I appear on “CTV News at 11:30” with anchor Andria Case to talk about the music bio “California Schemin’,” the Crave series “American Hostage” and Mikey Madison in “The Social Reckoning.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I sit with NewsTalk 1010 host Jim Richards, sitting in for Deb Hutton on NewsTalk 1010 to talk about a recently uncovered song by John Lennon, a new son for Michael McDonald and I review “The Social Reckoning” and “Run terry Run.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk about the new movies coming to theatres including the Facebook drama “The Social Reckoning” and the documentary “Run Terry Run.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I join the Bell Media Radio Network national night time show “Shane Hewitt and the Night Shift” to talk about the number one movie ever and one of the lowest grossing films of the year. Then I review “The Social Reckoning,” now playing on theatres, and suggest some viral cocktails to enjoy with the movie!
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “The Social Reckoning,” a new legal thriller starring Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White now playing in theatres, a whistleblower leaks secret Facebook internal research. “The firehose of bad information you are injecting into the air supply is becoming jet powered.”
CAST: Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White, Wunmi Mosaku, Betty Gilpin, Billy Magnussen, Bill Burr, Jeremy Strong. Written, co-produced, and directed by Aaron Sorkin.
REVIEW: A companion piece to Sorkin’s 2010 film “The Social Network,” “The Social Reckoning” is based on the 2021 Facebook leak by whistleblower Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison) and Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White).
When Haugen, a data engineer for Facebook, uncovers documents proving the social platform’s executives knew its products were amplifying misinformation, hate and causing body-image issues in teens.
Instead of looking for remedies, however, Facebook’s parent company choses to ignore the research in favor of engagement and growth. “Almost no one outside of Facebook,” Haugen says, “knows what goes on inside Facebook.”
Putting it all on the line, she contacts Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz with data that implicates the company’s billionaire CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong) who fights to suppress the story, now known as the Facebook Files. “I’m an investigative reporter,” says Horwitz, “and that guy and this company are playing an unprecedented role in our lives.”
Just in time for the US midterms comes a movie about how easily voters are manipulated. Unfortunately, the movie’s timely messaging of Facebook’s (now Meta) commodification of outrage, misinformation, cyberbullying and social isolation, feels like old news.
Had the film, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin with cool elegance, been released in 2021 when The Wall Street Journal unleashed the Facebook Files, it may have packed more of a punch. Today, the detrimental effects of social media are known and ingrained, so the blockbuster disclosures of 2021 aren’t dramatically compelling no matter how many times Sorkin cuts to intense footage of the storming of the United States Capitol.
As a result, watching “The Social Reckoning” in 2026 feels like the cinematic equivalent of doom scrolling, two hours of time spent learning nothing new.
Direction wise, the movie is straightforward and solid, reminiscent of prestige television from the 1990s, long before Facebook drained eyes away from the boob tube. It’s graceful, if a little dull, missing the paranoid vibe that made investigative movies like “All the President’s Men” and “The Parallax View” so compelling.
Of the headliners, Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White and Jeremy Strong, it’s Madison who impresses.
White leaves the chef jacket of “The Bear” behind to hand in a restrained performance as the slow-and-steady Horwitz.
Strong plays Meta Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg as a po-faced robotic villain, the powerful embodiment of free-speech absolutism and profit. His line reading of, “This is a business, Charlie. You know why we don’t fact-check ads: because we don’t have to,” is chilling in its repercussions.
Madison impresses. The external performance of “Anora” has been turned inward as she makes the self-confessed nerdy whistleblower whose actions are driven by idealism, not malevolence, the film’s most persuasive character. “Connecting people, it’s a virtuous mission,” she says. “Something changed.”
Bill Burr also earns a nod as Charlie, an early Facebook investor who becomes one of the few who will speak truth to Zuckerberg’s power. “The firehose of bad information you are injecting into the air supply is becoming jet fuel,” he says.
These performances provide “The Social Reckoning’s” vigor even when the movie takes on the tone of a lecture on profit vs. social harm.
SYNOPSIS: In “Anora,” the Palme d’Or winning film from “The Florida Project” director Sean Baker, now playing in theatres, Brighton Beach sex worker Ani (Mikey Madison) becomes involved with the Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), the son of a Russian oligarch. Their initial transactional relationship quickly blossoms into a whirlwind romance and elopement. Her “Cinderella” story is turned upside down when Vanya’s powerful parents swoop in to force an annulment.
CAST: Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Yura Borisov, Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyan and Aleksei Serebryakov. Written, directed and edited by Sean Baker
REVIEW: Part screwball comedy, part fight for survival, “Anora” is a triumph of controlled chaos. As in his earlier films, “Tangerine,” “The Florida Project” and “Red Rocket,” director Sean Baker keenly observes his characters with empathy and emotion in stories that examine money, class, and power.
But unlike his other movies, “Anora” constantly feels as though it is going to fly off its axis. Every scene, whether broadly comedic or heartbreaking, has a character-based urgency that propels the story. Baker’s ability to keep it all moving forward put me in the mind of watching plate spinning performers on the “Ed Sullivan Show.” It’s a film of remarkable energy and tension; one that keeps a lot of plates spinning without ever allowing the forward momentum of its anti-fairy tale to steamroll its characters.
Mikey Madison, best known to date as the oldest sibling on the sit com “Better Things” and being burned alive in both “Scream (5)” and “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” hands in a career re-defining performance as sex worker Anora a.k.a. Ani. An electric combination of tough-as-nails ferocity, self-assurance, desperation and poignant vulnerability, she is as compelling and charismatic a lead as we’ll see at the movies this year.
The film’s core, an extended set piece involving a city-wide hunt for Ani’s husband recalls the frenetic energy of “After Hours,” but the character building doesn’t stop when the action begins. A second scene-stealer, Yura Borisov as Igor, henchman for the Russian oligarch, emerges with a subtle but deeply felt and deeply comedic performance, tinged with an unexpected sweetness.
“Anora” is one of the best films of the year. An insightfully made look at the wealth divide, with elements of suspense and comedy, it never fails to entertain.
