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Movies 101

"The Smashing Machine" & "Anemone"

From left to right: actor Dwayne Johnson in the 2025 film The Smashing Machine; actor Daniel Day-Lewis in the 2025 film Anemone.
From left: Dwayne Johnson in The Smashing Machine (2025); Daniel Day-Lewis in Anemone (2025).

As the daily TV news leads warn us, violence is an ongoing part of our contemporary life, which makes the various examples of it perfect fodder for the movies. On this week’s show, Dan Webster, Mary Pat Treuthart, and Nathan Weinbender discuss two movies that incorporate violence, or references to it, at their very core. The first is the aptly titled The Smashing Machine, in which Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson plays the real-life MMA fighter Mark Kerr. The other is Anemone, a film starring Daniel Day-Lewis as a man tortured by memories of war.

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    Despite its faults, the feature film “Anemone” boasts an exercise in acting by one of the great screen artists of our time, says Dan Webster.
  • Movie Reviews
    Dwayne Johnson is getting the best reviews of his career playing UFC fighter Mark Kerr in Benny Safdie’s "The Smashing Machine." Nathan Weinbender says the performance is solid, but the movie is sketchy and unsatisfying.