Monthly Archives: May 2024

May 19 2024
Leave a comment
Movies

Movie Review – If (2024)

So many imaginary friends, so little time.

BQB here with a review of this heartwarming kids’ movie.

I wasn’t going to see this, but happened to be around a movie theater tonight with nothing else to do so thought, what the heck. Glad I did. While it’s not the typical type of movie I’m into, it has heart and if you’re looking for something the whole family can enjoy, then you can’t go wrong here.

The plot? 12-year-old Bea (Cailey Fleming) has suffered too much in her young life. Visits to her grandmother (Fiona Shaw) ‘s apartment in NYC can only mean one thing – one of her parents is in the hospital. She spent some time there as a little girl while her mother was dying from cancer and now, as a tween, she’s back, staying in the city while her father (John Krakinski) undergoes heart surgery.

Alas, poor Bea fears she may be on the verge of losing another parent when new wild and wacky friends come into her life. She discovers she is one of very few people who can still see imaginary friends long past the little kid stage of life.

Another such person is Cal (Ryan Reynolds) who lives in an apartment on the next floor in Bea’s grandmother’s building. While Bea finds her ability to see “IFs” amusing, Cal has long considered it a curse, because these weirdoes won’t leave him alone! Since he’s the only adult who can see them, he has a duty to help them find new kids to be BFFs with, seeing as how their previous kids grew up and forgot all about them.

Cal runs a placement agency for the IFs out of his apartment but it isn’t going well. He has the knowledge, but the IFs drive him nuts. Bea is young and inexperienced, but she has patience and easily establishes a rapport with the imaginary creatures.

And so, a partnership is created as Cal and Bea set out to place every last forgotten imaginary friend with a new kid who needs a BFF. Said IFs range from a big blue furry monster, a British bug girl, a talking glass of water, a talking banana (well, they all talk), a robot, a superhero raccoon, a pink alligator, a unicorn, a Shakespeare reciting ghost, a noir-style private detective and more.

The understated and/or unstated theme of the movie seems to be that kids are savvier than ever these days, so getting them to believe in the non-existent is difficult, ergo finding kids to pair the imaginary friends with is quite a chore. The movie gets a little schizophrenic as the writers can’t quite seem to decide whether the goal is to pair the IFs with new kids or to reunite them with their old kids who forgot them, who are all now adults and sadly, as we see, many of those adults are going through hard times and could use reminders of their happier childhood days.

Steve Carrell lends his voice to the big fluffy monster Blue, while the late, great Louis Gossett Jr. delivers what I believe is his final performance (unless another movie buff knows better) as the wise old teddy bear Lewis.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. I’m not sure this one will go down in the annals of children’s movie classic history, but I give it a solid A. You’ll love it. Your kids will love it. It has a good message about finding little bits of joy amidst the endless stream of sorrows that life provides. Never too early to teach your kids that life is one great big pile of shit and they need to dull the pain with imaginary fantasies of wonders that will never, ever be. OK I’m not entirely sure that’s what the movie was trying to say but that’s what I got out of it.

Tagged , , , , ,
May 15 2024
1 Comment
Movies

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)

Oh, those wacky apes.

BQB here with a review of the latest monkey movie.

I told myself I wasn’t going to watch this one, largely because I thought the last installment, 2017’s War for the Planet of the Apes, was a bit of a stinkfest. And frankly, they’ve made a lot of these movies over the past decade and IMO, none of them have been very memorable. The main characters are CGI apes, after all, so the films are low on human actors with performances that will stick in your mind, and yet though animated, don’t have the same heart as say, a full-on Disney type cartoon feature. So, you’re just left with a lot of animated monkeys without a lot of feeling.

But I’m a movie buff and I was bored so I went and while I think this one will come and go like its predecessors without a lot of fanfare, I have to admit its a lot better than the last few installments. A better story and better character development go a long way.

Past modern ape films (as opposed to the 1960s originals) showed us “The Planet of the Apes” in its infancy. Humans experimenting with a virus that goes awry, causing monkeys to get smarter and take over and other films saw the early years where humans and apes fought for control of the planet.

This film takes place many years in the future, long after the death of Caesar, an ape leader from previous films who managed to keep the peace between humans and apes. Now the apes reign supreme and humans have become subordinate. The same virus that made monkeys smart made humans dumb, so the few humans that survive just wander the countryside, foraging and rooting around in the dirt like dumb animals. Most of them do, anyway. A handful of smart humans unaffected by the virus remain.

Noah (Owen Teague) is a young ape from the peaceful bird clan, apes who appreciate nature and study falconry, bonding apes with birds who obey their commands. Alas, one day while in search of his own bird to train, evil apes under the command of super evil ape King Proximus (Kevin Durand) burn his village, kill most of the apes and take the few survivors hostage, including his friends and mother.

Swearing to avenge his slain father and rescue his mother and friends, Owen goes on a long hero’s journey to…dun dun dun “The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” a forbidden place his father had long warned him to stay away from, for it is ruled by evil apes who kidnap and enslave other apes for nefarious purposes.

Along the way, Owen is joined on his quest by the wise scholar orangutan Roca (Peter Macon) who is a gay ape, because why wouldn’t he be? It’s 2024, after all. He becomes a mentor to the young monkey, educating about the world he has largely been sheltered from his whole life.

He’s also joined by Mae (Freya Allan), one of the last few humans capable of intelligent thought and speech. She wants to rescue her fellow humans just as badly as Owen wants to rescue his fellow chimps, so they’ll have to work together. She’s also one of very few human actors in the entire movie (William H. Macy makes a welcome guest appearance half way through) so you will have to accept that this flick is pretty much one great big glorified cartoon.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. I still think these modern monkey movies have been for the most part a pile of drek, but this one had some heart as it followed a hero’s journey structure, a young being forced to grow up quick and find himself and overcome adversity so you can’t go wrong there.

Tagged , , , , , , ,
May 14 2024
3 Comments
Movies

Movie Review – Challengers (2024)

Tennis! 3-Ways! Zendaya’s butt!

BQB here with a review of…um…checks notes…a polyamorous tennis movie.

Has there ever been a really, really good tennis movie? Like a really memorable one? I had to google it and OK, Battle of the Sexes came to mind, but only after the google. I believe that years from now, this might go down as perhaps the first memorable tennis movie, because while you come (no pun intended) for the 3-way, you stay for the tennis.

“Do we really stay for the tennis, BQB?”

Yes. Somehow they found a way to make tennis that intriguing, and it’s not ALL about the 3-way. OK it’s mostly about the three way but at any rate, I never thought a movie about tennis could keep me on the edge of my seat.

The plot? In non linear fashion, the story jumps back and forth over the course of 20 years, telling the story of tennis pro power couple Artie and Tashi Donaldson (Mike Faist and Zendaya) and their once friend and lover, Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor.)

Zweig and Artie are childhood friends and longtime tennis buddies when they meet Tashi at a regional tournament in high school in the 2000s. The trio hit it off so well that the become inseparable and by that I mean, you can’t separate them when they’re between the sheets. 1 chick and 2…well, you get the drift. Zendaya gets spit-roasted! OK she actually doesn’t on film but you can imagine that her character probably did, early and often.

“BQB, what is it mean to get spit-roasted?”

OK, 3.5 readers, you know how when you go to the grocery store and they have those rotisserie chickens warming on those 2 metal poles that turn them round and round so they stay nice and warm under the heat lamp? Never you mind.

Time passes. By the start of the film which, in Tarantino fashion, is the ending, Artie and Tashi are an old, middle-aged pro couple. Artie is a world famous player. Tashi is famous in her own right, though her career was short lived due to an injury. However, she manages her husband’s career and managed him to the tippy top of tennis stardom.

But alas, as of late, Artie is on a losing streak, so Tashi has a suggestion. Take on a sure thing to boost his confidence. A petty ante, seemingly low stakes regional game. A slump buster, if you will. It’s kinda like how some dudes will, after striking out with hot chicks for awhile, will go ahead and boink an ugly chick just to boost their confidence so they come across as more desirable to the hot chicks for having some stank on their hang low.

What? Yes, I swear this is a tennis movie.

Meanwhile, by sure coincidence, Zweig, the Donaldsons’ former menage-a-trois partner and beloved friend now turned enemy due to reasons I won’t get into for SPOILER purposes, ends up being that slump buster, having qualified to compete in said slump busting match.

Zweig is getting older. He’s poor and living in his car. He’s swirling the bottom of the drain of the tennis circuit. He can barely make ends meet. He resents the Donaldsons, for it could have just had easily been him earning the big cash if Artie hadn’t snatched Tashi away, so now he’s hungry and angry and mean and RAARGH does he ever want payback.

What does this all boil down to? It’s the ultimate fight against cuckery. Tennis is Tashi’s life. Managing and being married to a winner is all she had to dull the pain of losing out on her own career. If Artie loses to a man she once danced the horizontal mambo with, he will forever be an uber cuck in Tashi’s eyes and their marriage and idyllic life will be over.

Yet if Patrick loses, he’ll be a homeless bum on the streets forever, so everyone has a lot riding on this and really, you want everyone to win and no one to lose.

Oddly, it’s clear the writers/producers/director knew a lot about tennis, for the story is quite detailed about the sport, to the point where I wondered if this was actually a true story and did I just miss a story in the news about three tennis players having a three way? Turns out it is indeed fictional though screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes in interviews has said he based the story on a tense Williams sisters match (the match seemed so cinematic that his creative juices began flowing.) (See Glamour magazine for more info but I’m too lazy to link to it.)

The real star of this film? Zendaya’s butt. Damn. I always thought she was quite skinny but that thing defies all laws physics. No, you don’t get to see it in all its glory, but just enough through the panties and for considerable time. Her butt should get its own independent credit in the film because it is enough reason to see it on the big screen. Truly breath taking, really.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. Does it sound ridiculous? Yes, but as the film flashed backward, it strung me along, making me wonder how a once friendly three-way broke up into 2 thirds of the three way despising the other third and as it flashed forward, I needed to know who was going to win this battle royale, this fight to not be a cuck in Zendaya’s eyes.

SIDENOTE: Men, I realized way too late in life that if you’re ever in a position where you feel you need to fight to keep your woman from not thinking of you as a cuck, then you’re already a cuck and need to dump her and find another woman who won’t cuck you. Stand strong against cuckery.

DOUBLE SIDENOTE: All props to Zendaya’s keister aside, this movie really allowed her to flex her acting chops. Prior to this, I saw her as a frivolous starlet but she really comes into her own in this picture. (Pun not intended.)

Tagged , , , , , ,
May 13 2024
3 Comments
Movies

Movie Review – Abigail (2024)

Vampire + ballerina = ballerina vampire.

BQB here with a review.

SPOILERS ABOUND!!! Go watch it first if you don’t want SPOILERS.

3.5 readers, we’ve reached a crisis with movies lately. The new ones, on the whole, are so dumb, lame, and boring, completely made for the paint by numbers, cookie cutter world of streaming, that I rarely rent a film. If it got me to put my butt into a movie theater seat then usually it was worth it (though sometimes it wasn’t) but if it didn’t get me to go to the theater, then usually it is a waste of my time to rent it.

I have tried and more often than not, I usually end up checking my watch 10-20 minutes in, I pause it and check my tweets, I’m so bored I do anything else but watch it and before I know it, a day or two has gone by and I missed my rental window and who cares? I do because I’m out 20 bucks but otherwise that’s a movie I won’t bother with again.

But I’m glad I broke my no-rental rule for this one because I was on the edge of my seat the entire time and if you like horror, crime with just a very light tinge of dark comedy, I’d say it’s worth your time too.

The plot? A bunch of crooks have gotten together to kidnap the 12 year old daughter of a rich man and hold her for 50 million dollars ransom. They break into her father’s luxurious mansion right after she returns from ballerina practice, still in her costume.

At first, this seems like it will be an easy job, but soon the predators are turned into prey when they realize they have been locked into a safe house with…dun dun dun…a tiny vampire ballerina! As the lights dim and the sound track to Swan Lake plays, this tiny terror pirouettes and dances about as she sucks the blood of her tormentors.

PRO: It’s very original. Sure, there have been other movies in the past where crooks messed with the wrong guy or in this case, gal. But to my knowledge, none have done it with a vampire and done it this well so kudos.

CON: Understandably, movie trailers have to package and promote a snippet of what the flick is about. So I remember the trailers for this one going around earlier this year. I recall it being billed as group of people stuck in house with vampire ballerina and thought it was weird. Sometimes I wonder if group of people stuck in mystery house where bad unexplained things would be a good way to promote it and then let the audience enjoy the mystery and the big reveal.

For the first hour, the crew is picked off one by one and they are terrified as they try to figure out what is going on. Little bread crumbs are revealed. Possible red herrings as thrown, making the crooks think they have different, natural, human opponents until the big reveal comes when they realize their captor has pointy teeth and supernatural strength and powers. Without the trailers revealing their opponent was a vampire ballerina, it would have been quite a surprise but then again, the vampire ballerina is the movie’s big draw so of course they have to promote her.

One more complaint. I’ve ranted a lot on this blog about how, for the past 10 years or so, Hollywood has, IMO, crossed the line when it comes to kid actors, putting them into adult situations for the sake of petty entertainment. Here, young actress Alisha Weir is covered with blood and given creepy eyes and terrifying teeth, allowed to feast on victims and commit heinous acts of murder. That’s a lot for a kid but I suppose it’s been done before. We know its ridiculous and not really real. What I didn’t like was a scene earlier in the film where in the beginning, where we think Abigail is just a kid and not a vamp, one of the crooks puts a gun to her hand and she cries. I just didn’t think that was necessary and I didn’t want to see violence like that perpetrated against a kid on film even if it is make believe. get they are trying to establish these are bad people, but we already knew. They had stooped low enough to kidnap a child, after all.

The cast? A lot of newcomers I didn’t recognize as well as movie regulars like Giancarlo Esposito and Dan Stevens who it seems is in everything these days. Kevin Durand, who usually plays psychos and weirdos, doesn’t disappoint. Melissa Barrera plays the crook with a heart of gold.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. If anything else, you’ll hear the sound track to Swan Lake more times than you can possibly shake a stick at.

HEY! I have a complaint about THE ENDING and IT CONTAINS SPOILERS so LOOK AWAY if you don’t want it SPOILED. If you did watch it already, then check it out.

So, we learn that Abigail is not just any old 12 year old but was actually frozen in time due to her vampirism several hundred years ago. Though she has lived for hundreds of years, she is forever trapped in a child’s body. Vampire flicks have explored this horror of horrors before, with Kirsten Dunst in Interview with a Vampire being a prime example. We learn Abigail’s “father” did this to her though we aren’t sure if her father is her actual father or her vampire father i.e did she have another biological father and her vampire father is the one who turned her into a vamp? Are they the same? Who knows?

At any rate, Abigail’s vamp father has been running an evil crime syndicate for centuries and posing as different crime bosses along the way and Abigail has taken the guise as his top enforcer, spreading the rumor that a monstrous hitman carries out the boss’ whims while in fact, his tiny vamp daughter does the murders.

Throughout the flick, Abigail revels in the murderous mayhem yet at the end, she seems to bond with Barrera’s character, Joey. You wonder maybe, for a brief moment, if Abigail wouldn’t like to be saved from this vile life of being a vamp mobster’s vamp hitman and maybe Joey could be her…I don’t know…aunt? Mother figure? Big sister?

So should the film have ended with Joey defeating Abigail’s vamp dad and saving Abigail? Ehh, maybe but then again, I got the impression maybe Joey thought about it, maybe even Abigail thought about it, and they just realized vamp dad would be a fight they couldn’t win and they had to go back where they belong, Joey to the human world, Abigail to the vamp crime world.

Tagged , , , , , ,
May 05 2024
2 Comments
Movies

Movie Review – The Fall Guy (2024)

He falls. He’s a guy. He’s the fall guy.

BQB here with a review of the first blockbuster movie of the summer season.

Or at least, it should be. I loved it and yet to my surprise, attendance at my local theater was sparse, though I don’t know if that’s a reflection of public interest in the film or public interest in cinema in general, given that most movies will be released to your TV within 2 weeks to a month tops now.

Anyway, in a sea of neverending reboots, Hollywood found a reboot loophole here. The reboot of a property so obscure in the public eye that it’s almost, ALMOST, as if they came up with something completely original. Eighties kids like myself will remember the original version of the Fall Guy with Lee Majors playing a Hollywood stunt man who, by day, recorded himself getting abused on film just to make pansy actors look good and by night, used his brawlin, car chasin, ability to take all manner of physical abuse and keep on tickin’ skills to fight crime. His pick-up truck was so cool it might as well have been given a mention in the ending credits. Heather Thomas played his love interest and fellow stunt woman.

But alas, while many 80s shows have been cemented into pop culture history due to memorable gimmicks (who can forget Magnum PI’s mustache or Mr. T’s tomahawk and gold chains), The Fall Guy, though an awesome show at the time (I remember enjoying it as a kid), faded into a place where it was remembered but only true 80s enthusiasts like the proprietor of this blog.

Frankly, over the years, I worked on my little writing projects that went nowhere and wondered if Hollywood ever one day liked my writing so much that they turned one of my self-published novels into a movie, what reboot would I pitch if I ever wanted to get into the reboot game? I always thought The Fall Guy was a ripe property to be mined because it had a good plot, could invite awesome action given today’s modern special effects, and didn’t have such a devoted fan base that they’d kick and scream over a reboot. (But forgive me for deluding myself into thinking Hollywood wants anything to do with me given my blog is only read by 3.5 readers.)

I digress. Onto the review.

Ryan Gosling stars as Colt Seavers, the titular Fall Guy, living the dream in Hollywood as a successful stunt man with the bonus of a budding relationship with camerawoman Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt.) Alas, an on-set accident leaves him with a broken back, a 2-year recovery, and an ego so bruised that he wants out of the stunt game for kid and even breaks it off with Jody for he’s embarrassed that he has sunk from the heights of movie stunt man to the lowly depths of parking cars for a restaurant valet service.

Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, Colt catches a big break to re-enter the stunt game when raging diet coke addict Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham) talks Colt into performing stunts for pretentious a-hole actor Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who Colt is a dead ringer look alike for. Matters are complicated when it turns out that Jody has been promoted to director and is in charge of the film, that Tom, due to a history of bad behavior, has gone missing, and its up to Colt to solve the mystery of Tom’s disappearance with the added pressure that the love of his life’s big shot at movie director stardom will be ruined if he doesn’t deliver. He’ll have to use his stunt man skills to fight all manner of villains, go on crazy car chases and take all sorts of physical abuse. Winston Duke of Black Panther fame lends a hand and some punches as a stunt coordinator who gets Colt’s back.

Criticism? There are a few points in the movie where the love story drags a bit. Don’t get me wrong. The chemistry between Gosling and Blunt is there and it is sweet but it lingers a lot when we are waiting for the next crash and bash.

Kudos? You might criticize it in that it is a movie about an actor who plays a stuntman who has suffers all manner of indignities as he is smashed, bashed, and crunched just so pretty actors can stay pretty and spoiled audiences can watch a cool scene for 5 seconds then forget about it. The irony is that while the movie is an ode to unsung stuntmen who do all the dangerous work while pretty boy actors take all the glory (in the end, even though the stuntmen get tossed around the audience thinks the unscathed actor took all the abuse), unsung stuntmen did Gosling’s stunts as he pretended to be an unsung stuntman.

How meta. But to the movie’s credit, during the ending credits, a behind the scenes montage of some of the film’s most dangerous stunts plays, cluing us in to how those stunts were pulled off and we get to see the stunt men in action, and that Gosling himself even performed a few stunts of his own and isn’t just the pretty boy face we assumed. Or that I assumed. I don’t know what you assumed.

If you do see it, do be sure to stay through the entire credits because there’s a pretty fun cameo with Lee Majors and Heather Thomas, the original Fall Guy and Fall Gal at the end. BTW, in today’s hyper woke age where you see movies with five foot tall, 100 pound women taking out 300 pound goons with a pinky finger, I find it refreshing that Hollywood had a chance with the original source material having a stunt woman girlfriend and they rewrote it to behind the scenes girlfriend. And she wasn’t a damsel in distress. She just assisted her BF with her brains and movie magic know-how. It was more believable than trying to convince us that Emily Blunt can pile drive a bodybuilder.

STATUS – Shelf-worthy. Worth a trip to your theater.

Tagged , , , , , ,