the good father movie review

The Good Father: The Martin MacNeill Story

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A young woman becomes suspicious of her father after her mother dies under suspicious circumstances.

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Watch a Clip: The true story of Martin MacNeill

About the movie.

Based on actual events. The story of Dr. MacNeill and the incredible life he led with his former beauty queen wife, Michele and their eight children. A pillar of the community, he was respected and loved by all especially by his daughter Alexis who adored him and even wanted to follow in his footsteps to become a doctor. But everything soon changes after Dr. MacNeill convinces Michele to have plastic surgery, ultimately leading to her drowning while on prescription medication. Just a few short weeks after his wife’s suspicious death, he brings home a new live-in “nanny” for his children but who is in actuality his mistress. Shocked by her father’s actions, Alexis begins to question everything she has known about him and discovers the depth of his lies, including his bogus medical credentials, falsified military records, and that the man and good doctor she once revered, was capable of murder. Tom Everett Scott, Charisma Carpenter, and Anwen O’Driscoll star. (2021)

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The Good Father EP Nancy Grace Explains Why Michele MacNeill’s Murder Still Haunts Her

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It’s been nearly a decade since television host and personality Nancy Grace covered Martin MacNeill’s salacious murder trial.

Accused and eventually convicted of drugging and killing his wife Michele MacNeill, the former doctor’s court case painted a disturbing picture. The trial also revealed that he’d also sexually abused his daughter Alexis, who once idolized her dad so much, she went to medical school to become a physician just like him.

Now Grace has created a platform for Alexis MacNeill to tell her family’s tragic story from her personal  perspective with the Lifetime movie The Good Father: The Martin MacNeill Story , which premieres tonight at 8/7c. Burden of Truth ‘s Anwen O’Driscoll stars as Alexis, with 13 Reasons Why ‘s Tom Everett Scott playing Martin and Buffy the Vampire Slayer ‘s Charisma Carpenter costarring as Michele.

“I became friends with various members of the family, specifically Alexis,” Grace says. “I can still remember the night of the verdict and speaking with Alexis. She was telling me how she had gotten married and her mother wasn’t there because her father murdered her. This movie means a lot to me. I don’t like calling it the Martin MacNeill Story . I like calling it the Michele MacNeill story, because that’s the real star.”

Grace, who currently hosts Fox Nation’s Crime Stories with Nancy Grace , says more than anything she wanted to honor Alexis.

“Her wishes and concerns were paramount in my mind,” Grace stresses. “This is not a story. It’s real, with a real victim who died in the family’s bathtub. They had eight children, and they had no idea what really happened to their mother. This is a story told through Alexis’ eyes. She had a lot to do with it. This is not a made-up story. It’s more critical that it’s true to life.”

“Anytime you mix true crime with scripted television, you do have to walk an extra-careful line,” Carpenter reveals. “It’s super challenging to honor her memory and to be able to get across her love of family and her confusion about her husband’s behavior and pathological lies. It was something I took to heart.”

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I watched that trial and the father wouldn’t have been convicted if it hadn’t been for the bravery and determination of his daughter Michelle who testified very shortly after welcoming twins. She then became the legal guardian of her younger siblings. The father was truly evil. Michelle was truly heroic.

Her name was Alexis and this movie is not accurate. There’s a sister missing. I watched the trial

Where is Alexis’ other sister

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'The Good Father: The Martin MacNeill Story' Review: Lifetime thriller chills bones

Spoilers for 'The Good Father: The Martin MacNeill Story'

If you're on the lookout for a mind-bending thriller that leaves you questioning the length a man can go for his selfish needs, look no further. ' The Good Father: The Martin MacNeill Story ' is the epitome of broken trust, relationships, grief, and loss. Lifetime's newest 2021 thriller leaves you with a lasting impression — the way some books, movies, and even people do.

The cast includes Tom Everett Scott as Dr MacNeill, with Charisma Carpenter playing the role of his wife Michele. Anwen O’Driscoll portrays his daughter, Alexis, who idolized McNeill until she began questioning the circumstances of her mother’s death. 

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Lifetime's 'The Good Father: The Martin MacNeill Story' is based on the true story of Dr Martin MacNeill, a Utah-based doctor, whose real character behind all that seemingly perfect persona and "too good to be true" charm comes to light after the mysterious death of his wife. Dr MacNeill led with an incredible life with his former 'Miss Concord' wife, Michele, and their eight children, three of whom were adopted from Ukraine.

The first half of the movie seems so perfect, you tend to think it's one of those classic feel-good family movies. But just when you start rooting for the MacNeills, the plot twist hits your gut so hard, you won't see that coming! Records say that the eight kids of the MacNeill family lost their mother Michele MacNeill and authorities quickly determined it to be due to natural causes, just days after she had undergone facelift surgery, in the last hopes of saving her marriage after having doubted her husband for having an affair. She died in the year 2007.

The turn of events that led up to Michele's death and after were a trail of horrifying wrongdoings. Her oldest daughter, Alexis, took the help of her aunt Linda, and led a campaign to have a thorough investigation opened into her death, which eventually uncovered some alarming facts. After much interrogation and checking all possible records, it was discovered that Michele's husband, Dr Martin MacNeill, had withheld decades of secrets from his family: extramarital affairs, falsified transcripts, lying his way through medical school, a hidden felony conviction — a long history that bolstered the family's suspicions that he had actually killed his wife and erased all evidence. Martin portrayed the role of a grieving husband and caring father, while having overdosed his own wife on medication.  

Six and a half years after Michele's death, Martin was put on trial for plotting to kill his wife, in what prosecutors said was a plan to start a new life with a woman called Gypsy. Martin had brought her home on the pretext that she's a nanny and had an affair with her. He was eventually convicted of murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment, and died 2 years into serving his sentence.

Watching this thriller whilst all the while knowing that it's based on true events is baffling, no doubt, and is sure to have the audience wrapped around the storyline throughout. While the movie is moderately paced, each scene moves onto the other without proper segue or an explanation, which might not sit well with the audience. The actors playing the doctor and his daughter played their parts with sheer brilliance. Tom Scott as Dr Martin in the movie is sure to have you second-guessing his intentions the next time you see him on screen.

'The Good Father: The Martin MacNeill Story' is currently streaming on Lifetime.

The Good Father: The Martin MacNeill Story (2021)

Stream & Watch 'The Good Father: The Martin MacNeill Story' Full Movie Online

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The good father: the martin macneill story.

2021 Directed by Annie Bradley

Weeks after his wife's suspicious death, Dr Martin MacNeill moves in his mistress under the guise of a live-in nanny. Shocked by her father's actions, his daughter begins to question everything she's known about him while uncovering a web of lies.

Tom Everett Scott Charisma Carpenter Anwen O'Driscoll Nicola Correia Damude Alicia Johnston

Director Director

Annie Bradley

Producer Producer

Juliette Hagopian

Executive Producers Exec. Producers

Howard Braunstein Nancy Grace

Writers Writers

Abdi Nazemian John Fasano

Casting Casting

Editor editor.

John Gurdebeke

Cinematography Cinematography

Paul Suderman

Composer Composer

Janal Bechthold

Lifetime Julijette

Alternative Titles

La verdad sobre mi padre, الأب الصالح: قصة مارتن ماكنيل, O Bom Pai: A História de Martin MacNeill, Vzorný otec: Příběh Martina MacNeilla, A jó apa: A Martin MacNeill sztori, Dobry ojciec: Historia Martina MacNeilla, Tatăl bun: Povestea lui Martin MacNeill, Chirurgie mortelle : l'histoire vraie de Martin MacNeill

Drama TV Movie

Releases by Date

02 oct 2021, 22 jan 2024, releases by country.

• TV PG Lifetime

84 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Reeves ½

This is one of those “ripped from the headlines” Lifetime movies where the true story (if you read the Wikipedia) is so completely messed up Lifetime couldn’t possibly do it justice. Lifetime needs to stick to doctor stories where Eric Roberts stalks people and does funny-insane stuff not insane-insane stuff.

Review by Trina DeMattei ★★

Typical lifetime cheese whiz but loved seeing Tom Everett Scott as a baddie.

Review by Heather4CU ★★★ 2

Great cast. For a film that was completely predictable and also quite suspenseful, this really didn’t have that much of a climax. I had to double check the time stamp to make sure we were at the end. Since this was a true crime story, I also had to look up the real case and Lifetime really sugarcoated this one. Maybe I’ll look up one of the documentaries instead.

Review by OblivionFlmClub ★★½

I’ve watched a few lifetime films on Hulu, and now all Hulu does is recommend lifetime movies. I don’t know how to stop watching these over the top ridiculous films. ~ with that being said, this ones pretty cheesy, but it's Thomas Everett Scott that is so extra in this film with his over the top portrayal of a sociopathic father. Don't expect to much going into this film, it's your basic ripped from the headlines story.

Review by Alph

no i did not watch this (yet) but i just wanna point out that that is frank heffley

Review by shelby ★★½

my toxic trait is my unironic love for lifetime movies

Review by 🪳🎵🔪L🍒E🦂A❤️‍🔥H💋⛓🕷

Tom Edward Scott is STILL so hot and he’s trying not to laugh

Review by 💗 ½

Antena Tres movie.

Review by binkzbinkz ½

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

lol, you can sense it in the beginning that he ain't a good dad

Review by kemiller ★½

Wow, they couldn't get Carpenter for the full movie. Cordy deserves better.

Review by Justin Miller ★★

You know what this is going in and if you’re looking for a bad Lifetime movie to laugh at, you could do way worse.

Review by Carlos Lee ★★

Standard Lifetime Movie Channel movie. It was not the usual crazy fun movie as it was based on a true story.

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Is Lifetime’s The Good Father: The Martin MacNeill Story Based on a True Story?

Directed by Annie Bradley from a script penned by John Fasano and Abdi Nazemian, ‘The Good Father: The Martin MacNeill Story’ is a Lifetime film replete with deceits, betrayal, grief, and crimes to provide us with a mind-boggling thriller. Revolving around a successful couple, who appear to be the pillars of their community, and their eight children, it probes into what transpires when the peculiar death of the matriarch unveils a tangled web of lies. Thus, due to all the complex aspects involved, if you’re wondering whether actual events inspired this story, we’ve got you covered.

Is The Good Father: The Martin MacNeill Story Based on a True Story?

Yes, Lifetime’s ‘The Good Father: The Martin MacNeill Story’ is based on a true story. Starring Charisma Carpenter (‘The Expendables’), Tom Everett Scott (‘That Thing You Do!’), and Anwen O’Driscoll (‘Burden of Truth’), this movie re-tells the actual events surrounding the passing of former beauty queen Michele MacNeill and the involvement of her husband in the matter. Alexis, her and Martin MacNeill’s daughter, played a significant role in real life as well by questioning everything she believed she knew about her father and the case to bring the harsh and harrowing truth to light.

At the age of 17, Martin MacNeill joined the military by lying about his age on the enlisting form. Yet, he was formally placed on “disability leave” just two years later, following which he collected veteran benefits for “ bipolar or anti-social disorders ” for decades. By 1978, he had eloped and married beauty queen Michele, only to spend six months in jail as a newly-wed for fraud and forgery. Upon release, Martin worked hard to get into a medical school, and in 1987, he received the license to practice as an osteopathic physician and surgeon in Utah.

For a short while, things seemed to be going great in both his private and professional life. However, starting from the mid-1990s, there were many allegations of Martin having adulterous affairs, along with him threatening to either commit suicide or kill both himself and his wife. These only came out to the public when it was too late, though. After all, no one suspected a thing since they had eight kids and were active in their community. That changed in 2007, after Michele got a facelift at the behest of her husband, thinking that it’ll improve their marriage.

Michele was prescribed a few different medications for recovery following the procedure, but because her eyes were bandaged, she soon started to believe that Martin was also overmedicating her. Alexis, who was at home on break from medical school, hoping to follow her father’s footsteps, took over the responsibility of giving her mother the pills. Thus, it came as a shock when Michele died on April 11, 2007, the day after Alexis returned to school, thinking that her mother was well enough to care for herself. The combination of pills had given her a heart attack.

What’s more bizarre is that two weeks after Martin killed his wife through the drugs and left her to drown in their bathtub, he hired a live-in “nanny” for his young kids, but she was actually his mistress. Alexis subsequently pressed officials to investigate. She was appalled by her father’s actions, and it was her determination that helped reveal the medicinal feature. Other family members were by her side. In 2009, Martin was sentenced to four years in prison for identity theft for using the details of one of his adoptive girls to get legal documents for his girlfriend, and in 2013, he was convicted of his wife’s murder.

Martin was also found guilty of obstruction of justice for purposefully making it look like Michele’s death was accidental and for his forcible sexual abuse of Alexis , which transpired five weeks after his wife’s demise. Martin’s sentence was such that he wouldn’t be eligible for parole until 2031, except two-and-a-half years into his term — on April 9, 2017 — he killed himself using a hose and a natural gas line of a heater. Most of this has been explored in Lifetime’s ‘The Good Father: The Martin MacNeill Story,’ making it a true story.

Read More:  Where Was The Good Father: The Martin MacNeill Story Filmed? Who is in the Cast?

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The Father review – Anthony Hopkins superb in unbearably heartbreaking film

Hopkins gives a moving, Oscar-winning turn as a man with dementia in a film full of intelligent performances, disorienting time slips and powerful theatrical effects

“L et me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!” says King Lear, a plea which is overwhelmingly sad because it can never be heard by anyone with the power to grant it. Anthony Hopkins, who played Lear in Richard Eyre’s production for the BBC , now delivers another performance as an ailing patriarch with a favourite daughter and nowhere to stay, in a film directed by Florian Zeller, and adapted by Christopher Hampton from Zeller’s own award-winning stage play. There is unbearable heartbreak in this movie, for which Hopkins has become history’s oldest best actor Oscar-winner , and also genuine fear, like something you might experience watching Roman Polanski’s Repulsion or M Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense.

Hopkins is Anthony, a roguishly handsome and cantankerous old widower, a retired engineer who lives on his own in a spacious, well-appointed apartment in west London, receiving regular visits from his affectionate and exasperated daughter Anne, who is played at the highest pitch of intelligence and insight by Olivia Colman .

But things are very wrong, because Anthony has dementia. He is subject to mood-swings and fits of temper connected with his sudden terror at not being able to work out what is going on. His behaviour has already caused his existing carer to quit, and now Anne tells him that he simply has to get on with the new one, Laura (Imogen Poots). This is because Anne, after the end of her marriage to Paul (Rufus Sewell) – to whom we will be introduced later – has now at last found a new partner and the opportunity for happiness that she deserves. She is going abroad with him, and can’t look after Anthony any more.

What is deeply scary about The Father is that, without obvious first-person camera tricks, it puts us inside Anthony’s head. We see and don’t see what he sees and doesn’t see. We are cleverly invited to assume that certain passages of dialogue are happening in reality – and then shown that they aren’t. We experience with Anthony, step by step, what appears to be the incremental deterioration in his condition, the disorientating time slips and time loops. People morph into other people; situations get elided; the apartment’s furniture seems suddenly and bewilderingly to change; a scene which had appeared to follow the previous one sequentially turns out to have preceded it, or to be Anthony’s delusion or his memory of something else. And new people, people he doesn’t recognise (played by Mark Gatiss and Olivia Williams) keep appearing in his apartment and responding to him with that same sweet smile of patience when he asks what they are doing there. The universe is gaslighting Anthony with these people.

Anthony is of course different from Lear in one particular: he doesn’t know what is happening to him, or has happened. Things are too far gone. But Hopkins shows how an awareness of his previous existence is still there at a deeper, almost physical level, sometimes resurfacing in his devastatingly contrite little apologies to Anne. And one scene with Paul in which Anthony becomes whimperingly afraid shows us that there are things that Anne doesn’t know about Anthony’s life.

Hopkins’s final speech to Williams is the one that reduced me to a blubbering mess. But the most subtly poignant moments are those in which Anthony will laugh – a flash of his old, roguishly charming self – and Anne and his carer will supportively laugh along with him. To some degree, it is a nervous laugh because Anne knows just how easily his mood can turn, and it is also a professional carer’s laugh, and a strained tragicomic laugh, the laugh you do instead of crying. But it’s also a perfectly genuine kind of laugh and, in its way, an urgent, shared gesture of faith in the person that Anthony was and occasionally still is.

The Father has something of Michael Haneke’s Amour in its one-apartment setting, and also something of Alan Ayckbourn’s 1985 stage-play Woman in Mind, in which the heroine retreats from reality. Its effects are essentially theatrical – but they are powerfully achieved, and the performances from Hopkins and Colman are superb. It is a film about grief and what it means to grieve for someone who is still alive.

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The Good Father

Bill (Sir Anthony Hopkins) is a man who's very bitter about his divorce and losing custody of his son. So, when one of his friends is being sued for divorce by his wife, so that she can ente... Read all Bill (Sir Anthony Hopkins) is a man who's very bitter about his divorce and losing custody of his son. So, when one of his friends is being sued for divorce by his wife, so that she can enter into a lesbian relationship, Bill decides to help his friend gain custody of his son in ... Read all Bill (Sir Anthony Hopkins) is a man who's very bitter about his divorce and losing custody of his son. So, when one of his friends is being sued for divorce by his wife, so that she can enter into a lesbian relationship, Bill decides to help his friend gain custody of his son in any way that they can devise, including using a sleazeball lawyer. But while Bill feels th... Read all

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• Trivia The original negative of the film was damaged during post-production, which resulted in the poor quality of all theatrical release prints.

Jane Powell : [watching a riot on TV] What do you expect if you keep taking people's jobs away?

Mark Varda : Got nothing to do with it.

Jane Powell : What do you mean?

Mark Varda : They don't want jobs. At least not the kind they're qualified to do. So even if we did manage to open all those steel mills and dog biscuit factories, we wouldn't get them to sign on.

Jane Powell : Are you saying they don't want to work?

Mark Varda : Oh, I dare say they wouldn't mind being president of IBM or a TV star. Or John McEnroe.

• Connections Featured in Siskel & Ebert: Back to the Beach/Nadine/Dirty Dancing/Rita, Sue and Bob Too! (1987)

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• Feb 15, 2003
• How long is The Good Father? Powered by Alexa
• February 11, 1987 (United States)
• United Kingdom
• Good Father - Die Liebe eine Vaters
• Battersea Bridge, London, England, UK
• Channel Four Films
• Greenpoint Films
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• Feb 16, 1987

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• Runtime 1 hour 30 minutes
• Black and White

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It’s Officially Time to Stop Calling the ‘Ghostbusters’

By David Fear

Forty years ago, four men put on uniforms, came up with a catchy logo — a startled specter in a red circle with a slash going through it, no big whoop — strapped on some proton packs and saved New York City from an evil deity holed up in a penthouse. They were brave, they were bold, they were smartasses and, we can’t stress this part enough, they weren’t ‘fraid of no ghosts. It’s not a Stay Puft Marshmellow Man-sized leap to say that Ivan Reitman ‘s original Ghostbusters changed Hollywood blockbusters . The idea of combining the cleaner elements of a gross-out comedy with horror, action and other summer movie thrills pretty much reset the board. We’ve been living in a cross-the-streams world ever since.

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And now, like the original, the attempt to “properly” restart this series get its own weak sequel. Directed by cowriter Gil Kenan, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire follows the Spenglers as they move to New York, having settled into the ol’ firehouse headquarters and keeping the family tradition alive. Callie ( Carrie Coon ), Trevor ( Finn Wolfhard ) and Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) are back. So is Gary Grooberson ( Paul Rudd ), their former teacher-turned-stepdad. Ditto Lucky (Celeste O’Connor) and Podcast (Logan Kim), their classmates who moved to the city as well. And, of course, Ray Stantz ( Dan Aykroyd ), Winson Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson), Peter Venkman ( Bill Murray ) and their old receptionist, Janine (Annie Potts). Did we mention that Mr. Dickless himself, Walter Peck (William Atherton), is once again stirring up shit as well?

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Frozen Empire gets its subtitle, by the way, due to the otherworldly villain’s ability to unleash “the death chill,” which causes everything to instantly freeze over. It’s a great excuse for the movie’s one impressive set piece, in which a dark cloud slowly makes its way to Coney Island and quickly envelopes Manhattan. (It’s in the trailer. Consider yourself $20 richer.) We wonder if that same power was behind the overall coldness and disinterest displayed by virtually every talented actor onscreen; other than Aykroyd, who admittedly displays a characteristic glee at being in his comfort zone here, nobody seems to want to be there or going through these motions again. Our best advice is to bring eyedrops and apply them regularly, so you won’t blink and thus miss Bill Murray’s brief appearances. We don’t think bustin’ makes him feel good anymore.

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Don Winslow says farewell to fiction writing in high style

With ‘city in ruins,’ winslow wraps up a spectacular crime fiction trilogy, a sweeping story that morphs and expands over time.

And so, we come to the end. The end of an exemplary crime fiction trilogy and the self-chosen end of a popular author’s writing career. But I’ve gotten ahead of myself.

With “ City on Fire ” (2022), “ City of Dreams ” (2023) and now “ City in Ruins ,” Don Winslow has written a near-perfect saga: He’s created great characters who grow and develop while remaining true to their essence, and a sweeping story that morphs and expands over time, with the stakes escalating until they reach nosebleed heights at the end. Winslow says he has given up writing novels to devote his time to political activism: “I wanted in the fight. I didn’t want to be writing a fiction obituary of America losing democracy,” he told the Los Angeles Times . With “City in Ruins,” he is saying farewell in high style.

Winslow modeled this trilogy on Virgil’s Roman tragedy “The Aeneid,” an intention made obvious by the epigrams in all three novels. However, you needn’t be a Roman or Greek scholar to enjoy these books (and though it is best to read them in order, it’s not vital). These novels wear their inspiration lightly. The epic poems do not bleed into Winslow’s story but linger like ghosts in the background.

At the center of the three “City” books is Danny Ryan, a Rhode Island version of “a Springsteen kind of guy,” a onetime Providence waterfront worker from a scrappy Irish American family. Over the course of the series, he has gotten mixed up with the mob, fought epic (yet doomed) battles and resurrected himself in Hollywood. After marrying into the family of the king of the Irish mob in Providence, he ends up their reluctant leader in a fatalistic war with the Italians, runs to the West Coast with his family and crew to lie low when it all blows up, manages to claw back his life, gets involved with a movie that’s being made about the Rhode Island mob, and falls in love with a celebrity superstar.

In the final moments of “City of Dreams,” Ryan is in a bad place: in the desert, facing off against a Mexican gang lord who wants to end him. The woman he loves is dead, and he blames himself. Ryan’s life has turned around in the opening of “City in Ruins.” He now owns a casino on the Las Vegas Strip; he’s being a good dad to his son, Ian, with whom he escaped from Rhode Island six years earlier; and he has a psychotherapist girlfriend who’s very different from his previous love interests — in other words, good for him.

But then Ryan decides to indulge his ambition by building a billion-dollar resort casino complex — Il Sogno, which sounds like Las Vegas’s latest wonder, the Sphere , expanded into a full-blown resort. Winslow shows us step by step what it takes to do something this grandiose in Vegas, where everything is supersize, especially the egos.

The project puts Ryan on a crash course with one of his hitherto friendly rivals. Vegas being Vegas, everyone has some connection to the mob, even if it’s distant, and before long Ryan — who thought he had successfully left his gangster past behind — finds himself up to his eyebrows in trouble as old vendettas are resurrected.

Peter Moretti Jr., son of one of Ryan’s former rivals, returns to the States after serving a tour in Iraq only to find out that his mother and her lover are responsible for his father’s death. In a scene involving the clan godfather, Winslow shows how an innocent like Peter Jr. is manipulated into carrying the water for his late father’s crime gang. The rest of this thread is devoted to the courtroom battle between the good district attorney who wants to see Peter Jr. pay for his crimes and the sharpshooting defense attorney who uses every trick at his disposal to get the young man freed.

There’s also Chris Palumbo, the late Peter Sr.’s second-in-command, who took to the wind after a partnership with a crooked FBI agent went south. We see him holed up in Nebraska with a hippie-ish woman (a la Odysseus and Circe in “The Odyssey”) until he comes to realize that he must return to his wife and children back East. He knows he must face the music for his misdeeds and confront the Providence crime gang that wants him dead.

Winslow immerses readers in the hidden world of organized crime, highlighting its inner workings. Whether it’s jousting between lawyers, etiquette among wiseguys or the history of the mob in Las Vegas, Winslow knows how to make the reader feel like one of the cognoscenti. For instance, he shows how he toed the line through the first two books so that Ryan can be in the casino business in Book 3: “Danny’s lawyers argued his cause. ‘There isn’t a single fact linking Mr. Ryan to organized crime,’ the lead attorney said. ‘Not an arrest, not an indictment, never mind a conviction. All you have are rumors and a few articles in the tabloids.’ … The appeal was an effort to keep Danny out of the [Nevada Gaming Control Board’s] dreaded Black Book, which would have prevented him from even entering a casino.”

You can read “City in Ruins” as a meditation on honor, revenge and justice, but the book also challenges readers to examine beliefs about morality. In “City in Ruins,” whether you’re in the world of gangsters or law enforcement or the casino industry, Winslow shows us that morality rides a sliding scale. Ryan is the closest thing the novel has to a hero, trying to inflict the least amount of pain and suffering while saving his family and friends, and willing to sacrifice his dreams as payment for his past sins. In absolutist terms, however, he’s no hero — yet the reader continues to root for him. Even the villains in “City in Ruins” question whether the gods are protecting Danny Ryan or if he will ever get his comeuppance. For the answer, you’re going to have to read the book.

Alma Katsu is the author of eight books, including the Taker trilogy, “The Hunger,” “The Deep” and “The Fervor.” Her latest is “Red London.”

City in Ruins

By Don Winslow

William Morrow. 400 pp. $32

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‘DogMan’ Review: Crackers for Animals

An electrifying Caleb Landry Jones plays the damaged heart of this oddly wonderful tale of resilience and revenge.

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

Drag queens, disability and dozens of canines converge in Luc Besson’s “DogMan,” which opens with a quotation from a 19th-century French poet and closes with a symbolic crucifixion. In between is the strangest, possibly silliest movie of the veteran director’s idiosyncratic career. It is also borderline brilliant.

On a wet night in New Jersey, a bloodied man dressed as Marilyn Monroe (Caleb Landry Jones) is arrested while driving a truck filled with agitated dogs. An empathetic prison psychologist, Evelyn (Jojo T. Gibbs), learns that the man is named Douglas, the dogs are his “babies,” and that his horrifying story resonates more than Evelyn would like with a predicament of her own. Flashbacks to Douglas’s past expose a childhood terrorized by a Bible-thumping brother and brutal father, who caged the boy alongside a team of fighting dogs. He also delivered the gunshot wound that would consign Douglas to a wheelchair for most of his life.

That life, unfolding in scenes that run the gamut from sweet to bizarre to heartbreaking, is a dark fairy tale of survival. Hunkered in a dank, abandoned building filled with books, security cameras and four-legged companions, the adult Douglas maintains an almost psychic bond with the only creatures to ever show him sustained affection. From his booby-trapped lair, he provides vigilante services to local supplicants, operating as a kind of godfather (dogfather?) with a pack that obeys his often wordless commands. Gigantic or tiny, fearsome or cuddly, stealing from the rich or subduing gangsters, they scamper through the film with lolling-tongued delight and discernible personalities. Not since “Amores Perros” (2000) and “White God” (2015) have so many movie canines impacted the lives of so many characters.

Besson, to his credit, recognizes the wackiness in his screenplay, and plays into it without reducing Douglas’s pain to a joke. Even so, it’s doubtful if the movie would work without Jones’s astonishing commitment to, and understanding of the character. (If you saw him two years ago in Justin Kurzel’s “Nitram,” you already know he excels at playing deeply damaged individuals.) He’s mesmerizing here, skirting easy pathos to give Douglas a touching dignity that stabilizes the movie’s kooky premise. When he discovers a talent for cabaret and debuts a performance of Édith Piaf’s “La Foule,” the moment is both sad and sublime: a bona fide showstopper.

People get hurt in this movie, but “DogMan,” loping along like one of its pups, doesn’t linger over the violence. Scenes flow smoothly from chilling to cute, buoyed by a cheekily over-the-top soundtrack. This isn’t a maudlin, triumph-over-adversity yarn: Douglas might be in a wheelchair, but he’s easily the most able body onscreen.

DogMan Rated R for a brutalized child and a chomped crotch. Running time: 1 hour 53 minutes. In theaters.

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Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, dad & step-dad.

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Inadequacy peeks from behind the uncomfortable smiles and passive aggressive remarks that two adult men exchange in the presence of the 13-year-old boy under their care. Both of these visibly distressed would-be role models is desperate for some validation. The father, Jim ( Colin Burgess ), has driven his adolescent son Branson (played by boyish-looking adult actor Brian Fiddyment ) to a home nestled inside a forest where Dave ( Anthony Oberbeck ), the kid’s overly involved stepdad, is waiting for them. Suzie ( Clare O'Kane ), the woman that connects the male trio, is set to arrive later in the weekend.

That’s the simple but effective setup of the consistently laugh-out-loud and unexpectedly poignant microbudget deadpan comedy “Dad & Step-Dad,” from filmmaker Tynan DeLong . The feature expands on a series of short films starring these characters, played by the same actors, that DeLong created over the last few years. The concept is reminiscent of the childish feuding between the protagonists in Adam McKay ’s “ Step Brothers ” but filtered through the down-to-earth, far less in-your-face sensitivities of mumblecore filmmaking.

Amid the tranquility of nature—expressed in idyllic cutaway shots of the surrounding flora and fauna—the two guys fight over every petty opportunity to assert their superiority in the eyes of Branson, who doesn’t much care about their juvenile, but mostly restrained competitiveness. Neither David nor Jim embody the hypermasculine bro-type to get physically violent, but rather a defeated pair of dudes approaching middle age and on the verge of snapping. Under a veneer of politeness, they argue about the grill’s temperature or whose approach to playing guitar is best suited to accompany Branson’s freestyle rapping.  

The humor derives from the self-seriousness of the line delivery, always without a hint of irony, and the uneasy silence that follows some of the most outrageous sentences uttered. A conversation on masturbation, a subject where Dave and Jim’s beliefs differ radically, turns into an interrogation of both Branson’s unusual desires and the most appropriate technique for self-pleasure. As preposterously awkward as the presentation of these parental dilemmas is, the underlying commonality is that they each exemplify how the men are projecting their own sense of failure onto the boy. It’s about them and not Branson.

The not-so-inconspicuous subtext of Dave’s optimistic outlook on life and Jim’s guilt over his initially hostile demeanor push DeLong’s debut over the fence of mere parody and into the realm of storytelling with characters exhibiting recognizable inner troubles. That is to say that “Dad & Step-Dad” is the rare movie that reveals itself more intellectually and emotionally rich than it purports to be on the surface, as opposed to the other way around, which happens quite frequently. The DIY manufacturing of “Dad & Step-Dad,” where the cast wears other crew hats, never calls negative attention to itself because the story has been conceived to exist not in spite of but within a set of specific limitations: a location that’s inherently visually dynamic and a group of actors with rapport built over a long time working together that allows them to construct compelling interactions from thin air.

There’s a wounded earnestness to Oberbeck’s performance that elevates it just a little higher than those of his counterparts. It also helps that the turmoil that afflicts his character—his relationship with the level-headed Suzie is on shaky ground—lends itself to more solemn acting. The dramatic register of Burgess feels just a tad closer to sketch comedy, which creates a dissonance necessary for the humor to work. Both Oberbeck and Burgess serve as co-writers and co-editors of the film, and while DeLong isn’t interested in filling us in on what came before or after this getaway, the evenly matched back and forth between the two convinces that there are lived-in layers to this bond. We are just witnessing the turning point in their frenemy arc. That Fiddyment plays Branson, also with utter sincerity, is a choice that feels not only practical, but thematically relevant as it points out that an immature personality can live inside a grown-up body—think man-child. We don’t simply become wise and leave behind our unflattering impulses when we grow older.

As with plenty of memorable comedies, what makes “Dad & Step-Dad” a special treat is that beneath its well-mannered raunchiness and stoic silliness there’s an undercurrent of something truthful about the human condition. It’s when rivalry morphs into a sincere bromance that DeLong, Burgess, Oberbeck allow the movie to grapple with men’s vulnerability without pulling the rug from under us. “What’s it all about, man?” Jim asks Dave after a shared moment of genuine connection. There’s no answer, but what DeLong tacitly gets at is that parents are simply kids that grew up and who don’t automatically gain an infallible manual on how to navigate the unforgiving waters of everyday existence.

That doesn’t change at the end of “Dad & Step-Dad,” but now these two average father figures don’t have to go through it alone. Wherever their unconventional family goes from here, looking after Branson is a great reason for them to hang out and fend off the darkness inside one stupidly inconsequential, yet amusing act one one-upmanship at a time. 

Carlos Aguilar

Originally from Mexico City, Carlos Aguilar was chosen as one of 6 young film critics to partake in the first Roger Ebert Fellowship organized by RogerEbert.com, the Sundance Institute and Indiewire in 2014. 

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Film credits.

Dad & Step-Dad (2024)

Colin Burgess as Jim

Anthony Oberbeck as Dave

Brian Fiddyment as Branson

Clare O'Kane as Suzie

• Tynan DeLong

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Movies | Review: ‘Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire’ is a…

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Movies | review: ‘godzilla x kong: the new empire’ is a worthy ‘when hairy met scaly ii’.

Guy behind the concession counter the other night asks me which movie I’m seeing. “Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire,” I tell him. He puts down the popcorn and heaves a nearly convulsive sigh of relief. Gratitude? Hope? All of it. A mashup of emotions, to go with the movie’s mashup of species.

“Oh, man,” the concession worker says. “We really need that one.”

“Dune II” notwithstanding, it has been a difficult year at the average movie theater. Now comes the new Godzilla/Kong smackdown — the marketing materials, for the record, tell us that the “X” in “Godzilla X Kong” is silent, which is a confusing waste of a perfectly good letter. But I’m happy to report that the follow-up to the 2021 “Godzilla vs. Kong” does the job — unevenly, yes, but with a pleasantly reckless spirit of engagement.

It’s directed, as was the 2021 movie, by Adam Wingard and features the return of Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Kaylee Hottle and assorted digital MonsterVerse golden oldies, from ‘Zilla to Kong to Mothra and more, shined up and fulla’ beans.

Maybe the preview crowd on Tuesday was an outlier, but I doubt it. The bursts of applause, particularly in the blithely destructive Rio de Janeiro climax — a team-building exercise for the headliners — had the ring of genuine approval, not just something you do because the movie’s begging for it. At one point Godzilla and Kong sprint toward their enemy, Scar King, the orange authoritarian nightmare whose territorial ambitions as a Kong-scaled antagonist know no bounds. You know the shot: the action-movie slow-mo dash toward the camera, executed here in such a way as to suggest Godzilla and Kong have spent many hours rewatching “Bad Boys.”

Dumb, right? Well, sure. Also amusing, and exciting and sincere. For the audience, it’s a shameless bid for applause that satisfies our deepest urges to see two endlessly competitive beings find the joy in starring, however briefly, in a Michael Bay action movie.

At the end of “Godzilla vs. Kong,” the atomically charged sea lizard and the woolly plus-sized simian reconciled, uneasily (without lawyers), after vanquishing the human-made Mechagodzilla. Despite widespread human fear and skepticism, Godzilla agreed (again, without lawyers) to keep a beady eye in his touchingly too-small head on monstrous threats to humankind on Earth’s surface. Kong returned to Hollow Earth, the gravity-scrambled inner wonderland of verdant beauty and violent predators. The film worked like a remake of “The Odd Couple,” proving that two lonely Titans can share a planet without driving each other crazy.

The threats double, triple and quadruple in the new movie. Scar King, whose miserably enslaved followers include a Titan “ancient” in the Godzilla vein, ranks as Headache No. 1.  But there are others, and Godzilla gives up his post to chase down an unexplained distress signal emitting from Hollow Earth. The signal perplexes the humans in “Godzilla X Kong,” nervous about what might happen if Godzilla and Kong mix it up again.

These humans of whom we speak include the brilliant, eternally preoccupied scientist Dr. Andrews (the Hall character). Her adopted daughter Jia (Hottle), the sole surviving member of the Iwi tribe of Skull Island, has been plagued by visions of Hollow Earth and imminent catastrophe, and with her telepathic communication with her pal Kong heightened, something’s definitely up. Reunited with the Titan-obsessed podcaster Bernie (Henry) and Andrews’ one-time squeeze Trapper (Dan Stevens), the humans zwoop to Hollow Earth to make their own set of astonished green-screen discoveries on cue.

Whole sections of “Godzilla X Kong” shove the humans off-screen for many minutes at a time. Few will complain. I love Hall in just about everything and she and Hottle capture enough authentic feeling in their mother/daughter relationship to earn a tear or two themselves. To be fair, some of that comes from the screenplay by writers Terry Rossio, Simon Barrett and Jeremy Slater, though the laziest exposition and boilerplate dialogue puts the “bored” in “cardboard.” (I stopped counting how often Hall’s character says “Oh, my god!” in response to whatever she’s oh-my-godding about.)

Whatever; nobody’s paying for the words here. “Godzilla X Kong” makes up for its own deficiencies with oddball flourishes. Wingard and the writers work like rogue chefs at an Olive Garden, tossing everything they can at any number of walls to see what sticks. The sight of Godzilla curling up like a kitten, napping inside the Colosseum in Rome after he’s half-trashed it in order to save it from an attacker: very nice. Later on, chowing down on a lifetime’s worth of free food (atomic energy stored under the Arctic ice), Godzilla’s bad breath and body odor color changes from blue to bright pink, as if he’s getting dolled up for a Summer of ’23 weekend with Barbenheimer.

The movie proceeds with brutal bouts of MMA combat with 300-foot combatants. The comparatively measured and selective action storytelling of the 2014 Gareth Edwards “Godzilla,” like last year’s terrific Japanese revitalizer  “Godzilla Minus One,” feels a long way from Wingard’s janky funhouse movies. But they have their own relentless, overstuffed appeal; I wouldn’t recommend them if they didn’t.

If I focus more on Godzilla in this new picture than Kong (the movie’s slightly more Kong-centric), maybe it’s because the best dog I ever had also had a too-small head. Not sure that’s enough to build an entire Godzilla ethos around, but I’ll take it up with my therapist.

And I’ll take these Godzilla/Kong MonsterVerse movies over most other corporate studio franchises these days, especially the recent “Jurassic Park” outings, which were, what’s the word … lousy. Yes, Godzilla and Kong cause untold and blithely unexamined human and property damage in Wingard’s latest, enough so that I wouldn’t mind seeing an entire movie at some point in this franchise’s lifespan devoted to lawsuits and legal battles, if only to see how Godzilla and Kong behave in a courtroom. The Rio carnage is quite extensive; earlier, there’s a dash of sweet pathos in the sight of Godzilla klutzing around Rome, damaging priceless landmarks because he can’t help it. Typical foreign tourist.

But let’s be realistic: What good is realism to “Godzilla X Kong”? Final question: Which low-level employee took the time to add the extra exclamation point to the dire control panel warning “GODZILLA VITALS SURGING!!”? There are only four possible words for whoever it was: employee of the month.

“Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire” — 3 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG-13 (for creature violence and action)

Running time: 2:02

How to watch: Premieres in theaters March 28

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

[email protected]

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The Good Father Reviews

The characters are hollow, dislikable and ignorant of their own needs.

Full Review | Sep 21, 2022

...mostly entertaining...

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 22, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 28, 2005

Provides a riveting portrait of a sundered marriage and the fallout from separation.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 27, 2004

The Good Father is filled with great supporting performances to circle around Hopkins' energy.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 1, 2000