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Aug 04 2022
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Movies

BQB Reviews Star Trek – Star Trek 3: The Search for Spock

Spock! Where you at, son?

BQB here with a review of the third installment of the 1980s era ST franchise.

RIP Uhura, you foxy mama, you.

In Wrath of Khan, Spock freaking dies. I’m sorry if this comes as a spoiler to you, but holy crap. You had like 40 some odd years to watch the movie, so get over it. Spock doesn’t just die, he dies heroically, running into a radioactive chamber to do some science stuff to keep the Enterprise operational. There was no time to put on an anti-radiation suit, so he croaks. Ah, but this scene also gives rise to his well-known catchphrase – “The good of the many outweighs the needs of the few or the one.”

Freaking pointy eared communist.

As if this movie didn’t add enough to the vernacular, it also gave us the “Kobayashi Maru” i.e. a simulator Starfleet Officers have to go through and the catch is there is literally no way to solve the problem. The test isn’t so much designed to educate as to what or what not to do in a sticky situation but rather to get the officer acquainted with the fact that sometimes, you can make the best decision possible and shit will still hit the fan and go flying everywhere. (Sidenote: Who came up with the phrase “When shit hits the fan” anyway? Because it totally describes something that must be avoided to prevent something really bad from happening, namely shit hits the fan blades then gets propelled so far and wide that no matter how hard you clean and scrub you’ll still be finding little shit clumps hiding around your room years later. I can only assume at some point in history, someone literally must have taken a dump on a fan only for everyone in the room to experience the fallout and realize this is good shorthand for explaining how something catastrophic yet avoidable must be avoided.)

EDIT: I just realized the Kobayashi Maru is in Star Trek 2 and not this film. I confused my Saaviks. Kirstie Alley played the She-Vulcan in 2 while Robin Curtis took the role in 3. Alley was afraid of being typecast which is sad because in her makeup and with her voice she really did make for an impressive Vulcan, though Curtis wasn’t chopped liver.

Wow, what a digression! Moving on.

Anyway, this is a pretty great flick. The plot? The Enterprise officers held a funeral for the late Spock and shot his body at the Genesis planet in a torpedo coffin, which frankly, sounds kind of disrespectful but maybe space folk are into that sort of thing. This happened at the end of the Khan film.

In this go-around, Dr. Bones McCoy, literally the crankiest old man in space who, if he had a lawn, would constantly be yelling at kids to get off it, always despised Spock’s incessant logic at the expense of emotion. Thus, it’s torture for Bones when he starts feeling Spock’s logic and worse, starts talking like a vulcan.

The diagnosis? The Spockster transferred his consciousness into Dr. McCoy just before he died. As Spock’s father Sarek informs Kirk, Vulcans can do that shit. And how convenient! Spock’s body, now on a planet where everything grows and renews and nothing is ever dead for long, has been reborn, now as a little Vulcan boy who is rapidly aging and must suffer the painful ramifications of pom far or as the layman might call it, Vulcan puberty.

Alas, Starfleet Command has nixed any attempts to reclaim Spock’s bod. Official consensus is the Genesis planet sucks the big one and no one knows what to make of it other than no one should be allowed to visit it. Thus, Kirk and crew pull off a pretty sweet and daring heist of the Enterprise and go rogue.

Veteran character actor Christopher Lloyd, always made up in some way or another on film, plays the rogue Klingon Kruge who wants to snatch the Genesis info for himself so he can recreate the women and rule the galaxy in the name of all Klingons because Klingons firmly believe that humans stink like butts.

That’s pretty much it. The theft of the Enterprise is pretty cool and what happens to it at the end in the name of taking out the Klingons, well, you’ll just have to watch it. Stupid Klingons.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. If you have no life, you can binge watch Star Trek just like me on Paramount Plus.

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Jul 31 2022
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Movies

BQB Reviews Star Trek: Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

“KHAN!”

Say it with me, 3.5 readers. “KHAN!”

So exhilarating.

Before I get to this review, let me discuss this little project.

I’m a recent subscriber of Paramount Plus and to be honest, I was thinking about not re-subscribing. However, Paramount makes Star Trek, so if you are a Trekkie, you’ll find all the movies and TV shows here, ready to stream where no stream has streamed before.

I’d say I’m at best half a Trekkie, maybe even a quarter Trekkie. The films were big in the 1980s when I was a kid and I have fond memories going to see them with my ‘rents, who sadly, are now dead. So that’s not fun, but it was fun when they were alive, except when you watch the films and realize half the cast are freaking dead now too. Ah, but maybe they aren’t dead. Maybe they’re just off living it up in that Undiscovered Country somewhere.

Wow that got morbid fast. Anyway, in the great annals of sci-fi flicks/TV, Star Trek is the father, but then Star Wars is the kid that grew up, did good, and bought its dear old Dad a new house. Oh, you thought they were in competition? Well, they were. But look at it this way. Without Star Trek getting viewers interested in space, you wouldn’t have had George Lucas tearing up the screen with kick ass special effects, then you wouldn’t have had the 1980s era studios pouring big bucks into sci-fi space opera fests. Some were schlock like Flash Gordon (though Ted the Teddy Bear liked it), some were middling like Battlestar Galactica (the original had a cult following though it didn’t quite kick ass until the 2004 reboot).

Ahh, but Paramount already had its space based intellectual property, it just needed Star Wars to pave the way to showing what can be done with special effects and wammo, the once cancelled 1960s show was back on film in new action backed blockbusters, albeit with a cast that ranged from middle-aged to elderly.

Anyway, my project is to review old Star Trek movies and shows from time to time. Why start with Wrath of Khan? A) it’s the best and b) it starts off a three movie arc where all the flicks are tied together.

Here, we have Admiral Kirk not really enjoying life behind a desk. He was made to be out in the space field, exploring new worlds and better yet, exploring fine ass tri-breasted green space babes. The aging Enterprise is now a training vessel and Kirk’s old BFF Spock is training the cadets. Blah blah blah, there’s a distress call from Ceti Alpha Whatever. Kirk’s old flame Dr. Carol Marcus and his heretofore unknown son David are leading the Genesis experiment, which boils down to shooting a special torpedo at a dead planet so as to resurrect it and make it lush and beautiful with life.

Meanwhile, vile genetically altered to be a super strong supervillain Khan (the always swarthy Ricardo Montalban) and his group of genetically superior super-underlings have been marooned on a dead planet for years, having been exiled there by Kirk during the original show for their crimes of d-baggery in trying to steal the Enterprise. Basically, these super-people have a long history of being forcibly exiled after using their powers for evil and so, mean as exile is, they totes deserve it.

Long story short, Chekov and his new Captain Terrell beam down to this planet to investigate, only to become Khan’s unwitting slaves thanks to disgusting bugs that can be placed into the brain via the ear canal, rendering the subject amenable to all commands. I still remember being a little kid in the movie theater and being totally grossed out by this scene.

Blah, blah, blah, Khan takes control of the Genesis device, turns it into a weapon (if it grows new life wherever it erupts, it could repave an existing society with trees and fauna).

Bottomline – Spock croaks in the ensuing chaos but not forever? That brings us to Star Trek 3: The Search for Spock.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. Kudos to the film for finding ways to embrace the cast’s age rather than ignore it. Here, Kirk is an elder Federation statesman but despises the role because he’s still young at heart and as long as the body is willing, the mind will always crave adventure (often even when the body is unwilling).

Spock’s a cadet trainer. The rest of the cast get roped into the mission in various ways. It does tie into the original series. There is an episode where Ricardo Montalban plays Khan and tries to oust Kirk as Enterprise captain.

Though it seems unlikely Kirk went this long without knowing he had an adult son, it does tie in with the character, i.e. he was a dude who bagged babes throughout the galaxy, never stopping to give them an intergalactic call to see how they were doing or if they had any lifeforms growing inside them that were his.

All in all, Kirk’s shouting of “KHAN!” when he realizes his old enemy has beaten him makes the movie. It is a meditation on revenge and whether it is ever the right option, for there are many moments where Khan has the upper hand. He and his hench-people can escape and live great lives, but like Captain Ahab (referenced in the film) he simply cannot stop hunting the white whale that is Kirk.

In conclusion, “KHAN!”

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Jul 24 2022
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Movies

Movie Trailer – Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Hey 3.5 readers.

Your old pal, BQB here.

The new trailer for Black Panda: Wakanda Forever is here.

As you know, Chadwick Boseman died way too young and right at the moment when his success in the first BP movie meant sequels and other roles were a lock, propelling him into super-duper stardom.

But he’s still a super-duper star in the hearts of us fans and it looks like Marvel/Disney has found a way to honor him while carrying on. It looks like the women of Wakanda, BP’s mother, girlfriend, sister and bodyguard govern the kingdom in the wake of T’Challa’s death.

We do see those famous claws unleashed at the end of the film, so who dons the Black Panther mask? Theories: one of the women, perhaps his sister who, wouldn’t she be next in line for the throne? Then again it appears there is a birth so maybe flash forward to the future where that child becomes an adult and takes over.

I always gave props to the original because despite being a comic book movie, it tackled serious issues and unlike most comic book movies, the stakes were pretty high. Most other comic flicks, characters are blown up only for someone to invent a magic device that puts them back together or something, but in this franchise, there were actual consequences to bad actions.

This comes at a time when Marvel needs it. The Eternals? Stink-a-roo. Dr. Strange and the Multiverse? OK, but it was the first Marvel movie I waited till it was on streaming and I’m not rushing out to see Thor: Love and Thunder either. I’d see this in the theater though.

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Jul 14 2022
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Movies

Lee Marvin and Benedict Cumberbatch – Time Travel Twins?

Hey 3.5 readers.

Your old pal, BQB here.

Every once in a blue moon, I check out that old classic, The Dirty Dozen. If you’ve never seen it, it’s a 1960s flick where the unorthodox yet results achieving Major Reisman is assigned by the top brass to take on the wildest of suicide missions, that being training and commanding a group of psycho degenerate criminally convicted ex-soldiers (yet technically still military property as they are serving time in military jail and sentenced for execution) on an absurdly dangerous mission to blow up the mother of all Nazi targets during WWII. If they survive, they’ll get a pardon and yadda, yadda, yadda.

I saw this years ago, but as I watched it again recently, I was like, “Holy shit. Did Benedict Cumberbatch travel back to the 1960s and assume the guise of Lee Marvin?” These two have similar faces, similar voices, the resemblance, speech, tone, all very similar.

Unfortunately, we live in an age where if you notice something, chances are others have too and sure enough, there are posts about the uncanny similarities.

You be the judge. Here’s a clip of the Lee-ster in action. Tell me you don’t see traces of our beloved modern-day Dr. Strange.

The movie itself is 3/4 a lot of fun whereas the last 1/4, well, I hate to give a spoiler but it’s action and explosions that were quite spectacular for its day plus, well, horror, as in Nazis at a party retreat are murdered with ruthless efficiency and like I get the irony of the inventors of ruthlessly efficient murder being murdered with ruthless efficiency but still, many of the casualties of war here are women who were just there to be Nazi arm candy and ok, serves them right for cavorting with Nazis but look all I’m saying is the way in which they are killed – i.e. locked in a tight space and knowing it’s coming and having to wait for it, all the screams and tortured cries, if you have a heart you’ll be like, yikes.

OK, I know they are Nazis. Could they have released the lady Nazis and put them in lady Nazi jail? I think most of them were there as prostitutes so like, do we even know for sure if they agreed with Nazi dogma? A working girl has to get her dough any way she can get it after all.

The first 3/4 we see many legendary actors at a young age. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Donald Sutherland any younger, or Charles Bronson. And while you probably only know Telly Savalas as good guy, tough cop Kojak, he plays a psycho rapist pervert who believes God has enlisted him to punish women and well, you can’t help but hope maybe he’ll be taken out along with the Nazis by the end.

Typical action movie tropes i.e. the brass berate Reisman for taking so many risks yet they are bureaucrats who sit on their butts all day and have no idea what it is like out in the field. Come to think of it, this movie probably invented a lot of the action movie tropes we see in action films today.

Sidenote 1: This movie is one of the last times Hollywood allowed a man with gray hair to be a kick-ass tough guy.

Sidenote 2: Throughout the film, whenever Reisman wants to get his soldiers’ attention, he blasts at their feet with a machine gun, which seems like it should totally violate several OSHA standards.

I lost track! Tell me if you think maybe Lee Marvin is Benedict’s secret grandfather or something.

Oh, if you need a Benedict clip for reference, not sure if this is the best one but I found this recent performance on SNL as one half of an experimental Chuck E Cheese band was pretty funny:

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Jul 11 2022
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Movies

Movie Review – Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022)

Banana, 3.5 readers.

Very banana, indeed.

I gotta be honest, the last few installments of this franchise were rather lackluster, IMO. I found that sad because the original, about professional supervillain Gru who, with the assistance of his little yellow goofball minions, learns he has a heart of gold, despite being encrusted in an evil layer, is a pretty great flick.

Then you had Despicable Me 2 and 3 and Minions and eh, though they had their moments, they were by and large forgettable cash grabs.

And while this film is, as all films are, about sucking up more moolah, it does have the heart of the original.

It’s the 1970s and young Gru (Steve Carrell) dreams of becoming a great supervillain. By accident, he is invited to interview with evil villain group, the Vicious Six. Shenanigans ensue and low and behold, Little Gru ends up taking his favorite villain band on with the assistance of his all time favorite villain, Wild Knuckles (Alan Arkin in perhaps the voice over role he was born to play).

Oh, and the little yellow schmucks are forever in the background, moving the story forward.

I could stop this review here, but I feel a need to comment on the whole Lightyear fiasco. I probably shouldn’t because I haven’t seen Lightyear but apparently, no one else did either (rimshot – too soon?)

All I can comment on is the Lightyear trailer seemed rather serious for a kid’s movie. Conservative commentators have been lambasting it as an example of “go woke, go broke” but I have a hunch Disney just went way too serious with this one. Buzz Lightyear, after all, is part of the Toy Story franchise. The running joke is that he is a very serious spaceman with a big ego who takes himself way too seriously and thus suffers big time mental anguish throughout the franchise as he comes to grips with the fact that he isn’t a super awesome astronaut but in fact, just a piece of plastic. His lasers are just little lights. His rockets are just easily lost plastic projectiles. He yearns to explore the greatest reaches of the galaxy but alas, just exists to chill in Andy’s toy box.

There was a Lightyear cartoon show that lampooned Buzz’s egotism and bumbling “I’m so awesome I don’t realize I accidentally trip over everything and luck my way into awesomeness” style and a modern day film that captured this style might have been better received. So going serious with a gritty, spaceman having to save the day with an interstellar twist where all his friends grow old while he goes on missions, eh. Too dark for this usually jovial character.

Compare it with this Minions movie that raked in boku cash while Lightyear tanked. From the opening scene where a young Gru clears out a sold out theater by detonating a fart gas bomb so he can get a better seat at a 1970s showing of Jaws (in a gas mask), you know this is a movie designed to make kids laugh, heck, to even make adults laugh.

I’m not saying there isn’t room for serious kids’ film. Frozen, for example, is a kids’ movie with serious themes that was done well and left room for silliness along the way.

All in all, this is me predicting that Dreamworks is on the way to eating Disney’s lunch if Disney keeps going on this serious, no room for fun path. Gru includes a preview for an upcoming Puss in Boots flick which also seems quite hysterical and as it plays up jokes about Puss having to break out of a horrible life of being one of a crazed cat lady’s hundreds of pets to resume a life of adventuring, you just get a sense that Dreamworks understands the first rule of a kids movie is make ’em laugh. No one at Disney seems to understand that these days.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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Jul 05 2022
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Movies, Uncategorized

Movie Review – Jerry and Marge Go Large (2022)

Well, it’s official. I’m a Paramount Plus subscriber now.

How did that happen? This freaking movie.

Let’s discuss, 3.5 readers.

I love Bryan Cranston and have been binging Breaking Bad as of late. Somehow, the internet oompa loompas who feed tailored ads to my computer must know this because they have been peppering me with ads for this film. Frankly, the best description of it is if the Hallmark Channel made a sweet, charming version of Breaking Bad that old ladies can enjoy, but still has enough humor for everyone else too.

Based on a true story, retired cereal factory worker Jerry Selbee has had a lifelong gift for number crunching that no one has ever appreciated. Adjusting to retired life, he feels useless and unproductive until he finds a flaw in a lotto game. After performing some calculations (and trust me, the film tries to explain it but you might be mentally better off if you just nod and politely agree that the math works and means the things that the characters say it means) Jerry figures out a way to game the system.

Alas, when his home state of Michigan discontinues his favorite lotto game, he and wife Marge (Anette Bening) spice up their stale marriage by making monthly trips to the Bay State, purchasing tens of thousands of lotto tickets at a time, to the point where they become BFFs with rural MA convenience store owner Bill (Rainn Wilson.)

Ahh, but the Selbees are altruists at heart. Noticing that their little town of Evart is down in the dumps of an economic downturn, they convince their friends and neighbors to pool their resources, creating a corporation that does nothing but buy lotto tickets, pays taxes on the winnings and distributes profits amongst the shareholding townsfolk. In the process, the newly rich Evartians are able to invest boku buckaroos in their fair burg, opening up shops and fixing up locations that had been rotting away unused.

Steve (Larry Wilmore) serves as the Selbees’ co-conspirating accountant, the joke being that no one else in town prior to the lotto wins had much money so he had to take on a second job because no one in town had any money to account for.

Naturally, any decent film needs a point of contention right? That’s where a group of smarmy Harvard students come in. These whiz kids have also figured out how to game the lotto. The Michigan townsfolk and Cambridge brainiacs butt heads, for if one side drops out, then that increases the winnings for the other and all’s fair in love, war, and playing the lotto, right?

STATUS: Shelf-worthy, though this is the oldest I’ve seen Bryan Cranston. He plays a grandfather here, an old who is having a hard time adjusting to the so-called golden years. I’m not knocking old age it’s just it seems like yesterday Bryan was cooking meth with Jesse as Walt and now he’s playing grandpas who have to wrestle snacks away from their grandkids to prevent them from finding out said snacks are a secret cash stash.

Hey, it convinced me to sign up for Paramount Plus and I felt it was worth it after seeing it, so if that isn’t a ringing endorsement, I don’t know what is. Chalk up another role for Cranston as a older person looking back on life, feeling like they missed out by not taking this or that shot, and finding some unique way to make big bucks before time runs out. At least Jerry did something legal here. Walt? Not so much.

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Jul 03 2022
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Movie Review – Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)

Roar!

People spend so much time thinking about how to do it they never stopped to think about if they should do it, that is to say, to make this movie, 3.5 readers.

BQB here with a review of the latest installment to the ongoing prehistoric monsters meet modern times saga.

At the outset, let me say this: I didn’t think it was as bad as the critics are saying, but I do think the concept of modern day dinos is played out and it’s going to be a long time, if ever, when writers think of a new setting to put our giant scaly predecessors in to make them interesting. The previous film stunk the big one, making me think that was all she wrote to this franchise, but by God, they managed to make one last flick that is passable.

The plot? Owen and Claire (Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard) are hiding out from the law and dinos with their clone kid who set the dinos free in an act of defiance against the villains of the last picture and don’t ask me to explain it any better than that because if I try, my eyes will glaze over.

Somehow, they go down the rabbit hole of uncovering a plot to control the world’s food supply courtesy of Dodgson (I always thought he was Dobson) the dude that Wayne Knight aka Newman aka Dennis Nedry sold the shaving cream can full of dino dna samples to in the last one. It was never mentioned in any of the other movies, but apparently this evildoer spent the last 30 some odd years starting and running his own evil biological company, though to the outsider, he comes across as a typical Tim Cook-esque Silicon Valley mogul.

Yes, these bad dudes have managed to use dino DNA tech to create prehistoric bugs designed to devour all the world’s crops except the bad guys’ crops and ergo, yadda yadda yadda, the villain will control all the food and you’ll have to sell your right testicle to get a damn candy bar.

One source of criticism might be that, you know, if there’s a villainous plot afoot, it should involve killer dinos instead of killer bugs, but the dinos are still present. Another source of criticism is that the last film ended with a teaser of a new world where dinosaurs have run amuck. I thought we’d see more of that and we do, just not in the ways we thought. Here, dinos do cross paths with and endanger humans but in most cases, it’s kind of like when a bear gets lost and wanders around a suburban neighborhood, “Damn it! That brontosaurus is getting too close to the city! Better call the cops!”

To be sure, there are evil dino breeders, underground dino black market clubs, and the evil corporation’s dino sanctuary to give you the visual dino feast you crave, but yeah, I thought based on the last film, this one would be all about a world destroyed by T-Rexes wreaking havoc on major metropolitan areas, chomping up everything in sight.

Then again, I mean, dinos being released into the world would be dangerous, but in reality I suppose we have the army, police, national guard and enough gun toting rednecks to take these beasts out and the remaining stragglers would be an annoyance and/or relegated to the black market. So I guess kudos to this flick for embracing that reality but then again this film is the last place I go to for reality. I wanted to see T-Rexes stomping all over downtown, damn it!

Bonus points for bringing the original cast back together. Laura Dern, Sam Neil and Jeff Goldblum all reprise their roles as Doctors Ellie Satler, Grant and Malcolm and much to the film’s credit, these aren’t brief cameos. While many franchises trot out their older stars for a quick walk-on, this trio is very integral to the plot. They get a lot of lines/scenes and have screentime for well over half the movie so if you’re nostalgic for the first film, look no further.

DeWanda Wise and Mamoudou Athie round out the cast as a pilot whose plane gets turned into pyterodactyl lunch and a whistleblower who fights the evil corporation, respectively.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. It seems this will be it for Jurassic films for a while and that’s probably for the best. I applaud the film for its overall message of “while scientific breakthroughs are awesome, let’s be careful while we’re playing God” but seriously, how many times can some idiot mess with dino dna before the government steps in and bans everyone from starting dino dna labs?

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Jul 02 2022
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Movies

Movie Review – Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

Hey 3.5 readers. Do you know that somewhere out there, there’s a world where this blog has 3.5 million readers?

Anything is possible in the multiverse.

BQB here with a review of the MCU’s latest.

At the end of Avengers: Endgame, I thought Marvel had written themselves into a corner. Iron-Man is dead. Captain America old, etc, etc. But now that the MCU has fully head-on embraced multiverse theory as reality, anything is possible.

In short, Iron-Man can come back as Iron-Woman, Iron-Dog, Iron-Clown, Iron-Mime, Iron-Anyone or Anything or more likely, just another actor playing the Iron Dude. All theory on my part but I suspect this is where Marvel is going, so as the longtime actors of this franchise commit the cardinal Hollywood sin of growing old or gasp, demanding more money, Marvel can just yank a different version of the same hero from another dimension.

Also removes the necessity for reboots. We always hate reboots where our beloved story stops and restarts anew, right? The story can just continue forever and ever now.

Admittedly, that didn’t happen in this movie but I think that’s where the franchise is headed. And multiverse theory, in this movie, allowed for an awesome character to join in despite his movies never working (John Krakinski as Mr. Fantastic) or to bring a character owned by one studio to a movie made by another studio (Sir Patrick Steward stops by as Professor X despite dying in Logan because um, he’s probably Professor X from another universe.)

The plot? It is terribly confusing and convoluted, but as far as I can tell, multiverse traveler America Chavez (Xochitil Gomez) is protected by an alternate Dr. Strange when he is ganked by incoming monsters who want America for her mysterious multiverse traversing powers. In our world, she seeks out assistance from our Dr. Strange, who in turn asks for fellow magic wielder Wanda Maximoff for assistance. Alas, she double crosses our favorite sorcerer because she wants America’s power so she can travel to a world where her kids from Wandavision are alive so she can be their mom again. That’s the long and short of it and there’s a lot of special effects and magic fights and so on.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. It wasn’t the best MCU movie and sadly, it’s the first MCU film that I waited until it was on streaming to see. A bit confusing. Also plotholes like how did America get her power? But fun and a sign of where the MCU is going. It does feel like we are in Marvel’s scraping the bottom of the barrel phase but if they handle this multiverse stuff well it’s possible that 100 years from now, this story could still be going on, just younger versions of our heroes being yanked from another dimension whenever our favorite actors age out. Don’t let your boss watch this movie lest he or she find a younger alternate version of you to replace you at work for less money.

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May 30 2022
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Movie Review – Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

Ba na na na na na na na na ba na na na na na na na na na….highway to the danger zone! Highway to the danger zone!

Welcome to the danger zone, 3.5 readers. BQB here with a review of this long-awaited sequel to everyone’s favorite fighter jet movie.

Ah, where does the time go? I remember being a little kid just yesterday, my parents taking me to see the original Top Gun. They bought me GI Joes afterwards. Then I blinked and suddenly I am a decrepit old bastard running a blog that is only read by 3.5 readers. I forgot to do a lot of stuff I wanted to do between the original and the sequel but oh well. This isn’t about me, right?

As we return to the world of Top Gun, we find Maverick as a test pilot, pushing the envelope, still taking unnecessary risks that infuriate his superiors. As they note, anyone with his long record of service should be an admiral or a statesman by now, but Maverick being the mavericky maverick that he is, just can’t follow the rules.

However, the brass admit that Maverick is the most awesome and badass fighter pilot at the Navy’s disposal, so they dispatch him back to Top Gun school to train a new generation of volleyball playing fighter pilots to take out an unsanctioned uranium enriching facility operated by an unspecified rogue nation. As a viewer, you are required to ignore a) the wimpiness of the film for not specifying which nation this is, for the enemy fighter jets have no specific markings and their helmet visors are kept shut at all times so you can’t guess their ethnicity and b) let’s be honest. If a rogue country is operating a uranium enrichment facility in this day and age, it’s probably because America paid for it in the wimpy hope that by buying them off they’d promise to only use the uranium for energy purposes. If anything, the mission in real life would be for Maverick to drop pallets of cash into the rogue nation’s airspace with his trusty F-15 Tomcat.

Alright, I digress. Besides, I give the film credit for at least admitting that blowing up an illegal nuke operation in the hands of evildoers is a good idea and something to promote through film in this age of wokesterism.

Moving on, Maverick’s new recruits include Phoenix, a lady pilot because you gotta have one. Bob, a nerd because they allow nerds to fly planes now. Back in the 1980s, nerds were only allowed to play with calculators and polish their pocket protectors in movies so they have progressed since Mav’s heyday. There’s the token jerk Hangman and a few others with cool call signs. I forget their kickass fighter pilot names. Lenny and Squiggy and Dopey and Sleepy and Sneezy and Doc, I think. Long story short, Rooster (Miles Teller made up to look like a young Anthony Edwards) is following in the footsteps of his late father as a fighter pilot. This leads to tension between the two as Rooster still blames Mav for the death of his BFF Goose so many years ago. Meanwhile, Mav blames himself and the fear of being responsible for the deaths of two generations of the same family of fighter pilots is too much for him to bear, such that he is crushed by the possibility that he wouldn’t be able to go on if he allows something bad to happen to the R-man.

Truth be told, even the flick admits that fighter jets are somewhat obsolete as drones and guided missiles typically take care of a lot of the work they used to do. Even so, Top Gun school continues in real life just in case the world needs aerial dog fighters to save the day. You have to suspend a bit of disbelief and just enjoy the sights and sounds. The flying stunts and tricks are a lot of fun and must be watched on the big screen.

Oh, and Jennifer Connelly stops by as Mav’s love interest while Jon Hamm takes the role of the stereotypical superior whose main job is to tell Maverick he is an asshole who is going to get everyone killed but then never offer any constructive alternatives.

Touching cameo from Val Kilmer who played Maverick’s frenemy Ice-Man in the original. It’s sad what time can do to a man but the cameo is tasteful. Honestly, even the whole movie is respectful, straddling the line between going its own way and not just being a cash grab rehash of the original.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. In all seriousness, this film as well as the original captured a sentiment lost on the public, namely that the ability to create, build, maintain, fly and use fighter craft is nothing short of magic. All the resources, manpower, time, effort, money and yes, skill and talent in keeping this metal birds in the sky is a marvel of modern science that seems like it should be impossible yet somehow it is. It really is a testament to a nation’s greatness when they are able to operate fighter jets and movies that celebrate US awesomeness are few and far between as of late, so kudos for Hollywood for making it.

Double kudos for Tom Cruise who really proves he is one of the last true movie stars. Yeah, he had his weird little freak out when he jumped on Oprah’s couch years back but he really does make a good flick and even comes out as himself before the film to thank you for watching it (oops, spoiler) so that’s awesome.

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May 22 2022
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Movies

Movie Review – Chip ‘N Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022)

Sometimes, some crimes, go slipping through the cracks but these two, gum shoes…are bringing the reboot back?

BQB here with a review of this uber meta movie.

If you’re a middle-aged person, chances are you loved a little slice of networking programming called “The Disney Afternoon” when you were a child. It all started with Ducktales and when young audiences of the late 1980s/early 1990s couldn’t get enough of Scrooge McDuck taking his duck nephews on globetrotting adventures, sure enough pretty much every other House of Mouse character got a reinvention for what was then considered the modern age.

You had TaleSpin, which featured the Jungle Book characters flying planes in search of derring-do and of course, Chip and Dale teamed up with an Australian adventurer mouse (Monterey Jack), a high-tech fixer of all things mouse (Gadget) and a mute fly (Zipper) to create their own detective agency.

Like everyone else now of a certain age where we’re too old to go back but too young to stop moving, I thought that simpler time of afternoon programming, where literally every other kid was watching the same thing so they could bond over it because there was nothing else to watch, were long over.

Thus, I found myself scratching my head in confusion when ads for this flick began circulating. Reboots of old shows/movies so often fail because that media was a product of a different time, so trying to breathe new life into a story that has its roots in the past can be an exercise of Weekend at Bernie’s-ian proportions. Eventually, Hollywood stops trying to drag the corpse of an old franchise around like the fly ridden meat puppet that it is and moves on to something else.

So, I have to admit, this movie surprised me…in that it’s pretty good.

Who is it for? That’s the million-dollar question, and frankly, a question I ask whenever an old show is rebooted. So often, Hollywood turns these reboots into a Frankenstein monster that the kids don’t want because the concept doesn’t appeal to the younger generation and the adults don’t want because it doesn’t embrace the essence of what made the show great a long time ago.

Ah, but leave it to the Lonely Island boys to find a humorous way to make something that appeals to everyone.

But first, I have to present the following points:

#1 – There is a world where humans and cartoons live together.

#2 – Cartoons are not animated. Cartoons are performed by cartoon actors, just as any other movie is performed by human actors.

Still with me? Hold on:

#3 – The Chip and Dale you know and love from Rescue Rangers were, in real life, actors who coincidentally have the voices of comedians John Mulaney (Chip) and Andy Samberg (Dale.) The voices from the old show? That was just Chip and Dale (actors) doing silly voices while playing fictional versions of themselves. Remember, they’re a duo of performing chipmunks who met in high school, went to Hollywood after graduation, and became famous performing a funny chipmunk act with characters of the same names, so famous that Disney greenlit their Rescue Rangers show and the rest is history.

Alright, now that you’ve traveled down that Matrix-like cartoon rabbit hole, you can start to wrap your head around this flick. Chip and Dale, the actor-munks, are now, like the kids who watched them back in the day, middle-aged-munks. It’s been years since they broke up and they are settling in with the grim reality that life probably will never be as exciting as they dreamed when they were young. (You know, just like the middle-aged adults who watched the munks when they were kids are doing right now.)

Blah, blah, blah, some stuff that I won’t give away happens and it is up to Chip and Dale to save the day, which will be new for them, because remember, they never actually saved the day in the past. They were just acting. But now they can’t just act. They must do, for they must get to the bottom of a mystery most foul and reunite with their old RR buddies (also toon actors) in the process.

Sounds ridiculous? Yes. Yes, it does, but, I’ll give it props because a) the middle-aged adults who loved RR as kids will get a kick out of it and b) their kids will enjoy it too because remember, at the end of the day, these toons are for the kids. Or are they? Toons for adults have been around so long it’s hard to know anymore but at any rate, with a PG rating, this is one the whole family can enjoy.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. My one criticism is if you ask who were the actors who played Chip and Dale before Rescue Rangers, you know, the chipmunks from the old 1950s cartoons where they just ran around and squeaked and stole apples and stuff from Donald Duck while they made his life a living hell, the whole premise falls apart, though I suppose they could explain that in the sequel, or the reboot. Don’t forget, a Rescue Rangers reboot is theoretically possible outside of this movie because the “real life” versions of Chip and Dale from this movie are just actors, after all.

I know it sounds like you need a flow chart and a slide rule to follow this movie, but don’t worry about it. Just turn it on, enjoy, and wonder how the heck you got so old. Curse you, time!

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