Tag Archives: moulin rouge

“May the bridges I burn light my way.” The Devil Wears Prada 2

4 May 2026

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“You can’t go home again.” A sentiment oft attributed to the author Thomas Wolfe. But dang if Hollywood doesn’t try. We live in a media cacophony of reboots and reinventions, sequels and prequels, all infinitely merchandisable with a sea of product placements and corporate synergies. There is seemingly no IP at this point that cannot be franchised into its own universe of spin-off narratives and monetizations.

Which brings us to The Devil Wears Prada 2. Miranda strikes back. I’m happy to report that in this (rare?) instance Prada 2 is a nostalgic cash grab with something to say. And a raison d’etre. Plus, it’s just a darn good bit of fun, kicking off the summer ’26 blockbuster season in frothy, fizzy fashion (with a neatly nestled poison pill of cultural commentary).

I’m likely the only person who is going to invoke Joker: Folie a Deux in my review here, but like that much-maligned film (I think I’m literally the only person who liked Joker 2 … ah well), Devil Wears Prada 2 presents a deftly redemptive arc, offsetting elements of the original film that haven’t aged terribly well (e.g. body-shaming, rampant careerism, classism, low-key misogyny) with a wry and dare I say winsome self-awareness. It’s a nifty bookend to the original film … and hopefully Disney/20th Century Studios can resist the greedy urge to force a trilogy down our collective throats. Although I suspect that will be an offer the cast and crew can’t refuse.

Returning director David Frankel and screenwriters Aline Brosh McKenna and Lauren Weisberger (author of the original novels on which all of this is based) wisely lean into providing a narrative framework tantamount to cinematic comfort food. All of the story beats burned into the consciousness of viewers who *may* have watched the first installment, say, 918 times are basically there: protagonist in desperate need of job finds herself in shark infested waters to pay the rent; a MacGuffin gauntlet is thrown to test said protagonist’s mettle (unpublished Harry Potter in the first, white whale of a feature interview subject in the second); protagonist starts to squeak into the inner circle; a fabulous European fashion extravaganza yields palace intrigue; the very industry featured throughout the film finds itself in existential peril; a double (triple?) cross puts everything right again; and just when you think all are happy and settled, there is a limousine-set exchange that makes you realize corporate America is a delicious jungle, baby (always has been, always will be). Finis.

How’s that for a spoiler/non-spoiler summation?

The core four from the original film – Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci, and Emily Blunt – are all dynamite (duh), bringing grit and wit, joy and gravitas to material that otherwise would float forgettably into the ether in less capable hands. New adds to the cast – Justin Theroux, Lucy Liu, Kenneth Branagh, Lady Gaga (!?) – have far less to do but make the most of limited screen time, running just shy of becoming a red flag for overstuffed sequelitis (Sex and the City 2 … I’m looking at you).

There are some inevitably clunky moments. Twenty years passing between installments will do that to a franchise. You can practically hear the plot-point gears grinding against one another to justify bringing the old band back together, but once the momentum is established, the whole enterprise feels like a cozily familiar cerulean blue sweater.

But as the world keeps burning, I suppose we all need entertainment that comforts and critiques simultaneously. Some have argued that Miranda Priestly has “lost her edge” in this latest production. I beg to differ. With time and the inevitable repeat viewings, the glitz and the flash of this sequel will retreat, and the film’s incisive assessment of the precarious moment we all find ourselves in culturally will be that much more evident.

We are buffeted by an increasingly fragmented, misleading, manipulative media landscape. Journalism dies a thousand deaths every day. Art and beauty are succumbing to an army of algorithms and ’bots shaping public discourse in spiraling, reductive ways. The authority of singular visionaries helping curate taste and style has been lost in a sea of “influencers.” Devil Wears Prada 2 straps on its Louboutins and runs headlong into this miasma with a hardy “may the bridges I burn light my way.”

Unleash hell, indeed.

P.S. I was in London last month and have been remiss in giving a shout out to the theatre scene there. Sometimes, honestly, I just want to go see something and NOT feel like I have homework to do after. That said, I took in, yes, Devil Wears Prada The Musical at the Dominion Theatre, starring fabulous Vanessa Williams with a score by Sir Elton John. Indeed, it’s yet another reinvention – first a book, then a movie, now a musical – but it’s also damn delightful. Imagine the relentless pep of Legally Blonde the Musical with an arch side of the chilly Teutonic pop of American Psycho the Musical. Rodgers and Hammerstein wept. Hopefully, the show will make its way stateside for you to form your own opinion. That’s all.

P.P.S. Oh, wait. That’s NOT all. I also saw Moulin Rouge the Musical at the Piccadilly Theatre and Disney’s Hercules the Musical at the Drury Lane Theatre. It’s not lost on me now that everything I saw was an adaptation/expansion of a beloved film. I sense a theme! Moulin Rouge is by far the stronger offering, with a louchely immersive theatrical experience and a clever updating to the pop/rock pastiche score that will bring smiles of recognition (and a pang of heartache or two). Hercules is gorgeously staged, and the Supremes-esque gospel Greek chorus deserve their own (better) show. Go for the spectacle, stay for the muses, and try not to think about the hodge-podge book too much. Now THAT’s all.

“We don’t grow children like that here.” The Ringwald’s production of The Laramie Project – plus, quick notes on Crazy Rich Asians, Blaine Fowler’s America, and yours truly being interviewed on Freeman Means Business

15 September 2018

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Laramie Project review originally published by Encore Michigan here.

[Image Source: The Ringwald’s Facebook page]

The Ringwald Theatre’s 2018-19 season opener The Laramie Project is not a production that needs to be reviewed. It is a production that needs to be viewed. It is a production that essentially illustrates (beyond question) that the most impactful theatre requires very little: words, voice, people, movement. Storytelling in its truest form. As an audience member, I haven’t cried like I did opening night of Laramie Project in years (if ever).

 

At the end of act one, I was a puddle, with two acts to go, and, by the time the performance wrapped, I was red-eyed, gutted, mad-as-hell, and cautiously hopeful. It’s that good. I suppose some projection was involved on my part. I was roughly Matthew Shepard’s age when he was savagely brutalized and murdered. I grew up and attended college in Indiana, which, as Mike Pence’s political ascent will attest, is a state not unlike Wyoming – more Handmaid’s Tale than Moulin Rouge.

That notwithstanding, The Ringwald’s production of Laramie Project is a slow-burn powerhouse.

The play written by Moises Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project assembles first-person narratives from hundreds of interviews with Laramie townspeople, University of Wyoming faculty members, friends of Matthew’s, and the Tectonic Theater’s actors themselves. The narrative roughly follows this arc: defining Shepard’s humanity and upbringing, detailing the incidents of that tragic evening, and assessing its aftermath, all in the words of narrators both reliable and not. It is up to the audience to sort the wheat from the chaff and to make sense of a society where such irrational cruelty can occur. The approach is as journalistic as it is theatrical, and the topic is (sadly) as timely today as it was when the piece was written in 2000.

Director Brandy Joe Plambeck has assembled an empathetic, deep-feeling, yet commanding cast to perform dozens of roles: Joe Bailey, Greg Eldridge, Kelly Komlen, Sydney Lepora, Joel Mitchell, Taylor Morrow, Gretchen Schock, and Mike Suchyta. Rarely does this stellar group miss a beat, and Plambeck wisely eschews distractingly overt theatricality for a stripped down readers’ theatre approach. The emphasis is quite literally on the words on the page, and, as the details mount, both performers and audience are swept into a hurricane of emotion, of indignation, and of heartbreak.

As for those tears of mine? Well, Lepora and Bailey are the chief culprits, tasked to deliver some of the more devastating speeches and historical detail. They resist the temptation to indulge their characters’ raw emotions in a broad, selfish, “actorly” way. Rather, they quite realistically and subtly show their characters desperately trying (and failing) to stifle and contain their confusion, their anguish, their rage. And that damming of emotion, only to see the floodgates fail, is what cuts an audience to the quick.

Suchyta is quite effective as a series of “Wyoming” alpha men, from a star theatre student to a local bar owner to Shepard’s tormentors Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson. Mitchell is a sparkplug, breathing bold strokes life into the play’s few comic moments as a surprisingly insightful cab driver, and Morrow does a fine job balancing characters both reprehensible (local “mean girls” who basically imply Shepard deserved his fate) and painfully noble (one of the very few out-and-proud lesbian faculty members at the University of Wyoming).

That said, I hate to single out any performances, because this is an ensemble show in the truest sense of the word, and everyone is excellent. Plambeck paces the show in a measured but never ponderous way. The costuming is minimal, stage directions and character names are read by Plambeck, and scene changes/location names are projected on the back wall of the space. This approach results in a production that places the emphasis squarely where it belongs – on the voices of the people who experienced this tragedy and on a nation that both evolved and devolved as a result. Don’t miss this production.

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[Image Source: Wikipedia]

“I’m so Chinese I’m an economics professor with lactose intolerance.” – Crazy Rich Asians

 

The other week we saw the film Crazy Rich Asians. Somehow life got in the way of me writing anything at length about the film, which is a shame because it is quite exceptional. Let me say this: while it was marketed as a wall-to-wall laugh riot a la Bridesmaids, it shares more with that film’s DNA than just riotous shenanigans.

Don’t get me wrong, Crazy Rich Asians has its fair share of zaniness, chiefly supplied by sparkling comedienne Awkwafina, but like Bridesmaids, that tomfoolery belies a gentler, sweeter, yet exceptionally subversive core. It’s been 20-some years since Hollywood produced a film starring an all-Asian cast (the far inferior Joy Luck Club), and the box office success of Crazy Rich Asians will hopefully inspire a bit of sea change where Asian representation in Tinseltown is concerned. Money matters (sadly).

Crazy Rich Asians is part fair tale fantasy, part light comedy, part soap opera, all heart. Luminous Constance Wu arrives a fully formed movie star as Rachel Wu, a whip-smart economics professor in New York whose life is turned upside down when she learns her longtime boyfriend Nick Young (a dashing Henry Golding) is in actuality Singapore real estate royalty. As Rachel runs the gauntlet of Henry’s wackadoo family members – including a sympathetically subtle turn by Michelle Yeoh as Henry’s fearful and controlling mother Eleanor – Wu reveals varied layers of heartache and resilience. It’s a thoughtful performance, understated and thereby likely to be unfairly overlooked come awards season, but nonetheless an exceptional depiction of female frustration and agency in this maddening modern era.

Catch this film while still in theaters or on home video shortly.

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[Yes, a window into my musical taste.]

Blaine Fowler’s AmericaMy friend Blaine Fowler is a brilliant, witty, and delightful radio DJ here in metro Detroit on WDVD 96.3 FM. His morning show is a top-rated listen in this market. He and his wife Colleen are also among the kindest people you’ll have the chance to meet with two lovely and successful children. But one of his greatest loves is music. I wrote a bit about his last iTunes album 49783 here.

 

His latest release America was just posted on iTunes and Amazon for download.The whole album is divine. More cohesive sonically and rawer lyrically than the prior one, with an almost “song cycle” effect and an evocative moodiness. I liked it very much. Highlights include “Love Is” (a trippy throwback to Prince at his Minneapolis peak), “Reach,” “Oval Beach,” and “Best Friend.” This is an impressive evolution, which is saying something as I very much enjoyed Blaine’s previous effort. Keep it up. And keep experimenting. My two cents.

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Freeman Means Business

This week, my friend and fellow legal marketer Susan Freeman interviewed me for her podcast. She writes, “Check out the latest great conversation about the life of a legal marketer from our ‘Peer Pod’ podcast featuring Roy Sexton, a real dynamo — and a reel dynamo too!” Click here or here.

“Be patient. Listen to those with experience in areas that are new or foreign to you. Don’t be afraid to be your authentic self. People WILL respond.” Thank you, Susan!

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Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital). In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

…but movies transport me

28 July 2014

8 Comments

Spider-Roy

Spider-Roy

Nina Kaur (thanks to fellow Farmington Player Amy Lauter for connecting us!) asked me to contribute a guest blog entry to her fun and interesting blog Thirty Something Years in Ninaland. Here’s what she wrote about me – “Every Monday I will have a guest blogger. Today I am featuring a wonderful Movie Reviewer named Roy Sexton. He is witty, charming and great critic! Enjoy reading about his journey!” Wow! Thanks, Nina! Click here for the original post on her blog.

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By yours truly …

Movies have always been an important part of my life.

I like to read books (more accurately comic books these days, as I seem to now have the attention span of a tsetse fly), and I adore music. Television is fine, and I’ve spent many hours traipsing the boards of theatres across the Midwest. But movies transport me.

I love the fact that a film is an encapsulated medium. Whether 90 minutes or three hours, a movie tells one story – beginning, middle, and end – introducing you to new friends and enemies and locales in an efficiently designed delivery mechanism. With a good film, you get the experience of reading a novel (whether or not the film is in fact based on any work of literature) in a highly compressed fashion.

Nina Kaur

Nina Kaur

Your brain leaves your body for a bit, you take a mini-vacation to places you might not otherwise ever see, and you return to your regularly scheduled life a bit changed, perhaps enlightened, and hopefully re-energized.

I stop reading email, answering calls, or monitoring social media…and just blessedly check out…for a bit.

My parents cultivated appreciation for the arts by filling our home with movies and music and books and love. I’ve groused in the past about wanting, as a child, to play with my Star Wars action figures in the solitude of my toy-lined room and being forced instead to sit in our den with my parents and watch some creaky B&W classic movie on Fort Wayne’s Channel 55. And I am so grateful now for that.

My appreciation for classic cinema resulted from these years basking in the glow of our old RCA color TV. And when we could finally afford a VCR and could now watch any movie of our choosing, I was already hooked on the story-telling of vintage movies with their requisite arch wit, dramatic stakes, whimsical joys, and belief that anything was possible.

However, not everything was high art in our house. The advent of HBO in the early 80s and its repetitive showings of whatever junk Hollywood had most recently cranked out shaped my tastes for better or worse as well. I’m a sucker for the movie train wreck – the more star-studded, over-budget, under-written, and garish the better. Some of my most beloved films are among the most notoriously awful of all time: Xanadu, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Wiz, Popeye, Flash Gordon. The Black Hole, Raggedy Ann and Andy’s Musical Adventure, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Return to Oz, Battle Beyond the Stars, Krull, The Neverending Story, and so on.

If it was a flop and it was shown ad nauseum one mid-afternoon following another on HBO in the 1980s, then I fell in love with it. Like self-imposed water torture on my nascent aesthetic.

As time went by and I stomped through my high school and college know-it-all years (some might argue I’m still stuck in them), I learned from both my parents and some wonderful teachers the tools of critique and criticism. What is the intent of the piece? What is the context for its creation? How effective is its structure, composition, impact? Where did it go awry or where did it cross over into something classic?

It’s all highly subjective and a bit arrogant, I suppose, but I can’t help it. I’m entertained by the act of analysis.

In more recent years, Facebook gave me an outlet to connect with my inner-Ebert. I started posting status statements summarizing in glib, condensed fashion my take on whatever flick we had just enjoyed … or endured. My kind-hearted and patient partner John has suffered through a lot of movies over the years, many he enjoyed … and even more he did not.

Jim and Lyn's Wedding

At wonderful Jim and Lyn’s beautiful wedding

We still bicker about his departure from Moulin Rouge after twenty minutes with nary an explanation. I found him after the movie in the lobby reading a newspaper – I don’t know what is more telling: that he was too kind to want to ruin the movie for me by alerting me how much he hated it, or the fact that I stayed to the end without checking on his safety and security!

My friends and colleagues enjoyed these little “squibs” I posted on social media. I suppose I was aspiring to capture the grace and insight of Leonard Maltin’s “micro reviews” that I consumed voraciously as a child every January when we bought his latest edition. (The paper on those early volumes was always of some strange newspaper-esque stock prone to smudging and was pulpily aromatic. I will never forget that musty, fabulous smell.)

John always asks plaintively, “Didn’t they know this movie was bad when they were making it?!”

Perhaps I keep trying to solve that riddle, with the false confidence that my $10 movie ticket entitles me to a shot at armchair quarterbacking. Perhaps the failed actor in me is still trying to reclaim some artistic glory. Or perhaps I’m just a wise-ass with too many opinions and without the good sense to keep them respectfully to myself.

My pals told me, “Set up a blog. Capture these Facebook reviews for future reference. They’re great; they’re fun! Blah blah blah.” I have to admit that eventually my ego got the better of me, and, one late night, I explored the wonders that WordPress holds (albeit not that many) and set up ReelRoyReviews as a diary of sorts, detailing my adventures in the cinema.

Here’s the funny thing. Nobody read them. Nobody. At least for quite a while.

Well, that’s not entirely true. My mom was an avid reader and supporter and was always the first to offer an encouraging comment: “My son writes the best reviews and everyone should love them.” So there!

But you know what? Something interesting happened along the way. I stopped caring and just started writing for myself. And I started having fun. And people started reading.

Life is way too short (and exasperating) to get too intense about entertainment, so I try to take a light and conversational approach with my reviews. And I try to respect that (for the most part) these are show business professionals putting (ideally) their best feet forward and that they are human beings with hearts and souls and feelings. I hope I never seem cruel. I don’t mean to be. These writings are off-the-cuff and journal-style and come from as positive a place as I can muster.

Approach everything and everyone honestly and with positive intent and offer candid feedback with an open heart and as much kindness as possible.

Please check out my latest reviews here … Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Transformers: Age of Extinction, Edge of Tomorrow, 22 Jump Street, The Fault in our Stars, and Tammy and more …

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Reel Roy Reviews is now a book! Thanks to BroadwayWorld for this coverage – click here to view. In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the book currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.