Category Archives: Movies

Aug 25 2018
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Movies

BQB’s Movie Reviews – Passenger 57 (1992)

Always bet on black, 3.5 readers.

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I caught this blast from the past last night after not seeing it since I was a kid and it is amazing the things you notice as an adult.

First, it features a young Elizabeth Hurley as a flight attendant and she’s so young that I didn’t even recognize it was her until just now when I looked the film up on IMDB.  Ahh, Liz.  You were the subject of so many of my 1990’s boner fantasies.  I fapped to you before anyone knew what fapping was.

Sorry for perving out there.  Moving on, it also stars a young Tom Sizemore, looking physically fit and strong, long before he succumbed to Hollywood excess.  Eh, then again excess or not we all get old I suppose.

Except Wesley Snipes seems like he never ages so he must be drinking some special health juice or something.  Back in the 1990s, Wesley Snipes was a legit action movie star, complete with the karate moves, the one liners uttered upon defeating a villain, the works.

Here, Snipes plays John Cutter, an airline security expert hired to head up security operations for a major airline.  He suffers from a tragedy, namely he lost his wife when he confronted a robber and has always regretted trying to be the hero.  Thus, in security classes he teaches to airline staff, he advises everyone to cave in to any and all hijacker demands.

Ironically, this movie gives us a view into the pre-9/11 world of airline hijacking.  It’s funny, every once in awhile, a young person in the extended BQB family will ask me why didn’t the people on the planes that were used in the 9/11 attacks just kick the asses of the bad guys?

Well, because pre-9/11, airplanes were hijacked all the time and it was standard procedure that everyone was expected to just shut up and do whatever the bad guys wanted and usually the hijacker either was trying to make a political statement or he was trying to get the plane to fly somewhere he otherwise could not have gotten to.  Often, compliance with hijacker demands led to a safe resolution (though not always.)

I’m serious, kids.  This shit was on TV all the time in the 1980s and 1990s.  Hearing a TV anchorman say “A plane got hijacked today” was like “The sky was blue today.”  In retrospect, the government should have done more to stop hijackings, but the old thought process was that it was unlikely that hijackers would crash the plane because then they’d die to and unfortunately it took a new kind of hijacker who was willing to die to convince the powers that be to get off their asses and provide safe, secure airline travel.

In addition to increased security measures, the passenger mindset has also changed.  Today, I think passengers are so scared of another 9/11 that if a dude were to pull a gun on a plane, they’d jump him and kick his ass, fears of getting shot be damned.  I could be wrong on that.  Hopefully, there won’t ever be a case where found out.

Getting back to the story, Cutter has to rethink his compliance strategy when Charles Rayne (played by the similarly named Bruce Payne), a British terrorist being transported by the FBI on the same plane as Cutter, escapes custody and takes control of the aircraft.

There are some awesome fight scenes though once the plane lands, it’s mostly Snipes and Payne running around a Southern hick town fairground trying to kick each other’s ass while a stereotypically incompetent Southern sheriff botches the entire situation.

There are some un-PC things that happen in the movie though I’ll let you decide if they are or are not OK given the context.  First, that iconic line, “Always bet on black.”  That’s Snipes’ career building catchphrase, perhaps the line he’ll be remembered most for.

Today, it seems silly for a character to even mention his race.  “Bet on me” would be the proper response to a villain, yet 1990s action flicks really depended on witty one-liners being said by the hero to the bad guy who is usually smug and didn’t see his comeuppance coming.

Second, Snipes’ love interest, a flight attendant (Alex Datcher) who initially can’t stand him, seeks revenge by seating an annoyingly chatty old lady next to Snipes.  The old woman talks and talks and talks, much to Snipes’ chagrin and finally when she mentions “I love your show” we learn (millenials won’t get it) that the old woman believes Cutter is Arsenio Hall.

That joke continues throughout the movie even to the end, when Cutter saves the day and the old woman does the “Woo woo woo” dog barking sound/hand gesture that Arsenio’s audience was known for.

Is the joke politically incorrect?  Yes.  Does it also mock passive racism, thus showing that sometimes white people who truly believe they are the least racist people ever might accidentally let an unconscious racial offense slip through?  Yes.  The woman is a sweet old lady but obviously, thinks all black people are interchangeable and so any black man she meets must be the only black man she knows, and the only one she knows is on TV.

Utlimately, the joke is funny and for people my age who remember Arsenio, it lands.  Cutter suffers the offense with dignity and it’s a teachable moment that probably wouldn’t be allowed today.

Finally, plot holes abound, though they don’t necessarily ruin the film.  For example, Rayne is such a dangerous criminal, a mastermind who has escaped before and they put him on a plane with one inept FBI agent watching him?  Give me a break.  They’d put him in a Hannibal Lecter suit and wheel him around tied whilst strapped to a hand truck.

Also, it’s an early example of bad product placement in movies.  Literally, every five minutes, someone is drinking a Pepsi.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

 

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Aug 19 2018
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Movie Review – Mile 22 (2018)

Say hello to your mother for me.

BQB here with a review of “Mile 22.”

I’ve been watching Mark Wahlberg’s acting career since the 1990s and inevitably, he always plays that same charming South Boston tough guy in every film – literally every film from serious roles in “The Departed” to silly throwaway stuff like “The Transformers.”

Here, he tried something different and made an effort to become someone else.  I’m not sure he achieved it or if he just came across as MW trying really hard to be someone else but at least he tried.

In this movie, Mark plays James Silva a clandestine special agent who is…well, I don’t know if we find out what exactly his problem is.  He’s hyperactive, highly intelligent, he might have some kind of personality disorder but at any rate, he’s brilliant when it comes to strategy but on a personal level, he’s a dick.  He speaks rapidly, blurting out facts and stats a mile a minute, bogging his subordinates down with info and orders and lacks diplomacy, insulting and berating them into submission.

I almost wanted to call it “Rain Man Meets Homeland” except Carrie was never this mean or testosterone fueled, and he is more functional than Dustin Hoffman’s character.

The plot?  A foreign government agent comes to an American embassy with information on where a weapon of mass destruction is located.  The catch – he’ll only tell if he is allowed to defect to America and freedom.  Thus, Mark and his elite special ops unit must fight their way through 22 miles of mayhem to get the operative to safety and away from the various baddies trying to kill him.

This movie is Lauren Cohan’s  (she of “The Walking Dead” fame”) big break to shine on the silver screen.  Though she has had others, this is probably the most memorable.  She plays Wahlberg’s number two, an agent struggling between her desire to do what she does best (fight international baddies) and what she wants to do (i.e. be a mom.)

Her husband, seen through various Facetime chats, is portrayed as a Dick Cheeseburger for moving on with his life and marrying another woman who takes an active role in step-mothering their daughter while Alice is traveling the world on one mission or another.

Cohan acts the crap out of this and you feel her pain so I’m not knocking her, but it just seems like there’s an ongoing film industry double standard.  If a male character chooses work over family, he’s usually portrayed as a dick and the woman who dumps him and moves on is a hero.  On the other hand, if the man gets tired of being alone and finds someone who will be there for him, he’s made out to be a total Turd McMuffin.

SIDENOTE:  I think at some point we, men and women, were sold on this sham that we can “have it all.”  Marriage. Kids.  Family.  High level career.  A rare handful of people make that happen and they are usually the lucky ones who find that special supportive someone willing to be alone, sometimes months at a time for the greater good.  Most can’t make it happen and inevitably, time is in short supply and we all must choose between career and family.

Back to the action, Ronda Rousey rounds out the cast as MW’s number three agent and I’m going to assume that it’s because action movie fans love RR and not because it’s 2018 and that means for every male character taking charge, there must be two females taking charge – a ratio of 2 vags for every 1 peen, as it were.

Overall, the movie mimics MW’s character’s style – it moves fast, very fast, sometimes too fast.  You barely have a second to breathe, eat popcorn, or pick your nose.  Blink and you might miss something.

STATUS:  Shelf-worthy but it’s more character driven than plot driven.  There are a lot of fancy, pretentious lines thrown out suggesting that the writers are like, “Hey we watch cable news and we worked in some buzz words we heard so that makes us smart and witty.”  At any rate, it’s a good movie but I think it might have worked better as an HBO series as the film quickly sets up the characters, how their special ops unit operates, and from there, they could face a new threat each week.  Oh well, maybe now that I put that idea out into the Cosmos, HBO might pick it up.

Plus, there is a message how war has changed, how it’s more often ops working behind the scenes rather than uniform wearing soldiers meeting on the field of battle.  The rules of warfare we once knew are over and it’s every man and/or woman for him/herself.

DOUBLE SIDNOTE:  Ladies, I love you.  It’s not that I don’t want you to pick up guns and shoot bad guys it’s just that…eh, I wish you didn’t want to.  I get that you felt left out for many years and men got to do things you wanted to do but men weren’t right about everything and I don’t know, maybe I’m a sexist pig but seeing Lauren and Ronda fight bad guys like barroom brawlers, getting all messed up and bloody and battered and so on…I don’t know.  I’m not telling women they have to get back in the kitchen but not everything men traditionally did is something to aspire to and violence isn’t one of them.

That isn’t to say Lauren and Ronda aren’t fun to watch on screen doing their thing but just, you know.  OK, I’ll shut up now.

Sheesh.  It’s a good thing only 3.5 people read this blog or else I’d get a lot of angry letters.

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Aug 18 2018
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Movies

Movie Review – The Meg (2018)

Sharks bite and so does this movie…except it’s a movie that is aware it kind of bites, so come to think of it, it doesn’t bite then, by the transitive non-bite property.

Whatever.  BQB here with a review of “The Meg.”

I’ve always been a big Jason Statham fan.  He was really a sight to behold in his “Transporter” days, taking on 3, 4, or more bad guys in one sitting with his sweet karate moves.

He’s still got the swagger, though we aren’t treated to the martial arts as much as we once were, which is a shame, because a roundhouse kick to a shark face would have been awesome.

Here, we don’t have just any shark.  It’s a Megalodon or “Meg,” a 70 foot long prehistoric monster that has come out of hiding to feast upon human flesh and any flesh will do, ranging from puppies to adorable little Asian kids just trying to swim on a beach to, yes, even a middle aged bald British kung-fu master.

Here’s the short version – this movie was good, but it could have been great.

It’s good in that it is a good time.  The special effects are fun.  It doesn’t take itself too seriously.  The plot isn’t that involved.  It’s more or less an homage to killer monster and/or killer shark movies of the past.  Tropes galore and if a dude makes a dumb expression as he looks into something then rest assure he’s about to lose his face.

It could have been better in that better writing might have kicked this film into second gear.  The characters are cookie cutters – forgettable fodder and of the many who become shark chow, maybe there’s like, one or two who you actually feel bad about.  Statham carries the film on his back and Ruby Rose as a sexy sea lab designer occasionally takes some of the burden, though she is underutilized and her unique look does most of the work.

The plot?  Jonas Taylor (Statham) is an expert when it comes to deep sea rescue missions, because apparently, they happen so often that people specialize in this sort of thing.

Alas, he’s been laughed out by his former colleagues, accused of being a drunkard after claiming during one mission that he saw a big ass shark.

Blah, blah, blah, the shark attacks his former homies and his homies eat a shit ton of crow in order to get him to save the day.

Rainn Wilson plays the eccentric billionaire who funds the research expedition that’s in danger of becoming shark lunch.  He excels at playing a dick and may find a career resurrection as the go to movie dick guy.

Bingbing Li (awesome name) plays Statham’s love interest and other than that, there are a bunch of other losers who are given absurd pieces of dialogue and honestly, just end up being so annoying you can’t wait for them to get in the mega shark’s belly.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.  To repeat, it’s good, but missed a shot to be great.  Still worth seeing in the theater due to intense big ass shark scenes.

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Aug 13 2018
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Movies

Movie Review – BlacKkKlansman (2018)

Put on your bell bottoms, 3.5 jive turkeys.  It’s time for a review of Spike Lee’s latest joint.

It’s the 1970s and a young Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) has become the first black police officer on the Colorado Springs force.  Alas, his dreams of defeating villains with kung-fu moves gleamed from his favorite flicks come to a grinding halt when he’s assigned to the epically boring records room.

One day, whilst fending off boredom by reading a newspaper, he spots a recruitment ad for the Ku Klux Klan.  On a lark, he calls it, requests information on how to join and down the rabbit hole he goes.

Naturally, Ron can’t show up to a KKK meeting and expect to get out alive, so he teams up with fellow officer Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), a man whose Jewish heritage is also not looked at fondly by the Klan.

Together, Ron and Flip become two halves of one whole klansman.  Flip infiltrates the Colorado Springs chapter of the racist hate group in person, pretending to be a fellow hater of all non-white, non-Christians.  Meanwhile, Ron handles all phone communications with the klan on behalf of the made-up klansman, and even strikes up a long, ongoing telephone friendship with the head klansman, David Duke (Topher Grace), allowing Ron to obtain all sorts of info.  He also gets Flips back, tracking the baddies and helping out where he can from behind the scenes.

I won’t give too much away but suffice to say, it’s educational, thrilling, full of action, suspense and yes, even as you might imagine based on the premise, comedy.  A scene where a police sergeant matter of factly explains to Ron that he will likely be figured out if he shows up to a klan meeting as himself is one of the funnier parts of the film.

In my opinion, this is the greatest of all of Spike Lee’s films or “joints” as he calls them.  It’s a shame it was released in August as it does have Oscar potential, though who knows, perhaps the Academy will have a long memory this year.

Shout out to Washington, who nails it in this (as far as I know) his first major big screen role.  I could be wrong on that but at any rate this is a big breakthrough performance for him.  Adam Driver continues to prove that he does his best acting when he isn’t playing Kylo Ren and Topher Grace banks on his patented ability to play smarmy weasels.

One criticism.  Nick Turturro is a great actor and has long been a regular in Spike Lee joints.  I’m not faulting him or his abilities it’s just that he usually plays characters of either Italian or Hispanic descent, usually with a New York accent and, well, here he plays one of the klansmen.

In this day and age of social media outrage, I have to be clear.  It’s not that under normal circumstances, you wouldn’t want Nick to attend your dinner party or be part of your organization, it’s just that, in this case, you have a movie that’s exposing the inner workings of a group of people who hate anyone who isn’t a WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) and in that respect, it seems like a character played by Nick would be more likely to be lynched by the klan than to be embraced by them.

I don’t know.  Again, not faulting NT as he has a number of great performances, but I think in this film, he might have been better as a cop or in a non-klan role.

Come on.  Don’t send me angry letters.  “You don’t look like you belong in the KKK” is a compliment.

A final thought – one (of many) positive messages I took from this film is that when people from different backgrounds come together, they can achieve great things.  Ron came up with the idea to infiltrate the KKK, but to pull it off, he needed Flip, as well as other police officers who assisted with equipment, surveillance, etc.

In other words, I hope one day we can reach a point where it isn’t about color or race or religion but rather, just good people doing good and keeping bad people at bay.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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Aug 11 2018
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Movie Review – The Voices (2015)

Your dog says behave.  Your cat says be bad.  What to do?  Why, read this review, of course.

SPOILER ALERT – I can’t really get into much of this film without giving it all away, so for now, if you haven’t seen it and your stomach isn’t turned by the thought of guts, gore, murder and also, the fact that somehow this is a comedy (a dark one) then go ahead and watch it on Netflix, then report back here to discuss in the comments.

I caught this at random, just searching through Netflix for something to watch and was surprised that I had never heard of this one.  It’s got Ryan Reynolds and Anna Kendrick and it’s been out for so long yet it fell below my radar.

Moreover, Ryan Reynolds does some honest to God acting in this flick.  You laugh, but I think that even Double-R would admit he has been depending on a snarky, over confident, self-absorbed schtick for a long time now.

Here, RR plays someone different, nay, three someones.  First, he’s Jerry, a shy, socially awkward bathtub factory worker.  To his coworkers, he’s a bit of an odd duck yet still a member of the team.

In his personal life, he’s clearly bananas.  Living in an apartment above a bowling alley, he talks to his pets – Bosco the dog and Mr. Whiskers the cat.  Bosco is Jerry’s good side so naturally, the cat is the villain.  Bosco advises Jerry to behave while Mr. Whiskers urges Jerry to give in to his deepest, darkest impulses.

Usually, Bosco wins, until a fateful night when Jerry scores a date with the babe of his dreams, Fiona (Gemma Arterton).  Alas, Jerry accidentally kills Fiona and Mr. Whiskers takes advantage of this to push Jerry over the line and urge him to kill again, this time on purpose.

Potentially in the crosshairs is Lisa (Anna Kendrick), another coworker who has harbored a longtime crush on Jerry.  Her fate will depend on whether Jerry starts paying more attention to his good pet or his bad pet.

From a writing standpoint (and look away for this is a big SPOILER), Jerry’s medication plays a big role from a “show, don’t tell” perspective.  Prior to the chaos, Jerry has been seeing Dr. Warren (Jacki Weaver) for treatment related to a traumatic childhood.

She urges Jerry to take his medication.  When he doesn’t, his world is happy, calm, peaceful.  He believes he has a pretty comfortable, sweet life, living in a nice, swanky apartment with his best four-legged buds.  Heck, the dismembered head of Fiona, now kept in his fridge, even talks to him, saying all the sweet nothings he longed to hear from her.

What happens when he takes the medication?  Reality sets in, and it’s a grim one.  The apartment isn’t a nice place to live at all.  It’s filled to the brim with filth – dog and cat poop, unwashed dishes, various warning signs that this wack job has not been taking care of himself for quite some time, as well as the bloody remains of his victim.  Worse for Jerry, his pets don’t even talk.  They’re just a cat and a dog.  And yikes!  Fiona is no longer a happy go lucky talking head but as you might have guessed, a silent, rotting head.

As Dr. Warren later explains with advice that could help everyone, no matter their level of crazy, most people hear “voices” though to most people, those “voices” come across as thoughts – ideas of self-loathing, disappointment, urges to do bad things and most people know well enough to push those thoughts aside and not be consumed by them.  Others, like Jerry, hear literal voices and create false worlds to avoid reality.

Scary, dark, funny though it seems like it shouldn’t be, the film has, surprisingly, a good message about facing reality, warts and all, learning to accept ourselves, rally around our strengths, forgive ourselves for our weaknesses, confront problems rather than pretend they aren’t there, to not live in a fantasy land because improving the real world around is often too hard.

It’s a good film where Ryan actually convinces me that he’s shy and awkward even though he’s anything but and to boot, he hams it up as an angelic dog and devilish cat.

It’s a good flick that probably deserved a little more critical acclaim than it got so its worth a watch, unless you aren’t into comedies about crazy men who talk to heads and killer kitties, then you know, don’t watch it.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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Aug 10 2018
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Daily Discussion with BQB – The Oscars Add Best Popular Film Category

You know, 3.5 readers, I’m actually old enough to recall when it wasn’t entirely impossible for a popular film to also be an Oscar film.  Sure, even when I was younger, the Oscars were known for pretentious snobbery, but movies like “Braveheart” or “The Departed” were well received by the public as well as having Oscar potential.

This is new category is laden with tacit admissions: 1) They’re admitting the films they nominate are basically just high falutin’ tripe 2) they’ll never, ever give the gold to a comic book movie.

You might forget that “The Dark Knight” was nominated for Best Picture in 2008 and funny, it was added to Netflix recently.  I rewatched it over the weekend and was struck at how relevant it is  – how longstanding evil can’t be defeated without great sacrifice, how sometimes defeating evil requires a man to get down into the muck, how there has to be darkness before there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, plus the immortal debate over whether or not all men are corruptible given the right circumstances.

Didn’t win.  Had an asshole dressed as a bat.

My guess as to why are they doing this? 1) Back in the day, people would actually become fans of a film and would watch the Oscars to see if their favorite movie wins.  Why, I recall people openly debating which films were the best…because they’d seen them.

No one saw the films this past year and if they did, the convo would be, “What, you think the film about the deaf woman who fucks a fish monster is better than the film about the grad student who statutorily rapes his employer’s teenage son?  How dare you?!”

Second, there is a movement in all walks of life for minorities to be treated equally everywhere and that should be no different in film.  So…the issue is that Oscar films usually deal with heavy subjects, so if a movie featuring black people wins, the black people are usually portrayed as slaves, or downtrodden, poor, caught in an oppressive system…and it’s not that I’m saying those films aren’t important but…

…oh well the hell.  They’re probably doing this because they want “Black Panther” to win an Oscar but they can’t bring themselves to give a gold statue for best picture to a movie about superheroes, even if the movie was able to use sci fi and comic book elements that a) appeal to young people and b) do a better job of explaining the historical arguments of how to obtain civil rights for African Americans.

Honestly, an argument could be made that BP deserves Best Pic outright and this could be Oscar night’s one chance to say hey, we aren’t snooty, we gave it to a super hero film.

But they just can’t do it.

Besides the Black Panther argument, black people (well, I don’t mean to speak for them so if I have any black readers feel free to educate me but I think I’m right)…they don’t ALWAYS want to watch TV and see black people as either slaves or downtrodden people.  Sometimes they want to see black people living life, having fun, going on adventures and so on.  To that end, a movie like “Girls Trip” might take home some gold.

Aside from the “Oscars So White” issue, I think the Academy is wrestling with its view that popular and/or comic booky/action/comedy/horror or fun or blockbuster popcorn films are taking on more and more social issues.  “Captain America: Winter Soldier” for example looked into whether we are sacrificing our right to privacy by putting so much of our lives onto the Internet – data for the government to mine and use and abuse.

I know the Academy prefers their precious, snooty little films about Cold War fish fucking but it wouldn’t hurt them to just give the award to a super hero movie one time…especially one like BP with a lot of cultural significance…and then they could go on to give the film to a snooty fish fucking film next year.

In the early 2000s, they gave the gold to one of the LOTR films, a popular, high grossing film, and then went on to give it to snooty films in following years.

What say you, 3.5 readers?

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Aug 08 2018
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BQB’s Classic Movie Reviews – Swordfish (2001)

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Halle Berry’s titties.

For years, that’s all I remembered about this film – that (those?) and also that it seemed kind of dumb at the time.

In the early 2000s, you couldn’t have asked for a better collection of actors.  John Travolta was knee deep in his “Pulp Fiction” career recovery.  Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry were fresh off of being X-Men (Wolverine and Storm, respectively).  Meanwhile, Don Cheadle was in, well, everything.

But…sometimes you can take a bunch of awesome things, like graham crackers, marshmallows and chocolate and create something awesome, like s’mores.  And sometimes you can take some awesome things, like pizza, beer and an all night dance party and end up puking your guts out.

In other words, the actors were great but the plot sort of came across as though a bunch of writers got together and said, “Let’s just bypass this whole plot thing and have a lot of awesome explosions, action and get Halle Berry to gratuitously flash her funbags for no reason.

Interestingly enough, I caught this on Netflix after having not seen it since I did in the movie theater oh so many years ago.  And for the first hour or so, I recalled why I thought the movie blew chunks in the first place.

Jackman plays Stanley Jobson, supposedly the world’s greatest hacker, currently on parole after pissing off the government with his hackery.  With a life reduced to poverty, he’s forced into becoming a hacker for Gabriel (Travolta) a mysterious, off-the-books, anti-terrorist operation runner.

The idea sounds awesome in theory but in practice, it’s a lot of just running around, things exploding, Halle Berry eating Twizzlers in a bizarre effort to seem interesting (she already was and didn’t need candy), and Travolta chewing scenery as he hams up his (to the best of my recollection) first villain role with great relish and gusto.

Well, if it sucks then why am I recommending it?  Because, in hindsight, the last half of the film is eerily prophetic.

You see, this film was released in the summer of 2001, a mere three months before the 9/11 attack.  For most of the film, Gabriel comes across as a psychopath who just wants Jobson to use his hacking skills to score some cash.

However, we learn (spoiler) that Gabriel was never just a bank robber, but in fact, he’s running his own anti-terror unit.  As he explains, any time a terrorist attacks American interests, he’ll use the cash to fund his own private Army that will hit the terrorists back tenfold.  Why, if he learns that countries are harboring terrorists, he’ll hit those countries back as well.  Uncle Sam doesn’t want to get his hands dirty, so he’ll do it for him.

Three months before 9/11, the idea was sort of a throwaway.  Sure there were terrorist attacks for years before 9/11, and Americans were vaguely aware of the existence of Osama Bin Laden due to attacks on American embassies in Africa and on the USS Cole, for example.

But the idea that a 9/11 could happen was inconceivable.

At the end of the film, Gabriel tries to convince Stanley that he was never the bad guy.  He poses a question to Stanley – if it were possible to develop a cure to all diseases known to man, but in doing so, one child would have to die, would Stanley do it?

Stanley answers no.  It would be immoral to let the child die.  Gabriel argues that it would be immoral to let so many die just to save one life.  The greater good.

Yes, three months before 9/11 I was just a young adult in the early part of my life, happy go lucky and carefree and I wrote the film off as just a fun diversion and a chance to see some delicious caramel flavored titties.

What I wouldn’t realize until 17 years later is that this relatively obscure action flick posed, right before 9/11, the great question that has plagued, and alas, even torn this country apart, namely – how hard is too hard when it comes to fighting terrorism?  Is it moral to go to war overseas in the hope of stopping it?  Is it moral not to, knowing that if terrorists are rooted out of hiding, they may kill Americans at home?

Whether it is moral to bring the fight to the terrorists or to just live life and accept terrorism as just another sad part of life (i.e. “the new normal”) has been the main source of feuding between conservatives and liberals for nearly two decades now.

Terrorists hiding in other countries.  America fighting back.  Shadow ops to take the baddies out.

Sigh.  We had an early warning in the most unlikely of places, that being a cockamamie action film that rested largely on fake CGI action and real titties.

Very real titties.

I love you Halle.  You tried to save America with your titties and never got the credit you deserve…until now.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy…mainly for the second half and only if you think about the questions raised by the second half in the context that this film was released three months before 9/11.

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Aug 06 2018
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Movie Review – The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018)

Espionage, intrigue, and vag jokes.  So many vag jokes.

BQB here with a review of “The Spy Who Dumped Me.”

I liked this movie.  It’s a comedy that was self-aware and didn’t take itself too seriously.  Jokes for the sake of humor that aren’t trying to educate you on a higher level.

Mila Kunis plays Audrey, a supermarket cashier who is dumped by her boyfriend, who, as it turns out, was a spy behind her back.  Blah, blah, blah, hijinx ensue and Audrey finds herself tied up in international mischief which can only be cured if she gets a flash drive left behind by her ex into the right hands.

Backing Audrey up is her BFF Morgan (Kate McKinnon, finally in her big screen chance to shine.)  Morgan lives larger than life and encourages Audrey to embrace her wild side, often to hilarious results.  True, Kate is no stranger to film, especially after having been 1/4 of the “Ghostbusters” remake crew.  However, she gets a lot of screen time here, more so than usual, and she makes the most of it.

I can’t get into anymore without giving it all away, but it’s a rare comedy that makes you laugh in this age where jokes are often watered down or pulled out to spare feelings.  The action scenes are great too.  There’s a lot of death and destruction and somehow that sounds like it wouldn’t be funny…except when two amateurs are experiencing it then yeah, somehow, it makes you laugh.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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Aug 04 2018
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Movies

BQB’s Classic Movie Reviews – Eraser (1996)

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Smile, 3.5 readers.  You’ve just been erased.

Scrolling through Netflix last night with a bowl of pasta in hand, I caught this flick and was transported to me teen years, to a time when seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger on a movie poster meant the film was guaranteed to be good (well, good to fans of action flicks, anyway.)

As it turns out, that era was soon to come to an end.  In my mind, this movie is Schwarzenegger’s last good film.  In the years since, he’s had a couple of flicks that were mildly OK or at least tolerable, and some bona fide garbage, but at any rate, this is the last movie he made that I remember being awesome.

Side note: Maybe he disagrees, but in hindsight, I think it was a mistake for Arnold to run for Governor of Cal-eee-fornia.  Maybe he did it because he thought he was getting older and his movie days were behind him, but I think he might have missed a shot to transition into more seasoned roles.  Maybe he might have, gasp, found an Oscar worthy vehicle.

I know.  He’s a giant weightlifter action star with an Austrian accent but he also had a lot of Hollywood pull.  He could have found his Oscar film. Is it too late now?  I don’t know.

Anyway.  Back to the movie.  This film takes us into the Federal Witness Protection program.  Spoiler alert: our first intro into this world is when Arnold evacuates a mobster turned witness and his wife who are about to get whacked.

Arnold dumps ketchup all over the mobster and his wife, takes a polaroid, puts it into the pocket of one of two hit men he’s offed.  He then replaces the husband and wife with corpse ringers pilfered from a morgue and drags the hit men’s bodies to the front lawn.  He shoots one, then puts the gun in the other’s hand.

The mobster (Robert Pastorelli, by the way) is confused.  Arnold, as his character, US Marshall John Kruger, explains, “They killed you, then turned on each other.”

Pastorelli replies, “Right.  Sons of bitches!”

I don’t know why, but that line made me laugh as a kid and so many years later it still does.

As the movie goes on, I saw a lot of stars I haven’t seen in a long time – James Caan as the film’s villain, Vanessa Williams as the witness Arnie must rescue and James Coburn as the head of the witness protection program.  Oh, and that guy who plays Roger in “Mad Men” has a bit part as an FBI agent.  Sometimes it’s fun to watch old movies and catch actors in parts before they get big.

Alas, if only we had known that not too long after this film, Arnie’s movie career went into the witness program.  It’s not dead, it’s just in hiding – probably in a farm house in rural Illinois, secluded from civilization and far away from anything resembling a restaurant that can provide a good meal.  Maybe it will come out of hiding someday.

For now, it’s just Arnie doing the old actor’s cash-in routine – lots of cash grab sequels to films Gen Xers feel nostalgia for.  As if wrecking “Terminator” with “Genisys” wasn’t enough (Terminators with gray hair, my ass), he’ll be out with a new Conan film I hear.  Something tells me he’ll be wearing more than a leather speedo in this one.

Oh well, who am I to judge? I’ve never been speedo ready in my life.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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Jul 23 2018
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Movies

Movie Review – Father of the Year (2018)

I’m going to make this a short review.

I generally avoid Adam Sandler and Co’s movies lately.  They’re all usually straight to streaming on Netflix and they remind me of a brand of humor that was edgy in my youth, but seems, for some reason, like it doesn’t work today.  I hate to see former SNL faves getting older.

I put this one on just for something to watch in the background while I did some housework and ended up laughing a lot.  Maybe Happy Madison’s still got it after all.

Childhood best friends turned college graduates Ben and Larry (they are too young and irrelevant for me to learn their actor names) come home for one last summer in their New Hampshire home town before they head off into the real world.

Blah, blah, blah, shenanigans ensue, a bet is made that Ben’s dad (David Spade) could totally beat up Larry’s dad (Nat Faxon.)

Various attempts at a fight ensue.  Hijinx galore.  Ultimately, the main idea seems to be to stop trying to control your life because no matter what you do, your fate will be out of your control.  Ben’s dad is a total loser but is blissfully oblivious to his scumbaggery.  Larry’s dad tries to do everything right but is bossed around shamelessly by his wife and young stepson.

I don’t know.  Lots of gross out humor.  It’s funny.  Watch it. End of review.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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