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Bad Match [Review]

If you’re on the market for a significant other, a big fear is a terribly awkward first date. Long pauses of silence filled with the mashing of food between your teeth as you try to make eye contact with the waiter to hurriedly bring the check is far from the movie-esque experience we’re all wanting. Thanks to the internet and apps like Tinder, finding yourself in one of these awkward dates is easier than ever. However, BAD MATCH takes your dating fears and turns it up to an irrational 11.

At the core of BAD MATCH , you have a stereotypical Douchey Dude Bro Harris (Jack Cutmore-Scott) one-night-standing a few ladies before swiping right on a stereotypical clingy Riley (Lili Simmons). There’s some techno-foolery happening behind the scenes, essentially ruining Harris’ career and life, but by the end, Riley has broken free of her mold while Harris has only fallen deeper into douchebaggery. It also exemplifies the violence women can face at the hands of deranged, irrational man.

BAD MATCH takes your dating fears and turns them up to an irrational 11.

Originally, the trailer left me with tepid expectations, but there were more than a few twists in the story that kept me pleasantly surprised right up until the end. The story plays with your gendered, Hollywood-molded expectations, but then flips those expectations on their head in the last 20 minutes of the movie.

BAD MATCH isn’t a drop-dead gorgeous movie, but it’s not one that’s poorly shot either. There are a few unique shots that writer/director David Chirchirillo uses on more than one occasion—such as the 360-degree panning shot, which is used more than once in quick succession. There’s one continuity error that is nearly impossible to miss, though, having to do with Harris’ bandaged right hand. You won’t miss it.

Cutmore-Scott and Simmons both shine in their respective roles. Which is to say Cutmore-Scott plays a douche really well while Simmons plays the clingy and slightly stalker-like woman in a budding relationship with expert precision. Both Cutmore-Scott and Simmons are supported by a great cast of secondary characters.

… more than a few twists in the story that kept me pleasantly surprised.

There’s one thing I would have liked more of from BAD MATCH —hacking. This was a major part of the trailer, but it only played a minimal role in the overall story. This isn’t a bad thing, at all, because the story clearly made up for it in other ways. However, it would have still been interesting to see what damage could be done to one’s life when you lose control of your online persona and information.

BAD MATCH is a thin veil of today’s modern dating scene. Apps like Tinder (Called Head Over Heels in the movie) and a Facebook-like social network are present in the film. It shows the shallowness that online dating can be. On the surface, BAD MATCH is about a man whose life is ruined after an awful date, but in reality, it’s about the violent dangers women face in today’s dating world—and that is what’s most surprisingly and enjoyable about the movie.

BAD MATCH takes your stereotypical male-female courtship, adds a bit of personal paranoia, and then delivers an unexpected ending after a string of despicable acts.

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Film Review: ‘Bad Match’

A toxic master of the digital hookup gets his comeuppance in a tawdry but watchable low-budget 'Fatal Attraction' for the age of Tinder.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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It’s a sign of how little most movies channel contemporary experience that the manners and habits and attitudes of the age of Tinder have remained a relatively off-screen topic. This past January, the Sundance drama “Newness,” directed by Drake Doremus (it has yet to be released), was a designer soap opera that had a few telling observations to make about what it feels like to live your life in a digital meat market. As a movie, though, it didn’t quite take hold. The new pulp thriller “ Bad Match ” is darker, grimier, and more entertaining. Written and directed by David Chirchirillo, who co-wrote the scurrilous violent hipster comedy “Cheap Thrills” (2013), the movie is “Fatal Attraction” for the age of the revolving-door hook-up, and in its fevered low-budget way it’s just clever enough to do what it sets out to do. It gives toxic masculinity its just desserts.

Jack Cutmore-Scott, who suggests a randier version of the young Greg Kinnear, plays Harris, a sleazy-smart young L.A. dickwad. He works for an advertising agency, and when he’s not soaking up his time with murder-fantasy video games he’s usually on a hook-up app, where he’ll swipe on 50 women’s photos a day, playing the percentages. He generally winds up in bed with one of them a few hours after they’ve met. Then he sneaks away, never to be seen again, ready to dive back into the shopping mall of sex.

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In movies, the cad who discards women as quickly as he finds them is an old trope (if Michael Caine’s Alfie had Tinder, he would have been this dude). But what gives “Bad Match” its twinge of originality is the way that Harris uses technology to seal himself inside an impenetrable bubble of solipsistic male coolness. Even on a date, where his opening gambit is to predict what drink the girl he just met is going to order, he’s staring at her through an imaginary computer screen.

Then he meets Riley (Lili Simmons), a willowy and confident 21-year-old student who seems just as avid in her gullibility as the others, until she fastens onto Harris and won’t let go. She keeps texting, calling, imploring. Is she stalking him? Or is the stalking in the eye of the beholder with the cold shoulder?

Thirty years on, “Fatal Attraction” still looms as a mythical thriller of feminine power. Yes, the Glenn Close character was “crazy,” but she stood in for all the women who ever thought, in the years after the sexual revolution, “I am not just going to be discarded!”

In “Bad Match,” Lili Simmons plays Riley in the same vein, as a spurned object of desire who will lie, manipulate, and shoot over the edge of acceptable behavior, but only to shove her humanity in Harris’ face. She fakes a suicide attempt (a loathsome thing to do — but Harris’ indifferent response is even worse), and by the time she begins to mess with his Twitter account, we’re in a brave new world of payback. Jack Cutmore-Scott, in a strong performance, makes Harris a supremely confident dude coming apart at the seams. When the police knock at his door, and we know in our bones what they’re looking for, the film turns into a cautionary pulp pressure cooker: Live by the digital gaze, die by the digital gaze.

There’s a moment where Riley has snuck into Harris’ apartment and is making a surprise dinner for him, and when Harris discovers her, she’s holding a kitchen knife. Shades of “Fatal Attraction” — but more than that, shades of every cheap thriller that ever introduced a psychological situation only to turn it into something action-y and boring. “Bad Match” often feels like it could become that kind of “ride,” but it never does. It’s something a shade or two more interesting: a scuzzy bro nightmare.

Reviewed on-line, November 3, 2017. MPAA Rating: Not rated. Running time: 83 MIN.

• Production: An Orion Pictures, Gravitas Ventures release of a BoulderLight Pictures, MM2 Entertainment release. Producers: J.D. Lifshitz, Raphael Margules. Executive producer: Jo Henriquez. Director, screenplay: David Chirchirillo. Camera (color, widescreen): Ed Wu. Editor: Michael Block.
• With: Jack Cutmore-Scott, Lili Simmons, Brandon Scott, Chase Williamson, Christine Donlon, Noureen DeWulf, Kahyun Kim.

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Review: ‘Bad Match’ unleashes a fatal attraction for the Tinder set

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“Fatal Attraction” provides the obvious inspiration for writer-director David Chirchirillo’s revenge thriller “Bad Match,” which updates the classic ’80s anti-romance for the Tinder age. Like its predecessor, at its best “Bad Match” takes the common misunderstandings and diverging expectations of dating and sex and turns them into all-too-relatable nightmares.

Jack Cutmore-Scott plays Harris, a commitment-phobic tech-bro who uses his favorite hook-up app to bed a different woman almost every night — always assuming his partners are just as interested in “keeping it casual.” Lili Simmons plays Riley, a knockout who obsessively texts Harris after their one-night-stand, certain she’s too sexy for him to reject.

Chirchirillo smartly refuses to clarify whether Riley’s unhinged or whether she’s just incapable of reading Harris’s cues that he’d rather be left alone. Even after Harris begins to suffer what appears to be an aggressive campaign to ruin his life — prompting him to lash out at Riley — “Bad Match” leaves open the possibility that he’s grossly misreading the situation.

The movie runs out of places to go after an hour and descends into a violent standoff that’s stylishly shot but narratively pat. (To be fair, “Fatal Attraction” had the same problem.)

Still, thanks to good performances by Cutmore-Scott and Simmons — and good writing by Chirchirillo — “Bad Match” effectively explores the everyday horror that comes from people treating their fellow human beings as interchangeable playthings.

-------------

Running time: 1 hour, 23 minutes.

Playing: Laemmle NoHo 7, North Hollywood

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Bad Match (2017)

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[Review] ‘Bad Match’ Is a Fun Ride Through Social Media Hell

Representing social media culture and online interaction in film is especially hard in this cynical day and age. While there have been a few successful depictions of the so-called “millennial lifestyle” in films like Unfriended and The Den , most attempts just come off as cringe-worthy. Luckily for us, David Chirchirillo’s extremely topical Bad Match is not only a believable take on the dark side of modern dating, but also a surprisingly effective thriller in its own right.

Starring Jack Cutmore-Scott as Harris, Bad Match chronicles a serial dater’s downward spiral as the remarkably clingy Riley, played by Lili Simmons, refuses to leave his life after a one-night stand. Things escalate as hacked social media accounts and anonymous accusations push Harris to the limits of his sanity, with the authorities refusing to believe that a seemingly normal girl could be behind this despicable online plot.

Bad Match may not be a traditional horror movie, but the thought of having your life ruined by just a few simple clicks is downright terrifying in this digital age. Though the film often uses fake social media apps and websites in an effort to avoid any possible legal issues, there’s an honesty behind the storytelling that makes Harris’ unfortunate troubles seem completely believable.

While the setup does sound pretty dire, the film has a lot of fun with the premise, cleverly juxtaposing comedy and tragedy in a unique balancing act. The movie is ultimately an unexpectedly humorous commentary on the impact that the internet can have on our daily lives. Thankfully, the story never gets preachy, with the savvy script acting as a cautionary tale without actively condemning anyone.

You can tell that the filmmakers relate to the subject matter, or have at the very least done their homework, as potentially embarrassing references to millennial culture (such as Tinder or Sonic the Hedgehog fan-art) are subtly woven into the story and don’t detract from the experience.

A flawed yet likable main character also helps sell the illusion, as Cutmore-Scott makes Harris a sympathetic figure throughout his struggles, despite sometimes acting like a jerk. Simmons is also incredibly watchable as Riley, as there’s a constant feeling that there’s more going on with her than meets the eye.

Despite everything it does right, Bad Match still has its fair share of flaws. There are a few scenes that tend to drag, with some disposable side characters and dialogue, and quite a few story-beats seem to be recycled from successful thrillers of the past. I feel that the film could have been a genuine classic if it had it gone the extra mile with its premise instead of relying on well-worn tropes. Either way, it’s still a fun ride, even if the end result is a little tame.

However, potential viewers may be divided by the ending, which could be interpreted as either exceptionally clever or a contrived mess depending on who’s watching. Personally, I think the final moments complemented the rest of the film, though I understand why some viewers wouldn’t be completely satisfied.

In the end, Bad Match is an entertaining thriller that manages to comment on pertinent social issues without coming off as self-righteous or feeling out of touch. It may not be the most original flick out there, but it’s certainly worth a watch, and will definitely leave you feeling suspicious of online dating for quite some time.

Bad Match will be available in limited theaters and on VOD platforms November 3rd!

Born Brazilian, raised Canadian, Luiz is a writer and Film student that spends most of his time watching movies and subsequently complaining about them.

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‘Bad Match’ On Netflix Is ‘Fatal Attraction’ For The Tinder Generation

Where to Stream:

• Bad Match (2017)

We’ve all had nightmarish dates; bad conversation, missed signals, and all-around lack of chemistry can make for some meet-uglies. Online dating has perhaps revolutionized the good date, the bad date, and the one-night stand – and it’s also made the Tinder horror story mainstream. Such a horror story is explored in  Bad Match , a thriller written and directed by David Chirchirillo now streaming on Netflix .

The influences of  Fatal Attraction   on  Bad Match  are pretty obvious from the get-go; Harris, a no-strings-attached kinda sleazeball ( Deception ‘s Jack Cutmore-Scott ) has what he assumes to be a one-night stand with a knockout, confident 21-year-old student named Riley (Lili Simmons) and she appears to become obsessed with him. After Harris (predictably) gets caught trying to dodge Riley and winds up blowing her off, she seemingly embarks on a quest to ruin is life by any means possible, causing him to lose his job and eventually wind up in an incredibly high-stakes legal situation.  But in this flick, not everything is as it seems – and that’s what makes it so gripping.

While  Bad Match  could easily fall victim to clichés and paint things in black-and-white, Chirchirillo instead keeps us in a little bit of a grey area, refusing to relegate Riley to the tired “crazy bitch” box. Harris slowly devolves into a mess of a man, making us wonder why we even rooted for him in the first place. Who can we trust? Where will this go? Will we ever be able to go on Tinder again without thinking about this movie? All these things (and more!) may or may not be revealed by the time  Bad Match  wraps up.

Bad Match  is surprisingly clever, acting simultaneously as an effective thriller and a smart exploration of toxic masculinity and technology’s effects on relationships and identity. There are patches of dialogue that feel forced and bits that feel a tad overplayed, but the flick as a whole works extremely well, subverting expectations and elevating itself beyond similar fare.  Bad Match  is best entered fairly blindly, so we won’t give away any big spoilers here, but prepare yourself for total insanity – and some seriously shocking twists and turns. No matter how you feel about the outcome, you’ll definitely think before you swipe next time.

Stream  Bad Match  on Netflix

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Bad Match | A queasily effective Fatal Attraction for the era of swiping right

Dating hell.

A louche LA Casanova gets his comeuppance in the low-budget thriller Bad Match , a Fatal Attraction for the era of swiping right from writer-director David Chirchirillo, screenwriter of 2013’s darkly comic fable Cheap Thrills . Jack Cutmore-Scott’s caddish protagonist, Harris, is a master of online dating and he only goes in for one-night stands.

Yet when his latest hook-up proves more than usually clingy, his efforts to shake her off send his life into a tailspin. Lili Simmons’ flaky stalker Riley may look like an incipient bunny boiler, but is Harris the one who is really unhinged?

Bad Match lacks the ferocious grip of Cheap Thrills but its anxious depiction of modern dating still proves queasily effective.

Certificate 15. Runtime 80 mins. Director David Chirchirillo

Available on DVD & Digital from Precision Pictures.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj5yEnhuUgk

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Bad Match (2017)

Genre: thriller, duration: 90 minuten, alternative title: bad match, country: united states / singapore, directed by: david chirchirillo, stars: jack cutmore-scott , lili simmons and noureen dewulf, imdb score: 5,6  (4.820), releasedate: 25 august 2017.

Bad Match plot

"Beware of love at first swipe." The life of Harris, an Internet-dating playboy, changes when he meets the woman Riley online. After a one-night stand, she thinks she's his girlfriend, and because she can't handle rejection, threats soon follow. He gets into trouble at work and with the police.

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Chase Williamson

Noureen DeWulf

Terri Webster

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Brandon Scott

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• 'Miami Connection'
• 'Road House'
• 'Showgirls'
• 'Irish Wish'

Bad movies can be an art form. Sometimes you are in the mood to watch a challenging biopic or a depressing documentary, but other days you want nothing more than to turn off your brain and turn on a movie so bad you can hardly believe it was ever greenlit. Oh, the sweet power in daring to be the worst.

'Miami Connection' (1987)

This indie martial-arts flick was a total flop on initial release and remained unseen for decades — until Drafthouse Films restored it in 2012. Inevitably, "Miami Connection" became an underground cult favorite. "The plot centers on a tae kwon do-themed synth-rock band called Dragon Sound and the group's 10-fisted battle against an evil Florida empire of cocaine-dealing motorcycle ninjas," said Zack Carlson at Wired . "Now, ask yourself why your eyebrows just leaped up when you read that sentence. Because it sounds bad? No. Because it sounds incredible."

'Road House' (1989)

"Road House," the story of a tough guy hired to clean up a rowdy roadside bar, was recently remade starring Jake Gyllenhaal in Patrick Swayze's stead. But the new version fails to "capture the B-movie spirit of the original," said NPR . The 1989 action landmark is still beloved for its colorful characters, campy violence and incessant onslaught of face punches. "It's dumb and satisfying, a straight-no-chaser shot of sex and violence," NPR added. 

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'Troll 2' (1990)

This low-budget lark follows a family vacationing in a small town called Nilbog (goblin spelled backwards), where they discover the inhabitants are man-eating monsters. The actors are all non-professionals who do everything in their power to recite lines as robotically as possible. ("Poor Darren Ewing's elongated 'Oh My God !' may be the film's most famous crime against acting," said SyFy.com .) Director Claudio Fragrasso and his Italian film crew spoke little English, and the American cast appears noticeably confused. There is no "Troll" preceding this film; it emerges, inexplicably, as a sequel. There are also no trolls. 

'Showgirls' (1995)

Paul Verhoeven's erotic thriller is a camp- and sequin-infused, chaotic romp. It follows the transformation of Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley), a Las Vegas stripper on a quest to become a star, and received a record 13 Razzie Awards nominations. Many kids grew up watching the NC-17 melodrama on basic cable, where floating bras were drawn over the topless actresses. The film has earned cult status due to its "big budget yet inherently trashy premise, quotably absurd dialogue ridiculous characters … [and] lavish musical numbers," said The Guardian .

'The Room' (2003)

Tommy Wiseau's "The Room" is perhaps the most infamous movie on this list. In a true auteur effort, Wiseau wrote, directed and starred in the project that "spawned seemingly endless viewings at midnight showings around the world, where fans quote the film's garbled script by heart," said Vox. To put it on an even higher pedestal: "It is one of the most important films of the decade," Ross Morin, a professor of film studies, said to Entertainment Weekly . "'The Room' is the 'Citizen Kane' of bad movies."

'2012' (2009)

"2012" was released after an online panic arose over the Mayan calendar's alleged end of the world prediction date of December 21, 2012. It was ultimately nonsense, but disaster master Roland Emmerich took that fear and ran with it, directing an epic apocalypse blockbuster full of improbable moments like a tsunami consuming the entire planet and a limousine driving through an active earthquake unscathed. "Like all the best disaster movies, it's funniest at its most hysterical," said Roger Ebert . "This one ends the world, stomps on it, grinds it up and spits it out."

'Cats' (2019)

The popularity of Andrew Lloyd Webber 's Broadway musical "Cats" has always been mysterious, but even more mysterious is why director Tom Hooper thought it would make a good film. Instead of putting distinguished actors Sir Ian McKellen and Dame Judi Dench in cat costumes, Hooper employed the use of skin-crawlingly creepy special effects to create "transmogrified CGI human-cat hybrids," said The Guardian . The result is somewhere between a waking nightmare and an acid trip, which plenty of viewers embraced . "Watching 'Cats' is like a descent into madness," said a Collider review.

'Irish Wish' (2024)

Lindsay Lohan rose to fame as a child star, oscillating between two roles in "The Parent Trap" with aplomb. She then disappeared from the big screen for many years, before finally reemerging to star in Netflix holiday projects. 2022's "Falling for Christmas" marked her first role in a major production in over a decade, and this year's March release — tied vaguely to St. Patrick's Day — continued the pattern. The film is so bland and unconvincing, it's almost hallucinatory. "Irish Wish" is a "crypto-fascist work of art cluttered with … dialogue that could have only been written by a malevolently programmed artificial intelligence," said Vulture . Who wouldn't want to watch that?

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Anya Jaremko-Greenwold has worked as a story editor at The Week since 2024. She previously worked at FLOOD Magazine, Woman's World, First for Women, DGO Magazine and BOMB Magazine. Anya's culture writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Jezebel, Vice and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. 

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Movie Review: Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt are great fun in ‘The Fall Guy’

The Associated Press

April 30, 2024, 1:35 PM

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One of the worst movie sins is when a comedy fails to at least match the natural charisma of its stars. Not all actors are capable of being effortlessly witty without a tightly crafted script and some excellent direction and editing. But Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt seem, at least from afar, adept at that game. Just look at their charming press tour for “ The Fall Guy .” Theirs is the kind of fun banter that can be a little worrisome — what if their riffing is better than the movie?

It comes as a great relief, then, that “ The Fall Guy ” lives up to its promise. Here is a delightful blend of action, comedy and romance that will make the audience feel like a Hollywood insider for a few hours (although there are perhaps one too many jokes about Comic-Con and Hall H).

Loosely based on the 1980s Lee Majors television series about a stuntman who made some extra cash on the side bounty hunting, Gosling takes up the mantle of said stunt guy, Colt Seavers.

Colt is a workaday stunt performer and longtime go-to for a major movie star, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). Tom is the kind deeply egotistical and self-conscious A-lister who tells everyone he does his own stunts and worries out loud about Colt’s jawline being distractingly softer than his. I think the word potato is thrown around as a descriptor. Taylor-Johnson has quite a bit of fun playing up all his eccentricities that you hope, and fear, are at least somewhat inspired by real horror stories of stars behaving badly.

The film comes from director David Leitch, the Brad Pitt stuntman and stunt coordinator who helped bring “John Wick” to the world and directed “Atomic Blonde” and “Bullet Train.” He’s a guy who not only has the vision and know-how to bring the best in stunts to films and make them pop, but also has a vested interest in putting them in the spotlight. Forget the Oscar, how about just any acknowledgement? Perhaps “The Fall Guy” is just one tiny step on the path to making audiences more aware of some of the behind-the-scenes people who really make movies better and risk it all to do so.

It’s revealing that the movie starts with Colt suffering a terrible injury on a set. The stunt that goes wrong is one he’s just done and doesn’t seem remotely nervous about. The film cuts to his recovery and semi-reclusive retirement until he gets a call from Tom’s producer Gail (a delightfully over-the-top Hannah Waddingham) begging Colt to come back for a new film. They need him, she pleads, as does his longtime crush Jody (Emily Blunt) who is making her directorial debut. She waits to inform him that Tom is missing and he’s the one who has to find him. On the quest, Colt encounters tough-guy goons, enablers, a sword-wielding actress, and a dead body on ice that all lead up to something big and rotten. And like a selfless stunt guy, he does it all out of sight of Jody – trying his best to save her movie without giving her something extra to worry about. Nothing about it is particularly plausible, but it’s not hard to get on board for the ride and much of that is because of Gosling.

While he’s not quite underappreciated for his comedic timing, especially after “Barbie,” it’s fun to get to see him really embrace and lean into the goofiness whether it’s crying and singing along to Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well” or quoting movie lines to his stunt coordinator pal (Winston Duke, always a good addition) in the midst of an actual fight.

There is something very juvenile and sweet about Jody and Colt’s will-they-won’t-they romance, with its mix of attraction, banter, misunderstandings and hurt feelings. It was a genius stroke to cast these two opposite each other and it leaves you wanting more scenes with the two.

Working with a script from Drew Pearce (“Hobbs & Shaw”), Leitch packs the film with wall-to wall action, both the film’s movie sets and in its real world. And with the self-referential humor, the industry jokes and the promise of a little romance, it feels like one of those movies we all complain they don’t make anymore.

“The Fall Guy,” a Universal Picture release in theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for “action and violence, drug content and some strong language.” Running time: 126 minutes. Three stars out of four.

Copyright © 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.

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‘Demolishing democracy’: how much danger does Christian nationalism pose?

Documentary Bad Faith looks at the history of a group trying to affect and corrupt politics under the guise of religion

B ad Faith, a new documentary on the rise of Christian nationalism in the United States, opens with an obvious, ominous scene – the storming of the Capitol on 6 January 2021 – though trained on details drowned out by the deluge of horror and easily recognizable images of chaos. That Paula White, Donald Trump’s faith adviser, led the Save America rally in a prayer to overturn the results for “a free and fair election”. That mixed among Trump flags, American flags and militia symbols were numerous banners with Christian crosses; on the steps of the Capitol, a “JESUS SAVES” sign blares mere feet from “Lock Them UP!”

The movement to overturn the 2020 election for Donald Trump was, as the documentary underscores, inextricable from a certain strain of belief in America as a fundamentally Christian nation, separation of church and state be damned. In fact, as Bad Faith argues, Christian nationalism – a political movement to shape the United States according a certain interpretation of evangelical Christianity , by vote or, more recently, by coercion – was the “galvanizing force” behind the attempted hijacking of the democratic process three years ago.

Bad Faith traces the origins of the movement as a savvy, disproportionately powerful political force, from churches to Republican political operatives to donors, either from conviction or convenience. “I think a lot of Americans have a very difficult time accepting and understanding the fact that such treason, such anti-democratic activity, could be carried out by people who basically look like Sunday school teachers,” Stephen Ujlaki, the film’s director, told the Guardian. By looking back on the half-century of Christian nationalist belief, organizing and action, the events of January 6 no longer seemed shocking, but the logical endpoint of anti-democratic ideals. “It was unmistakable, once you looked in the right place and you listened to what people were saying, and you understood how to decode what they were saying,” said Ujlaki. “Little would you know that when they talk about recreating the kingdom of God on earth, they weren’t talking about something spiritual. They were talking about demolishing democracy so that God, ie themselves, could rule. And for that reason, I call it a conspiracy carried out in broad daylight.”

Though Christian nationalists are quick to invoke the founding fathers, whom they claim were directed by a Christian God, the conspiracy has its modern origins in the 1970s, when the Republican political organizer Paul Weyrich began uniting evangelical parishioners and televangelist preachers like Jerry Falwell with Republican party politics opposing desegregation, via a political action group called the Moral Majority. It’s not that evangelical Christians weren’t political – as the film, narrated by Peter Coyote, points out, the idea of America as a white Christian nation undergirded the Ku Klux Klan, which at its peak in 1924 claimed 8 million members, the vast majority of whom were white evangelicals, including 40,000 ministers.

Accordingly, the crucial tie between white evangelicals and the Republican party came not from the 1972 ruling in Roe v Wade, as is often misattributed, but from opposition to a different ruling preventing racially segregated institutions – including schools and churches – from claiming charitable, tax-exempt status. The ruling brought segregated church leaders such as Falwell in alignment with Republican operatives like Weyrich, who cannily realized that emotional arguments against abortion would drive more grassroots support than openly racist talk against desegregation.

Bad Faith highlights Christian nationalism’s “origins in the racism, and the segregation mentality, and you can draw a straight line from that to gerrymandering and voter suppression,” said Anne Nelson, a film participant and author of Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right. Christian nationalist supporters, she added, were “very skillful at ... framing and branding and messaging, that makes something like voter suppression look like electoral integrity. And they do this time after time, on every front”.

The film juxtaposes the decades-long roots of the movement with its evolving principles: that America was founded as a Christian nation, for and by Christians; that maintaining such a state is a divinely sanctioned, righteous fight; that anti-democratic or violent tactics should be employed in the name of God. And in recent years, that Donald Trump – a thrice-married, profligate cheater with too many character scandals to name – is, if not a true “Christian”, a divinely sanctioned “King Cyrus” figure sent to disrupt the secular order. “The divisiveness and the distrust of institutions that we’re seeing today was part of a plan,” said Ujlaki. “It was a result of an actual plan, successfully executed to get to this point. And once the institutions are weakened and people have lost faith in elections, there’s room for the strongman to come in.”

In addition to political experts contextualizing the growth and funding of Christian nationalism, Ujlaki also enlisted several prominent, faithful Christians to dispute another of the movement’s prominent myths: that it’s a true distillation of Christian teachings. “It is absolutely not Christian. It is anti-Christian,” said Ujlaki. He quoted the theologian Russell Moore, who calls the movement “heresy” in the film, as well as the Rev William Barber II, whose faith leads him to advocate for wealth redistribution, racial equality and social justice: “They may have their Trump, but they don’t have their Jesus.”

“They don’t care about the actual Jesus,” said Ujlaki. That’s underscored by the money trail, followed by Nelson and others, which leads to several non-evangelical donors – the Koch brothers and more – who nevertheless benefit from the movement’s weakening of institutions and drive to the far right, as with the Tea Party movement in 2010. “They’re in bed together, based on economic principles, not theology,” said Nelson.

And yet theology continues to drive an anti-democratic movement, for which January 6 was not a disaster but a starting point. Bad Faith ends with a note about Project 2025, announced in December 2023 by the Heritage Foundation. The 900-page document builds on Weyrich’s Conservative Manifesto and recommends, among other things: placing all independent government agencies, including the FBI and Department of Justice, under direct presidential control; purging government employees considered “disloyal” to the president; and deploying the military against American citizens under the Insurrection Act.

Some of the recommendations sound far-fetched and extreme, but if Bad Faith has one point, it is to take Christian nationalism as a serious threat to democracy. “These people are not stupid,” said Nelson. “They’re incredibly strategic. They’re extremely good at organization, and they have a very, very long attention span. If they set out an objective, they will give it 40 years to play out, they will build organizations, they will go into electoral districts not a month before the election, but two years before the election, organizing voters.”

In Nelson’s view, major media organizations misunderstood this in the run-up to January 6. “They look at these events as independent grassroots eruptions, like the Tea Party,” she said. “And they’re actually fully integrated as a strategy with massive coordinated funding and implementation. If you don’t see that, you miss the story.”

Bad Faith is now available to rent digitally in the US with a UK date to be announced

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‘Cabaret’ Review: What Good Is Screaming Alone in Your Room?

Eddie Redmayne and Gayle Rankin star in a buzzy Broadway revival that rips the skin off the 1966 musical.

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By Jesse Green

Just east of its marquee, the August Wilson Theater abuts an alley you probably didn’t notice when last you were there, perhaps to see “Funny Girl,” its previous tenant. Why would you? Where the trash goes is not usually part of the Broadway experience.

But it is for the latest revival of “Cabaret,” which opened at the Wilson on Sunday. Audience members are herded into that alley, past the garbage, down some halls, up some stairs and through a fringed curtain to a dimly lit lounge. (There’s a separate entrance for those with mobility issues.) Along the way, greeters offer free shots of cherry schnapps that taste, I’m reliably told, like cough syrup cut with paint thinner.

Too often I thought the same of the show itself.

But the show comes later. First, starting 75 minutes beforehand, you can experience the ambience of the various bars that constitute the so-called Kit Kat Club, branded in honor of the fictional Berlin cabaret where much of the musical takes place. Also meant to get you in the mood for a story set mostly in 1930, on the edge of economic and spiritual disaster, are some moody George Grosz-like paintings commissioned from Jonathan Lyndon Chase . (One is called “Dancing, Holiday Before Doom.”) The $9 thimbleful of potato chips is presumably a nod to the period’s hyperinflation.

This all seemed like throat clearing to me, as did the complete reconfiguration of the auditorium itself, which is now arranged like a large supper club or a small stadium. (The scenic, costume and theater design are the jaw-dropping work of Tom Scutt.) The only relevant purpose I can see for this conceptual doodling, however well carried out, is to give the fifth Broadway incarnation of the 1966 show a distinctive profile. It certainly does that.

The problem for me is that “Cabaret” has a distinctive profile already. The extreme one offered here frequently defaces it.

Let me quickly add that Rebecca Frecknall’s production , first seen in London , has many fine and entertaining moments. Some feature its West End star Eddie Redmayne, as the macabre emcee of the Kit Kat Club (and quite likely your nightmares). Some come from its new New York cast, including Gayle Rankin (as the decadent would-be chanteuse Sally Bowles) and Bebe Neuwirth and Steven Skybell (dignified and wrenching as an older couple). Others arise from Frecknall’s staging itself, which is spectacular when in additive mode, illuminating the classic score by John Kander and Fred Ebb, and the amazingly sturdy book by Joe Masteroff.

But too often a misguided attempt to resuscitate the show breaks its ribs.

The conception of Sally is especially alarming. As written — and as introduced in the play and stories the musical is based on — she is a creature of blithe insouciance if not talent, an English good-time gal flitting from brute to brute in Berlin while hoping to become a star. Her first number, “Don’t Tell Mama,” is a lively Charleston with winking lyrics (“You can tell my brother, that ain’t grim/Cause if he squeals on me I’ll squeal on him”) that make the Kit Kat Club audience, and the Broadway one too, complicit in her naughtiness.

Instead, Frecknall gives us a Sally made up to look like she’s recently been assaulted or released from an asylum, who dances like a wounded bird, stretches each syllable to the breaking point and shrieks the song instead of singing it. (Goodbye, Charleston; hello, dirge.) If Rankin doesn’t sound good in the number, nor later in “Mein Herr,” interpolated from the 1972 film, she’s not trying to. Like the cough syrup-paint thinner concoction, she’s meant to be taken medicinally and poisonously in this production, projecting instead of concealing Sally’s turmoil.

That’s inside-out. The point of Sally, and of “Cabaret” more generally, is to dramatize the danger of disengagement from reality, not to fetishize it.

The guts-first problem also distorts Redmayne’s Emcee, but at least that character was always intended as allegorical. He is the host to anything, the amoral shape-shifter, becoming whatever he must to get by. Here, he begins as a kind of marionette in a leather skirt and tiny party hat, hiccupping his way through “Willkommen.” Later he effectively incarnates himself as a creepy clown, an undead skeleton, Sally’s twin and a glossy Nazi.

Having seen Frecknall’s riveting production of “Sanctuary City,” a play about undocumented immigrants by Martyna Majok , I’m not surprised that her “Cabaret” finds a surer footing in the “book” scenes. These are the ones that take place in the real Berlin, not the metaphorical one of the Kit Kat Club. She is extraordinarily good when she starts with the naturalistic surface of behavior, letting the mise en scène and the lighting (excellent, by Isabella Byrd) suggest the rest.

And naturalism is what you find at the boardinghouse run by Fräulein Schneider (Neuwirth), a woman who has learned to keep her nose down to keep safe. Her tenants include a Jewish fruiterer, Herr Schultz (Skybell); a prostitute, Fräulein Kost (Natascia Diaz); and Clifford Bradshaw (Ato Blankson-Wood), an American writer come to Berlin in search of inspiration. Soon Sally shows up to provide it, having talked her way into Cliff’s life and bed despite being little more than a stranger. Also, despite Cliff’s romantic ambivalence; over the years, the character has had his sexuality revamped more times than a clownfish.

The Schneider-Shultz romance is sweet and sad; neither character is called upon to shriek. And Rankin excels in Sally’s scenes with Cliff, her wry, frank and hopeful personality back in place. The songs that emerge from the boardinghouse dramas are not ransacked as psychiatric case studies but are rather given room to let comment proceed naturally from real entertainment. Rankin’s “Maybe This Time,” with no slathered-on histrionics, is riveting. It turns out she can properly sing.

The interface between the naturalism and the expressionism does make for some weird moments: Herr Schultz, courtly in a topcoat, must hug Sally goodbye in her bra. But letting the styles mix also brings out the production’s most haunting imagery. The intrusion of the Nazi threat into the story is especially well handled: first a gorgeously sung and thus chilling version of “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” then the swastika and then — well, I don’t want to give away how Frecknall stages the scene in which Schultz’s fruit shop is vandalized.

That so many of these moments arise from faithful attention to the original material should be no surprise. “Cabaret” hasn’t lasted this long for nothing. Created at the tail end of Broadway’s Golden Age, it benefited from the tradition of meticulous craftsmanship that preceded it while anticipating the era of conceptual stagings that followed.

All this is baked into the book, and especially the score, which I trust I admire not merely because I worked on a Kander and Ebb show 40 years ago. That the lyrics rhyme perfectly is a given with Ebb; more important, they are always the right words to rhyme. (Listen, in the title song, for the widely spaced triplet of “room,” “broom” and, uh-oh, “tomb.”) And Kander’s music, remixing period jazz, Kurt Weill and Broadway exuberance, never oversteps the milieu or outpaces the characters even as it pushes them toward their full and sometimes manic expression.

When this new “Cabaret” follows that template, it achieves more than the buzz of chic architecture and louche dancing. (The choreography is by Julia Cheng.) Seducing us and then repelling us — in that order — it dramatizes why we flock to such things in the first place, whether at the Kit Kat Club or the August Wilson Theater. We hope, at our risk, to forget that, outside, “life is disappointing,” as the Emcee tells us. We want to unsee the trash.

Cabaret At the August Wilson Theater, Manhattan; kitkat.club . Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes, with an optional preshow.

Jesse Green is the chief theater critic for The Times. He writes reviews of Broadway, Off Broadway, Off Off Broadway, regional and sometimes international productions. More about Jesse Green

Screen Rant

I can't believe how low bad boys 2's rotten tomatoes score is - what the hell happened.

Bad Boys 2 is one of Will Smith's worst-rated movies of all time despite being a major part of one of his most beloved movie franchises.

• Bad Boys II was poorly received by critics, earning just a 23% score on Rotten Tomatoes, making it one of Will Smith's lowest-rated films.
• Despite the critical reception, the Bad Boys franchise has always been more about pleasing audiences, with high audience scores for all films.
• The success of Bad Boys for Life, with a fresh score of 76%, helped to reignite interest in the franchise despite the disappointing sequel.

The Rotten Tomatoes score of Bad Boys II is quite surprising considering the success and popularity of the Will Smith-led franchise. The first Bad Boys film was released in 1995, becoming an instant buddy cop classic directed by Michael Bay ( Armageddon , Pearl Harbor , Transformers ). Starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence ( Martin , Death at a Funeral , The Beach Bum ), the highly anticipated sequel to Bad Boys was Bad Boys II , released in 2003. Despite the 8-year difference between the first and second films, which certainly generated some hype for the sequel, Bad Boys II was ultimately torn apart by critics .

With Bad Boys: Ride or Die being one of the most exciting upcoming Will Smith movies , the celebrated franchise will pick up where 2020's Bad Boys for Life ended. Both the original Bad Boys and Bad Boys for Life , which is the third installment of the 4-part movie franchise , received mixed and slightly positive reviews from critics, which makes the poor critical reception of Bad Boys II somewhat alarming. This could also be a major reason why there were 17 years between the second and third installments of the Bad Boys franchise. Regardless, Lawrence and Smith will once again appear as their iconic characters, Marcus Burnett and Mike Lowrey, in Bad Boys: Ride or Die .

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Bad boys ii is one of will smith's lowest-rated movies on rotten tomatoes, bad boys ii received just a score of 23% on rotten tomatoes.

Even Smith's most notorious films, such as the 2017 Netflix movie Bright and 2016's infamous Suicide Squad are rated higher than Bad Boys II.

Shockingly, Bad Boys II is one of the worst-rated movies in Will Smith's illustrious career. The only movies worse than Bad Boys II are the 2013 M. Night Shyamalan misfire After Earth , 2016's underwhelming romantic drama Collateral Beauty , and 1999's offbeat action comedy Wild Wild West . Even Smith's most notorious films, such as the 2017 Netflix movie Bright and 2016's infamous Suicide Squad are rated higher than Bad Boys II , which certainly raises some eyebrows. Bad Boys II received just a score of 23% on Rotten Tomatoes, while After Earth got a score of 12%, Collateral Beauty got 13%, and Wild Wild West got 16%.

Although Bad Boys II is the fourth worst-rated movie on Rotten Tomatoes, there are plenty of movies that are not far behind. Suicide Squad (26%), Bright (26%), Gemini Man (27%), and Seven Pounds (27%) are all more or less in the same unfortunate ballpark, although none of them have inspired sequels like Bad Boys II had. During the remainder of the 2000s and 2010s, the Bad Boys franchise appeared to be over until Bad Boys for Life reaffirmed its popularity and made up for the downfall of the sequel by earning a fresh score of 76% on Rotten Tomatoes, the highest of the entire franchise.

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Why bad boys ii only has 23% on rotten tomatoes, critics were harsh on the michael bay sequel.

A large majority of top critics from the most reputable sources gave Bad Boys II poor reviews​​​​​​.

Bad Boys was just the fourth movie that Will Smith had ever starred in before Independence Day and Men in Black skyrocketed his fame to new heights. Bad Boys II , however, was not as universally loved as Smith's other classic movies, a fate that was also similarly suffered by Men in Black II , which earned a score of just 38% on Rotten Tomatoes . From more than 180 reviews written by critics, for Bad Boys II , a large majority of top critics from the most reputable sources gave Bad Boys II poor reviews. Many critics were quick to point out the poor directorial choices of Michael Bay in the Bad Boys sequel.

Legendary film critic Roger Ebert has the most iconic take on Bad Boys II , writing in his review, " Everybody involved in this project needs to do some community service. " Ebert goes on to critique the overall needlessness of the entire project in his 1-star review . Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post wrote in his review of Bad Boys II, " Might be considered three action sequences and four comedy routines in search of a story. " Collin Levey of the Wall Street Journal wrote , " Like our two loose cannons with badges, the movie misses its target at least as often as it hits it. Along the way, as well, it will likely batter a few brain cells into a premature grave. "

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Bad boys ii's rotten tomatoes audience score is a lot higher than its critics score, the bad boys franchise has always been focused on crowd-pleasing.

Even before the release of Bad Boys for Life , the Bad Boys franchise was never widely applauded by critics.

Even before the release of Bad Boys for Life , the Bad Boys franchise was never widely applauded by critics. Instead, its audience scores were always much more impressive than its critical reception. The Bad Boys franchise has always been one that focused more on crowd-pleasing than critic pandering as evidenced by the high Rotten Tomatoes audience scores of Bad Boys (78%), Bad Boys II (78%), and Bad Boys for Life (96%). Despite the poor reviews for Bad Boys II , the Bad Boys franchise is still a box-office success, earning a total of nearly $839 million across 3 movies . Bad Boys 4 is poised to get it past the $1 billion mark.

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Bad boys: ride or die.

Bad Boys 4 is the tentative title of the fourth installment in the action-comedy film series starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. The series centers on hard-boiled Miami detectives Mike Lowery and Marcus Burnett, who take on dangerous drug kingpins and thwart dangerous schemes as they attempt to stop the circulation of illicit drugs in their city.