Baldywood: A NEW feature in "What Should I Stream Tonight?" // "Reddit? Did It!" // Actor Redundancy of the Week // Reader feedback

"Remember, his taste sucks..."

Oct 03, 2025

Hello! And welcome to “Hooray for Baldywood.”

Let’s start off with a roundup of movie-related items and musings:

KTLA news in Los Angeles invited me on last week to talk about Robert Redford: His life, his legacy and his movies. In true news fashion, they gave me about 11 minutes notice before the camera started rolling. Thankfully I had a clean shirt to throw on! Here’s the segment (and a big thanks to KTLA for having me):

I had the misfortune of recently watching 2019’s “Cats,” and while it is easily among the worst movies I’ve ever seen, it did provide me with this week’s Actor Redundancy (see below). So it wasn’t a total waste of two hours! Memory…

“One Battle After Another” personal update: It’s been a week since I’ve seen Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, and I’m happy to report that - as I hoped in my review from last week’s edition - my affection for the movie has grown significantly! Especially the humor; it’s one of the funniest (and best) movies of the year. “I’ve had a few…”

On to this week’s newsletter…

In this edition:

“What should I stream tonight?”
“Reddit? Did it!”
Actor Redundancy of the Week
Reader feedback

Let’s get started!

“What should I stream tonight?”

I’m glad you asked!

I want a small movie with a big star (that also happens to be very funny): “I Love You, Phillip Morris”

It’s time to debut a new feature for my streaming picks: “Big Star, Small Movie.” And they don’t get much bigger than Jim Carrey in 2009, when he starred in a little movie called “I Love You, Phillip Morris.” Ewan McGregor co-stars as the titular Phillip Morris. At this point, you may be asking, “Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor? How have I never heard about this movie?” It could be because Carrey plays Steve, the man in love with Phillip Morris.

Yes, Jim Carrey’s Steve is a closeted gay man, living a double life as a dutiful church-going family man and a philandering homosexual, engaging in multiple affairs with other men. Eventually, he gets found out, moves to Miami, and starts to con people out of their money. You know, as a side hustle. His life of crime isn’t too sophisticated, however, and he soon gets caught and sent to prison, where he meets and falls in love with fellow inmate Phillip Morris.

Based on a true story, “I Love You, Phillip Morris” is weird, wacky, funny, subversive, and ultimately kind of sweet. Sadly, after the movie debuted at Sundance in 2009. it was barely released in the US. The film grossed $200,000 in its first week and just $2 million overall. Compare that to the top movie that year, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” which made $200 million in its first week and $400 million in total. Very different movies, of course, but indicative of the meek performance of “I Love You, Phillip Morris.” Why? The film had a messy and prolonged odyssey to find a distributor, which some speculate was due to the explicit gay content. We’ll likely never know, but “I Love You, Phillip Morris” is a quirky gem that should be more known.

“I Love You, Phillip Morris” is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

I want a wholesome little movie about a wholesome little farm: “The Biggest Little Farm”

In 2010, fed up with the hustle and bustle of life in big-city LA, married couple John and Molly Chester bought a farm and moved there, hoping to bring plant and animal life to a plot of land that is… “in disrepair.” They go through the obvious ups and downs: insect infestations, predators, wildfires. Yet they remain committed to “biodiversity” - the idea that a farm doesn’t have to produce just one thing (eggs, apples, almonds, etc) and can instead have a diverse population of flora and fauna, each thriving symbiotically side-by-side.

“The Biggest Little Farm” is just so darn charming and wholesome. It’s easy to root for Molly and John (who directs), and their farm animals are adorable. The cinematography is stunning; the film is wall-to-wall slow-motion glamour shots of rolling hills, feeding hummingbirds, crawling insects and everything else you could imagine at a working farm. It’s rated PG, so enjoy it with the whole family.

“The Biggest Little Farm” is streaming on HBO and Kanopy.

“Reddit? Did it!”

I love to browse movie forums on Reddit. Recently, a topic was posted to r/MovieCritic that asked, “Who Do You Think Is Greatest Antihero In Cinema History?” Great topic! So great, in fact, that we did it on my podcast The Film Vault in 2012, in an episode titled “Top 5 Antiheroes.” My list*:

Daniel Plainview - There Will Be Blood (2007)
The Driver - Drive (2011)
Patrick Bateman - American Psycho (2000)
Mark Zuckerberg - The Social Network (2010)
Borat - Borat (2006)

*Looks like I avoided some obvious choices (Han Solo, Captain Jack Sparrow) in favor of some less-celebrated antiheroes.

What movie are YOU ashamed that you haven’t seen yet? No judgement!

Actor Redundancy of the Week:

Actor redundancies were first brought to my attention by my former co-worker and all-around swell fella Dave Dameshek, who delighted whenever an actor does the same oddly-specific thing in two separate, non-related movies. Such as…

Idris Elba wears yellow-tinted contact lenses to portray a humanoid… thing with strange headwear in two movies: “Thor” (and its sequels) and “Cats.”

Isn’t that amazing?? Click “Share” to post this to social media and blow people’s minds:

Reader feedback

Did you know that “feedback” is the only (normal) word in the English language that contains the first six letters of the alphabet (a, b, c, d, e and f)? Now that you know, let’s see what the readers have to say!

Tom S. Tweeted me his thoughts on “One Battle After Another” and Paul Thomas Anderson in general:

“I have a hard time with PTA films because his characters are either pathetic or despicable.”

Agreed, but that’s what makes them special and memorable! Daniel Plainview, Barry Egan, Scotty J, Quiz Kid Donnie Smith, Frank TJ Mackey, Jimmy Gator, Reed Rothchild, Amber Waves, Brock Landers, The Colonel, Jack Horner, The Mattress Man, Eli Sunday, and now Sergio San Carlos, Bob Ferguson and Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw will occupy space in my heart and mind forever.

(These were all done from memory, BTW. I only had to look up Eli’s last name, which I mistakenly thought was “Holiday.” That’s how much I love these characters.)

Hooray for Baldywood!

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