The Accountant / Randy & the Mob

Ray McKinnon has been one of my favorite “that guy” actors since I first saw him punch George Clooney in the face in O Brother. Since then, it’s always been great to see him pop up from time to time, most notably in Deadwood. Over the years, I’ve looked up his IMDb when I see him in something and when I come across the “Won 1 Oscar” part of his bio it always stops me. Did he win an Oscar for The Blind Side, and I just erased it from my memory? Nope, it was a short film he made with his wife, the late Lisa Blount, and former “that guy” and current big deal Walton Goggins. With the new blu-ray release of The Accountant and McKinnon’s southern crime comedy Randy & the Mob, I finally got to check out why he won that Oscar.

The Accountant on its own is worth checking out and writing about, but there are so many connections and similarities with Randy that it just makes sense to cover both. The Accountant is about two brothers (Eddie King and Walton Goggins) trying to save the family farm. Goggins brings in the titular accountant (McKinnon) to solve their financial problems. The premise itself is fairly commonplace in southern pop culture. There’s always a farm that has been lost or is in danger of being lost, etc. What makes The Accountant stand out is its dissection of what it means to be southern and the quirkiness of the accountant. 

First, the quirkiness. The accountant does plenty of weird shit, like stomping to count everything and chugging whatever beer is available (imports will do but he prefers PBR), but that alone doesn’t make a character. He has moments in which he turns into an angry southern robot, having to yell to get through to the brothers. It’s truly one of McKinnon’s best performances. 

McKinnon shines the most when philosophizing about the southern way of life and how corporations are ruining it to the point that future generations will “eat cornbread that’s sweet and drink iced tea that’s not and think it’s tradition!” He rails against “real” people in entertainment like Billy Bob Thornton (a kind of in-joke as this and Randy are clearly influenced by Sling Blade, and McKinnon would go on to direct Thornton in Chrystal), that can’t be real country if they’re allowed to make films and whatnot. 

That is the accountant’s mission statement: save the southern way of life one farm at a time. Even if it means someone has to be maimed, or a pet needs to die, or a spouse needs to be murdered. 

Viewed from today’s lens it comes close to coming across as a little too Jan. 6, but you can’t take it too seriously when one of the primary culprits in the conspiracy to bring down the south is Boston Market (I suppose Boston Market’s capacity for evil made more sense to fear back in 2001 [things truly were better back then]). 

Despite that little conspiracy hiccup (which the film doesn’t exactly endorse anyway), it’s easy to see how The Accountant won an Oscar and helped McKinnon get his foot into the door of Hollywood. He took an overused premise and injected a truly original character into it and made the whole thing fresh and interesting when stories like this are typically drab and boring. 

At first glance, it doesn’t seem like Randy & the Mob would have much in common with The Accountant beyond sharing the same actors and filmmakers. It’s about Randy (McKinnon), an average dickhead who wants people to like him but fails to see that’s exactly why people don’t. He gets into ridiculous financial trouble trying to appear to be a businessman, he shuns his gay twin so people don’t question his sexuality, he belittles his son for wanting to play soccer, he ignores his clearly depressed wife, etc. Randy fucking sucks.

But then Walton Goggins shows up as a kind of version of the accountant, and the ease with which he becomes universally beloved finally wakes Randy up. Goggins is essentially playing a friendlier version of Carl from Sling Blade, but he still shares a violent past. 

If this sounds messy and all over the place, it’s because it is. I watched Randy twice and it grew on me, but I couldn’t help but wish that The Accountant had been feature length while Randy was given the short film treatment. But something said in the archival making-of documentary turned me around on Randy a bit. In it, McKinnon claims that the film is an attempt to take a subculture usually reduced to caricature, and show real people. In that regard, he is successful. This is a southern film that isn’t taking cheap shots at accents and redneck bullshit. It’s about good and bad people just getting by in a nondescript small town. As someone currently living that life, I can appreciate that. It doesn’t make for a completely entertaining film, but it’s still commendable. 

And that’s the true connection to The Accountant. It’s as if McKinnon is heeding the advice of his own character. Don’t preserve the south by catering to cliches and cartoonish nonsense. Show real characters, even if it makes the movie less palatable. 

Special Features and Transfer

Both discs look great. And that’s worth the purchase alone if you like either of these films, especially The Accountant. These movies are easy to find online, but the quality is iffy, especially for The Accountant. As for the special features, there aren’t any for the individual release of The Accountant. But Randy has that making-of doc, and…The Accountant is included as a special feature. It seems like a no-brainer to just buy Randy, but The Accountant alone is cheaper. So it’s nice to have that option.

Highway to Hell - Visual Vengeance

 If it wasn't for everybody else in the world, I wouldn't be such a bad guy!”

Highway to Hell, (out now from Visual Vengeance) a no-budget thriller from 1990 I had never heard of, can best be encapsulated in one scene. Mass murderer Toby Gilmore, recently escaped from prison, is making his way down the road in a stolen car trying to spread his hatred and violence anywhere that he can. As he drives by a “Pavement Ends” sign, he takes a shot at it and misses. Enraged, he doubles back, gets out of the truck, takes time to aim and shoots the sign, this time hitting his target. “Fuck you!” he yells as he climbs back in the truck to continue his rampage. 

This is the kind of stupid crazy shit I want from a villain. Toby (Benton Jennings) is just evil, and he fucking likes it. You can tell because he laughs constantly while doing terrible shit, like running over children or shooting random drivers. Too often, modern villains have to have some goal or some past trauma that shaped their lives. Not Toby. He’s just an old school fuckhead that needs to be put down. The closest we get to any kind of introspection from Toby is this line: “If it wasn’t for everybody else in the world, I wouldn’t be such a bad guy!” He’s a classic “I hate everyone” bad guy. 

If that sounds off-putting or miserable, then Highway to Hell isn’t for you. If you’re like me, and you enjoy seeing forgotten trash, then this is going to be a good time. It’s an ugly movie, to be sure, but Jennings and writer/director Bret McCormick inject enough oddness to make it worthwhile, like Toby being utterly committed to wearing a female victim’s sunglasses for most of the movie. Or the overused musical cue that eventually distorts when shit gets truly awful. 

I’ve never heard of Bret McCormick, much less seen any of this films. But there are a few trailers for his more gore-driven early work included on this disk. I might check those out one day, but they honestly looked a little too gross for my taste. Highway to Hell is plenty violent, but the low budget didn’t allow for any over-the-top gore, which actually made some of the moments more realistic and haunting. 

This may be the only McCormick film I ever see, but it did give me early John Carpenter vibes. You know, if Carpenter was dealing with a little less money and a lot less talent, and that’s a compliment. Highway to Hell is no classic, but it has a unique feel that’s hard to explain, and it has a refreshingly simple villain who just wants to watch the world burn.

Special Features and Transfer

This is the first movie I’ve seen from Visual Vengeance, but I assume each one starts with the same disclaimer that pretty much states, “This is the best we could with what we had to work with, if any of it is bad, it’s because the source material was fucked up. We think you’re going to enjoy it regardless.” This film in particular was taken from a VHS copy the writer had, so you can imagine it’s not pristine. But it would honestly feel wrong if it was. This is the best way to see this movie. It’s as cleaned up as possible, but you still feel like you’re watching an old VHS tape.

The special features are plentiful, with plenty of interviews and a commentary. There’s also a short feature directed by the writer of this film, but I wouldn’t recommend checking it out unless you’re just really into these filmmakers already. 

Hands down the best special feature was an “interview” with Richard Harrison, who was just enough of a “star” at the time to guarantee some money for the budget. Harrison is only in the film in interstitials getting updates on all the crazy shit going down (like Toby somehow taking out a chopper with a handgun). He only showed up once the action was over, and the victim had already saved herself (kind of like DiCaprio in One Battle). It’s clear that he wasn’t giving his all for this. And that is confirmed by the interview. The run time for the interview is about a minute and a half, but the actual footage of Harrison is five seconds of him calling the experience awful. It’s obvious that the interviewer was hoping for something a bit more in depth, but this wall he got, so there’s an overlong intro and a lengthy credits sequence around the five second clip. They were clearly having fun with the disappointing interview, and it got a good laugh from me.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie - "I Need to Pee!"

The common complaint among most critics with the first Super Mario Bros. Movie was that it was superficial fan service that was pretty to look at with no depth, but kids would probably like it. Based on the blurbs and whatnot I’ve read about The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, you can just copy and paste everything that was written about the first film and apply it to this one. I agree with this general take, but the most important part of the critique is that kids will probably like it.

Before I had children of my own, I would only watch the yearly Pixar movie, if that, when it came to animation. I wasn’t interested in it, and my opinions about such films didn’t matter. Now that I have three kids that I can take to the theater, I’ve certainly watched a lot more animated movies, but I still find reviewing most of them pointless. I’m making an exception with Mario Galaxy because of that common complaint of it lacking heart, or depth, or a message, or whatever Pixar adds to all their movies. Yes, this movie is all surface, and that’s why I like it. Well, that’s one of the reasons I like it.

Animated movies with complex messages for a young audience are great and important, and I like them just fine. But I also appreciate it when a movie can just be a movie. It’s why I enjoy plenty of the critical darling films, but I find even more enjoyment in a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. Sometimes it’s nice to shut my brain off and watch some trash, and I like that my kids have that option, too. 

The makers of Super Mario Galaxy clearly feel this way, as well. Yes, there is a plot involving a kidnapped princess and Bowser and all that. But this is really just patched together moments, characters, and locales from everything Nintendo has made in the last forty years. My two old children both looked at me when the desert setting from Super Mario Odyssey was used in a scene. They were just happy to recognize something from a game they played. And so was I.

If this series was about a franchise or company that I was not into or unaware of, I might not watch it all, and if I did I probably wouldn’t enjoy it very much. But I’ve been playing Nintendo games since I can remember, so, like my kids, I was just happy to see stuff I recognized, even if it wasn’t inspired. For instance, my favorite part involves R.O.B., the gimmicky robot Nintendo released in the NES days. The joke of the character is that it is very slow in telling characters where to go, but this is just a ripoff of a very similar joke with the sloth in Zootopia (and it’s not like that was a brilliant joke to begin with). But it was R.O.B. so I found it funny. There are dozens of examples like that depending on your experience with Nintendo through the years. 

This was the case with the first film, as well. Because of this, I didn’t plan on writing anything about this movie. What was the point? This is going to make money no matter what. I can’t imagine there’s a single person waiting for the reviews to come in to decide whether to watch this. What made this movie unique for me was that it was the first movie my three-year-old daughter was able to sit through all the way through (we tried Moana 2 a while back, but she only made it through half of it), minus one bathroom break (more on that later). 

Movies have been a barometer for me with my kids for their entire lives. It’s a milestone to sit through an entire animated movie, then move on to some live action, then get to the point in which they’re telling me movies they want to see. I use their attention spans for these movies as evidence that screen time is not destroying their brains as much as I feared. Sure, the younger ones fidget around a bit more and want to switch seats and whatnot, but for the most part the movie holds their attention. My youngest doesn’t get any of the videogame references, but the characters have permeated culture so much that she recognizes most of them anyway, and princesses in general are a big deal to her right now, so that helped. She even broke into applause when Princess Peach took off flying midway through the film. 

It was the bathroom break that made the night, though. She had been asking to go to the bathroom early on, but I kept telling her to wait. My wife had to give in and take her when she loudly announced, “I need to pee!” right after a lull in the action after a loud T. Rex scene (the T. Rex from Super Mario Odyssey, of course). Her loud proclamation got a bigger laugh from the audience than anything in the movie itself. 

What else could I hope for from a kids’ movie? Afterwards, all the kids simply claimed the whole movie was their favorite part (which I think they just say so we’ll stop asking them questions). They were excited by the mid and post-credits scenes. And I didn’t need to explain any deeper concepts to them afterwards about grief or death or whatever. Just a decent night at the movies with a memorable moment from my youngest child. Sometimes that’s all you need from a kids’ movie. 

Random Thoughts (SPOILERS [ha ha!])

My oldest daughter was a little mad once I showed her the post-credits scene with the appearance of Daisy. She thought Daisy should have been in the entire movie.

I was a little disappointed that the Kongs weren’t really involved. But good for them for showing a little restraint, I guess. Or more likely not wanting to pay Seth Rogen. 

I loved all the Super Mario Bros. 2 stuff. This and Mr. Game & Watch are the kind of shit that make me forgive the shallowness of it all. I never imagined Wart having Luis Guzman’s voice, but it’s canon now, so Guzman it is.

Nice of them to find a way to show some of the action in the old NES style.

So how does that roller coaster on the Bowser planet work? Koopas go on normal and come out as dry boneses? (Is that the plural of dry bones?) So it kills them? They don’t seem to mind, though it’s hard to tell if they’re screaming with joy or terror. Are they warned about this before getting on? Is it only for Koopas? I have so many questions, and the filmmakers definitely never had a single one.

Galaxy is one of the few main Mario titles that I never played, so there are quite a few characters and references I didn’t recognize at all.

As for the voice acting, I’m still down with Day as Luigi, and I’ve accepted Pratt as Mario. Benny Safdie as Bowser, Jr. is wild, and I never would have guessed that was the actor if you gave me a thousand tries. And Donald Glover as Yoshi? It’s cool that these guys want to do this, but it sure is a waste of their talent. Glen Powell is spot-on as Starfox (he’ll always just be Starfox to me just like Grogu is Baby Yoda). 

Finally, this is one that I won’t mind the kids asking to watch when it comes out on streaming because I’m sure I missed about a thousand references.

Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice - Mobsters & Time Travel & Steve Winwood & Gilmore Girls & Ampersands!

There are plenty of reasons for me to be wary of Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice (beyond having to type so many ampersands each time I refer to the title). It’s a modern mob action comedy that at first glance looks like a Joe Carnahan Smokin’ Aces-type thing (I’m just not a fan of the subgenre). There’s not one, but two Vince Vaughns. It’s a straight to streaming movie (check it out right now on Hulu or Disney+ or both because I’m still not sure what’s going on with those two services!). I guess that’s it, so maybe “plenty” isn’t accurate. But it doesn’t matter because Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice (which I will no longer refer to by its full title out of ampersand protest) is surprisingly entertaining, weird, and delightful. 

In simple terms, MNNA is a love triangle movie about a mobster (Vaugh) who stumbles into a time machine and uses the opportunity to spare the life of his wife’s (Eiza González) lover and his mob buddy (James Marsden). Okay, that’s not exactly simple, but I swear the movie is easy to follow. The main thing is that the title is accurate: there are two Nicks (a future and a present), and one Mike and one Alice, and they’re all on a mission to save Mike. 

Mike has been set up as a rat, so the mob, run by the always awesome Keith David, wants him dead, especially as his son, Jimmy Tatro, has just been released from a prison sentence he thinks Mike is responsible for. So while the time travel hijinks are being worked out, the film keeps cutting to different levels of Tatro’s welcome back party. It’s all very silly, but mostly funny. 

This leads to quite a bit of R-rated violence played for laughs, which can be difficult. If it’s too hardcore, it becomes disturbing, and if it’s too silly, it becomes annoying. For the most part, writer/director BenDavid Grabinski walks that tightrope providing just enough gory headshots and gore to keep things funny, but not too funny. It helps that beyond the three, technically four, main characters, you don’t really care what happens to anyone. Tatro and David are funny (as is Tatro’s dumbass buddy played by Arturo Castro), but I don’t care about them, and I certainly don’t care about the dozens of other mobsters just hanging out waiting to die a horrible death. 

Still, action comedy alone can get a little boring. That’s where Grabinski’s quirky pop culture shit and fun needle drops come into play. I don’t want to ruin much, but if you’re a fan of Gilmore Girls, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by this. I’ve never seen the show, but I could still appreciate the comedy of these characters geeking out over the show. Beyond that, my personal favorite random bit was Tatro’s Big Trouble in Little China back tattoo that includes the title of the movie and its year of release. More on Tatro in a bit.

The needle drops were my favorite aspect of the film. As a big Steve Winwood fan, I found the use of “Valerie” perfect. And dropping the music from the Reptile fight scene from Mortal Kombat into an action scene felt like Grabinski was personally tailoring the film to me. 

Back to Tatro. He was the all-star of the film for me. I could’ve watched an entire movie of Tatro and Castro being morons and talking about their dicks. And a scene with David describing how he came to adopt Tatro was the icing on the cake. Silly, idiosyncratic moments like that are what make comedies memorable, and MNNA has enough to warrant an annoying Screen Rant YouTube video (“Every Pop Culture Reference, Needle Drop, and Weird Joke You Might Have Missed in Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice!”).

Perhaps what surprised me the most with this film was Vince Vaughn’s dual performance. I got tired of Vaughn’s schtick a long time ago, so the prospect of two fast-talking neurotic mobsters worried me. Thankfully, he plays the whole film rightfully somber. In both versions of himself, he’s dealing with depressing things: the failure of his marriage and the death of his friend. So instead of speed-running jokes the whole movie, he comes across as a little numb, and it works. 

MNNA is the kind of comedy we used to get all the time but has now become a rarity, and it sucks that you can see it on your TV right now and not the theater. But it is what it is. I’m just glad someone out there still knows how to put together a stupid comedy that knows how to balance action and comedy, and quirkiness and stupidity. Check it out now, and hopefully it will do well enough to convince some dickhead executive to give Grabinski’s next movie a theatrical release.

2026 Academy Awards Predictions

Believe it or not, the 2025 movie awards season is not over. It finally comes to a close with the Academy Awards on Sunday, March 15. Each year, I make predictions for every major category to wildly different results. Ever since the Academy vastly expanded membership, the Oscars have become increasingly unpredictable, but I still like to try. 

The expansion of the voting base has allowed for movies of all kinds to possibly win cinema’s biggest award. In the past few years, a foreign language film (Parasite) has won Best Picture, and insane and edgy stuff like Everything Everywhere All at Once and Anora have won. Some people might look at these and think, “Those movies just don’t seem like the Best Picture winners of the past.” And that’s exactly what the Academy is going for. “Prestige” films are no longer a shoe-in, and stuff that would normally only get accolades from minor awards shows and area critics associations are now in the big race. 

This has made predicting things much more difficult, but it’s also made for a lot more crossover between my personal favorites and the nominees. This year, six of my top ten films are also nominated for Best Picture. And there’s only one nominee that I actively disliked (F1: The Movie), though I understand why it was nominated. (Cars go “vroom!” just isn’t enough for me to love a movie, but I do concede that the filming of the races in that film is impressive.) To put it another way, the Academy now nominates movies I like. A film like Sinners (my favorite of the year), which broke a record for most nominations for a single film, would most likely have only received nominations in technical categories twenty years ago, if any.

All of this is to say these predictions are not meant to be anything but fun, and it’s more of a chance for me to slightly comment on a few categories. I’ll break each category down in three ways: I will make my prediction for the winner, I will make my personal pick among the nominees, and I will name my favorite overall, whether it’s nominated or not. Sometimes all three will be different; sometimes they will be one film. In the interest of keeping this reasonably short, I’ll only make some slight comments on the bigger categories.

I will not be listing every single nominee because that would take up too much space, and I’m too lazy to do that. So feel free to just Google the nominees.

Cinematography

Prediction, Pick, and Favorite - One Battle After Another

Original Score

Prediction - Sinners

Pick and Favorite - Bugonia

Original Song

Original Song

Prediction - KPop Demon Hunters

Pick and Favorite - Sinners

Visual Effects

Prediction, Pick, and Favorite - Avatar: Fire and Ash

Original Screenplay

Prediction, Pick, and Favorite - Sinners

This is where I start getting very conflicted. I feel like Sinners could win almost every category it's nominated in, or they could only give it Original Screenplay while One Battle wins everything else. I’m just going with my gut on this one, but Sentimental Value could sneak in this one, too, but the Academy will likely feel good enough about just giving that film Best International Feature.

Adapted Screenplay

Prediction, Pick, and Favorite - One Battle After Another

One of the few picks I feel 100% confident about.

Documentary

Prediction, Pick, and Favorite - The Perfect Neighbor

Full disclosure, this category is a big blindspot for me, and The Perfect Neighbor is the only nominee I watched. But it’s very good. Check it out on Netflix if you haven’t already.

Animated Feature

Prediction and Pick - KPop Demon Hunters

Favorite - Predator: Killer of Killers

International Feature

Prediction - Sentimental Value

Pick and Favorite - The Secret Agent

I would love to see a little upset here for The Secret Agent, one of my favorite films of the year. But it seems like the Academy is big on this one, so I think it will go with it here, and it might get Best Supporting Actor, as well.

Supporting Actor

Prediction, Pick, and Favorite - Sean Penn

This is the most coin-toss category of the night. Jacob Elordi is the only nominee that would truly surprise me with a win. Penn has been winning the big awards leading up to this, picking up the BAFTA and the SAG Award, so that’s my reasoning. But I’d be happier if del Toro or Lindo won. Skarsgård is a strong possibility, too.

Supporting Actress

Prediction, Pick, and Favorite - Amy Madigan

I could see this also going to Wunmi Mosaku or Teyana Taylor, but I’m banking on Madigan since Weapons got snubbed elsewhere this year. And she’s great.

Actor 

Prediction - Michael B. Jordan

Pick and Favorite - Wagner Moura

Until a few days ago, Chalamet would’ve been my prediction. He’s great, and he still could win, and deservedly so, but he didn’t win the BAFTA or the SAG, and Jordan won the SAG, so I think it goes to Jordan, which would be awesome, anyway, since he pulls double duty in Sinners and truly made each character unique.

Actress

Prediction - Jessie Buckley

Pick and Favorite - Rose Byrne

This is one of the only locks, apparently. Buckley is great in Hamnet, but that film is just too miserable for me. Byrne is amazing in an equally tough to watch film. But Buckley has been winning pretty much everything so far, so odds are it’ll be her.

Director

Prediction, Pick, and Favorite - Paul Thomas Anderson

This and Best Picture are giving me the most trouble this year. I could truly see this going any number of ways with One Battle and Sinners. I’m thinking it’ll be a split this year, honoring Anderson for the current film along with an amazing career, but giving Sinners the top prize. Or it could be vice versa. Or either film could win both. If it’s not the split I predict, then I think it’ll be One Battle winning both awards.

Picture

Prediction, Pick, and Favorite - Sinners

I pretty much laid out my thoughts on this in the Director category. I’ll just add that I loved Sinners, and it will be the film from this year that I revisit the most in the future. I hope it wins.

So there you go. I have no faith in these predictions, but it’ll be fun to see how badly I do on Sunday night. Also, Conan O’Brien is hosting again, so there should be plenty of off-beat weird humor during the show, as well.