#54. Birds of Prey, the Oscars, and Gym Fees!

Birds of Prey splits the show wide open. JVL saw it in a packed Dolby Atmos house at the Alamo Drafthouse where every joke landed, and he texted the guys afterward that between this and Joker, DC has overtaken Marvel in cinematic ambition — he stands by it, calling the film smarter than the first Deadpool (which "just gets by on smarm"), praising the way the Harley-on-the-run, stolen-diamond and Huntress-vengeance plots weave together, the itchy-and-scratchy violence, the hyena named Bruce, and a genuinely thoughtful treatment of toxic masculinity that he backs up with Harvey Mansfield's Manliness and contrasts with the "ham-handed paint-by-numbers piece of cardboard" that was Captain Marvel. Sonny, whose own theater was 90% empty, was bored for long stretches: he'd have preferred a straight Harley Quinn movie, rates Mary Elizabeth Winstead's eye-rolling Huntress his favorite performance with Margot Robbie and a very hammy Ewan McGregor chewing scenery, thinks Rosie Perez is a decade too old for Montoya and the Cassandra Cain pickpocket is a lousy character, and says watching it feels like reading a Word document where someone has obviously pasted in text in a different font. He also calls the release a disaster — $33 million against projections of $50-55 million, the worst DCEU opening since Man of Steel, needing $320-330 million to break even — and blames the title, insisting it should have been "Harley Quinn, from the director of John Wick," since Chad Stahelski reshot much of it anyway. Vic skipped it after John Podhoretz's review but runs the quadrant (1 hour 50, medium plot, fantastic violence, no nudity) and lands on B+, which turns out to be its actual CinemaScore. The Oscars post-mortem has Sonny insisting his hedges covered Bong Joon-ho and Parasite, more surprised that 1917 lost than that Bong took screenplay away from Tarantino, and shrugging at Hollywood's now-established habit of rewarding small films while ratings fall six million viewers to the lowest ever. JVL finds it genuinely amazing that an industry under existential threat from streaming used its one big advertisement for the theatrical experience to crown a tiny subtitled movie instead of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood or 1917, and both marvel at the inexplicable Eminem interlude (JVL passes along Richard Rushfield's line that it was the 18th anniversary of 8 Mile, which is the 10th anniversary plus eight). Elsewhere: the French Dispatch trailer, which JVL says made him simultaneously desperate to see it and want to murder everyone involved, plus Sonny's tirade about an LA Times piece calling Wes Anderson's casting too white when the trailer contains Jeffrey Wright, Benicio Del Toro and Stephen Park; JVL's grief over having been in line outside the old media club right when the bomb went off, illustrated by a Times piece on a former Details editor who ran on 60 Vicodin a day and published a fabricated Kurt Andersen interview without losing his job; Sonny's XSport Fitness cancellation saga, where an Illinois law supposedly required a signed letter mailed to a P.O. box until he played the Texas card and asked for a manager, who produced an email option in 60 seconds; his praise for Amazon delivering a Diaper Genie at 6:03 a.m.; a plug for the Dallas premiere of Fangoria's VFW, essentially Assault on Precinct 13 with old guys in a veterans' bar; and Vic's confession that he is drinking more beer than he wants, including a walk to a bar during his daughter's dance class, plus a long-overdue gout update.