Cold

 

Cold

The hordes of Indianians have returned to their state of Hoosierism, taking with them the college football national title and leaving behind one of the coldest Miami winters in memory.

The contest itself… #1 Indiana vs #10 Miami, was played at the Hurricane’s home stadium. It was a great game that left the locals bereft and the visitors (a majority by thousands in Miami’s home stadium) ecstatic. It is, I am sure, fair to posit that most of these Hoosiers had never breathed a moment when they had even fantasized about a national championship that did not involve a round ball.

On January 19, the HOO became the what… and watched, along with thousands of their neighbors, the Indiana FOOTBALL team… and their Heisman Trophy winning Quarterback… win it all. No longer would Gene Hackman be the only star of record in Indiana. The Hoosiers now had Fernando Mendoza!

16 straight games without a defeat, leaving in their path not only the Hurricanes, but cutting a wide swath through a lifetime of grievance, pain, and humiliation imposed for generations by the Ohio State Buckeyes and the reviled Nittany Lions of Penn State. Did I mention Fernando Mendoza seemed to fly into the end zone, defying gravity, to score the winning touchdown that January night at Florida’s Hard Rock Stadium?

The atmosphere was electric, if not warm. There is, they say, something about revenge being best served cold. Exciting as it was, I would have given it all up for another 10-15 degrees on the upside. If you have been anywhere on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States this January you know what I am talking about.

Of course, much worse things were going on just west of the home of the Hoosiers … for while the ghosts of failed football teams of the past were being put to rest on that Indiana campus… 600 miles from Bloomington… in Minneapolis… Liberty’s poem, highlighted by the phrase, “Give me your tired, your poor…” rang as hollow as ice in an empty glass.

It was all it took to get me to look for escape in the form of filmed entertainment. Landman with Billy Bob Thorton and a fabulous ensemble cast… now enhanced by the always good Sam Elliott... has ended its second season on Paramount Plus. When comes such another? Not soon enough.

I lurched toward some Oscar nominated motion pictures and was disappointed in Marty Supreme. Good as Timothee Chalamet is as table tennis champion Marty Mauser, and as well directed as one could ask of Josh Safdie… 150 frenetic minutes in the company of a sociopathic anti-hero was more than I had bargained for. There is some real good stuff in the movie, but I suspect little of it (if any) will make the memorable list when that great documentary in the sky, composed of Hollywood’s best film clips, is finalized.

The Secret Agent (O Agente Secreto) was next. It is a Brazilian film set in the time of that country’s military dictatorship (mid 1970s). It is winning a lot of international awards but I am betting American audiences will find it too long and its narrative too unstructured. It is well made and probably appropriate that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences find a way to honor it with a nomination… if not an endorsement that the viewing public should actually go out and pay money to see this film. Something I do not have to go out very far on a limb to predict they will not do.

My biggest disappointment of this film trio was Bugonia, but only because ever since Poor Things I so looked forward to this next film by director Yorgos Lanthimos. Emma Stone is back with the director for this one and she is excellent (and nominated). So is her co-star, Jesse Plemons. Poor Things, which pretty much won everything a couple of seasons ago, simply had me expecting too much of filmmaker Lanthimos. The Bugonia film is a very good one, it just isn’t the great one I had anticipated. Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons just could win it all, but I doubt it… not in the year of One Battle After Another.

But then…. I am the guy who went out on a limb for Russell Crowe in Nuremberg. Go know.

 

Barney Rosenzweig

 

 

BATTLE AFTER BATTLE

What may be the best film of 2025 is, undoubtedly, the most important film of a very long time.

It is… all at the same time… concise, obscure, funny, terrifying, accurate, necessary, and fanciful. I could go on. The movie certainly does… for just under three hours.

I refer you to Director Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another and I hardly know where to start. Let me begin in the summer of 1955, immediately after my graduation from High School.

It was June and there was a review in TIME magazine of the film The Night of the Hunter where the reviewer wrote something to the effect that the movie was “a bit like using a .45 to kill a ladybug. One admires the marksmanship but deplores the waste of power.”

I have remembered that quote since reading it over 70 years ago, have referred to it more than once regarding any number of movies, and thought of it again when watching One Battle After Another. I thought of it… but quickly realized it really does not apply to this powerful and, potentially, important film.

“Potentially,” in that we have yet to see what the film audience will do with what they see at the nation’s movie theatres and streaming on Netflix. Will it awaken the imagination of the viewing audience? Cynically, I suspect that the potential of this film and its message will be wasted. The movie’s dismal failure at the box office is a strong indicator that I am right about that.

For purposes of this review, I shall put aside the politics of this motion picture. I believe it was Samuel Goldwyn who, nearly a hundred years ago, said something to the effect that “…messages are for Western Union.”  Ironic in that his grandson (Anthony Howard “Tony” Goldwyn) plays a powerful white supremacist in the movie whose significant role is all about “message.”

Onward. The movie is long… very long at 162 minutes. It does not matter. The time flies by. The performances are all … even the tiniest parts… visually and virtually terrific.

In no particular order, Chase Infiniti makes an amazing debut as the daughter of Leonardo DiCaprio and Teyana Taylor, both of whom shine as Ms. Infiniti’s parents. I have never before seen a Latin American sensei… nor can I imagine anyone better at playing such a part than Benicio del Toro does in this film. Regina Hall is powerful in her role, and Sean Penn, as US Army Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw, is assured an Oscar nomination for his performance in this motion picture. There are so many others… and director Anderson has herein proven the point that there are no small roles… as each of the actors in this movie play their parts beautifully and believably.

Director Paul Thomas Anderson wrote the screenplay for One Battle After Another, partially based on the 1990 novel Vineland by Thomas Pynchon and with a nod to the French film classic Battle of Algiers.

Anderson is a genius filmmaker and unlike the movie, Jay Kelly, which I had to watch twice because I could not believe it could possibly be as boring as it was on the first viewing, I will watch One Battle After Another at least one more time to understand it better and in appreciation for my favorite art form being realized so well.

There is no minimizing the restraint this observer exerted in this review by minimizing the content of this motion picture. It is a very political movie and its truths might sting, yet they are valid. As someone who often categorizes himself as a political animal, I felt it better to exercise restraint and to deal with other aspects of the movie with only a reference or two as to what the whole thing is really about.

One Battle After Another is about revolution. The film begins in Reagan’s 1984 America and ends in the present day. It refers constantly to racism in today’s America… those who experience it by being born something other than white, and those who will do whatever necessary to … at the very least… freeze the country in place with the hope of a regression into a whiter, more Christian country than the one we now have.

One Battle After Another is scary, in that it could provide a handbook… or, at least, a reminder of what oppressed people ought to do. It is equally frightening to see what little was accomplished in those battles of the past and what has/ or more properly, has not happened for those advocates of change.

Director Anderson went out of his way not to mention any current politicians, political parties, or movements on either the left or the right. Still, it is an all-too-real depiction of what, at the very least, we are flirting with in modern day America.

“Be careful,” the aging revolutionary Leonardo DiCaprio says at the end of the movie to his 16-year-old daughter as she is about to go out into the world.

Meant to bring a smile of recognition to the filmgoer and a reminder of the understanding that the battle goes on, is her reassuring response:

“I won’t.”

Barney Rosenzweig

DY-NO-MITE

 A House of Dynamite, has arrived at Netflix, courtesy of director Kathryn Bigelow (Academy Award winner for The Hurt Locker) and it is… as one might well expect from this talented director… a well-made thriller; a  “whodunit” in the world of apocalyptic tales… a mystery in that no one in our nation’s defense system is able to discern which one of our ever-increasing list of enemies has precipitated this doomsday scenario.

The metaphor that explains the title is spoken near the end of the film “… everyone acts as if it is safe living in a house of dynamite simply because it hasn’t exploded yet.”

Do we need another film that explores that theme? I am gonna guess yes since I cannot remember when I last felt a sense of security about our interactions with other nations.

Everyone is good in the movie but I would single out Idris Elba who plays the President of the United States for his performance. In fairness to his fellow actors, Elba’s character is given the broadest range as we see him as a true politician and a loving husband before he gets the awful news of an imminent atomic attack.

And how is that possible? How is it that the President of the United States of America is among the last to learn of all that is going on? That is where filmmaker Bigelow challenges her audience. With hardly any warning that the timeline has changed and that the part of the story now seen on screen takes place hours before its predecessor, the director artfully moves her story along.

There is nothing so mundane as a message on the screen, or a clock on the wall. The decision to so subtly introduce an achronological narrative may prove confusing to some… many might even say “most” … but in retrospect there are clues along the way that this is how this powerful story is to be presented. Bigalow demands as well as commands your attention. Whatever the complaints… I have also heard folks questioning the film’s ending… the movie does work. It serves as an important reminder that while we are not truly safe in our house of dynamite, we can be secure in the knowledge that Ms. Bigelow’s Oscar nomination for direction of a motion picture is all but guaranteed.

Another current motion picture now streaming on Netflix is something else altogether. The film is Jay Kelly, starring George Clooney and Adam Sandler. I watched it twice. Not because I liked it, but because I could not believe… given all the hype I had heard about the film… that the movie could be such a bore.

Had I unwittingly dozed through some critical parts? Did I somehow miss an underlying subtle theme? Having just turned 88 years of age it is, I think, understandable that I might wonder about such possibilities.

As a fella who enjoys writing commentaries about films and such, I was also concerned about my built-in bias. I had avoided the movie for as long as I felt I could, simply because Adam Sandler was in it.

(A moment is herein provided for readers to take a pause and think of performers they simply cannot stand to watch.)

My first was Dorothy Malone. Trust me, you would have had to have been around in the 1940s and 50s to appreciate that reference. Next for me was Karen Black in the1970s. Twenty-some years later, after two decades sans any noted bias, Adam Sandler made his debut on Saturday Night Live and I stopped watching the late-night series until he was fired in 1995.

Having pretty much avoided anything in which Sandler appeared for almost thirty years, it was not easy for me to contemplate watching a movie in which he co-starred with anyone… not even George Clooney… but I persevered. And you know, Sandler wasn’t half bad. I understand he received some rave reviews (probably from folks who were grateful he did not play his usual juvenile idiot). Whatever the reason, this sub-standard movie is not his fault. While being generous, I will not blame George Clooney either. Who then gets the dubious credit for this mediocrity?

Noah Baumbach and Emily Mortimer wrote the screenplay and Baumbach was also its “director.”

Baumbach spent 132 minutes exploring his lead character’s angst as if Fellini had never made 8 ½, or Birdman had not already picked up four Academy Awards for a similar theme. It would appear Baumbach would be surprised to learn of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, or Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, or even Shakespeare’s King Lear.

Of course, it is perfectly appropriate to explore or even merely revisit a theme such as this, but one would hope that a fresh look at the subject of a man looking back over the wreckage of his life would be able to add something… anything… to the basic idea.

Filmmaker Baumbach? He drones for 132 minutes. And me? Other than the unregainable loss of those 264 minutes was the disbelief that so much energy had been invested in such tripe that I watched it again to see what I missed in that first screening.

Nothing.

Betty Comden and Adolph Green would say it best in Wonderful Town, “…what a waste of money and time.”

Barney Rosenzweig

REFLECTION

 

There is something a little intimidating about sitting down to compose a review on a rather large/potentially important motion picture that has received little or no “buzz” from other movie commentators or even much of a nod from the ubiquitous gang at “Rotten Tomatoes.”

The motion picture Nuremberg is such an event. Even with an all-too-ready concession that the movie fails in ways that I could only wish it did not, there is still an abundance of terrific stuff built into this effort to qualify this historical drama as one of (if not) the best movies of the year.

In today’s world of filmed entertainment, perhaps this film would have been a better presentation as a six-to-eight-hour mini-series. There is certainly enough story for that and I, for one, felt the two and a half hours of the film’s running time simply flew by.

Director James Vanderbilt’s work was solid and often inspired. I found that I could only wish that screenwriter Vanderbilt’s efforts were as worthy as those of his alter ego behind the camera.

The script was good in so many ways, but only occasionally did it approach greatness and too often was too thin … too convenient… too much of the time.

Russell Crowe as Hermann Goring gives a perfect performance… one, for which, I am sure, he will be recognized by his peers. Rami Malek, as US Army psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, is almost always interesting (Bohemian Rhapsody, Mr. Robot), but in some ways miscast in this role. Michael Shannon gives his usual solid performance of an American stoic, and Leo Woodall has a nice scene toward the movie’s end.

The mini-knock on Vanderbilt’s screenplay should be qualified because although much of this historical monument was given short shrift, the writer did not miss many opportunities at giving today’s audience the chance to make comparisons of the politics of mid-20^th century fascism and what is currently going on in the 2020s.

In many ways, Nuremberg is an old-fashioned movie. It is professionalism personified by every craft involved in the making of such a motion picture. It reminded me of a time when more than one of these movies came along on an annual basis.

Sadly, that is not so true these days.

And, as the calendar on my word processor reminds me, these days of 2025 are soon ending.

As of now, the only other movie I can reference with reverence is Blue Moon, the setting of which brings me to the world of theatre. In no particular order, the best of what I have seen in the world of entertainment include three tiny surprises on Broadway: the very campy, Oh, Mary, the very surprising to me, Dead Outlaw, and the incredibly brilliant, Maybe Happy Ending. Lest it go unmentioned, I must also reference the incredible staging of The Picture of Dorian Gray, which included the Tony Award winning performance of Ms. Sarah Snook.

Television… mostly in the series format… is what continued to float my boat. The Diplomat’s latest season, the vintage classic Gilmore Girls, Landman… and here I must pause to say that this year there has been no better writer of dialogue than Taylor Sheridan and no better actor at delivering a line than Billy Bob Thornton. In Landman, these two come together and it is a wow.

The Studio on Apple TV is toward the bottom of my best of 2025 list but it did make the cut… as did season four of The Morning Show although it was a drop off from the previous season number three. Perhaps seeing some very familiar scenes of the industry I write about in my upcoming autobiography, Before and After Cagney & Lacey; Memoir of a Hollywood Career from Mailroom to TV Maven was an influence.

Finalizing that book could also have led to my getting very hung up on a few other vintage shows during the year, namely Younger, Bunheads and Homeland… which I could watch and praise with equal enthusiasm every single year.

Some favorable comments, with a caveat or two, will be forthcoming in the NewYear about A House of Dynamite from director Kathryn Bigelow along with such highly touted Best Motion Picture entries as One Battle After Another, Hamnet, Sinners, Marty Supreme, and Bugonia.

Finally, near the top of the year’s best was the limited series, Adolescence. Every actor was perfect and the direction was nothing short of brilliant. Exceedingly rare anytime but particularly so in the year 2025.

Happy Holidays to all with a look-forward to 2026.

 

Barney Rosenzweig

 

 

GOOD THINGS (SOMETIMES) COME IN SMALL PACKAGES

          

It is the small movies that often give the reviewer the most trouble. There is concern that… just perhaps… no one else will “get” this movie the way the self-anointed film expert might, that by virtue of being part of this elite calling, and having chosen to place one’s commentary on paper and the internet, that somehow the critic is filled with insights and sensibilities that mere mortals in the theatre audience do not possess.

The less than academic commentator might also fear that a plethora of research will have to be done in order to “explain” to the reader just why this tiny movie works and for what reasons it might be important that attention must be paid… especially to something so small.

The tiny movie to which this column refers features one of America’s great wits, a man who, along with his collaborator of a quarter century, formed a partnership that became… arguably the most prolific songwriting team of all time. It is said as a compliment, but in fact is something akin to understatement, that this very same All-American partnership is the US equivalent of the internationally renowned team of Gilbert and Sullivan.

One could easily speculate that the bulk of Frank Sinatra’s fame and fortune would be garnered singing songs written by this pair… songs such as I Didn’t Know What Time it Was, Isn’t it Romantic, My Funny Valentine, The Lady is a Tramp, Dancing on the Ceiling, Glad to Be Unhappy, Where or When, It Never Entered My Mind, Little Girl Blue, Manhattan, My Romance. And that is just Sinatra. There was, of course, also Ella and Tony Bennett. There is the very real danger of filling this entire film review with nothing but song titles.

And then there is the fear of the whole thing being just a little inside baseball as the set up for the movie that is one particular night… one awful night… in the life of Lorenz Hart. For it is on this night that Mr. Hart’s erstwhile partner, Richard Rodgers, with whom he wrote more than 500 songs and 28 stage musicals, is having the world premiere of his latest musical… his first with a new partner… a circumstance made necessary, according to Mr. Rodgers, because of Mr. Hart’s alcoholism.

Mr. Rodgers’ new partner is Oscar Hammerstein II and the premiere, just down the street from the bar at Sardi’s where this little movie takes place, is, of course, Oklahoma! Note the exclamation point.

There is no equivalency of setting or circumstance that any self-professed theatre buff could possibly come up with that would resonate with more raw emotion, more mixed feelings.

The title of the movie is Blue Moon… also a song by Rodgers & Hart… and it stars Andrew Scott (who played the Hot Priest in the sensational Fleabag, Tom Ripley in the recent limited series, Ripley, and he also played every single cast member of the most recent edition of Uncle Vanya both on stage and film); Scott’s co-star is Ethan Hawke (Dead Poets Society) who essays the literary half of the famous duo. Margaret Qualley makes (what was for me, at least) an impressive debut as the object of Hart’s affection, while the always solid Bobby Cannavale reluctantly keeps Mr. Hart’s glass filled at the Sardi’s bar.

I took the liberty of removing Mr. Hawke’s top billing as it fit my sentence structure better since he played Lorenz Hart, who was in life billed in second position to Richard Rodgers. Still, make no mistake about it, this is Mr. Hawke’s movie. If no one else gets an Academy Award nomination for this film, I can assure you that Ethan Hawke will get his. Richard Linklater, who also helmed the impressive Hit Man, and who directed Blue Moon, could be busy at Oscar time as well. This was the first screenplay for Robert Kaplow, who authored the novel Me and Orson Welles, and I feel comfortable in saying he is another who will not go gently into that Oscar evening.

Hollywood made its bones on pretty people saying pretty things in pretty places. Blue Moon isn’t that… rather it is very bright people revealing very poignant and intellectually stimulating things in a most provocative environment. Consider yourselves lucky to be able to join the party at a theatre near you or on Amazon, Apple TV, or Fandango at home.

 

Barney Rosenzweig

A MIXED BAG

Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys bring their acting creds to Netflix in the limited series, The Beast In Me. It is a semi mystery… but mostly it is a suspense thriller (there is a difference). Claire Danes schlepps most of the water in this which, in less talented hands, would be a dreary eight hours.

Ms. Danes is simply one of the best acting talents in the business and everyone associated with this thing owes her a debt of gratitude. She not only makes the show worth watching… she is, in fact, virtually the ONLY reason to watch.

Rhys, who has shown his considerable acting chops in one of TV’s great classics (The Americans) can find little to do besides look creepy but credible. The rest of the acting ensemble do their best with this material, but the bravas all go to Ms. Danes, whose multiple gifts come through even when the show is not Homeland.

Peacock’s All Her Fault features Sarah Snook, another actress with such solid credentials as Broadway’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and the HBO series, Succession.

I didn’t care for this limited series…  and then I did… and then, once again, I didn’t. Snook is sorta one-note and although that note is a reasonably powerful one, it is… after all… but one note. The police work, characterized by actor Michael Pena, was interesting and almost all by itself made the eight-episode series work.

Parts of the limited series captured me… more than once after I was sure I had become permanently estranged from just whatever it was that was… or was not… going on. Overall, there was a  sense of relief over the simple fact that I didn’t know… and would likely never meet… either screen writer Megan Gallagher or novelist Andrea Mara. One or both have about the lowest opinion of men that I have ever seen projected on any screen anywhere. Michael Pena’s idealistic cop, good as it is, cannot balance out the incompetence and malevolence of the lead actors playing the husbands in this heavy-handed version of a sexist melodrama. Ladies, if you hate your husbands and need even a little bit of a confirmation of the validity of your feelings… this show is for you.

The Roses is a new motion picture, currently in a theatre presumably near you. It stars Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch and is a remake of War of The Roses which starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner way back in the 20^th century. My crowd seemed to like this updated version better… and from a plausibility and believability perspective, I sort of agree. Sort of. Frankly, I could not get past the nagging feeling that the 1989 version was really the superior movie.

The best of the bunch was a DVD from Criterion that was the Thanksgiving screening for my grandson. His mother and I insist that at every family gathering which includes viewing entertainment at least one classic must be included… whether he wants it or not. This year it was the Preston Sturges film from 1941, Sullivan’s Travels, starring Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake. Good stuff, and the good news is you do not have to wait for a special occasion to watch it.

 

Barney Rosenzweig

TO BE FRANK

The latest version of Mary Shelley’s 19^th century novel Frankenstein has finally been brought to the screen by Academy Award winner Guillermo del Toro Gomez. I picked the adverb with an abundance of forethought. Director Gomez has said that he has waited almost all of his life to bring this story to the cinema and, there is little question, he should be the perfect guy to do so.

Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water, Hellboy, and Pinocchio were worthy precursors to the gothic film which viewers… as well as del Toro himself… might well suspect would spring from the mind’s eye of this gifted picture maker.

Was it worth the wait? Frankly, the answer is no. The first half is a bore and so much so that the second half… which is much better… cannot fully compensate for what went before.

What went wrong? Hard to know. Have we seen the filmization of this story too many times? Could be. In fairness, it is not as easy a thing to pull off as one might expect. Horror movie buffs are rebuffed by the empathic character that is the monster. The result…?... It just isn’t… nor has it ever been… a true horror story.

Man’s inhumanity to man? But is the thing… the “monster”... technically human? And just maybe none of this esoterica matters anyway. No matter how massive the sets, how glorious and mysterious the cinematography or the underscore of music, maybe… we… the picture-going audience… have stayed too long at the fair.

Mary Shelley’s story has stood the test of time, is one of the great yarns of semi-modern literature, but (frankly) we have been there and done that… and what’s more, Director Yorgos Lanthimos pretty much put a nail in this coffin with his award winning 2023 motion picture, Poor Things starring Emma Stone as “the creature.” It just may be impossible… to top Yorgos’ send-up of the genre.

That said, not all have gotten the message. Still to come is The Bride, directed by Maggie Gylllenhaal, based on the filmic concept, The Bride of Frankenstein.

Recently… and need I add not seen by me?…. Lisa Frankenstein, where a teenage girl flips the genre by creating a “mate” and then there is The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster.

About these, “… frankly, I don’t give a damn” is a suitable cinematic closer.

Besides the history of cinema, history itself has been of some more than casual interest for me even before taking it as my major as an undergraduate at the University of Southern California. Death by Lightning, a four-hour miniseries on Netflix, the story of the brief term in office of President James A. Garfield and his assassin Charles J. Guiteau, is well worth your attention.

I knew little about either of these true to life-characters, other than my parents having met at James A. Garfield High School in East Los Angeles and my more than superficial interest in the Stephen Sondheim musical, Assassins, which … among others… featured “Charlie” Guiteau.

Death by Lightning, see it. It is an informative and satisfying four hours.

I turned on Mindhunter, vintage 2017-2019, because of actress Anna Torv, the Australian beauty who J.J. Abrams first brought to my attention in his fabulous ABC series, Fringe. That was a long time ago, but Ms. Torv is still a fine actress … that is when you finally, get to see her. Listed as one of the three leads, Ms. Torv barely makes an appearance until late in the series. The two male leads, Jonathan Groff and Holt McCallany are fine but neither has the kind of star power it takes to navigate a series to anything resembling success.

I have yet to return to the Netflix series but I might. Ms. Torv’s role could get larger, the show might get a bit better, but time has sorta run out; Netflix canceled the psychological crime drama after two seasons (a total of 19 episodes).

Finally… I took a look at the latest (or, indicated in its title, last?) Mission Impossible-The Final Reckoning.  The movie runs for 169 minutes and for something like 130 of those not only was the mission impossible, but it was also not even understandable.

Somehow, in the waning moments of the movie, the whole thing came together.  I congratulated myself on making sense of much of the thing, despite feeling that before that moment of illumination, most of the film was being made up as it went along.

I am old enough to have watched Tom Cruise grow up on the screen. What a fantastic career. Is he finally getting a bit long in the tooth for the kind of derring-do required in this sort of motion picture?  I dunno. The whole thing is so unbelievable, so contrived, so convenient to whatever the screenwriter can imagine… why not have a 63-year-old do whatever the role requires? After all, they do warn you at the very outset… it’s…

IMPOSSIBLE.

 

Barney Rosenzweig