Category Archives: Movies

Mar 21 2022
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Movies

Movie Review – The Batman – (2022)

Riddle me this, 3.5 readers.

What’s only going to be read by 3.5 readers and full of SPOILERS?

THIS REVIEW!

(SERIOUSLY, SPOILERS ABOUND)

This isn’t the worst Batman film ever made. I doubt the late 1990s’ Batman and Robin, what with its bat nipple suit on George Clooney, will ever be unseated from that distinction.

It’s far from the best either. 2008’s The Dark Knight has some big shoes that may never be filled while 1989’s Batman, though silly by today’s standards, paved the way for Hollywood to start thinking there might be gold in them thar superhero flicks, so I doubt you’d have any of the Marvel success today without it.

This movie is somewhere in the middle. It’s worth the price of admission, there are some fun twists and turns. However, it’s not something I want to rush to watch for a second time and at 3 freaking hours long, it’s a time commitment. Seriously, the movie is so long that when I walked out of the theater I wondered if so much time had passed that the world had been conquered by damn dirty apes.

My best description? Imagine a noir detective Batman. Like so many 1930s fedora clad private dicks, Batsy narrates the film, explaining to the audience what he’s up to.

It’s also, God help us, millennial Batman. The Caped Crusader fights for social justice and against white privilege (including his own) with his mighty Bat-Fu skills.

There’s even a twist of emo Batman – Robert Pattinson broods with long hair in his face and dark eyeliner.

To the film’s credit, it’s not an origin story. I think Hollywood is finally grasping that we don’t need to see origins of superheroes that we’ve seen a hundred times before. No need to see Mr and Mrs Wayne murdered. No need to see baby Superman’s little spaceship crash in the Kents’ backyard. No need to see Spidey’s Uncle Ben shot by a mugger again.

Yet (SPOILER), the Waynes’ untimely demise(s) feature prominently in the film as part of a larger mystery, so there’s still at least one Hollywood suit out there who is worried there might be one viewer left in the world who doesn’t know Batman became Batman because he’s sad about his dead parents.

Paul Dano brings The Riddle to life in a major creepy way heretofore unseen on film. Past incarnations of the human question mark have always just been a wacky version of The Joker (Jim Carrey’s career making goofball performance in Batman Forever, for example.) Here, Paul Dano plays every millennial’s worst nightmare, the unloved, socially inept incel who broods behind a screen all day, exposing big time dirt on Gotham’s elite with a side of murder and violence to increase online viewer counts. (Gee whiz, even the Riddler gets more readers for his blog.)

Zoe Kravitz is Catwoman though is never called Catwoman, yet she becomes a sidekick/love interest for Batsy as she searches for justice for her deceased friend caught up in the madness. Meanwhile, Colin Farrell is completely unrecognizable as crime boss henchman The Penguin. I literally did not know it was Farrell until I googled it at home. Good performance, yet another handsome guy robbing an ugly guy of an ugly role with the aid of prosthetics and make up. Sigh. If only prosthetics and make up could make an ugly guy handsome, then again who has that much time to sit in the makeup chair every day?

A lot of weirdness. A lot of heavy handed exposition. A lot of telling instead of showing. At times we are spoon fed helpings of backstory and while many films have been able to pull off a three hour run time by keeping you on the edge of your seat, this one doesn’t. By the two hour mark, I wanted to go already.

Though it avoids origin story silliness, it’s still new, early in his career Batman. He makes mistakes. Literally falls on his face at one point. If you came for super awesome grappling hook, zipline, flying around while making it look easy Batman, you came to the wrong place and ultimately…yeah while there’s a decent amount of action but there’s more talking than action.

Andy Serkis plays a believable Alfred. Lt. James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) plays buddy cop to Bats, but it almost reminded me of the cheesy 1960s Batman where Batman would work directly with the police while in full costume and no one thought it odd a mystery man in cape and cowl was consulting with the police. Here, everyone does think it is odd, but its like the writers felt there needed to be some obligatory lines like “Hey why are we working with this costumed guy” and so on.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. It’s acceptable but not great. It builds a world that I’m not, at this time, really chomping at the bit to see and it’s not just because I’ve seen it a hundred times before. And I’ll admit, I’m old, and comic book movies are for the young, so maybe the younguns will enjoy Millennial Batman fighting for truth, justice and wokeness.

I would point out though that back in the day, I thought 2005’s Batman Begins was great but at the time, I thought it would just be a one and done. That film paved the way for 2008’s powerhouse the Dark Knight so you never know, with a little tweaking this franchise might (I’ll believe it when I see it) but might just have a masterpiece sequel on the way if everyone plays their cards right.

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Mar 05 2022
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Movie Review – The King’s Man (2021)

Wow 3.5 readers. Europe is so fragile all it takes is one dead archduke to eff things up beyond repair.

BQB here with a review of this historical action movie.

I have to say it up front. This one is not as good as the other two in the series. For the uninitiated, the first two installments take place in modern times and follow British delinquent Eggsy (Taron Egerton) as spy Harry (Colin Firth) recruits him into a secret espionage organization and turns him from a wayward punk into one of Her Majesty’s top clandestine agents. Somehow, the films manage to combine zany, over the top slapstick comedy, globetrotting hijinx, action and yes, even heart as we see Eggsy confront his shortcomings to become a better man with the help of characters who urge him to put country over self.

Don’t get me wrong. This film is good and worth a watch. However, it is very serious, often times quite sad and generally lacks the humor that made the first two films great. While it explains how the Kingsman organization got its start, it is set during WW1 which, let’s face it, if you’ve been watching the news lately, humor and raging global conflict are two subjects that do not mix, so you can’t blame the producers for abandoning the yuk yuks altogether.

While I wonder if it wouldn’t have been a greater box office success for the studio to have gotten Egerton and his mates together for a third installment set in present day (history pics tend to not put butts into theater seats) I have to say it did educate me a lot about how WW1 broke out, albet in a comic book fashion. Did you know that Kaiser Wilhelm (Germany), King George (England) and Tsar Nicholas (Russia) were cousins? I did not know that. The movie suggests the Great War had its roots in the era when the boys would play fight war games under the disapproving eye of their granny-in-common Queen Victoria of England.

Anyway, the plot? Lord Orlando Oxford (Ralph Fiennes) was once an adventurous do-gooder, using his vast family fortune to intervene in war, to broker peace and deliver aid whenever possible. Alas, when his wife is shot during one such junket during The Boer War, he cloisters himself in his estate, vowing to shield his son Conrad (Harris Dickinson) the only family member he has left, from harm.

Alas, when World War 1 breaks out, Orlando realizes he can’t stay on the sidelines anymore. Young Harris sees war as a chance to prove his mettle and find great honor, despite his father’s protestations that there’s nothing but pain and bloodshed and no greatness to be found. Rather than let Harris go it alone, Orlando braves the world again as father and son go on a whirlwind adventure, from Russia where they take on the villainous Rasputin to other Euro locales where history’s greatest baddies are conspiring to commit heinous deeds most foul.

Along the way, they found the King’s man organization, meeting out of a tailor shop, recruiting other “knights of the round table” and relying on the assistance of a vast network of domestic servants who overhear what their powerful bosses are up to and report the dirt back to Oxford’s housekeeper Polly (Gemma Areton) with backup from butler Shola (Djimon Hounsou).

STATUS: It’s a good film that I fear will probably be swept under the rug. Lots of action. Great special effects. You will learn a lot about history. Obviously, much license is taken with the facts but if you weed through the chaffe you’ll pick up some tidbits of info here and there. I’ve always found WW1 to be quite complicated and this film did a better job of explaining how it happened (if you can look behind the comic bookish bits and realize the real scoop.)

Alas, the movie’s downfall is it’s not funny like its predecessors. Understandable because again, watch the news as of late and you’ll find yourself not laughing, but it doesn’t quite fit with the other two hilarious films in the series. Quite good as a stand alone.

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Feb 13 2022
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Movies

Movie Review – Spiderman – No Way Home (2021)

I finally got to see it, 3.5 readers and it is the best Spiderman movie ever made.

BQB here with a review of the latest film about our friendly neighborhood webslinger.

Don’t get me wrong. All the Spidey films have heart and the first two installments of the Tobey Maguire version really did bring superhero films into the modern era. Without them, I doubt you’d have the Avengerfest of today. The Andrew Garfield films were fun though I think maybe they just came too close on the heels of the Tobey films and the world wasn’t ready for a reboot just yet.

The past two Tom Holland films were epic, owing in large part to the Avengers-verse that Marvel has created. When a rich, backstory filled structure has been built, it isn’t that hard for a new Spidey to come in and sling his way into the 2020s with great gusto.

Following Mysterio’s big reveal that Spiderman is Peter Parker in the last film, the anonymity jig is up for Peter (Holland), and his partners in crime, girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) and BFF Ned (Jacob Batalon). Their lives are ruined under intense public scrutiny as the wall crawler and anyone who assisted him is raked over the coals by media blabbermouth J. Jonah Jameson (JK Simmons).

When Pete seeks the assistance of Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), the great wizard agrees to help with a spell that will make everyone forget that Pete is Spidey, but Pete’s own blabbermouth during the incantation causes the spell to go awry and well, the rest is movie making history.

Magic makes worlds collide and those older Spiderman movies? Turns out they weren’t just movies. They were alternate worlds. The multi-verse is real, with infinite versions of you, me, Spiderman and his foes.

Truly a Herculean effort that required cooperation between different studios and different actors of various incarnations of the franchise. Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Electro, The Lizard, and Sandman team up to unleash chaos in our current world and it’s up to Team 3-Pete, Holland, Garfield and Maguire (three Spideys, no waiting) to save the day while Willem Defoe, Alfred Molina, Jamie Foxx, Thomas Haden Church, and Rhys Ivans reprise their villainous roles. Marisa Tomei and Jon Favreau return as Aunt May and Happy Hogan.

At almost 2 and a half hours, it’s the longest Spiderman movie ever made, though there’s so much going on you’d hardly notice it. It’s quite ambitious with a lot of moving parts, my only criticism is it feels like there might be a few plot holes but honestly, I couldn’t tell you if these are really plot holes of if it’s just something I didn’t quite get on a first viewing with everything moving so quickly.

It’s definitely a movie we all needed, what with the pandemic scaring movie buffs out of theaters, closing theaters, and causing Hollywood to shut down or delay production of big time flicks. Personally, this is the longest I’ve gone without checking out a superhero movie, because a) I literally was unable to buy a ticket at my local theater for the first month because every time I tried they were all sold out online and b) alas, my local theater closed down because it couldn’t stay afloat in the pandemic, which means I just won’t be able to see movies as much as I used to. Is that a good or bad thing? I don’t know.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy, and proof that people will go to the movie theater if a film is awesome enough. Hang in there Hollywood, keep making those blockbusters and try to help theaters stay alive any way you can.

SIDENOTE: 40, 30 and 20 something Spidermen all on one screen. Where has the time gone? Memories, like the corners of my webbed up mind…

DOUBLE SIDENOTE: Kudos to this movie for thinking of a new way to rehash old(er) characters. The problem all superhero reboots and sequels suffer from is we’ve already seen the story before. We don’t need to see Pete get bitten by the radioactive spider again. We don’t need to see Norman Osborne go nuts and become G-Gob. Sure, younger actors can take on these characters but it usually just feels like a rehash of something that has already been done. With the spell gone awry plot device, we can immediately return to our old Spidey baddy faves without having to re-tell the stories we already know.

TRIPLE SIDENOTE: I know the Academy hates comic book movies but I wonder, given the fact this film put butts into theater seats in record numbers at a time when theaters are closing and people are avoiding social gatherings might not have merited some Oscar consideration. If theaters do go the way of the Dodo, I truly fear we will see a stark decline in the quality of moviemaking overall and we need films like this to save the industry.

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Feb 06 2022
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Movie Review – Home Team (2022)

Go team, 3.5 readers.

BQB here with a review of this family friendly Netflix comedy.

Based on a true story, this film stars Kevin James as Sean Payton, a New Orleans Saints football coach who, after being suspended for a year in the wake of the bounty scandal (players offered cash prizes for injuring other players on purpose) reconnects with his estranged son by coaching his junior high school football team.

Connor’s (the aforementioned son’s) team is the worst in the league, regularly causing the scoreboard to be shut down out of pity because it just doesn’t seem right when the opposing teams score so high when they barely get on the board. When Payton, just initially sitting on the sidelines as a Dad, offers a bit of advice that leads to their (literally) very first touchdown ever, the kids celebrate wildly.

Payton is recruited by Coach Troy (Taylor Lautner of Twilight fame) to be an assistant, though as a pro NFL coach, he runs it all, pushing the kids to be their best, but having to figure out how to straddle the line between winning and remembering these are only 12 year olds who can only be pushed so far and all the pressure takes away the fun.

This is an Adam Sandler produced film, with his wife Jackie starring as Payton’s ex and a Sandler son starring as a hotel clerk who drives Payton nuts. Sandler has apparently found a home on Netflix as his brand of comedy, once edgy in the 1990s, has become family friendly fare today.

STATUS: Shelf worthy. Typical sports film where an outsider comes in to shake a team of losers up and turn them into winners. My main criticism is the film kind of glosses over whether Payton was responsible for the bounty scandal, if he got a raw deal, or something in between. It goes into how he was embarrassed by it but it never answers the question of if he was unfairly accused and thus outraged or if he was fairly accused and thus learned his lesson. There is a brief moment where he says he was in charge so he has to take responsibility so I guess there’s that. If he’s responsible, should he get a tribute film? I don’t know…but if you’re looking for a mildly funny movie to watch with the fam, you could do worse than this.

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Jan 31 2022
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Movie Review – The Tender Bar (2022)

Grab your pens, 3.5 readers. It’s time for a review of a movie based on a writer’s memoir.

I have to say this up front. I generally hate most stuff on Amazon Prime with a passion. More to the point, I have becoming increasingly disgusted by most streaming media TV shows in recent years. At first, platforms like Netflix were challenging the status quo, picking up ideas that didn’t quite fit the formulaic box of network TV and making bank on it but now I feel like a new quasi-network system of standards is being adopted by the streaming services, one where every show is designed by committee so as to not offend and in so doing, it just becomes toothless drek. Amazon, IMO, is the worst offender.

But I digress.

This movie is actually quite good. It’s a coming-of-age tale and generally I despise those too, but this one was different. I know they all say they are different but this one is.

JR (Tye Sheridan) grows up money poor but family rich in the loving but dilapidated home of his grandfather (Christopher Lloyd) with his mother (Lilly Rabe) and full-time bartender/part-time philosopher Uncle Charlie (Ben Affleck.) The missing piece of the puzzle is JR’s biological father, “The Voice” (Max Martini) a smooth-talking radio DJ who ran out on his mother years ago, leaving young JR to sit by the radio and listen to the only connection he has to his wayward patriarch.

Disappointed with herself for choosing a tryst with a bum over her college education (she had to drop out when JR was conceived), Mom vows she won’t let her son make the same mistake, pushing him to get good grades at school and urging him to do what it takes to get into Yale, which he does, almost through his mother’s sheer willpower.

Alas, when he hits the Ivy League, JR finds himself as the proverbial fish out of water. He isn’t a blue blood. He doesn’t come from money. He doesn’t have all the class, sophistication and connections that his classmates have and struggles to fit in.

Thankfully, Uncle Charlie, as a barkeep, has been a people watcher his entire life and gives his nephew an education he can’t find in any school, that being street smarts, how to carry himself, hold his head up high, not let others bring him down and so on.

Ultimately, whether in his childhood or young adulthood, JR finds his uncle’s bar to provide a source of stability and kinship in a very unlikely place. Various down on their luck drunks regale the lad with life lessons, things they wish they had and hadn’t done, more lessons for a kid high on book smarts but low on actual experience. Uncle Charlie and his band of bar bums become a sort of collective father, more so than his actual dad ever was.

And therein lies the crux of the film. Most people run off to NYC or LA or somewhere else in search of fame and fortune because they have nothing to lose. While JR feels the call to run to Manhattan to pursue his dream of becoming a writer, he is torn as he knows he has all the support and love he’ll ever need…right there in The Tender Bar.

Will he leave his loved ones behind and pursue his goal of becoming a famous writer? Will he stick by his family and stay in Long Island, too attached to his loved ones that the thought of leaving them behind pains them? Find out in…sigh, yes, this Oscar caliber film from :::shudder::: Amazon.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. Sidenote this is a great performance from Affleck. Ben has definitely made a living on his good looks and it can’t be easy for him to get older. There are a few moments in this film where we see him accept the aging process gracefully and even one where, well, I won’t give it away but there’s an encounter with the Voice where Ben does not get the upper hand.

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Jan 22 2022
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BQB’s Classic Movie Reviews – Hotel Rwanda (1994)

Sorry, 3.5 readers. I have no witty starting lines because this movie is too sad, so let’s move on to the review.

As the manager of the luxurious Hotel des Mille Collines, Paul Rusesabagina has spent his life tending to the needs of the international rich, powerful and politically connected. Diplomats, military men, politicians – all have rested their heads under his roof and over the years. As tensions begin to rise over warring Hutu and Tutsi, Paul wonders if he has done enough favors for the hoi polloi that he might be able to call in some chits of his own should he find a need to get his family out of Dodge.

The social credits Paul has banked come in handy when a tenuous, negotiated peace is broken, and all out carnage begins. Tutsi rebels shoot the Hutu president’s plane out of the sky. Interhamwe, a Hutu militia, responds by passing out machetes like party favors and going on a hack and slash spree on Tutsis, who they openly refer to as “cockroaches.”

Paul (Don Cheadle in perhaps one of his best performances) is a Hutu married to a Tutsi, Tatianna (Sophie Okonedo), and has many Tutsi friends and neighbors. Not every Hutu and Tutsi embraces the rhetoric both sides lob at each other. Many just want to make a living, raise their families and be left alone.

When the machete attacks begin, Paul opens his doors to hundreds, filling the swanky joint to overflowing with Tutsis marked for death, as well as Hutus that Interhamwe believes are not sufficiently supportive of their cause.

It all escalates into a horror show, where Paul comes to believe that the mass genocide of his guests is inevitable, and it’s not a game of saving them permanently but just prolonging the inevitable. A tenuous business friendship with Georges Rutaganda, a product supplier who has long made a hefty profit selling goods to the hotel with Paul as purchaser buys some time. In addition to his day job, Georges is the leader of Interhamwe and the radio voice that whips his followers into a frenzy, pushing them to bloodshed. Georges calls the shots and as long as the hotel keeps operating as a hotel and acting as a cash cow for Georges, he’ll delay the slaughter of the guests while Interhamwe forces hack and slash elsewhere.

Thus, Paul has to keep up appearances. He’s not charging the refugees but has to create phony bills to make it appear as though he is. He has to doctor records to remove names from the system to hide people the militia is looking for by name. He has to negotiate with staff who are ready to walk off the job and flee. A friendship with a Canadian UN General (Nick Nolte) means he might be able to get his guests to safety. A friendship with a Rwandan general might get him some backup that he desperately needs.

It’s all about buying time and using bribes, connections, cajoling, begging, even smooth talking to navigate his way through chaos in the hopes of saving as many people as he can. Add to the mess that he’s trying to locate his lost nieces whose parents have likely perished and its quite a film, a fitting tribute to the real life Paul.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. Sad, both in the film and the real life. One wonders if the UN could have done more. A million people were killed in three months. That’s a frightening number and how sad to know that such hatred can lead to such a massive kill count.

Sidenote – A young Joaquin Phoenix as a cameraman giving us insight to the fact that well, while the West cares, they probably don’t care enough to actually do anything. (It is hard to know what the West could have done here. On the one hand, perhaps a massive coalition of UN forces could have stood between the Hutu and Tutsi and saved lives. On the other hand, we’ve seen in the past 20 years Americans wanted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over in 5 minutes, so I’m not sure we had the collective stomach to engage in an African conflict that might have resulted in years of warfare. I’ll leave it up to the experts to decide.)

Double Sidenote – The movie explains what the difference between Hutu and Tutsi is, something I never knew. Apparently, in the old Belgium colony days, the Belgians selected what they felt were “better looking, more attractive” Rwandans to become a ruling aristocracy, giving them lands, titles, power so long as they kicked money up to the Belgians. The Hutu resented this, seeing the Tutsi as collaborators and sell-outs long after the Belgians left. Sad irony is, as the movie points out, looks are subjective, what is attractive to one might not be attractive to someone else and ultimately, it’s difficult to tell the difference between a Hutu and a Tutsi. The differences are that arbitrary.

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Dec 28 2021
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Movie Review – The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

Jesus Fucking Christ, this movie makes The Room look like Citizen Kane.

BQB here with the horrid poopy stinkfest that is the fourth installment of the Matrix franchise.

Let me begin by saying please support your local movie theater. If you’re (understandably) afraid to take in a show due to Covid concerns, maybe just buy a gift certificate and throw it in a drawer to spend on tickets on that long-awaited day when the rona becomes about as dangerous as a bad case of gas. Or what the heck? Just buy a seat online and don’t go.

I know. I’ll never do such things and you won’t either. Neither of us has the money to waste.

My point is this movie is the type of schlock you get when streaming services reign supreme and theaters go bye bye. As long as they meet their subscriber quota and have enough people paying monthly fees to keep the service going, they don’t give a shit if you actually like the movie. They can make it as dumb or stupid or preachy or lame as they want.

Meanwhile, the latest Spiderman flick is breaking box office records and doing the unthinkable, putting butts in theater seats, the moviegoing masses uncaring they might catch a debilitating illness because apparently the movie is that awesome and therein lies the rub – for a movie to make it at the theater level, it must be good, like, really good…so good that Hollywood suits might put in actual effort.

But I digress.

Way back in 1999, The Matrix was a surprise hit, a new twist on the sci-fi genre about a world where the machines have won a war and turned the defeated humans into batteries, placating their minds with a false simulation. Those smart enough to figure out the world is an illusion gain superhuman like abilities, which they’ll need to fight the system’s evil agents designed to keep free thinkers down.

The underlying message and/or food for thought? Life is a game and if you figure out how to hack it, you can break all the rules and do whatever you want.

I don’t think any of us fans blamed the Wachowskis for making the shitty 2003 back to back sequels. They stunk big time though the second had a few cool moments, the fight scene on the big rig in particular. The then brothers (now sisters because apparently they took their own message about hacking the life game’s code quite literally) had wowed us with a pretty awesome flick so who could begrudge them a 2 sequel cash grab?

But this latest one? It is truly an unmitigated pile of horse manure, covered with pig manure, drenched in pigeon poop, and then like, a dozen syphilitic hobos peed all over it and then the whole thing was left out in the hot sun to rot and fester and grow mold and mushrooms on it and then a bunch of rats and mice and assorted vermin burrowed into it and called it home and that’s before a bunch of drunk frat boys puked all over it.

No, really. It’s that bad.

The plot? It’s a super meta Matrix movie about the other Matrix movies. The main villains are Neal Patrick Harris and the literal Warner Brothers Corporation. (You read that right, as in the studio that gave us Bugs Bunny. No one thought it was funny when WB made itself a central plot point in Space Jam this summer so I don’t know why they thought it would work this go around.)

SPOILERS ABOUND

NPH is an evil psychiatrist who seeks to keep Neo (Keanu Reeves) under control by convincing him none of the stuff from the first three films ever happened and that it was all dreamed up by Neo’s real life identity Thomas Anderson, a video game designer who put elements of his life into a super realistic video game, ranging from his controlling boss (Agent Smith) to the soccer mom he likes to oggle at his favorite coffee shop (Trinity.)

When Warner Brothers, the parent company of Anderson’s gaming company, orders an unnecessary sequel (the studio only gets so many points for making fun of itself), Anderson goes into a deep state of depression over having to return to a bunch of stories he’d grown tired of until a plucky band of cyber warriors led by Bugs (Jessica Henwick in a dual reference to the rabbit that leads Alice down the rabbit hole and WB’s perennial carrot chomping mascot and seriously, whoever it is at WB who thinks it is a good idea to make WB a key part of movie plots needs to be both fired and publicly shamed, preferably at the same time)….

….where was I? Oh, right. They break Neo out of his funk and into a whole new world of data driven conspiracies.

Fan favorite characters Agent Smith and Morpheus return, but in different digital bodies played by Jonathan Groff and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. They try but they don’t hold a candle to Hugo Weaving and Laurence Fishburne who, I like to think (or hope) they turned down this crap because there wasn’t enough money in the world to make them lower themselves enough to be associated with it.

Meanwhile, Carrie-Ann Moss reprises her iconic role as the leather clad biker babe Trinity and the gang must save her from the life the Matrix has cruelly assigned to her, that of a suburban soccer mom, because apparently, she would be better off getting sucked out of a pod full of goo and forced to live as an underground freedom fighter aboard a stank ass, dank, dark tunnel dwelling ship than, God forbid, raise children and be the important matriarch figure in their lives.

STATUS: To quote John Lovitz’ the Critic, “it stinks.” I watched it so I could tell you that you shouldn’t. To be fair, the final 20 minutes is a fun special effects bonanza, so if you want to put up your HBO MAX app and fast forward to the last 20, I wouldn’t blame you. You certainly shouldn’t sit through the first 40 where very little action happens and NPH and Keanu just pontificate over Mr. Anderson’s depressed state as a video game designer forced to make an undesired sequel. What about us fans who were forced to watch an undesired sequel? Will WB pay our therapy bills?

Oh wait. Now that I think of it, no one forced us to watch it and if we’d stop watching them, the studios would stop making them. Perhaps the system really can be hacked after all.

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Dec 27 2021
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Movie Review – Don’t Look Up (2022)

Don’t look up, 3.5 readers…then again, maybe you should.

BQB here with a review of Netflix’s big holiday release.

Let’s face it, 3.5 readers. We are all so hopelessly divided that we don’t agree on even the most basic of facts. If I said the sun is yellow, at least 2 out of 3.5 of you would tell me it is orange.

We are also obsessed with social media. It’s tough to get our attention when…hey! A new kitty cat video! Wait…what was I saying?

On top of all that, we have become a what’s happening now society, such that if it isn’t going to affect us within the next 24 hours, then we simply lack the foresight and/or mental bandwith to worry about it. Planning for tomorrow, let alone for the next month, or next year has gone the way of the dodo.

Director Adam McKay and an all-star cast mock these and more terrible aspects of society when astronomers Randall Mindy and Kate Dibiasky identify a comet on a collision course toward earth, destined to cause the end of the world in 6 months. Jennifer Lawrence is her usual snarky self as Kate while Leo goes against type to play a wimpy, worrisome nerd who needs to puke his guts out before he goes on live TV.

Alas, these intrepid scientists find that everyone is too stupid to pull their heads out of their butts long enough to come up with a solution. Mother/son team President and Chief of Staff Orlean (Meryl Streep and Jonah Hill doing their best Donald Trump and Don Jr. impressions are too worried about their own political scandals to worry about the comet.

Randy and Kate are left with no choice but to conduct their own media blitz, quickly discovering that people, by and large, are genuinely stupid and care more about the duo’s looks, physical appearance, their tones of voice, basically anything other than the fact that they’re trying to warn everyone about a freaking incoming killer comet.

Rounding out the film is Mark Rylance’s Peter Isherwell, turning in a performance that can only be described as a cross between Elon Musk and Jordan Peterson. The multibillionaire/owner of the world’s largest cellphone and tech company wants mine the comet rather than destroy it, putting the safety of the world at risk for profit.

Overall, the film serves as a warning against all the things we aren’t looking up at or even just at. We go about our daily lives, wasting our time on social media and we do very little to fend off the very real problems that are headed our way. Will we, as a collective society, ever pull our heads out of our butts long enough to solve the world’s problems before it is too late?

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. My one complaint is this is largely an anti-conservative satire and indeed, Trump has done much worthy of parody, but Biden has been prez for a year and I don’t really see him solving any problems either. There might have been room to lampoon the two-party system or to point out it isn’t enough for Democrats to say they want to save the environment. They actually have to be proactive in achieving goals toward saving it.

Bonus points for Cate Blanchett who is virtually unrecognizable as a stereotypical blonde bombshell cable news babe. With all the phony hair, makeup and the plastic surgery look she was given for the role, I didn’t figure out it was her until halfway through the film.

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Dec 10 2021
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Movie Review – Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)

Time to assemble the Lethal Protectors, 3.5 readers.

This movie is:

  1. Dumb
  2. Fun

It’s rare that dumb movies are fun. Usually, they just stay dumb. This one, like its predecessor is about Venom, an alien symbiote that fused with reporter Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy). Together, they are a crime fighting duo with Eddie using his research skills to find out the dirt on the baddies and Venom, well…he beats them into submission and then eats them because like a zombie, he needs to feed on brains. Overall, they’re a dastardly Dexter-like duo. They need to kill. Left to his own devices, Venom would kill and eat anyone, but Eddie is the conscience that demands he only eat those who really, really deserve it.

In this go around, “The Lethal Protectors” as Venom calls them in 1980s action sitcom fashion, fight off Carnage, an alien symbiote attached to Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson), a serial killer who has it in for Eddie on account of how our intrepid journalist exposed his crimes and put him on death row.

It all culminates in the ultimate grudge match. Good and bad symbiotes. Who will win?

Yeah, I know. It all sounds horribly stupid and yet, it’s a good time. Tom Hardy and Michelle Williams are such serious, gravitas carrying, Oscar caliber actors that it is surreal to see them let their hair down in this flick that really is among the dumbest of comic book premises. I mean, it’s not Howard the Duck dumb but still, it is pretty dumb. Venom’s scary yet King’s English style, perfectly precise voice where he says serious yet unintentionally hilarious things sells the film.

Adding to the dumbness is that Venom, as a concept, is originally a Spiderman villain, an alien symbiote that took the form of an evil version of Spidey’s suit. For reasons above my brain capacity, Spidey couldn’t be mentioned in the first film (different studios own different characters or whatever) but apparently that got ironed out as our favorite webslinger is mentioned in this one.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. I did feel like I wasted a bit of my life watching it, but the laughs were worth it.

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Nov 20 2021
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Movie Review – Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)

Busting makes me feel good, 3.5 readers.

The reviews thus far aren’t great, but I liked this movie. If I have one complaint, it’s with the ending and while I found it to be an enjoyable ending, I understand why reviewers aren’t being kind.

SPOILER ALERT: I don’t think I can talk about it without giving major spoilers as well as giving the entire ending away, so look away if you don’t want literally the whole movie spoiled for you.

The movie begins with the revelation that an elderly Egon Spengler long ago abandoned his ghostbusting pals as well as his family and moved to the middle of nowhere to become a lonely, dirt farming hermit.

Thus begins the captivating mystery of the film – why on earth would Egon do such a thing?

After the nerdiest G-Buster’s untimely demise, his estranged daughter and grandchildren who he never met, financially down on their luck, move to the dilapidated farmhouse left to them and make it their new home. McKenna Grace and Finn Wolfhard’s bro/sis team Phoebe and Trevor (spitting images of Harold Ramis) team up with science teacher Mr. Grooberson to investigate the strange, supernatural doings in town, slowly but surely working their way through Egon’s left behind research and clues.

Ultimately they unravel (YOUR LAST CHANCE TO AVOID A SPOILER)…yeah, it’s just freaking Gozer and the devil dogs causing trouble again. Cue original Ghostbuster team cameo to rush to the kids’ aid and a…well I’m still debating if it’s a sweet loving tribute or blasphemous cashgrab of a cameo of a computerized Harold Ramis as a ghost. He doesn’t slime anyone or say anything really. He just finally gets to meet his grand kids and have a moment with his daughter where all is forgiven and they realize he never wanted to abandon them, he was just trying to save the world.

So…I’d say 2/3 of this movie managed to build something new, walking the fine line between fan service and going in a new direction, and then the last third is just plenty o’ fan service, callbacks, gag repeats and cameos. If they could have found, say, an entirely new threat that Egon was fighting, it might have saved the film from bad reviews but the franchise’s inability to score a modern day critical hit seems to lie with the fact that the writers can’t come with a villain other than Gozer.

It almost made it and even so, I found the ending fun just…yeah, I get why the critics have a problem with it. Still, McKenna Grace does a fun turn as a 12 year old female Spengler clone, putting her grandfather’s quirks and mannerisms on full display.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. SPOILER ALERT – A post credit scene shows us that Winston Zeddmore has become a multi-billionaire/financial genius. He proposes using his big bankroll to turn the Ghostbusting franchise into an international company so…perhaps the next film will give us Ghostbusters in Europe? Japan? Africa? Australia? Who knows? Just…well, look, I’m just a silly old fanboy from way back so if you give me the fanservice, I’ll lap it up like the dog that I am but if you want decent critic reviews, you’re going to have to come up with a villain, any villain than Gozer. Name him Schmozer or something. Make an attempt an originality.

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