Jesse Brenneman

I’ll give Wake Up Dead Man this: it’s better than Glass Onion. It has a slightly sturdier foundation and is more interested in its non-Benoit Blanc main character. It’s slightly less interested in playing to the cultural zeitgeist (or at least weaves its contemporary references in somewhat less hamfistedly). Its murder is pretty admirably complex and could make for a great mystery. However, it shares the same fundamental problem as Glass Onion: it was made by Rian Johson.

Hello! It’s me , Jesse B, Script MD, back again to delight or, more likely, infuriate you! I started this newsletter as a platform for dissecting why some movies and episodes of TV shows don’t work and how, if they only took advantage of my stellar insights, they could be made to work.

Hello all, It wouldn’t be a Vinyl Odyssey Christmas if this weren’t coming in right under the wire, but, hey, there may still be a few hours of Christmas left when some of you read this, so it still counts! And here’s a little Christmas miracle to make it worth the wait: it’s actually two shows! My customary tardiness combined with an additional pre-holiday work and travel crunch led to my failing to post my last show before Christmas, and so today I have for you both the official 2025 Vinyl...