The Rock

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

Will Dwayne Johnson always be The Rock?

Over the past couple of weeks, two expensive, auteur-driven films with big stars have been released at the American box office, both conscious throwbacks to the kind of Seventies cinema that isn’t supposed to be made any longer. In the case of Paul Thomas Anderson, his Leo DiCaprio-starring Thomas Pynchon fantasia One Battle After Another seems to have been a success by the skin of its (yellowed) teeth: it has already made over $100 million worldwide, helped by excellent reviews and strong word of mouth. But in the case of another A-lister, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, the critical and commercial reception of The Smashing Machine has been rather more muted, suggesting that audiences know what they want from Johnson, and it sure as hell isn’t arthouse fare.

Monday

Neal Pollack

A Big, Beautiful Alcatraz is only the beginning

Among the Sunday night demands from King Donald came this bizarre proclamation: “REBUILD AND REOPEN ALCATRAZ!” The latest Trumpian nocturnal emission evoked a time when America was a more “serious Nation…No longer will we tolerate these serious offenders who spread filth, blood, and mayhem on our streets.” Apparently, to return to law and order, all we need to do is restore the glory days of The Rock, which has been closed for 60 years and is currently a museum operated by the National Park Service. To be charitable, our prison system is cruelly overcrowded, and under Trump’s rule, it is fixing to be even more so. We’re going to need facilities to house “America’s most ruthless and violent offenders,” and Arkham Asylum only exists in the imagination.

Wednesday

Mary Katharine Ham

How Mark Zuckerberg became based… by Brazilian jiu-jitsu

In the storied Fast & Furious movie franchise, now eleven films strong, there’s a tradition of the villain from one movie becoming a member of Vin Diesel’s street-racing international shenanigans gang in the next. Luke Hobbs (The Rock) is sent to hunt down Dominic Toretto before asking for his help to track Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), who is also adopted, while Jakob Toretto (John Cena), long-lost brother to Dom, redeems himself from assassinating their father in a sabotaged stock car by helping defuse a rogue weapons system that would cause all of civilization’s computers to collapse. You know, normal family stuff: wreaking havoc on the crew before being welcomed back with a Corona at a backyard barbecue.

jiu-jitsu zuckerberg