Wanderings and … wonderings.

Pip: Welcome to Wanderings and … wonderings., where today we ask the eternal question: is anyone actually making good epic cinema anymore, or are we all just suffering together?

Mara: Ben Gould has been watching, and he has thoughts — on Roman spectacle gone wrong, and on biker drama that lost him before the halfway mark. Let's start with the films that aimed for grandeur.

Epic Films And Historical Spectacle

Pip: Two films, two attempts at the kind of sweeping historical cinema that used to mean something — and both apparently fell apart before they even got going.

Mara: The Megalopolis review sets the tone early. The setup is a film based on the Catilinarian conspiracy, and the verdict is blunt: "Some of the images here catch the eye, but they never coalesce into anything resembling a coherent narrative."

Pip: So you have one of the most dramatic political episodes in Roman history — Cicero, Catiline, the fate of the Republic — and the film somehow drains it of all intrigue, political stakes, and, notably, any actual Cicero.

Mara: The characters, as the post puts it, "have arguments you can't even connect with or understand; they bicker for the director's benefit." It ran 56 minutes before the television was turned off. The closing line is: "Life is too short for this shite."

Pip: Fifty-six minutes is generous, frankly. That is a man trying his best.

Mara: Gladiator II gets even shorter shrift. That post calls it "pathetically, absolutely futile cinema" and argues it is essentially a verbatim copy of the first film, with a siege sequence lifted from Game of Thrones and a scene that mirrors the famous Ben Hur chariot moment — except here it just reads as cynical recycling.

Pip: The post's question — "Why does anyone still have dealings with this director?" — is not rhetorical.

Mara: It really isn't. Both reviews land on the same underlying frustration: these are films with resources, historical material, and recognizable talent, and they squander all of it on spectacle that never earns its scale.

Pip: From ancient Rome to open American highways — though the road ahead is equally bumpy.

Modern Biker Drama

Mara: The Bikeriders promised atmosphere and a committed Tom Hardy accent. The post is direct about what derailed it: "My ears are in pain. I hate folk on motorcycles."

Pip: That is a sentence that contains an entire film review.

Mara: The lead performance is described as "Marge Simpson scraped down a blackboard with a bit of Karen Hill from Goodfellas chucked in the vernacular mix" — and that was enough to end the viewing at thirty minutes. Hardy and Michael Shannon together, and it still couldn't hold.

Pip: When the scenery is the most praised element, and the recommendation is to remove the story, the bikes, and the accents, you're left with a landscape documentary. Which might actually be an improvement.

Pip: So: Roman conspiracies without intrigue, sequels without purpose, biker films without listenable dialogue. The bar is apparently on the floor.

Mara: And yet someone keeps making these. Next time, maybe something clears it.

This was fucking horrible! With an exclamation mark.

What is with this screenwriter’s obsession with a tracking camera fixated on high-velocity corridor conversations between wee sycophantic dweebs scurrying behind an authority figure? It’s pathetic. As is the film, which is pure Democratic propaganda and essentially a barely concealed Republican hit job.

I do find it amusing how it emanates from the Clinton era, a way for the filmmakers to back their peerless man. It’s right before or during his extramarital … shenanigans.

Clearly, this is a picture made by and for sleazebags.

Pip: Welcome to Wanderings and … wonderings. — where the watch history is eclectic and the verdicts are not gentle.

Mara: Ben Gould has been revisiting some films that range from star-powered spectacles to stylized provocations to outright prestige disasters. Today we're covering all of that territory.

Pip: Let's start with the movies that exist mainly to remind you how famous their stars are.

Overblown Star Vehicles

Mara: The question here is simple: what happens when a film's entire reason for existing is its cast's celebrity?

Pip: The review of Mr. and Mrs. Smith doesn't leave much room for interpretation — "its purpose is to show the audience how successful and beautiful the two leads are."

Mara: Which means the film has nothing else going on. No story worth following, no reason to keep watching beyond the faces on screen.

Pip: Junior gets the same treatment — described as one of the flattest movies around, with a pregnancy premise that apparently never locates a single actual joke. Arnie carrying a child: funnier in the poster than in the runtime.

Mara: And that's the pattern — spectacle over substance, star power filling the space where a film should be. Which leads us somewhere even louder.

Stylized Chaos And Excess

Pip: Natural Born Killers is a film that wants to condemn media violence — and the review calls it out for doing the opposite.

Mara: Directly: it "appears to aim to be a condemnation of mass media and its obsession with lurid violence, yet luxuriates in the mayhem committed by our murderous couple."

Pip: So the critique eats itself. The style is the problem it's pretending to diagnose.

Mara: It's placed among Oliver Stone's worst — though not quite at the bottom, which Alexander apparently still occupies. The excess here isn't thrilling; it's just noise. And noise, it turns out, can also wear a prestige budget.

Scathing Takes On Prestige Flops

Pip: The Bonfire of the Vanities is a film with a famous source, a famous director, and a famous cast — and the review's verdict is that none of that saved it.

Mara: The line that lands hardest: "I thought Brian De Palma was meant to engulf daft, badly scripted projects with his patented style; whatever happened, the movie is that of visual neglect, as anonymous as the work of the next hack."

Pip: That's a significant charge. De Palma's whole reputation rests on style overwhelming material — and here the style apparently didn't show up either.

Mara: The review asks whether it was satire, whether it was meant to be funny, whether there was any underlying point at all. It finds no answers. Tom Hanks is specifically named as awful. The final word is simply "Rubbish."

Pip: There's something almost impressive about a film that fails to be anything — not even coherently bad. Just absent.

Mara: It's the prestige flop in its purest form: the reputation, the budget, the talent on paper, and then nothing on screen that justifies any of it.

Pip: Bad movies, it turns out, fail in remarkably consistent ways — vanity, incoherence, or just not turning up.

Mara: More films, more verdicts. We'll be back with whatever's next on the watchlist.

It’s not funny, not clever, and has but one reason to exist, and that is Steve Stifler in a mullet.

Shite.

Bye for now.

Pip: Welcome to Wanderings and … wonderings. — where one person’s film opinions arrive with the confidence of a final verdict and the brevity of a Post-it note.

Mara: Ben Gould has been watching, and he has thoughts — on a casino sleazeball who owns every scene he touches, a poker film that apparently tests the limits of human endurance, and a long-delayed comedy sequel coasting on goodwill. Let’s start with the gambling and crime films.

Lester Diamond, Rounders, and the Luck of the Draw

Pip: The question here is what makes a crime film actually work — and whether it’s the world, the story, or just one memorably repellent human being on screen for ten minutes.

Mara: The post on Lester Diamond makes the case plainly: “James Woods is a treat and we should be grateful to him.”

Pip: That’s the whole argument, really. A supporting character with a fraction of the screen time walks away with the film’s most lasting impression. The pimp outlasts the plot.

Mara: The post describes Woods as “effortlessly creating one of the sleaziest, slimiest characters ever put on celluloid” — a mere ten minutes that apparently cements an acting legacy. That’s a strong claim, but the writing doesn’t hedge it.

Pip: Ten minutes of screen time, a lifetime of residual disgust. Some actors just know how to leave a stain.

Mara: The Rounders post lands at the opposite end of the spectrum entirely. Where Casino delivers Lester Diamond, Rounders delivers — according to the post — repetition, a tedious voice-over, and poker somehow rendered inert.

Pip: The review calls it “a boring waste of boring time.” The word boring appears so many times it starts to feel like a formal critical methodology.

Mara: Seven times, by my count. The post also singles out Matt Damon’s performance, notes that Ed Norton’s arrival promises relief and doesn’t deliver it, and ends with the line “I hated this fucking boring slog.” No ambiguity there.

Pip: So: one film gives you James Woods chewing scenery for ten glorious minutes. The other gives you two hours of poker and a voice-over. The casino wins. Speaking of things coasting on past glory —

The Unnecessary Sequel Nobody Asked For (But Here We Are)

Pip: Happy Gilmore 2 is the kind of film that exists because enough time passed and someone said yes. The post calls it “the type of entirely unnecessary sequel you’d expect after a 30-year hiatus.”

Mara: The verdict is measured: “It’s okay for what it is — hit and miss, breezy enough for an hour but far too draining once the physical comedy reaches breaking point in its repetition.” The post also notes a John Daly cameo, which prompted genuine surprise that he is still alive.

Pip: Ten minutes of screen time, a sequel nobody needed, and a poker film that broke a man’s spirit. The range is impressive.

Mara: Same territory next time — what sticks, what doesn’t, and why it matters.