Recently, the Rewatchables podcast covered L.A. Confidential, one of my favorites

In that episode they discussed the two failed attempts to build a network TV show out from the movie (which seems like a fool’s errand). The second of those, which only made it so far as a pilot, starred (among others) Walton Goggins as Sgt. Jack Vincennes, the role played by Kevin Spacey (I know) in the movie. I told my wife about this, as she’s a big Goggins fan, and she looked at me puzzled and said that she’d never seen L.A. Confidential.

Naturally, I had to remedy this! A good excuse to revisit a great movie and see if there was anything new to take away from it. Turns out, there was.

Very briefly, L.A. Confidential is the story of three cops in 1950s Los Angeles trying to solve a grizzly mass murder that arises in the wake of a power vacuum in the city’s organized crime ranks. There’s Bud White (Russell Crowe), who’s spun up by abusers of women and used as dumb muscle by superiors. There’s Edmund Exley (Guy Pearce), the political animal “college boy” who has ideals of what the “new” LAPD could be. Then there’s Vincennes, kind of a celebrity cop who works as a consultant on a “Dragnet”-style TV show and has a profitable relationship with the purveyor of one of the local tabloids. They’re all drawn together by a massacre that’s initially written off as the work of young (black) hoods, but winds up going straight to the rot of the city.

What particularly stood out to me this time were the scenes where the three cops talk about why they wanted to become cops.

White’s is a post-coital conversation with Lynn (Oscar-winner Kim Basinger), a high-class call girl who’s boss is definitely involved the city’s corruption, when she asks about a scar on his shoulder. White explains that he got it from his father, when White tried to intervene and stop him from beating on his mother. White’s father tied him to a radiator and beat his mother to death in front of him and then escaped. When Lynn asks if he became a cop to “get even,” White says “maybe” and then that he “used to” like it.

For Exley, it comes during a conversation with Vincennes. He tells the story of how his father (also a cop) was shot and the perpetrator never caught. Exley dubbed the guy “Rollo Tomasi,” just to give a name to the people who get away with it. He wanted to be a cop to go after the people who think they can get away with it (notably, this comes after telling a reporter earlier that it was to “help people”). Exley then asks Vincennes why he wanted to be a cop.

Vincennes – aka “Hollywood Jack” – says he can’t remember anymore.

As a public defender I’m awfully cynical about cops. I see too much bad behavior that goes not just unpunished but rewarded. But it’s worth remembering that all but the worst power trippers in uniform probably got there for noble motives – wanting to help people, protect the vulnerable, and do justice. But even the best intentions don’t mesh well with a system that’s all about the accretion and deployment of power and authority over others.

Not for nothing do none of the three main cops come out of L.A. Confidential in great shape. Vincennes is killed, straight up, by the crooked police captain. White is reduced to a mute, broken man with no future in policing. Even Exley, while he comes out of the whole thing with another promotion where he might actually do some good in the department had to extrajudicially kill the crooked captain to get there (the same one who earlier had chided Exley for not being capable of doing “the right thing” when it came to it).

My wife asked, after the movie was over, how I could like a movie so much that was, after all, about crooked cops. I think the answer is that the movie doesn’t valorize them and it shows the destructive power of a corrupt system that people enter into even with the best of intentions. The moral shouldn’t be that, in the end, Exley did what he had to regardless of the rules. It should be about the toll it took on his soul, his humanity, and his values in the process.

That’s the thing about great movies – you find interesting new ways to think about them with every viewing. Plus, this makes me laugh every time:

Having covered the small screen from 2025, let’s talk about the big one . . .

I had a pretty good 2025 when it came to movies. My wife and I made some effort to get out to the theater to see things on the big screen more than in the past few years, which meant I actually saw some new releases when they were actually new! Of course, the in-theater experience can be a little odd sometimes, so most of what I saw last year was at home.

That included a movie that, while not near my favorite for 2025, has caused me to do a lot of thinking.  That’s the latest from Kathryn Bigelow, A House of Dynamite.

Released on Netflix, it’s the story of a sudden, unexpected nuclear missile launch from somewhere (we never learn where) that kicks the United States’ response plans into action. It plays out in real time (three times over) as the missile heads for Chicago and a response is weighed and (maybe) retaliation launched. The time-loop structure drains some of the tension as it goes around, but I like how each time worked further up the chain of command from information gatherers to strategists and decision makers (ultimately, the president). And while the cut-to-black ending didn’t bother me as much as some people, I thought the couple of coda scenes tacked on afterwards were pointless. Regardless, what this movie did was to send me deep down a rabbit hole of fiction of the nuclear apocalypse, of which I’ll have more to say later.

Several of my favorite movies of 2025 actually came out in 2024, but I only got around to watching them after the start of the year.

That’s how I wound up seeing Anora just before it won Best Picture last year. Yeah, it was that good.

The story of a stripper/hooker who gets swept into the world of the son of a rich Russian oligarch, it’s funny, bawdy, and really sweet in equal measure. Mike Madison carried the movie as the titular character (deserved her Oscar, she did). I kind of expected to be underwhelmed by this, and maybe that’s why it hit me all the harder. I wrote some more about Anora here.

I had a better idea of what to expect from A Different Man, but it still hit pretty hard, too.

It has a simple pitch: a miserably aspiring actor with a disfiguring disease undergoes an experimental therapy to cure it, only to wind up cast in a play about a man with that condition – being advised by another man with the same condition who’s getting along quite well in life. This could have gone a very saccharine “after school special” kind of way, but it didn’t, partly due to Sebastian Stan’s amazing performance. It asks questions of identity, of what the world owes us, and how to deal. Highly recommended.

A more difficult watch, definitely, but just as highly recommended is September 5.

The particular September 5 in this case comes in 1972 at the Summer Olympics in Munich when terrorists attacked the Israeli team. This is not a broad overview of the event – for that see the 1999 documentary One Day in September, which is chilling – but focuses narrowly on how ABC Sports, who were covering the games, reacted to the situation and brought the news of it to the world. It’s very technical and, ultimately, it’s about people confronted with an astounding situation and dealing with it as best they can. Has some resonance today, no?

Home is where I normally watch documentaries – new, old, or otherwise – and 2025 was no exception. A couple were pretty disturbing, while another was uplifting in a way that made its “big screen” adaptation abysmal.

Without a doubt, one of the weirdest and saddest things I saw last year was The Contestant.

A 2023 British documentary about a late 1990s Japanese reality show, it covers the fame (infamy?) of a guy known as Nasubi (meaning “eggplant,” due to the shape of his face – and, yes, that might be where the emoji comes from) who went on a show where he lived in a tiny apartment, by himself, and had to subsist entirely on winnings from magazine sweepstakes competitions. Producers threw in a little bit of food, but he was on his own for the most part. Critically, he thought this would all be edited and broadcast later – only it was shown live (some of it streaming on the nascent internet). The whole thing is a wild indictment of just what you can get people to watch on TV and the impact it might have on the people involved.

Just as sad, but for completely different reasons, was another 2025 Netflix release, The Perfect Neighbor.

It’s the story of a Florida neighborhood fully of playing kids (most of color) and the “perfect neighbor” (a racist white woman) who shot and killed their mother one night. The film is told almost entirely through body camera and dash camera footage from cops, which provides an interesting perspective (although not a completely objective one – don’t be fooled). It mostly plays out as slow motion tragedy (we know from the jump she kills somebody), but it’s really well put together and leaves you feeling like you’ve been on the corner in that neighborhood watching as things slowly simmered and then suddenly exploded.

A much happier outcome is portrayed in Next Goal Wins, a 2014 documentary about the improbable struggles of the American Samoan national soccer team.

Having been blown out by Australia 31-0 in 2001 World Cup Qualifying (a result that caused Australia to switch regions in search of more competitive games), the powers that be hired Thomas Rongen – among whose prior stops included a stretch coaching DC United (1999 Supporter’s Shield and MLS Cup winners!) – to turn things around. Which meant, maybe, winning a game during the next cycle. That happens and its as heart swelling as any game could be, but only because by that time you’re fully invested in the amateurs that make up the team (including a transgender player, highlighting Somoa’s history of more diverse views on gender identity) and Rongen himself (fighting through grief at his daughter’s death). It’s just a great story well told.

Which is more than could be said of the 2023 narrative film of the same name, starring Michael Fassbender as Rongen. I watched it by mistake (they have the same title, I rented it first) and it’s just awful, turning Rongen into a needless villain and smoothing down a lot of interesting angles. Do yourself a favor, stay away from the Hollywood version on this one.

Of course, at home is the only place I could have seen a couple of stone cold classics last year.

I didn’t even know Akira Kurosawa made a movie called High & Low until I found out last year that Spike Lee was doing a remake.

It’s the story of a wealthy businessman (who’s having issues, of course) whose son is kidnapped and he agrees to pay a ransom. Only it’s not his kid, it’s his chauffer’s taken by mistake. Will he do the right thing? That’s the first half of the movie, with the back half a tight police procedural tracking down the kidnapper. It’s wild to see Japanese cops work so selflessly, professionally, and with coordination, versus the usual rule-bending cowboys favored in American movies.

I wrote a bit about High & Low and how Lee’s joint, Highest2Lowest compare here. It’s not the masterpiece the original his, but it’s pretty good with some excellent set pieces.

The other old movie I finally got around to seeing last year was The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin’s satire of Hitler and fascism.

Can’t imagine why that felt sadly relevant in 2025 (or 2026).

All that said, I wanted to highlight a couple of great movies I’m very glad I got to see on the big screen.

The first was Sinners, the long-simmering passion project from Ryan Coogler.

This was my favorite new movie I saw in 2025. I was a little suspicious (at one point someone said it was a musical, which, no thanks?) when I first read about it and the effusive praise it got upon release just upped my natural anti-hype reflex. It lived up to it, big time. The world building was completely immersive. The scene where the song in the juke joint turns into a rhapsody across time and culture was amazing. And Michael B. Jordan brought more reality to the one-guy-playing-two-dudes thing than most.

The other great new movie I saw in theaters was Weapons.

It starts with a fabulous premise – what if, one night, all the kids in a particular elementary school class just disappear (technically they run away, but still). The movie does a good job of showing how unsettled the town gets, where blame gets put initially, and the like. The fractured timeline works pretty effectively, so much so that when it lock in for the home stretch it’s kind of disappointing (shockingly hilarious violence excepted). Still, a pretty awesome telling, for the most part. 

But, at the end of the year, it was back to the small screen to see what appears to be the current Best Picture front-runner, One Battle After Another.

This was another one that where my hype reflex kicked in, but it met the challenge, for the most part. I love Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood so I didn’t find that it reached those heights, but it’s very good. Love the way Di Caprio’s character fails his way through the movie (although he does wind up in the right place when needed), but the supporting cast is just as good (including Chase Infinity, who plays his daughter). Johnny Greenwood’s score is, of course, great. All in all if this kind of “not his best work” Paul Thomas Anderson can make that’s really saying something.

So much for sights and sounds – next week we wind things up with words.

When I found out earlier this year that a new Spike Lee Joint was on the way, I was excited. When I found out it was an adaptation of an Akira Kurosawa film – one I’d not yet seen – I was doubly thrilled. So how does Highest 2 Lowest compare to High and Low? Not as well as it might have, but I kind of think that’s the point. There will be spoilers aplenty!

It’s worth noting that both movies have their roots in a 1950s hard-boiled detective novel, King’s Ransom by Ed McBain.

No, not that McBain. “Ed McBain” was a pen name of Evan Hunter, who also wrote the book The Blackboard Jungle (on which the movie was based) and the screenplay for The Birds. King’s Ransom was part of a series of books dealing with a particular group of cops and tells the story of a wealthy magnate (named King, hence the title) who, while angling to take over his company, learns that his son has been kidnapped. The twist is that the kidnapped kid is actually his driver’s, which leads to a conflict as to whether King will pay the ransom or not.

Neither film, it turns out, is a particularly faithful adaptation of the book for a simple reason – in the book (so far as I can tell – I’ve not actually read it) King decides not to pay the ransom. The plot is entirely taken up in a will he/won’t he. As we’ll see, both movies use the ransom stuff as more of a jumping off point, although they go to entirely different places.

Both movies, though, at least use the same setup as the book. High and Low, which came out in 1963, stars Kurosawa regular Toshiro Mifune in the King role (since the names are basically the same in both movies I’ll refer mostly to actors’ names instead) as an executive leveraged to the hilt in an attempt to take over the shoe company he runs.

In Highest 2 Lowest, by contrast, Denzel Washington plays the aging head of a music label of which he’s trying to regain control.

He’s not in quite as much financial peril as Mifune, but the nature of his business raises bigger concerns (about, for instance, a historical driver of black culture being stripped for parts after a takeover). It’s a subtle difference, but an important one.

The relationship between mogul and driver is quite different, as well. Mifune’s relationship with his driver is purely business and plays out through rigid class distinctions. Their kids play together, but there’s never any forgetting who is the boss and who works for whom. Denzel, by contrast, has a much deeper relationship with his driver (played by Jeffery Wright), one that suggests common roots, if different life paths. The pairing of Denzel and Wright is great and Highest 2 Lowest is often best when it focuses on them, but the deepening of that relationship drains some of the suspense out of whether the ransom will eventually be paid.

Although there’s not really any doubt on that. Beyond the fact that there’s no back half of these movies without the ransom being paid, the fact is there really isn’t much of a moral argument against paying it. Practical, yes, but not moral. To have either Mifune or Denzel hold out would have ruined their characters (or made for very different movies). That said, how the decision gets made is also subtly different. Mifune never decides to “do the right thing” (so to speak) and pay the ransom, but agrees to a police scheme to pay it as part of an operation in which, he’s promised, they’ll get the money back. It’s unclear exactly why Denzel has a change of heart, although getting the money back is also mentioned by the cops he works with, too. I suspect that vagueness is intentional, but it’s a little frustrating.

Where both movies shine, in different ways, is the sequence where the ransom money is actually turned over. Both take place on trains. The kidnapper lures Mifune onto a train where he thinks the handoff will take place, only to be instructed to toss the bag with the money out a window going over a particular bridge. It’s a taut, tense sequence where it looks like everything is spiraling out of control, but actually isn’t. Denzel is likewise lured onto a train, a subway train bound for Yankee Stadium (allowing Spike Lee to indulge in some amusing Red Sox hate). It’s more sprawling than taught, but equally vibrant in a completely different way, accented with chanting Yankees fans and a chase through a Puerto Rican Day parade. Musically this is where Highest 2 Lowest is at its best, both in the propulsive jazz piano score and the sweet Latin fusion of the late Eddie Palmieri and his band (performing for the parade).

It’s here where the movies diverge greatly, leading one to ask whether “adaptation” is the right description for what Highest 2 Lowest is. Which one works better for you will probably come down to what you look for in movies.

In High and Low, once the money is dropped Mifune is almost entirely absent from the rest of the film. The focus shifts to the police who, with the kidnapped kid safely rescued, work on tracking down the kidnapper and the money. There’s some time spent with the kidnapper himself, as well, but we’re mostly with groups of cops trying to track down leads. The driver helps with one, but aside from a couple of quick check ins Mifune is absent. What proceeds is almost like a time capsule from an era were cops were dedicated and incorruptible, going above and beyond. It’s almost like a fairy tale.

Highest 2 Lowest, by contrast, slips into action movie mode. The cops here range from ineffectual to flat out racist and are more wedded to procedure than anything else. When Denzel, who we’ve been told over and over again has the best ears in the business, delivers a pretty damned good clue as to the kidnapper’s identity thanks to them, the cops shrug it off. The dedicated police procedural of Kurosawa’s film instead becomes a kind of buddy movie, with Denzel and Wright teaming up to find the kidnapper and get the money back. This allows Denzel to come face to face with the kidnapper (a rapper played by A$AP Rocky) in a cracking scene in a recording studio that has the rhythm of a rap battle. It also personalizes the motives of the kidnapper, for better or worse.

Oddly, then, both kind of come back together at the end. In High and Low Mifune, who has lost just about everything (some of the money was recovered, but not quickly enough to save his home, much less the corporate takeover), has a final confrontation with the kidnapper in prison, during which the kidnapper explains his motives. Highest 2 Lowest has a similar scene, although Denzel comes into it in a much better position, and it feels a little redundant given the prior confrontation in the recording studio. The motives are also quite different, with Mifune’s tormentor choosing him as an avatar of wealth lording it above the rest of society, while Rocky is bent out of shape at not being recognized specifically by Denzel for his musical talents. Highest 2 Lowest then ladles on a coda showing Denzel’s relaunch in life and business, a stark contrast with High and Low’s decidedly downer ending.

With all that said, does one work better than the other? Like I said, I think that it depends on what you’re looking for. In spite of their common roots, the movies are quite different and it’s unfair to judge Highest 2 Lowest against High and Low in the way you might judge a movie version of a book. They are different things getting at different ideas. And, if anything, the thing they’re least interested in are what they take from King’s Ransom.

Highest 2 Lowest has, for my money, more highs and lows than the prior film. Some scenes – the money drop and chase, Denzel’s initial confrontation with the kidnapper – are electric. Some others are a little sluggish, particularly in the first half. In fact, the critical consensus seems to be that the first half is bad, the second half good. I think that’s overly simplistic – High and Low’s first half skates by on a lot of technical mastery (framing, shot composition, etc.), which kind of overlooks how non-compelling the actual moral dilemma is. Highest 2 Lowest doesn’t get the same break. Highest 2 Lowest also offers the Denzel/Wright pairing, which is unlike anything in the other film. That said, while it does lead to some great work on screen, it also slightly undermines what tension there otherwise could be over whether the ransom is ever going to get paid.

Where High and Low shines is in its broader themes. My understanding is that some critics initially read it as an indictment of capitalism and I definitely get that. This is where Mifune’s business venture being less compelling than Denzel’s pays off because it makes his choice even more stark – he’s going to risk some poor boy’s life for shoes? Additionally, because it ends with Mifune basically stripped of everything it implies that he’s paying a price for not doing the right thing for the right reasons. High and Low also really lives up to its title, shifting from one milieu to the other halfway. Its kidnapper could have targeted any rich guy as a blow against the system.

In the end, I don’t think Highest 2 Lowest is going to supplant High and Low, but I don’t think that was its intent, either. It is, to borrow the musical terminology of the movie, a riff on a common theme. High and Low is a classic for good reason and one of the highlights of Kurosawa’s career. Highest 2 Lowest is pretty good, but I don’t think anybody will think it’s knocking any earlier Lee movies out of his top five or so. It’s definitely worth a watch.