Yockey Stick: "Venus," reviewed.

Regina Aquino and Kimberly GIlbert in Venus. (Cameron Whitman)

Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company was one my favorite DC stage, a position it lost after co-cofounder Howard Shalwitz stepped down as its longtime artistic director for reasons too varied to reiterate here. My City Cast DC review of Venus, Woolly’s refreshingly weird but not-all-there season-opener from screenwriter Steve Yockey, addresses it.

Predator, Catch Thyself: "Primetime," reviewed.

The lurid, unsettling film Oppenheim has made dramatizing all of this isn’t a biopic, though Robert Pattinson’s flashy performance as Hansen is the basis of its promotional campaign. As demonstrated by the clipped, nasal line readings he gives of the catch phrases Hansen drops on his prey—“You see how this looks, right?” “Why don’t you have a seat right there?”—Pattinson is not attempting naturalistic mimicry of Hansen (who has condemned the movie, unsurprisingly), or of any human creature. The English star is giving us an Oily American even more obviously craven than the one he played in The Odyssey, wherein he and Tom Holland both affected American accents to play Bronze Age Greeks because that’s the mode of the film.

My Washington City Paper review of documentarian Lance Oppenheim’s feature debut Primetime is here.

Signature's "Merrily We Roll Along" is a delight from end to beginning

Jason Gotay, Melanie Field, and Jake Loewenthal as Frank, Mary, and Charley. (Christopher Mueller) 

When Stephen Sondheim died the day after Thanksgiving five years ago, he was 91 years old. That grand run wasn’t quite long enough for him to see Merrily We Roll Along, the 1981 musical that had stood for decades as the most destructive and demoralizing failure of his brilliant career, rehabilitated into a critically-adored, multi-Tony Award-winning, and profitable revival in 2023. It’s that version that has found its way today to Signature Theatre, the Sondheim specialists in Arlington, Virginia.

My CityCast DC review of Signature’s fine Merrily We Roll Along is here.

Movie Death Match: "The Last Waltz" v. "Stop Making Sense"

It Makes No Difference who wins: Hearing rock critic par excellence Steven Hyden assert the supremacy of The Last Waltz against Bright Wall / Dark Room editor Elizabeth Cantwell’s eloquent defense of Stop Making Sense is a Once in a Lifetime rhetorical contest. Listen below.

"Onslaught," reviewed.

Adria Arjona leaves it all on the field in Onslaught. (A24)

I haven’t seen The Guest, director Adam Wingard’s prior misused-veteran flick, but I responded, up to a point, to the Reagan-era charms of Onslaught. My Washington City Paper review is here.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: "The Dog Stars"

Glen, Aisha, and I were all fairly unmoved by Ridley Scott’s latest, The Dog Stars, which I wrote about last week. But it disappointed each of us in a slightly different way. Hear the Pop Culture Happy Hour episode below.

Tim Curry 1946-2026

Tim Curry and Ian McKellen in Amadeus in 1981. The show warmed for its Broadway turn with a stint at the National Theatre here in DC in November 1980.

I wrote up a little history of Tim Curry’s DC stage performances for City Cast DC.

I Have Bad News About the Dog Star of "The Dog Stars"

A boy (Jacob Elordi) and his dog and his plane. (Fabio Lovino)

We’re left wondering why Scott wanted to make this movie. His contemporaries who’re still working have turned their attention in recent years to long-contemplated dream projects and/or summations of their guiding obsessions: Steven Spielberg, 79, waited for his parents to die to make The Fabelmans, then returned to his seminal subject of extraterrestrial ambassadors this year with Disclosure Day. Francis Ford Coppola, 87, had completed the first draft of his 2024 opus Megalopolis in 1984, four decades before the movie hit theaters. Michael Mann, 83, spent decades trying to get the already-all-but-forgotten 2023 biopic Ferrari made. He’s about to start shooting Heat 2, a sequel to the 1995 masterpiece that he’d already previewed back then with a 1989 made-for-TV version and elements of the Mann-produced NBC shows Miami Vice and Crime Story.

My Washington City Paper review of the 88-year-old Sir Ridley Scott’s latest is here.