Movie Review: Nightbitch


For those on the fence about whether to give up their careers to stay home and raise a child, this is not the movie for you.

The new movie “Nightbitch” stars Amy Adams in her first role in about 2 years. It is a mystery when a respected actor who has received six Oscar nominations and has been a major player in Hollywood for over 25 years, would choose this screenplay to return to acting. Adams wears no makeup in this film, has gained about 30 pounds, and plays an extremely depressed, exhausted, and suicidal married woman during the entire time she is living in this small house with her son, and has a husband who is rarely home. Adams’s character name in this movie is of all things, “Mother”, with her husband, played by actor Scoot McNairy, “Husband” – one of those “trying to be different, never seen this before” ideas that are seen far too often in movies in the last few years.

Nightbitch is based on the book written by Rachel Yoder, and being true to the book while creating another off-the-wall movie idea, Mother slowly starts to transition into a dog. She notices hair on her body that was not there before, her teeth become more pointed and sharper, and while in the shower, we see that she has developed 6 dog nipples – now that is something we have never seen before on screen – and never wanted to see on screen. Mother starts to walk on all fours like a dog and hangs out with other dogs in the neighborhood. Mother also has several incidents where she is eating food like a dog with her head in a bowl or a plate, even in front of several people at a local food store cafeteria, where she gets face to face with a plate of meat. For long-time fans of Amy Adams, “What the hell is she thinking, taking this role?”

This movie has too many fake scenes, where the actor fantasizes about something they would like to say or do, followed by what they say in real time. Too much of this can be distracting and somewhat annoying, with this practice getting old very quickly in any film. In one scene Mother is asked how she felt giving birth and goes into an insane tirade about her life being ruined, her dreams destroyed, her fears and desperation. Then says, “My brain just doesn’t operate the way it did before I had the baby,” she says. “I’m dumb, now.” In the real-time scene, Mother says, “I love being a mom”. Enough of this already.

The idea behind the Mother to dog transition has to do with the book stating that while giving birth and raising a child, a woman can become more like an animal than a human being, which is the entire reason for the dog transitioning throughout this mostly ridiculous and depressing film.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for Nightbitch are a correct and understandably low 60%, with my rating at 50% only because of some of the good acting in this hard-to-believe was ever produced insane movie.

Movie Review: Wicked


While watching the new movie “Wicked”, which has been adapted from the long-running Broadway musical I realized that given the years of hard work, the sets, the costumes, the music, and the enormous amount of money spent on 2 Wicked movies (Wicked 2 will be released in November 2025), is that out of respect for this much effort, no critic could ever give a bad review to a movie like this one. I have no doubt that Wicked will be one of the ten movies nominated for Best Picture this year, making it one of the few musicals ever nominated for Best Picture in Oscar history.

The story of Wicked is about the good witch Galinda played by Ariana Grande and the wicked witch of the West Elphaba played by Cynthia Erivo and how they met and became friends at a college called Shiz University. There are frequent musical numbers in this film, and the singing of all the cast members, especially Erivo and Grande is always outstanding. The overall story is slow at times and one flaw I thought was the transition from the friendship of Elphaba and Galinda into an ending when Elphaba and Galinda meet the Wizard, played by Jeff Goldblum, that seemed contrived and too out of nowhere. The ending, in my opinion, broke up the flow of the story too abruptly and seemed designed to create a dramatic ending out of nowhere.

At the end of the movie, there was a “To be Continued” message for the next film, Wicked 2, which will be released in late November 2025 and show Elphaba’s transition into an evil witch.

The real strengths of this film are more the musical numbers, amazing sets, and costumes, and less the overall story, which I thought was sometimes weak with an overly complex and contrived ending.

I mostly agree with the high 90% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and I recommend this movie.

Movie Review: Gladiator II


The peak of actor Russel Crowes’ career was in 2000 and 2001 when he starred in the first “Gladiator” movie and won the Best Actor Oscar and was then nominated the following year (and should have won) for playing the brilliant Nobel Prize-winning professor John Nash in “A Beautiful Mind,” directed by Ron Howard. Unfortunately for Crowe, after some bad breaks and the ongoing harsh realities of the movie industry, getting a top movie role, finding a good enough screenplay, and trying to survive the fickleness of the American public, Russel Crowe has never reached the heights of 2000 and 2001 again.

The sequel to Gladiator, “Gladiator II,” is another story that spends much time creating excuses for major fight scenes and violent death inside the Roman Colosseum, and not much time for character development and interesting dialogue. For me with both films, the historical content of showing thousands of human beings sitting in a huge stadium while smiling and laughing at the agony and horrific death of slaves and soldiers is one of history’s greatest examples of “man’s inhumanity to man”. This sequel does have scenes of Crowe as Maxiumus from the original movie, with a timeline some 20 years later with Maxiumus’s son, Lucius played very well by actor Paul Mescal and Maxiumus’s wife Lucilla played once again by Connie Nielsen.

In this sequel, there are no Tigers that rush into the Colosseum to kill people, instead, the director
Ridley Scott, who directed the first Gladiator, has vicious monkeys, a huge charging rhinoceros ridden by a Roman Soldier, and even an ocean-water-filled Colosseum floor with man-eating sharks who attack and kill men who fall off the boats while fighting with swords and bow and arrows. This part of the story, with Sharks, Monkeys, and a huge Rhinocerous has more to do with Hollywood embellishment than being true to Roman history.

Denzel Washington plays Macrinus, the central antagonist in this story who is constantly scheming to take over as emperor of Rome does provide some of the best acting in this film, a main reason to see this sequel despite the obvious drop in quality from the first movie. As with the last film, the fighting is extremely violent, brutal and definitely not for children younger than 15.

The critics are not very high on this movie, giving an anemic 72% rating, and this time around I agree with the critics as this movie is too much about nonstop fighting scenes, with not much else. Due to the impressive special effects, I give Gladiator II a small recommendation.