Monthly Archives: February 2024

Feb 25 2024
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Movies

Movie Review – Drive-Away Dolls (2024)

Love may be a sleigh ride to hell, 3.5 readers, but this movie is a one-way ticket to crap town.

BQB here with a review and boy did I ever take a bullet so you don’t have to.

How could one half of the legendary Coen Brothers duo let me down? I was on the fence but when I noticed a Coen was involved (Ethan in the director’s chair here sans bro Joel) I figured, why not but now I’m wondering if Joel hasn’t been the brains of the whole operation the entire time and has been dragging Ethan on his back. OK that was probably too harsh but it’s not like anyone other than 3.5 people read this blog anyway.

The plot? It’s 1999 and lesbian BFFS (they’re friends who are lesbians but not lesbians lezzing out together) Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) embark on a road trip that ends up in a comedy of errors. Jamie is a fast talking, care-free Texan and Qualley’s ability to say funny things with a deep Southern accent may be the film’s only saving grace. Marian is a very straight-laced, uptight office drone who avoids fun but desperately needs some. She decides to visit her aunt for a vacation in Tallahassee and Jamie, fresh off a breakup from her latest lesbian lover (she cheats on her cunnilingus partners often) tags along rather than face the music from her ex, Sukie (Beanie Feldstein).

They snag a drive-away car, which apparently is a thing? I’ve never heard of it before but apparently they arrange to be drivers of a car that needs to be transported to Tallahassee anyway. Alas, there’s a mix-up because the car they pick up contains hot cargo that is wanted by villainous ne’er-do-wells. Don’t ask why gangsters wouldn’t just drive the cargo where it needed to go without involving a drive-away car service to begin with. That one baffled me.

For half the movie, Jamie and Marian tour the countryside, in search of lesbian hijinx, going to make-out parties, looking for meaning in gay bars and smooching other women and what have you. Two inept hit men are hot on their tail but always seem to bungle things up along the way.

To be honest, the whole thing seems like a lot of filler. It struck me as it might have worked as an SNL sketch but somehow they needed to stretch it out to meet a movie length runtime so they added some extra stuff in the middle that goes nowhere. I’ll admit there were a couple of jokes that made me laugh out loud and the last twenty minutes, where the contents of the cargo and the backstory of how it got there is revealed made me chuckle but boy howdy, did they ever make me work for it.

Big criticism 1 – The movie is set in 1999 yet despite occasional 90s references, you’d hardly know it. You’d think since it’s set in the 90s there would be a bangin’ 90s soundtrack but for some odd reason, it utilizes 60s music instead. My first thought was this movie must have been made by young people who don’t know the difference between the 60s and the 90s but it was made by a Coen brother who obviously does. There are some weird psychadelic, groovy type 1960s transition scenes that seem out of place though when you learn about the plot they make a little more sense but even so I just don’t get all the focus on 60s culture in a late 90s movie. Seems like a missed opportunity to capitalize on late 90s nostalgia.

Big criticism 2 – There are flashback scenes where Young Marian, played by a child actor, spies on her nude sunbathing neighbor through a peephole in a fence and I assume the takeaway is this is when Marian first realized she was a lesbian. I know the child actor was probably taped staring through a peephole and never saw a naked woman but I just didn’t like this at all, the idea of a scene where a kid is drooling over a naked adult’s body. Creepy. Weird. Scenes like this just put Hollywood on the path to normalizing pedo behavior if you ask me.

Other than the last 20 minutes, the comedy rests largely on wacky cameos. Dermot Mulroney, Pedro Pascal, Matt Damon, and Miley Cyrus all stop by and the joke seems to be you’ll never believe what this celeb is doing.

STATUS: Not shelf-worthy but I’ll give it credit for serving as a star vehicle for Qualley, the daughter of Andi MacDowell, who will likely go on to do big things in her own right. It’s funny now that I saw her in a leading role in this film, I suddenly recognize her from smaller yet significant roles in films for the past several years.

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Feb 24 2024
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Movies

Movie Review – Queenpins (2021)

Coupon crime!

BQB here with a half-off review.

This is a 2021 movie that flubbed at the box office in 2021 yet found a new life on Netflix this year and has been going strong as of late. So yes, once in a while, Netflix does a good deed because this one is worth a watch.

The plot? Connie Kaminsky (Kristen Bell) is, like so many people of the millennial generation, someone who did all the right things, yet landed flat on her face. She’s a retired Olympic racing walker (yes, apparently that’s really an event) but never found fame nor fortune. Her husband, Rick is such a dick that a) he works for the IRS and b) he’s played by Joel McHale, the go-to guy whenever Hollywood needs an actor to play a dick in a comedy.

Even worse, Connie’s plagued by outrageous debt, the result of multiple IVF treatments that didn’t work. In her late thirties, she desperately wants a baby yet for all her effort, all she has to show for it is a humongous bill that never goes away.

In the hopes of cutting that bill down, Connie takes up the art of couponing. She becomes a whiz at saving money, scouring fliers for savings and is the bane of the existence of her local A and G Food Mart cashier.

She teams up with her neighbor JoJo (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) a wannabe social media influencer who lives with her mom because of debt she incurred when a fraudster stole her identity. Together, Connie and JoJo develop quite the local reputation as coupon queens. So adept are they at spotting deals that they even share their free stuff with others in the community.

Alas, they get quite greedy. Connie and JoJo track down a factory in Mexico responsible for printing and shipping most of the coupons throughout the U.S. They persuade a corrupt employee couple (husband and wife team) to send illicit coupons for free stuff their way, which the duo then, in turn, sells at a lower price over the internet.

Confused? Say a product costs 10 bucks. Just buy one of Connie’s coupons for 5 bucks and save 5 bucks. Got it now? Good.

The coupon queens make big buckaroos and are living large until A and G food market loss prevention officer Ken Miller (Paul Walter Hauser) gets wise to the scam. Noticing that his store chain is losing a lot of money to this fraudulence, he teams with U.S. Postal Inspector Simon Kilmurry (Vince Vaughn) to hunt the ladies down.

From there on, you’re not sure who to root for because Connie and JoJo are two women who did everything right only to get crapped on their entire lives and finally they give up and start breaking the rules to get ahead and who can blame them when following the rules got them nowhere? Yet, Ken is great as his job but everyone hates him because his job largely involves being the dick that has to tell old ladies that their coupon for half-off roid cream is invalid and they have to pay full price for their butt itch relief medicine. He dreams of busting a huge case wide open and this is his chance. Vaughn is funny as he has to remind Ken that yes, he indeed, is a real cop who just happens to work for the post office. He has a badge and gun and if necessary, can shoot people.

The good? It’s funny and the scam (based on a real life case) is inventive. It’s interesting how it all unfolds and I know I wanted to see it through to the end to find out how it was all going to go down.

The bad? Given the film’s subject matter, i.e. couponing and shopping, I feel like this movie’s number one target audience would be moms, grandmas, those ladies of the house in charge of doing all the family’s shopping who know how to wield a coupon like an Old West Sheriff wields a six-shooter. Thus, I think the film errs in using bad language that will likely turn a lot of these moms off and doesn’t really add anything to the plot or the comedy yet gives it an R rating that will probably cause a lot of women who would have otherwise been into it to pass it by.

But that’s just my two cents.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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Feb 18 2024
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Movie Reviews, Movies

Movie Review – Bob Marley: One Love (2023)

Jah, 3.5 readers. We jammin, we jammin, and I hope you like this review.

BQB here with a review of the Bob Marley movie.

Most musician biopics follow a pretty standard cradle to grave structure. We first see our favorite singer as a kid, maybe they test their pipes out at a family gathering or a church social. Next thing you know, they’re a rebellious teenager starting a band. Blah, blah, blah, they sign a record deal. They fall in love. There’s some turmoil. They have a falling out with their band and their significant other. Hopefully they reconcile and find great success only to die a tragic death before they have a chance to sit back, relax and enjoy the fruits of their labors.

SIDENOTE: Why the heck do so many musicians fall into this pattern? Being a musician is a tough life.

Anyway, this movie ditches the linear path and chooses a zig-zag structure, starting with the most turbulent moment of Marley’s life, then moving forward to his super stardom and flashbacks to his youth to explain how he got there.

The story begins in the mid-1970s, a time of great strife in Jamaica. A turbulent election is underway and two warring factions are engaging in violence in the streets, almost to the point of all out civil war. Reggae musician Bob Marley, Jamaica’s number one celebrity known for his songs about rastafarianism, overcoming poverty, strife, yearning for peace, equality, ending racial injustice and so on, organizes a peace concert. His goal is to bring both sides together, bid them to lay down their arms for an evening and enjoy some music but alas, one of the factions misunderstands his intentions.

Under the mistaken assumption that Marley is throwing the concert to lend support to their enemy, one of the factions sends assassins to his compound to strike. Fortunately, the assassins prove to be quite incompetent. Marley and wife, Rita, his lead back-up singer are shot but survive while their manager, Don Taylor, gets shot six times, miraculously survives, yet becomes bitter and takes this tragedy as an excuse to later rob Bob.

Finding Jamaica unsafe, Marley goes into exile in the UK and there he puts out his best album, Exodus, which propels him into super stardom, giving birth to songs that you know and love today (and alas have been absconded with by the Carnival cruise line.)

The good? The movie doesn’t spoon feed anything to us. It goes with the show, don’t tell structure, which is important for quality writing. It brings us into the world of 1970s Rastafarian Jamaican singers and if we don’t understand it, that’s our problem. And when I say we don’t understand it, I mean, A) as Westerners, a lot of us won’t understand the ins and outs of the Rasta lifestyle but also B) the Rasta accents are pretty thick and heavy. Get ready for a lot of “Jah mon ya bombaclot” for an hour and 47 minutes. I’m not knocking it. I wouldn’t want an inauthentic Rasta movie where everyone talks like they’re from America. To the film’s credit, there’s a joke where Bob meets a white American. They converse and the guy blinks and is like, yeah, you’re going to have to say that to me again. Irony is, Bob is speaking English, just a form of English we Americans are not used to.

The movie doesn’t pull any punches either. It doesn’t sugarcoat anything. It shows a lot of the good Bob did, being a worldwide ambassador for Jamaica, Rastafarianism, peace, unity, ending racial strife, shining a light on the plight of the poor and downtrodden. But it doesn’t give Bob a pass for the bad, namely all the affairs despite having a wife who had his back from childhood and walked through all sorts of fire for him. We do see Marley had a lot of kids, both with his wife and through affairs. It doesn’t get too deep into him being an absentee father though as a viewer you can put two and two together and wonder who is being a Dad to all these kids when he’s busy making music and going on tour.

The bad? While the show, don’t tell is a plus, it’s a minus in some ways. This movie is probably the biggest commercial Rastafarianism will ever get and they probably could have spoon fed a little more to the average Western viewer who doesn’t know anything more about this religion other than Rasta dudes wear funny, colorful hats and smoke a lot of weeds. You still do learn a lot but the religion is central to the plot and I had to google a lot when I got home to figure some things out.

They probably could have fleshed out a little more about the civil strife in Jamaica, what everyone was fighting about, and they might have fleshed out “the wailers” i.e. Bob’s band. Bob’s bandmates are pretty one dimensional other than they’re presented as pretty loyal to him all throughout his youth well into his fame.

For a biopic, it’s short and I suppose if it had been longer, we’d be complaining about it, but I don’t know. If they could have fleshed out some more details, I wouldn’t have minded an extra half hour. All in all, a decent movie though.

Kingsley Ben-Adir plays Marley well and it must have been a challenge to match his funky dance moves on stage. Lashana Lynch plays Rita, Bob’s long suffering wife who eventually becomes so sick of Bob’s cheating that she does some cheating of her own. Sopranos fans will be pleased to see Michael Gandolfini in a small part as a record producer.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy, mon.

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Feb 08 2024
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Movie Review – Wonka (2023)

Oompa loompa doopitty doo – BQB here with a review for you.

I avoided this movie for awhile. Why? I admit I suffer from woke movie PTSD. Also, lame movie PTSD. I have seen so many of my favorite franchises get the woke streaming treatment, where Hollywood takes the bare bones of the film, cuts out anything good, adds a few random lesbians fighting the patriarchy and a nonsensical filler plot that goes nowhere that I just assumed they would do that here.

But I was wrong and when you watch a movie expecting it to stink only for it to turn out good, it’s a nice surprise.

This is a prequel to the 1970s film and/or the 2005 re-do based on the book by Roald Dahl. Here, a young Wonka played by Timothee Chalamet is orphaned by the death of his choclatier mother, but inspired to carry on her passion by sailing to Europe and starting his very own chocolate shop at the Galeries Gourmet, a land where only the most savvy candy lovers congregate.

Naive, dim witted and poor, Wonka is tricked into signing his life away to the evil Mrs. Scrubitt, forever doomed to join a cast of downtrodden folk sentenced to a lifetime of washing laundry. He befriends another orphan, Noodle and together they inspire Mrs. Scrubitt’s captives to make a break for it in the name of finding a better life as employees of Wonka’s future chocolate shop.

Ah, but there’s the rub. To establish a chocolate shop, Wonka must take on the infamous chocolate cartel, comprised of three comically evil chocolate robber barons who employ the chief of police (Keegan Michael Key) to take out any and all competition to their chocolate monopoly.

I always saw Chalamet as an overrated, weaselly little doofus who somehow wandered into Hollywood by accident and everyone just shrugged and allowed him to stay, but he really wowed me here. This was the role he was born to play and he does the role justice with all of Wonka’s eccentric imagination and whimsy.

Meanwhile, Hugh Grant steals the show as an oompa loompa hot on Wonka’s tail, looking for revenge as Wonka inadvertently ruined his life when he unwittingly stole the cocoa beans under his watch.

So yes, it is possible to sometimes teach an old dog new tricks. And yes, it is possible for Hollywood to dust off an old property without making it all about lesbians fighting the patriarchy. Who knew? I sure didn’t but this flick proved me wrong.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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Feb 04 2024
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Movie Review – Argylle (2024)

Spies fly off the page and into action, 3.5 readers. BQB here with a review.

At the outset, let me say I give this movie a solid C +. It passed the minimum standards required for me to not demand a ticket refund but it didn’t razzle dazzle me either. It had cute, funny moments but ultimately, I’ll never watch it again and won’t think of it much a year from now. It was made by Apple and had all the earmarks of a streaming movie, so much so that I wondered why I didn’t just wait two weeks until I could stream it in the comfort of my own home.

Sidenote – A couple of weeks ago I noticed the Beekeeper was made by Amazon and this week this movie is made by Apple. Alas, when I was a kid I thought the movie business was out of my reach. If only someone had told me that I just need to learn how to code. Oh well. Moving on.

This is one of those films where the trailer is better than the movie. On paper, the idea is pretty solid. A spy novelist (Bryce Dallas Howard) pens the fabulous adventures of Agent Argyle (Henry Cavill) who, with the help of his handler (John Cena) and tech specialist (Ariana DeBose) fights the evil femme fatale LaGrange (Dua Lipa).

In reality, the novelist’s life is quite bland and mousy indeed. She’s scared of everyone and everything, her only friend her cat Alfie who she takes everywhere in a special backpack with ventilation holes. Alfie is the best part of an otherwise paint by numbers movie.

One day while on a train ride to visit her mother (Catherine O’Hara), novelist Ellie is attacked by mysterious assailants in a scene straight out of one of her bestsellers. Real life undercover spy Aiden (Sam Rockwell) comes to the rescue, and he’s far from the buff, studly, sophisticated Argylle but he gets the job done.

It turns out that Ellie is such a great writer that somehow, she has managed to predict with stunning accuracy in her novels what an actual spy agency is up to in her books, and they want her deep-sixed before she keeps blabbing away to her readers. Far-fetched? Yes. I could go into further detail but I’d ruin the movie for you and well, it does a good enough job of doing that on its own.

It’s a star studded cast. Samuel L. Jackson and Bryan Cranston stop by. Bryce, daughter of Ron “Opie” Howard, gets a chance to shine in her own vehicle. She does a better job in the first half as a mousy character but falls a little flat when she’s asked to be a bad ass. I’m not sure if it’s her or the written material she was given. Probably the latter.

Cut scenes throughout the first half of the movie refer to Ellie’s spy novels in which Cavill and Cena fight Dua Lipa and I couldn’t help but think how much more awesome the movie would have been if it had just been about Cavill and Cena fighting Dua Lipa than about Bryce Dallas Howard being in trouble for writing about Cavil and Cena fighting Dua Lipa. In true streaming movie fashion, it’s a lot of star power in that everyone was probably paid big bucks to show up for five minutes yet the trailer hoodwinks you into thinking they’ll be a huge part of the movie throughout.

So maybe just skip it and watch the trailer instead. Or wait until it streams on Apple Plus. It’s not a bad movie. It’s just not a good movie. It’s a C Plus movie. If you compare it to a term paper, its not the A plus paper that the honors kid stayed up every night for a month writing. It’s the paper the goof off kid wrote on the bus ride to school ten minutes before it was due. It got the job done but you can’t help but thing there was some wasted potential.

Sidenote. I hate to say this because I’ve whined extensively about my own weight problems on this fine blog, so I’m going to say this in a positive way. Bryce Dallas Howard is pleasantly plump and…you know what? She really isn’t. She just is for movies. She’s normal size for everywhere else. Most women in film, nay, most men in film for that matter, look like they eat three almonds a day and maybe, just maybe, if they’re good, they’re allowed one cup of spinach if they run a five mile marathon after. For example, I bet Dua Lipa only ate three celery sticks last year so she could film that cool scene where John Cena plucks her off her motorcycle that they put in the trailer that makes you want to buy a ticket to this otherwise lackluster film. But the Bryce-meister has a little bit of chub going on which works when she’s mousy novelist Ellie and a little surprising later as she tackles the a tougher kick ass role.

I’m not knocking it. I like curvy babes. It was nice to see a woman on screen who isn’t afraid of a sandwich. And I noticed the female lead in the beekeeper looked like she never shied away from the BK drive-through. There seems to be a trend in Hollywood as of late to put chubby chicks front and center and I applaud it. I’m just saying, where are the fat dudes? Where’s Special Agent Wayne Knight (Newman from Seinfeld) chasing down the bad guys? I’m not sure we’ll ever get equal time for portly dudes on screen, but there seems to be a cabal of chubby chicks who are doing a PR offensive to get husky babes on screen. Large dudes need their own PR team. All I’m saying.

Again. I’m fat. I applaud it. To an extent. Don’t get too fat, people. You don’t want the health problems that come with it. Trust me.

But Bryce is far from that. She and her cat are tres adorbs.

STATUS: Moderately shelf-worthy.

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