In August of 2025, Spike Lee released "Highest 2 Lowest", his fifth collaboration with Danzel Washington. The movie is about a wealthy music executive, played by Danzel Washington, who has his son kidnapped, only to find out later that the kidnappers took the son of his best friend, by mistake. The moral question follows: will Danzel's character still give the kidnappers millions of dollars even though the son they kidnapped is not his child?
Surprisingly, the new Ben Affleck Netflix film, "Animals", has just about the exact same premise as Highest 2 Lowest. So similar that Ben Affleck delayed the production of his film to avoid the obvious comparisons between the two. It is hard to understand why Affleck, one of the three screenwriters, did not create a major rewrite to avoid what could be a future copyright infringement lawsuit, given how alarmingly similar these movies are.
The two main characters, Mark Kimball (Ben Affleck) and David King (Denzel Washington), are both wealthy and having money problems, due to debt at the time of the kidnapping. Mark Kimball is running for mayor of Los Angeles, and David King is a well-known music mogul. One main difference is that Kimball hires an expensive kidhapping expert Dayle Burton (Gillian Anderson), who charges 20% of the ransom to try solve the kidnapping with options that include even killing the kidnappers. Kerry Washington plays Kimball's wife Abigail Kimball, and acting scenes with Affleck that were highly emotional and well performed throughout. There are other well played scenes with Ben Affleck and Gillian Anderson, with large contrasts of a distraught Affleck and an always very calm Anderson.
The ending was well done with original ideas, and a final conclusion that many will question based on several lies that were told to the police to avoid political damage to Kimball's mayoral campaign.
The Rotten Tomatoes rating of 36% is too low - as this is not a bad movie, aside from the possible plagiarism issues. I rank this movie as a passable 70%, mainly due to the acting of Affleck, Anderson and Washington.
Movie Reviews From a Screenwriter's Perspective
Saturday, October 10, 2026
Friday, October 9, 2026
Movie Review: The Social Reckoning
The Social Network" (2010) was one of Aaron Sorkin's best screenplays. Along with other Sorkin screenplays that include a much larger volume of dialogue than an average screenplay, "A Few Good Men" (1992) and "Molly's Game" (2017), The Social Network was about the unlikely rise of Mark Zuckerberg from a Harvard student to creating the largest Social Network in the world with Facebook. Facebook is now known as Meta and has the largest market cap (currently 1.83 trillion). Throughout most of this film, Zuckerberg was never depicted in a very positive light, which is now even truer with his new movie "The Social Reckoning", which Sorkin wrote and directed.
We all know going into any Sorkin movie that he is more of a "tell rather than show" screenwriter. Almost all of Sorkin's screenplays are much longer than standard, with A Few Good Men at 140 pages, Molly's Game at 160 pages, and The Social Network at 178 pages. This is also true with his latest screenplay, which is a sequel to The Social Network and bears no resemblance to the original movie. This film contains a large series of unexpected ideas that I thought mostly did not work.
Throughout this entire movie, Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong) is in an interview room where he is asked a myriad of practice questions for an upcoming Congressional hearing by Facebook's crisis-management adviser, Raya Akinola (Wunmi Mosaku), with some intense scenes with Charlie Galligan (Bill Burr), a former Facebook advisor. I would rather have seen Zuckerberg working in his offices at Facebook, handling the many problems of the day, and facing the Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White), who is in contact with a Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison).
The main message of this film is about greed or "money over humanity". In order to increase Facebook posts and social interaction in the News Feed rankings, priority was given to posts that generate conversations and interactions between people, rather than simply prioritizing content people might like.
The acting in this movie is very good throughout, starting with Mikey Madison, who won the Best Actress Oscar for last year's Anora, Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, and Bill Burr, who is a stand-up comic but was also very good in his role.
This movie demonstrates once again how very difficult it is to write a great screenplay that receives high marks from most of the critics, even with a great screenwriter like Aaron Sorkin. Rotten Tomatoes ranks this movie at only 57%. Some of the worst reviews: Nina Starner The verdict: The film is an unnecessary sequel that fails as both a drama about Facebook and a successor to The Social Network. Chris Evangelista. The verdict: A compelling real-world story becomes a dull, lifeless movie.
For me, the real problem is that the original Social Network movie was so great that it was impossible to follow it with anything close to as good. My rating for this movie is 70%, and a very mild recommendation only because Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay.
We all know going into any Sorkin movie that he is more of a "tell rather than show" screenwriter. Almost all of Sorkin's screenplays are much longer than standard, with A Few Good Men at 140 pages, Molly's Game at 160 pages, and The Social Network at 178 pages. This is also true with his latest screenplay, which is a sequel to The Social Network and bears no resemblance to the original movie. This film contains a large series of unexpected ideas that I thought mostly did not work.
Throughout this entire movie, Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong) is in an interview room where he is asked a myriad of practice questions for an upcoming Congressional hearing by Facebook's crisis-management adviser, Raya Akinola (Wunmi Mosaku), with some intense scenes with Charlie Galligan (Bill Burr), a former Facebook advisor. I would rather have seen Zuckerberg working in his offices at Facebook, handling the many problems of the day, and facing the Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White), who is in contact with a Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison).
The main message of this film is about greed or "money over humanity". In order to increase Facebook posts and social interaction in the News Feed rankings, priority was given to posts that generate conversations and interactions between people, rather than simply prioritizing content people might like.
- Engagement: Posts that triggered interactions could reach more people.
- Comments: Posts likely to spark discussion received more prominence.
- Shares: Content people redistributed could receive greater weight.
- Reactions: Emotional responses, including anger and surprise, could influence distribution.
The acting in this movie is very good throughout, starting with Mikey Madison, who won the Best Actress Oscar for last year's Anora, Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, and Bill Burr, who is a stand-up comic but was also very good in his role.
This movie demonstrates once again how very difficult it is to write a great screenplay that receives high marks from most of the critics, even with a great screenwriter like Aaron Sorkin. Rotten Tomatoes ranks this movie at only 57%. Some of the worst reviews: Nina Starner The verdict: The film is an unnecessary sequel that fails as both a drama about Facebook and a successor to The Social Network. Chris Evangelista. The verdict: A compelling real-world story becomes a dull, lifeless movie.
For me, the real problem is that the original Social Network movie was so great that it was impossible to follow it with anything close to as good. My rating for this movie is 70%, and a very mild recommendation only because Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay.
Sunday, October 4, 2026
Movie Review: Digger
Tom Cruise has been at the top of the movie industry for over 40 years, starting with "Risky Business" (1983) and "Top Gun" (1986), followed by the Mission: Impossible franchise that started in 1996 and now includes eight movies, making Tom Cruise by far the greatest movie stuntman of all time.
Cruise has been nominated for three Oscars, including "Born on the Fourth of July" (1988), "Jerry Maguire" (1996), and "Magnolia" (1999). For reasons unknown, Tom Cruise was not even nominated for his outstanding performance as a Navy Lawyer in "A Few Good Men" (1992). In my opinion, Cruise deserved at least 2 Oscars for these performances, but now, at age 64, he has never won an Oscar.
The buzz about the new movie "Digger" was that it would, once and for all, showcase Cruise's acting ability and finally win him that elusive Oscar. The truth about the movie Digger is that it does show three outstanding acting performances by John Goodman, Riz Ahmed, and Tom Cruise, but the movie itself is such a nightmare of insane ideas, creepy scenes, and a completely illogical story that it is likely that none of these actors will be nominated for anything. It is close to impossible to win an Academy Award for a movie that has been panned by critics — Rotten Tomatoes is a very low 51%.
Digger was written by three screenwriters; another reason for the disconnected, insane story is that it might suggest that none of these writers actually collaborated while writing this disaster of a movie. It is hard to understand, given that the goal was to give Tom Cruise a great chance of winning an Oscar, that this screenplay was chosen, considering how crazy and insane the whole idea behind this story is.
Tom Cruise is Rockwell, the CEO of an oil company with rigs working in Greenland. Unfortunately, there are leaks that have been known about for some time and ignored, which cause a huge iceberg to break off and head towards Europe. At this point in the story, everything was normal and looked to be a good message story about Global Warming; then, about 25% in, the film took a giant leap into a crazy direction that seemed entirely about being different and had nothing to do with creating an interesting, coherent movie. The critics are as harsh as I have ever seen: Odie Henderson — The Boston Globe — ZERO STARS: “this egocentric piece of s***.” It is worth noting that Henderson isn't merely saying the movie is bad—he put it in the extremely rare zero-star category.
Considering some scenes of great acting with Cruise, Goodman, and Ahmed, the mistake of turning this good story into a crazy, off-the-wall idea is somewhat tragic, when you remember that the entire point was to give Tom Cruise his shot at winning an Academy Award, and three great acting performances will go largely ignored. The people in charge of this movie all got the acting parts right, but forgot to write a real movie with a message that made sense.
I agree with the 51% rating for Digger on Rotten Tomatoes and do not recommend this movie, mainly because the "let's be different" ideas are stupid, and it is so hard to sit through. As for the acting, some scenes might be a good idea for an acting class somewhere in Hollywood; for the rest of us, run away fast from this two-hour, insane, and incoherent mess.
Cruise has been nominated for three Oscars, including "Born on the Fourth of July" (1988), "Jerry Maguire" (1996), and "Magnolia" (1999). For reasons unknown, Tom Cruise was not even nominated for his outstanding performance as a Navy Lawyer in "A Few Good Men" (1992). In my opinion, Cruise deserved at least 2 Oscars for these performances, but now, at age 64, he has never won an Oscar.
The buzz about the new movie "Digger" was that it would, once and for all, showcase Cruise's acting ability and finally win him that elusive Oscar. The truth about the movie Digger is that it does show three outstanding acting performances by John Goodman, Riz Ahmed, and Tom Cruise, but the movie itself is such a nightmare of insane ideas, creepy scenes, and a completely illogical story that it is likely that none of these actors will be nominated for anything. It is close to impossible to win an Academy Award for a movie that has been panned by critics — Rotten Tomatoes is a very low 51%.
Digger was written by three screenwriters; another reason for the disconnected, insane story is that it might suggest that none of these writers actually collaborated while writing this disaster of a movie. It is hard to understand, given that the goal was to give Tom Cruise a great chance of winning an Oscar, that this screenplay was chosen, considering how crazy and insane the whole idea behind this story is.
Tom Cruise is Rockwell, the CEO of an oil company with rigs working in Greenland. Unfortunately, there are leaks that have been known about for some time and ignored, which cause a huge iceberg to break off and head towards Europe. At this point in the story, everything was normal and looked to be a good message story about Global Warming; then, about 25% in, the film took a giant leap into a crazy direction that seemed entirely about being different and had nothing to do with creating an interesting, coherent movie. The critics are as harsh as I have ever seen: Odie Henderson — The Boston Globe — ZERO STARS: “this egocentric piece of s***.” It is worth noting that Henderson isn't merely saying the movie is bad—he put it in the extremely rare zero-star category.
Considering some scenes of great acting with Cruise, Goodman, and Ahmed, the mistake of turning this good story into a crazy, off-the-wall idea is somewhat tragic, when you remember that the entire point was to give Tom Cruise his shot at winning an Academy Award, and three great acting performances will go largely ignored. The people in charge of this movie all got the acting parts right, but forgot to write a real movie with a message that made sense.
I agree with the 51% rating for Digger on Rotten Tomatoes and do not recommend this movie, mainly because the "let's be different" ideas are stupid, and it is so hard to sit through. As for the acting, some scenes might be a good idea for an acting class somewhere in Hollywood; for the rest of us, run away fast from this two-hour, insane, and incoherent mess.
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