Digger
2026, Alejandro González Iñárritu
Review by Connor McLaughlin

To Dig or not to Dig... that is the question polarizing moviegoers today.

I’ll preface this review by saying this: I am a Tom Cruise apologist. Say what you will, but the man is a cinematic daredevil and the last of an ancient breed of entertainers we may never see again on the silver screen. Every film of his is a blessing that we won’t have forever, especially his first non-franchise film in nearly a decade. Digger, however, is a conundrum.

More so than any other film from 2026, Digger might be the hardest movie to discuss without actually getting into what this picture’s deal is. In essence, the film is a lampoon of crumbling American politics and the end of the world which is inadvertently kickstarted by Cruise’s aging oil magnate Digger Rockwell. What happens next is better left unsaid. Trust me.

Acclaimed director Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman, The Revenant) brings a lot to admire here. There are tremendous performances across the board with Cruise playing nothing less than a caricature of Cruise himself here - egotistical, full of deniability, theatrical to a fault - and I mean that in the most complementary way.

Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, and Jesse Plemons are all scene stealers in their own right. The film, shot on VistaVision by Emmanuel Lubezski, is a feast for the eyes, just stunning to look at and blocked to perfection.

Conversely, Iñárritu has made a self-indulgent, smug, and purposefully annoying satire that made me walk out of the theater saying, “Well, that was interesting.” The film begins aggressively with an overstimulating soundscape, lots of yelling, and Digger Rockwell’s deflated, bare buttocks. It was a lot to swallow, but then the story takes a turn that (no spoilers) scrambled my brain like an egg.

I spent the rest of the movie going back and forth from being completely won over by scenes like Cruise’s showstopping six minute monologue and being immediately turned off by other plot points. Yet, by the end of the film, it kind of won me over? I don’t even know if I liked it, but it sure was interesting.

As irritating as it is to say, Digger is truly a rollercoaster of a movie experience that needs to be
seen for yourself.

Like Digger Rockwell says, “When all else fails hit ‘em with the truth. Hit 'em with the hard truth. Just bang, bang, bang.” By the time you read this, the damage of the merger of Warner Bros. Discovery by Paramount Skydance will be done. It feels appropriate and poetic that a film about the end of the world is the last film to be released by Warner Bros. Bold, big-budgeted stories like this may be in short supply in the coming years, but at the end of the day, even on the bleakest of days, art will always bring people together...as will Tom Cruise.

Digger is playing at theaters across the city

Splashdown in space: Aquamob return with 2001: An Odyssey Into the Deep
Review by Todd Perley

Aquamob did it again, y'all, once more dipping into the Kubrick well. Last year’s “Wendy, Darling”, a sendup of The Shining was bloody hilarious (emphasis on the ‘bloody’) and I’ve been waiting impatiently for a year for their next blood-soaked, satirical, musical water ballet.

We begin with rival gangs of screeching hominids fighting (and dancing) in the pool, crawling out onto land and continuing their frenzied battle. If you’re in the front row, you’re in the splash zone, so choose your seat depending on your preference, and caveat emptor.

My companions got pool water and monkey blood all over them, an evolutionary Gallagher-esque treat. The creatures find the monolith and learn the lessons of tools and weapons, and one small ape,
played by an adorable little girl of about ten years, uses a stray femur to beat another ape to death. I’m always happy to see children enjoying their bludgeoning.

If audiences of Stanley Kubrick’s film in 1968 were confused by the surreal messages meant to ask more questions than they answer, today’s audience will have the same opportunity to interpret Aquamob’s atmospheric tale. (Who says space can’t have an atmosphere?).

Though the film is heavy and long, there’s really very little plot or dialogue, you may recall, which opens up all sorts of avenues for interpretation and satire. I would recommend refreshing yourself to
the source material. This assignment should be a joy, as the film is just so good, and when’s the
last time you saw it anyway?

To bring things into the 21st century, the HAL-9000 (and AI in general) is on the table for discussion. Creators Cody Evans Gan and Noelle Tollet do not treat this complicated subject in facile black-and-white. AI is neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’, but nuanced between how it can serve, and the danger of humans relying on it too much. Dr. Bowman (Terry Miles) and Dr. Poole (Rebecca Poole) grapple with HAL’s usefulness and traitorous behavior.

Cody Keech appears in a couple roles to give much-needed exposition in amusing ways, first as a Tucker Carlson/Max Headroom-type idiot reporter, and later as the recording the astronauts were supposed to hear once they landed on Jupiter which explains HAL’s conflicted motivation.

The cast is dedicated ... and soooo numerous, with about 30 people performing as actors or damp (and bloody) ballet dancers. The use of water as a Zero-G environment is effective and hilarious. The band The Kissing Disease plays The Doors and David Bowie as well as they play Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra” made iconic in Kubrick’s film (but now on electric guitars).

And there’s a pole dance worthy of Cirque du Soleil on a bizarre contraption neither I nor anyone seated near me had seen before. Yes, I asked everyone around me at intermission, “What IS that thing?” Shrugs, with smiles.

Funny, rockin’, and surprisingly thought-provoking, it’s difficult to say who’s having more fun: the players, or the audience. When the ten year old girl emerges again at the end, held aloft as the Starchild wrapped in umbilical cords and finger-booping Dr. Bowman, the audience roared.

Nobody is doing what Aquamob is doing, and if someone tried, chances are slim they’d pull it off as expertly as this company. I’m going to have another long, fidgety year awaiting the next time they open their pod bay doors, HAL. If we’re sticking with Stanley Kubrick next year, might I suggest Eyes Wide Shut? That could be filthy and absurd.

2001: An Odyssey Into the Deep plays at the Midtwon Hotel through October 10th. Click here for show and ticketing information

​Jersey Boys @ The Saenger Theatre
Review by Lauren Malara

Hey-la, hey-la, Jersey Boys is back! As part of the 20th anniversary tour, this Tony Award-winning musical has returned to the Saenger Theatre. The show is fast, fun, and filled with hit songs. It was no surprise when audience members got up to dance at the end of Act II. Oh, what an opening night, late September, down in New Orleans...

This heartfelt story follows a group of boys from Jersey as they make their way to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. A code of brotherhood guides the boys as they navigate mobsters and music executives. With spirited and focused performances, you won’t take your eyes off the stage. The cast serenades the audience into a trance, inviting them to step into the past via their incredible legacy of hit songs.

You've heard their hits no matter your age: you might just not realize who recorded these classics: Let's Hang On (To What We Got), Can't Take My Eyes Off You, and Working My Way Back to You are just some of the instantly-evocative singalong numbers.

Oram (Frankie Valli)’s vocal mastery is nuanced, taking the audience on a journey as he learns to walk like a man. In addition to his soothing voice, McCredie (Nick Massi) offers some strong comedic moments.

​Sperduto (Tommy DeVito) plays the closest thing the show has to a villain, but his warm performance can’t give you anything but love. Schoenhofer (Bob Gaudio) is so affable and grounded; as he fights for Valli, it’s hard to remember that big girls don’t cry.

Even if you’ve seen it, make your way back. The songs and story have a lasting effect. You’ll leave the theatre singing and begging to stay.

Jersey Boys plays at The Saenger Theatre through Sept 27th, with matinee and evening shows this weekend. Click here for show and ticketing information
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All quiet on the cold front:
​Pressure (2026, directed by Anthony Maras, now streaming)
Review by Paul Oswell
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The British weather, for centuries a staple of everyday smalltalk on that fair isle (and I grew up there, so I know of which I speak), now takes to an unlikely center stage as the harbinger of high wartime tension in this film portraying real life events. 

It’s 61 hours before D-Day, one of the Allies’ most important attacks against the German occupation of France. The outcome of the war is still very much in the balance, and everything must go as perfectly as possible. Pressure. American forces have joined the Brits at a secret countryside compound to plan a manoeuvre that requires the utmost secrecy and - since it requires coordinating a huge number of air, sea and land units - as much information about the weather as possible, including barometric…pressure. 

Andrew Scott (Fleabag, All of Us Strangers) is an air force meteorologist, Group Captain James Stagg, who is called away from leave and his pregnant wife to provide rapid and accurate weather predictions to America’s General Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) and Britain’s General Montgomery (Damian Lewis). 

He arrives to find Eisenhower a bellowing blowhard, and Montgomery a sarcastic toff. All they want is to hear a good weather prediction for their preferred date, and with the Germans on high alert, the clock is very much ticking. To make matters worse, Eisenhower has brought his own guy, Irving Krick, played as the brashest Italian-American weather expert imaginable by Chris Messina. Kay Summersby (Kerry Condon) is Eisenhower’s assistant and is Stagg's only real support as she diplomatically triangulates the clashing egos. 

The generals and Krick want to go ASAP. Stagg foresees storms on the horizon and advises delaying. None of them believe him as it’s currently sunny outside, and his detractors seem unable to imagine any weather that’s not right in front of them. They want locked-in assurances, but Stagg can’t give them. Cue a series of heated debates and montages of nerdy scientists making weather charts. It’s sadly not the most visually intriguing activity as it mostly involves writing tiny numerical figures and lines on big maps. The music swells. People roar at each other about cold fronts. But what’s that building up in the background? That’s right. The pressure.

A typical scene has Fraser barging into a room and hollering at the top of his voice (every line from him is delivered at a volume loud enough to scare the neighborhood cats) about how sunny it is and why can’t he launch his bombs from the clear skies? Then Messina calls Scott a limp-wristed buffoon with no balls and Scott slowly becomes more and more indignant. 

These are the kinds of things that the cast shout in a very melodramatic manner: 

“The fate of the war hinges on this! There's only one imponderable left! I need a forecast!”

“This is the English Channel, gentlemen, I can’t guarantee anything!” 

“Get me the upper atmospheric readings from Dunstable!” 

The most dramatized light shower in history moves things along, and the deadlock is broken (no spoilers about who won the war, just in case you haven’t caught up yet). 

I understand that it’s a serious subject - there were huge casualties on both sides and I don’t want to trivialize the unimaginable sacrifices made that day. It’s also not an uninteresting story on paper; the weather really did play a huge part in the planning, and Eisenhower regularly talked about the value of the Allies’ superior meteorologists in the aftermath. 

It’s just very challenging to translate very dry, academic work into a cinematic drama, and some of the more esoteric problems verge on sounding silly when grown men are yelling them into each other’s faces. Maybe a film to half watch on a rainy afternoon. I’m not sure when that would be, you’d have to check the forecast. 

Pressure is currently streaming.
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Cooking up an origin story: Tony (2026, director Matt Johnson)
Review by Connor McLaughlin

The film opens with the title card ripped straight from Chapter 2 of Kitchen Confidential, "I was—to be frank—a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, badly in need of a good ass-kicking."

This message is quickly realized when we are introduced to a cocky, fake-it-till-you-make-it, 19-year-old Anthony “Tony” Bourdain. As a student at Vassar College, he aspires to be a writer and applies for a writing fellowship in New York. He confidently tells everyone, including his family and his college crush Nancy Putkoski, he got it. He did not get it.

Aimless and embarrassed, he impulsively follows Nancy to Provincetown, Massachusetts for the summer. He has no money, no writing fellowship, and no plan - except to work at a local seafood restaurant, The Flagship, in exchange for a place to stay at the head chef/owner’s house. To make matters worse, Tony Bourdain has no restaurant experience either.

What follows is a delectable and briny bildungsroman that feels effortlessly charming and self-contained for a genre so overcooked. It would be an understatement to say that Anthony Bourdain holds a special place in the zeitgeist and perhaps only 'providence' could explain what he meant to the world at large. Thankfully, writer-director Matt Johnson can also explain it.

Coming straight off the success of this year’s Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, Johnson withholds and strips down the usual chaotic tendencies of his previous work, but still he maintains an astute eye for character and tone. Johnson is not interested in telling the story of Bourdain becoming a maverick, the young Elvis of bad-boy chefs. or his mythos. Instead, the filmmaker treats this young lout as a practically complete unknown, whose mouthiness and angsty essence could be anybody’s.

As for casting Dominic Sessa: man, he is truly great. From the chain smoking to his frizzled look, reminiscent of a young Elliot Gould, Sessa continues to deliver dynamically interesting performances that seem to walk straight out of the 1970s. His role as Bourdain is not so dissimilar from his breakout role in Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers, but there are more than enough idiosyncrasies to differentiate the roles.

Emilia Jones as Nancy continues to impress with her versatility, as does Leo Woodall. However, the real heart and scene-stealer of the film is Antonio Banderas as the owner of The Flagship. His role as “Chef” is heartbreaking, hilarious, and never showy, but he reminds the audience why he's one of the most underrated actors working today.

In short, Tony is a chef’s kiss of a movie. The film’s structure is straightforward, satisfying fare. It's akin to a meal that you’ve had plenty of times before, but the recipe goes off script just enough to make you feel something truly special by the end... and, not least, hungry for some raw oysters.

Tony is playing in theaters across the city

Review by Conor McLaughlin

Have you ever wanted to go back in time? Back to when things were simpler? If the answer is yes, you might want to take a step back with The End of Oak Street.
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The year is 1982, and the Platt family wants things to go back to the way they were. Greg Platt (Ewan McGregor) has lost his job, now secretly working as a pizza delivery driver and sleeping on the couch. His wife and aspiring novelist Denise (Anne Hathaway) secludes herself in the basement writing a book about leaving her family. Their kids Audrey and Brian (Maisy Stella and Christian Convery) just want their old parents back...or to divorce already.

Everyone wants to go back, even the family dog Starbuck. So when the troubled Platt family and all the residents of their suburban town are inexplicably transported back to a prehistoric age of feathered dinosaurs and terrifying pterosaurs - everyone needs to get back home; back, if you will, to the future.

On the surface, director David Robert Mitchell’s (It Follows, Under the Silver Lake) newest is a lean, mean-as-hell machine that turns suburbia into a prehistoric killing field, pushing its PG-13 rating to a vicious extreme. The outlandish premise of “what if your family home was suddenly surrounded by dinosaurs” is cinematic catnip. It is a true-blue summer blockbuster with exciting visuals, great acting and rock-solid directing.

For all its split-diopter shots, the film can be compared affectionately to the Amblin Entertainment-produced movies of the 1980s (eg. E.T and The Goonies), and it's specifically a fun homage to original, high concept, mid-budget thrillers that used to get made constantly.

The movie is on one hand a violent dinosaur romp, but it is also an ironic investigation of nostalgia. It opens with an unmistakably Reaganesque flavour, a big neighborhood block party with Michael Giachinno’s glossy music underscoring an idyllic time. It begins as a fantasy of a supposedly happier time, when the nuclear family was the center of American life. However, Oak Street and the Platt family are merely an advertisement for this illusion of American beauty. Similar to David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, The End of Oak Street understands the appeal of that fantasy while quietly exposing its absurdity: the past is never actually safe or ideal.

In short, you can romanticize the old neighborhood, but you can't romanticize extinction times. This is where Mitchell's Spielberg homage becomes more than imitation. The End of Oak Street reproduces the grammar of the Amblin movies of old, namely the ordinary American family encountering something extraordinary, but it places that story in a self-reflective lens. It's awesome to see Anne Hathaway shotgun blast an Allosaurus, and the family dog Starbuck attack a pterosaur, but Mitchell understands that going back isn't necessarily the same thing as going home.

The End of Oak Street is playing on screens across the city

Following a successful kickoff and a full slate of August collaborations, Ladies Night NOLA is heading into its final month with five Wednesday events across New Orleans, bringing together some of the city's most beloved hospitality businesses for evenings of food, cocktails, music, conversation, and community. Created by Chef Nina Compton of Compère Lapin, Ladies Night NOLA is designed to support local businesses, introduce guests to new destinations, and celebrate the women helping shape New Orleans' vibrant hospitality scene. 
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September Events
Wednesday, September 2 | Peche | 5:30PM–7:30PM
September kicks off at Peche with an Oysters and Bubbles experience for $25, featuring a half-dozen oysters paired with bubbles, soufflé potatoes, and crème fraîche. Caviar may also be added to the offering.

Wednesday, September 9 | Dakar | 5:30PM–7:30PM
Dakar will host a Ladies Night experience on the patio, with curated snacks and cocktails available à la carte. The evening will feature some of Chef's favorite childhood snacks, including seafood fatya, alongside other seasonally-inspired snacks and beverages.

Wednesday, September 16 | Zasu x Commander’s Palace at Zasu| 5:30PM–7:30PM
This all-star collaboration will feature lobster rolls made with preserved lemon and crème fraîche on house-made toasted brioche, paired with a signature gimlet featuring gin, celery, Asian pear, and thyme. The evening will also feature live entertainment.

Wednesday, September 23 | Lil Dizzy's Cafe | 5:30PM–7:30PM
Lil Dizzy's Cafe will bring guests together for conversations over cocktails, gumbo, and more. A plate of gumbo, potato salad, and bread pudding will be available for $21, with cocktails priced at $11.

Wednesday, September 30 | The Mosquito Supper Club | 5:30PM–7:30PM
The series concludes at The Mosquito Supper Club, featuring a raw oyster bar with Lady Nellie oysters at the restaurant's new oyster bar. Guests can also enjoy specialty cocktails and browse a mini-market featuring local artists and craftsmen.

Events are open to the public, with reservations encouraged where applicable. 

WHO/WHAT:
Known for its hyper-seasonal California cuisine, iconic Santa Monica restaurant Rustic Canyon will join forces with Dolfy's for an exclusive collaborative dinner on Tuesday, August 25, 2026.
The one-night-only event will feature a special five-course tasting menu from Dolfy’s Chef/Owner Adolfo Garcia Jr. and Elija DeLeon, Executive Chef of Rustic Canyon. The dinner will include a farmers' market haul from Santa Monica Farmers Market, said to be one of the best markets in the country. For the dinner, each chef will produce two dishes and collaborate on the final course with Dolffy’s Pastry Chef Amanda Perdomo. The dinner, priced at $110 per person (excluding tax and gratuity), will highlight a perfect balance of some of Southern California’s best produce and Louisiana’s best Gulf seafood.
 
WHEN/WHERE:
Dolfy’s x Rustic Canyon Collaborative Dinner will take place on Tuesday, August 25, 2026, with staggered reservations between 5PM – 9PM. Reservations are available on Resy. Dolfy’s is located at 4508 Freret Street. 

The second of Crescent City Stage's Bard at the Batture events (last year's was a resounding success) belongs to Shakespeare's women…Beatrice's sharp tongue, Lady Macbeth's ambition, Rosalind's wit, Juliet's longing…six remarkable actresses, one riverfront, the sun going down over the Mississippi. Wit, longing, and a little rebellion. About 60 minutes, no intermission. Shows on October 5th and 6th. 
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​Tickets are live now, click here to reserve your spot
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