Actor Jonathan Majors is a respected actor in Hollywood who in recent years has had problems with a domestic violence charge involving actor Grace Jabbari – the main reason why the new movie “Magazine Dreams”, produced in 2023 is releasing now, after most of Major’s legal issues have gone away and he is now married his long time girlfriend Meagan Good.

Major’s performance in this movie about a young man living on the edge of suicide or going postal is good and convincing enough for an Academy Award nomination. Unfortunately, films released this early in the year are rarely considered for any major movie awards.

Killian Maddox, played by Majors is a man in his mid-30s who works at a low-paying menial job at a local food store and lives with his ailing grandfather. Killian tries to distract himself from his memories of his father murdering his mother and then himself when Killian was 11 years old, by devoting all his free time to trying to be the world’s greatest bodybuilder. The bodybuilding aspect of this story is the most impressive thing about Major’s acting performance – due to the months of massive calorie intake and intense bodybuilding workouts to become believable in this extremely physical role. As is too often the case with competitive bodybuilders, Killian injects himself with steroids and after visiting a doctor, does not even care about the noncancerous tumors on his liver and the high probability of dying from steroid abuse.

Midway through this story, Killian becomes dangerously angry due to the steroids and destroys a hardware store after they refuse to complete a job of painting his grandfather’s house. This later leads to a violent confrontation with three men and metal pipes that almost kills Killian. A downward spiral follows with Killian losing his job with the food store and being humiliated when he is on a date and she sneaks out of the restaurant. This movie is very good at showing just how bad the life of a human being can get – very quickly.

The ending uses some seen-before movie trickery involving Killian meeting his long-time bodybuilding idol and fantasies of going postal by shooting a large number of people with a rifle he buys from the internet.

The Rotten Tomatoes critics are correct this time around with a high 82% rating and I agree with this opinion and recommend this film despite its dark and depressing story.