and unrealistic love for her. She’s played by a slightly too old Margaret Qualley, who radiates appropriately and graciously connects with Hart while being honest about the future of their relationship.

This character and her connection with Hart raise the question of his sexuality, which has historically been considered gay, and that is generally echoed in the film.  Why this character is here is a bit of a mystery, but Margaret’s bond with an aging sad man provides some breathing room and kindness, as Hart is forced to stop performing and seems to relax in her presence, all the while dreaming on this night on what might have been if many circumstances had been different.

Every performance is solid, but as with many Linklater films (including the three mentioned above), the star is Ethan Hawke, who gives a career-best and Oscar-nominated) performance as Hart. Except perhaps for his moments with Qualley, Hawke is sad, biting, cynical, cruel, jealous, beaten down and can seem to catch his breath emotionally . Hawke brings a nonstop stream of energy to his portrayal, even in the quiet moments. This is a man desperate to not feel desperate, and he’s working as fast as he can to keep his demons at bay. As the film lets us know in the beginning, this is pretty much his last hurrah working at that. He didn’t die right after that evening, but he did die, in a ditch, in the rain, just eight months later.

One technical note: Hart was five feet tall. Hawke is 10 inches taller, and the film pull out every trick of perspective and camera angle to make him seem close to Lorenz’s height.

This is a sad movie in some senses, not because of how it ends, but because of how Lorenz Hart was living. But the wit of the conversations, the dark humor, and the masterful performance by Hawke make it a joy to experience.

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The Lost Squadron (1932)

Posted on February 13, 2026 by Mark DuPré

The Lost Squadron is a pre-Code* melodrama/buddy movie/action film/romance/murder film, and yes, the film is as pieced together and strange as that description sounds. The plot is an easy and straightforward one at the beginning but then it takes some fascinating twists and turns. Three World War II fighter pilots return as heroes to the States. Not all that surprisingly, especially if you’ve seen other films with a similar set-up (The Big Parade, The Roaring Twenties, The Best Years of Our Lives, Coming Home, etc.), they run into unemployment and a world that has changed, and not for the better, in their absence.

They decide to take their talent as war pilots and make some money doing airplane stunts for movies. Great set-up, and then the film goes in several different directions, all of which create a cornucopia of plot changes, major diversions, distractions, commentary, and of course, romance. The film, the first produced by David O. Selznick as production chief at RKO, may well be best known for its aerial sequences, which are first-rate for the time. The film was right in the wake of similar flying films such as Wings (1927, and the first Best Picture winner) and 1930’s Hell’s Angels and Dawn Patrol.

Aside from the aerial sequences, film historians will enjoy the tension in the film’s time and place. Lead Richard Dix, nominated the year before Best Actor for Cimarron, brings a silent film style stolidity to his already passive acting style. He locks down the film, and not in a good way; he seems a remnant of the silent era. Then there the fresh face and energy of Joel McCrea, who crashes into the film’s acting styles with an uneven but exciting sound film energy. Even in a supporting role, he brings more dynamism than the rest of the cast combined. Roger Armstrong, who would gain attention in the next year’s King Kong, falls somewhere in between. He’s solid, but rather wooden, even when playing the drunk.

Then there are the two legends. One is future Oscar-winner Mary Astor (The Great Lie, 1942) (above, with von Stroheim) in a role that begins with some drama and interest, but which fades into virtual nothingness as the film goes on. It’s too bad, as she plays the bad girl whose broken emotional state is evident in her many poor decisions. That glorious speaking voice is on full display as a woman whose elegance and intelligence rises above everyone else in the film. When she slips off the film in a disappointedly unresolved way, we miss her.

One subplot that we don’t see coming until we’re in the middle of it is the creation of the film-within-a-film that the famed diabolical German director is trying to make. It’s a fine subplot, and one that almost turns this into a precursor to that same year’s What Price Hollywood?, released a few months later. Astor’s character Follette, who has dumped two lovers/husbands on her way up, is the unhappy wife of said director, who has made her into a big star over the years. The director is played with scenery-chewing panache and fierceness by silent film acting and director legend Erich von Stroheim. He’s the very essence of the hardheaded control freak he was rumored to be in real life. (Some saw this as perfect typecasting.) Stroheim was generally a better director than an actor, and he needs a tight controlling hand to give his best. Under the direction of French-born George Archainbaud, who began directing films in 1917 and was busy with television work until his death in 1959, there isn’t a nuance to be found in von Stroheim’s performance. He’s that perfect clichéd combination of Prussian directness and German roughness.   

The film takes a grim and curious turn toward the end, and it seems rushed and less coherent in the final scenes. Even the action scenes are messy. Stories rush toward conclusions that aren’t properly supported, and some plot lines are rushed into completion while others are dropped completely.

The Lost Squadron is less than the sum of its parts. But its many parts can be greatly entertaining—the wildly conflicting acting styles of Dix and McCrea, the presence of Mary Astor before she became a major star, and a view of von Stroheim between his earlier Greed and his upcoming La Grande Illusion and Sunset Boulevard.

Historic note: This is thought by some to be first sound film to include a man giving the finger. But it was briefly seen in The Miracle Woman the year before.

As always, this is a time capsule demonstrating the tensions between silent and sound acting and directing. It’s also a good place to watch famous actors as they plateau (von Stroheim) and begin their ascent (Astor). All films reflect their time, and there are many shifting various styles and personalities to enjoy here.

* Pre-Code films are American motion pictures produced between roughly 1929 and mid-1934, characterized by risqué, subversive, and frank subject matter before the strict enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code (Hays Code). This era, starting with the advent of “talkies,” featured themes of sexual freedom, drug use, interracial romance, and cynical crime. 

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Avatar: Fire and Ash and Mercy

Posted on January 31, 2026 by Mark DuPré

Within a short period of time, I saw a $400,000,000 behemoth of a film, and right after, a short and narratively tight $60,000,000 film. I enjoyed the smaller film.

The first, of course, is the third installment of the Avatar films, Avatar: Fire and Ash. The second, Mercy, to my great surprise, bumped Avatar off the top of the charts for this past week as I write this. I never would have seen that coming.

Avatar: Fire and Ash

My eyes were both dazzled and slightly glazed over watching AFA. Of course, the world of Pandora is more beautiful and shimmering than ever, and director James Cameron is clearly advancing the world of visual technologies. But as ever, he is not the strongest of screenwriters and engaging narratives (though he shares writing duties here with Rick Java and Amanda Silver). He manages to venture out into a more layered approach to family relationships, moving past husband and wife to a strong emphasis on parent/children and sibling relationships: teens being punks to parents and each other, brother-sister rivalry, and the issue of bring non-related folks into the family.

But while more is explored here—after all, the movie is three and a quarter hours—there is nothing new or fresh. Cliches abound in the dialogue as well as in the situations outside of the “let’s get Sully” backstory. Perhaps the most “interesting” play on this is an awkward nod to the Bible’s Abraham and Isaac interaction, but the reference adds nothing of resonance to the action, and in fact, seems to undercut the meaning and emotion of it all.

Then there are the new bad guys, including the bad girl. The new girl is a riff on the femme fatale of noir cinema, but she is so shamelessly slinky in looks and behavior that it’s laughable. I was just glad she was dressed in a great deal of red, because the film could have been titled Avatar: One Battle After Another; there was such a swirl of creatures of various looks and intentions that it was hard to keep track of the players.  There is no need for any film to have so many nonstop skirmishes unless it’s to spend more time in this visually stunning world. But that’s not enough anymore.

The “humans bad, blue creatures good” trope is getting a little old. The Avatar films are of course Dances with Wolves on Pandora, but as that film demonstrates by omission, there is always a place where nuance might be introduced. And then there are the nature worship and new age worship raves that abound. It looks like a combination of a Studio 54 party and a gathering of drugged, semi-sentient, semi-conscious  demoniacs.

The fading interest in the Academy is clear:

Avatar—three wins out of nine nominations, including Best Picture

Avatar: The Way of Water—one win out of four nominations, also including Best Picture

Avatar: Fire and Ash—two nominations, not including Best Picture (it has a good chance of winning Best Visual effects again, but who knows?)

The box office shows the decline as well, though this is clearly a great run:

Avatar: $2.9 billion

Avatar: Way of Water: $2.3 billion

Avatar: Fire and Ash: $1.4 billion so as of 1/25

There are reports of another two sequels at least. Please, Mr. Cameron, use this incredible visual platform you’re created for something new dramatically.

Mercy

Mercy, on the other hand, is a small, laser-focused film with a great elevator pitch: Detective wakes up in a chair in the near future, and discovers he has 90 minutes to live if he can’t prove his innocence on a murder charge. His “handler” is an AI woman played by Rebecca Ferguson, who is nearly emotionless and is the epitome of legalism itself, but eventually comes close to (oh, never mind, spoiler alert). Other characters are introduced, but this is essentially a two-character film surrounded by readily-available visual content from every source imaginable—think Minority Report and Enemy of the State having a movie baby.

The film was made a couple of years ago and was released in January 2026 so as not to compete with seasons that were busier. Since January and February are generally considered the months where lesser films are dumped, it seems to have been a good strategy. Lead actor Chris Pratt was surprisingly good as a serious actor, and his comic persona disappears quickly as the film begins. Ferguson is necessarily more one-note of course, and there are some moments that were hard to play as her character was challenged.

The film builds nicely as the scenario unfolds and a few different characters are brought in. The reasons for the set-up and the gradual unveiling of the plot against him proceeds with energy and tension until the last 10 minutes, when the wheels fall completely off the cart. And it wasn’t even necessary. We were moving along fine even when a “this time, it’s personal” element is added (bad enough), and then at the last moment, we get a revelation of one more layer of deception that seems to come out of nowhere. There is little presented earlier to make this revelation resonate, plus it neutralizes the one thing that could have elevated Mercy above the usual action genre film. There is a question of guilt that runs alongside our main character’s, and it could have made for a powerful and provocative ending. But then, it would have made us think and muse, and that’s not what this movie wanted to do.

Bottom line: All in all, the simple tense drama of Mercy at just over an hour and a half was more of an enjoyable time at the movies than Avatar: Fire and Ash at more than twice the running time. And thank God for a movie well under two hours!

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