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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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Movie Reviews

Movie Review – Mission Impossible: Fallout (2018)

Hey 3.5 readers.  Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to read this review.

This blog will self-destruct in…oh, who am I kidding?  This shit blew up a long time ago.

BQB here with a review of “Mission Impossible: Fallout.”

I went into this film thinking that this series was surely about to jump the shark.  Tom Cruise is 56 now, thus the only death defying actor who performs his own stunts that I know of who qualifies to receive an AARP card.

Sure, he’s preserved to a level that only a fortune built in La La Land can provide, but even so, I wondered if maybe it wasn’t time to hand this series to the next generation.

As it turns out, Tom’s still got the moves.  The plot is complicated, so much so that your eyes will go crossed if you actually try to follow it.  Honestly, sometimes I wonder if the writers of these films count on that.  In the theater, you’re sitting there, doing the mental calculations of what is transpiring in your head until….oh, wow!  Explosions!  Car chases! Fights!  Stunts!

While Tom’s still got it, I can’t help but notice Hollywood keeps insisting that he get a younger sidekick, i.e. Jeremy Renner in the previous film, or in this one, Henry Cavill of “Superman” fame.

Shit.  I wish I were Henry Cavill.  I’d get so much poon.  Damn it.  Why am I so ugly and yet this guy wakes up every morning, looks in the mirror and realizes he’s got a license to print snatch?

But I digress.

To the film’s credit, there’s a main plot device, i.e. Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, despite a lifetime of espionage and intrigue, still maintains a moral compass.  He will never put a team mate in danger (Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames return as Ethan’s long suffering tech lackies, Rebecca Ferguson and Michelle Monaghan as his past and present love interests), even to keep a mission from failing.

Meanwhile, Cavill’s August Walker will gladly put a friendly down for the greater good.

That’s sure to make for a good international buddy cop drama.

The film centers around a plot in which various villains plan to set off nuclear bombs in the world’s holiest cities – Jerusalem, the Vatican and Mecca.  It will be up to Hunt and his crew to save the day.

One thing, and if you’re a fan of the series then it’s not really a spoiler, but as cheesy as the old “take a mask off to reveal another person” gag gets, it never ceases to amuse me.  I won’t give it away, other there was a point early on in the film where I thought the film was starting to look like it would be a dud, only for such a gag to happen, and make me realize it was actually going to be good…and it was.

A last thought.  For awhile now, I did think these films were fun throwaways, largely built around complicated plots that you forget and instead, you remember the stunts.  Instead, this film, and the last one, really do draw on a long, rich history, especially when you consider this series began in 1996…I freaking remember seeing it when I was in high school!

So Tom, I doubt you read this fine blog, though you should because you are missing out if you don’t, but I’ll just put this into the air – if you do only have one, maybe two of these films left in you, please make sure that they’re not only good but that they wrap up Ethan’s long life story.  Give him a happy ending, either he finally gets the girl and gets to relax, or he goes out doing what he was born to do – saving the world one last time.

Ethan might get his kicks hanging off of cliffs, but just don’t leave your longtime viewers hanging.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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Jul 01 2018
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After a Second Viewing, The Last Jedi Doesn’t Suck as Much as I Thought

Hey 3.5 readers.  BQB here.

SPOILERS, although if you haven’t seen it yet, you don’t really care that much, do you?

As you 3.5 are aware, I really laid into The Last Jedi when it came out, calling it the stinkburger to end all stinkburgers.  In particularly, it bugged me that the Force Awakens set us up for hopes of awesome Luke/Rey Jedi training montages and possibility Luke is Rey’s father.  Instead, we got a bitter old Luke who just whines about all his problems to Rey.  Our hero, who we assumed would go on to be a lifelong badass just gave up on life and stared at the ceiling of a cave for 30 years.  Just didn’t seem like a good life for Star Wars’ most beloved hero.

But after watching it a second time and without the “WTF are they doing to Luke?” lens I watched it with the first time, I get it.

Two main points:

#1 – Lack of Communication and Assuming the Worst

There’s an ongoing subplot in which Poe challenges Admiral Holdo’s leadership.  When he learns she is evacuating the ship, he is angry, telling her that the First Order will just blow the escape transports up and she’s a coward who refuses to fight.

SPOILER – as it turns out, Holdo had a plan.  Once the ship was evacuated, she rammed the First Order ship at light speed, sacrificing herself but making a cool scene in the process.

A lack of communication is tearing us apart.  When we hear disagreement, we immediately assume the disagreeing person is an enemy.  We shut down attempts for the disagreeing party to explain their point of view.  We assume the worst and we assume any explanations offered are really just attempts to mask evil intent.

Holdo might have told Poe to shut up and trust her and avoided a mutiny.  Poe might have assumed his commanding officer had learned a thing or two in her movement up the ranks and trusted her.

In the real world, we see Democrats and Republicans assume the worst about each other every day when they could try to reach common ground and make some deals that might be beneficial to all.

#2 – We are Hopelessly Stuck in the Past and This is Ruining Our Future

Luke is stuck in the past.  He is paralyzed by the Jedi’s past mistakes.  The Jedi trained his father, Anakin, and in doing so, unleashed Darth Vader on the world.  When Luke sees the same evil lurking in Ben Solo, he thinks about killing Ben to avoid repeating the mistake that was made with Vader.  He doesn’t, but this display sets Ben down a bad path, turning him into Kylo Ren.

Was Luke wrong in not killing Ben?  Perhaps he did not learn from the Jedi’s past mistake.  Perhaps emotion made him avoid reason – i.e. ignoring the hard learned via Vader lesson that if evil is spotted in a Jedi trainee, said trainee should be sliced and diced with a lightsaber ASAP.

Or maybe Luke chose not to be beholden to the past.  A past failure with Vader doesn’t mean a future failure with Ben.  By being stuck in the past, Luke caved into past fears and raised his lightsaber toward Ben in anger.  Ben had done nothing wrong and was pre-judged based on a past he didn’t live.  Assuming the worst in people before they have even had a chance to become the worst might just turn them into the worst as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Ben informs Rey she can drop her past, let it go and become stronger.  Forget about her parents.  There was nothing special about them.  Stop clinging to a hope that they’ll swoop in and save her and offer an epic story of why they had to abandon her.

Perhaps the real world advice there on a personal level is to stop trying to make your parents happy and make yourself happy.

On a generational level, it might be that everyone needs to hug it out and get a long.  Stop looking at each other as enemies just because our parents did.  Stop repeating the mistakes made by past generations and stop carrying their biases and mistakes into the next generation.

There was a part where Rey had a chance to join Kylo Ren.  Maybe the Resistance and the First Order are just two sides of the same coin – zealots who can’t let the past go, who are bent on carrying past grudges into the future forever, even if they must tear the galaxy apart forever.

I think it would have been a real coup if Rey and Ben had teamed up.  It would have been a fabulous cliffhanger, though I don’t know what a Rey and Ren vs. the First Order and the Resistance film looks like.

In reality, we don’t have to hate each other because our parents did.  We don’t have to repeat our parents’ mistakes because we fear change.  We don’t have to be stuck in ruts forever because of mistakes we made in our personal lives.

Conclusion – Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bath Water

Luke, and to my surprise, Ghost Yoda, decide that the Jedi should go the way of the dodo because of mistakes they made.  This seems rather Draconian and ignores all the good the Jedi did…and it also assumes that it is possible for any organization to exist with a perfect track record and that organizations should only exist if they only never, ever, ever make a mistake.  The second a mistake is made, the organization must disband.

Yes, the Jedi made Vader but they also defeated Vader.  Rey points this out so maybe in a way she is a voice of reason.

Real world application?  There seems to be a disturbing sentiment out there that because of America’s bad history, it can never have any kind of a good future.  Slavery.  The killing of Native Americans.  The list goes on and on.

Do we wish that equal rights for all had been established on Day One?  Yes.  But luckily, the mechanisms needed to bring about change via various legal and governmental process.  Today, we aren’t perfect, but surely we’ve come along way, even in the past 50 years.

America isn’t perfect but like an imperfect body, wounds heal.  The develop scars to remind us of past mistakes, scars which serve as reminders to not repeat past errors and to keep on a path that doesn’t open up new wounds.

America and Jedi have both made mistakes but to get rid of either because of past mistakes is to assume any and all replacements of America and/or Jedi will offer complete 100 percent perfection.

Plus, I just don’t think anyone wants to see a Star Wars movie with Jedi.  If the Jedi are gone altogether or are renamed the Knights of Gawooby Dooby or something, I think that will be the point where Star Wars jumps the shark.

Your thoughts?

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Jun 24 2018
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Movie Review – The Incredibles 2 (2018)

It was incredible.

BQB here with a review of the long awaited sequel to “The Incredibles.”

Wow.  How quickly fourteen years go by.  When I saw the original film in 2004, I was young, full of hopes and dreams and now, all these years later I realize that being the humble proprietor of a blog that’s only read by 3.5 people is the best my life will ever get.

SPOILER ALERT – before the film, the cast, i.e. Craig T. Nelson (Mr. Incredible), Holly Hunter (Elastigirl) and Samuel L. Jackson (Frozone) come out to apologize for taking so long to make a sequel, and then in a fun way, explain how long it takes to make an animated movie, from coming up with a story idea, refining it, drawing it out on paper, getting it into computerized animation, etc.  It’s all so complicated you are amazed animated movies, or really, any movies, get made at all.

As it turns out, 14 years was worth the wait.  This is a rare sequel that is good as the original, and perhaps even surpasses it in some ways.

The story picks up right after the end of the last film.  Superheroes continue to be hated by the public and the government, thought of as jerks who just get in the way and cause more damage to the city while fighting villains that the world would be better off just letting the villains take whatever they want.

However, Winston and Evelyn Deavor (Bob Odenkirk and Catherine Keener) don’t share this view.  Wealthy telecom company owners, this brother-sister duo believe that superheroes are the future and are willing to put up their money and public communication skills on the line to rehabilitate public perception of superheroes, all in the hope of changing anti-super hero laws.

SIDENOTE: I’ve always felt that the anti-hero laws of this world reflect the real world.  All too often, we bitch at people who are trying to solve problems because it’s easier than, say, actually rolling up our sleeves and trying to solve the problems ourselves.

Back to the review. The Deavors become the Incredible family’s benefactor, putting them up in swanky digs and funding missions for Elastigirl.  That’s right.  It’s Mr. Incredible’s turn to stay home and play Mr. Mom, helping super fast son Dash with his homework, invisible girl Violet with her teenage angst, and, to hilarious effect, corralling baby Jack-Jack, whose budding super powers have no bounds as the little guy is all emotion with no ability to control himself.

Meanwhile, Elastigirl dazzles in a particularly awesome scene with a special motorcycle that can separate apart as she needs it to.  Remember, she’s like a big rubber band, so as the action happens, her butt can be twenty feet away and the back half of the bike will detach and stick with her butt as needed.  Sounds silly, yet awesome on the big screen and kudos to the writer who thought of that.

There are many great action scenes like this, showing that Disney knows super heroes, Pixar knows animation, so more animated super hero flicks might definitely pan out.  As I recall, Disney’s other animated super hero flick, “Big Hero 6,” was further proof of this phenomenon.

It all culminates in taking on “The Screenslaver,” the villain who is able to control the minds of anyone who watches one of his hacked screens, with an underlying message that perhaps we could all use a little less screen time.

STATUS:  Shelf-worthy.  Lesson?  Take your time with sequels, Hollywood.  Resist the cash grab urge.  I know you’re in a money making business but put sequels on the back burner while you work other projects, and then when those sequels have simmered enough, move them to the front burner where they can satisfy our appetites with gourmet precision rather than fast-food speed.  The extra time taken here paid off big time.

Not to keep knocking “Star Wars” but keep in mind that absence makes the heart grow fonder and maybe even makes the movie maker’s mind sharper.  Maybe 14 years is a long time but a sequel, say, once every 5 years is like getting together with an old, long lost friend, whereas a sequel once a year is like that house guest who sets up shop in your living room and refuses to leave.  Sure, it was fun for a week but now you’d like to be able to watch your TV and sit on your couch in peace.

Other lesson – more animated super hero movies or, barring that, more animated any kind of adventure movies.  Live action hero movies are great, but animated films can really stretch boundaries and give adults something to actually enjoy while captivating the kids.

 

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Jun 23 2018
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Movies

Movie Review – Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

Oh God.  What a poopfest.

Let’s just get this review over with.  SPOILERS ABOUND.

The biggest spoiler is that it sucks, though maybe we should have realized this ahead of time as this is the fifth movie in a franchise based on an early 1990s film the success of which was good writing and acting paired with the first example of how CGI, if done well, can enhance a film.

Alas, the lesson was not learned that films cannot live by CGI dinosaurs alone.  While the actors do their best, the plot is like a 500 pound T-Rex turd – mildly interesting from afar, but big, smelly and useless up close.

At first, it feels like a bait and switch.  Our heroes, Claire and Owen (Bryce Howard and Chris Pratt) are recruited to save the dinosaurs left on the island from the previous film, from an impending volcano eruption.  I expected 2 hours of our adventurers running around with dinos in a race against time whilst avoiding incoming hot lava and am willing to ignore how our heroes did not learn from the previous film that Mother Nature decided long ago that man and dinos don’t mix and that the dinos should be left to be cooked because they can never be controlled.

Indeed, the first 20 minutes where this happens make up the most interesting part of the film, but from there it struggles.  I don’t want to accuse the film of a bait and switch because on a second glance of the plot, the trailer is honest about what the film is about and I suppose it’s my fault that I only watched the first part of the trailer.

At any rate, the hot lava island chase idea is cut short early and we are transported to the mansion of Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell), the never yet mentioned former business partner of Hammond from the original film.  Lockwood, Clare and Owen have been double crossed by Lockwood’s business associate Eli (Rafe Spall) and a merc (Ted Levine, who, as we all know, once famously asked a lady to put the lotion in the basket in “Silence of the Lambs.”)  His presence in the film is cool and creepy but doesn’t save it.

Blah, blah, blah the villains have brought the dinos to the mansion to be auctioned off to the world’s wealthiest reprobates.  Owen and Clare are left to escape the dino infested estate, and a dino fight in the bedroom of Lockwood’s granddaughter seems surreal.

It all culminates (BIG SPOILER) in dinos being released into the world and although that’s scary, it seems unlikely, as the number of dinos released is relatively small and surely the Army could have taken them out before they get too far and take over.

It ends (SPOILER) with Jeff Goldblum reprising his role as Dr. Malcolm, testifying before some kind of committee about the dangers of dinos and/or man’s hubris in thinking he can control the uncontrollable.  I felt cheated as I assumed Goldblum was going to be running around on the lava filled island, firing off quips to our plucky band of younger heroes.  Alas, his presence is just a quick cameo.

From “Star Wars” to this film, this “We’re bringing the old timers back!” only to have them move on and off the screen quickly seems lame.  Although Harrison Ford’s part in “The Force Awakens” is big, Luke and Leia were underutilized.  Here, I’m not sure why Goldblum isn’t given a bigger role as he seems to still be physically capable and his mind seems sharp so…beats me.  Money?  Who knows.

Hollywood, take a cue from Dr. Malcolm.  Just because you CAN clone dinos doesn’t mean you should.  Therefore, just because you CAN make a fifth sequel a very original, yet to be surpassed dino film doesn’t mean you should.

Yes, man was blessed with the ability to do a number of things, but he was also blessed with the ability to consider whether he should do these things and when it comes to dino movies…please, unless you come up with an original plot, very doubtful at this point, just take the cash you would have given to a sixth cash grab and green light something else instead.

The wisest among the characters in the series know the dinos should die yet the Hollywood suits, like their corporate dino company counterparts, just don’t get the point.

STATUS:  Not shelf-worthy!!!  Oh, it pains me to say that.

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Jun 17 2018
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Movies

Movie Review – Tag (2018)

Tag, you’re it, 3.5 readers.

BQB here with a review of “Tag.”

I love it when a movie pleasantly surprises me.  Going into this, I expected a fairly standard to possibly mediocre comedy.   I didn’t expect anything great or terrible, just something to pass the time.

I was wrong.  This movie is a laugh riot and who knew that Jeremy Renner had comedy chops.  Not this guy.  That’s who.

Renner, Jon Hamm, Ed Helms, Hannibal Buress and Jake Johnson star as a group of friends who have been playing the same game of tag every May since childhood.  While they were kids, simply running around the neighborhood whilst slapping each other was fine, but now that they are adults and men of means, they resort all kinds of tricks, schemes, antics and shenanigans to trick each other into getting tagged.  From wacky costumes, to elaborate set-ups and even downright lies, nothing is sacred as these pals try to one up each other.

Renner plays the king of the tag game, having never, ever once been tagged.  To tag him is the holy grail of the game, and as his wedding approaches, the tag posse see an opportunity, not to be there for their best bud on his big day….but to give him the tagging he so richly deserves.

Isla Fisher stars as Helms’ foul-mouthed wife who takes the game more seriously than her hubby, pushing her man to engage in all kinds of hi-jinx to tag their long time adversary.

Meanwhile, Annabelle Wallis stars as Rebecca, a Wall Street Journal reporter who is so taken aback by the silliness that she follows the group in order to report on their taggings.

Interestingly enough, the movie is actually based on a Wall Street Journal article about a real life group of friends who kept a game of tag going from youth well into adulthood.

The movie’s motto is “You don’t stop playing when you get old, you get old when you stop playing,” and ironically, the game gives the friends, who all live in different parts of the US, to drop what they are doing every May and seek one another out.  How sad that friendships blossom in youth only to require an excuse to continue in adulthood, but alas, that’s the way life goes.

Very funny.  Made me bust a gut several times.  Renner is hilarious as he takes down his would be tag assailants with expert precision and extreme prejudice.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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Jun 13 2018
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Movies

Daily Discussion with BQB – Why is the Star Wars Franchise in the Dumper?

Hey, 3.5 readers.

BQB here.

“Solo” did poorly at the box office, though strangely, I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Meanwhile, the latest saga films, “Force Awakens” and “The Last Jedi” were commercial successes, but the fans aren’t happy.

“Rogue One” did well commercially and in my opinion, is the best of the four new films.

I do believe this is partly “Star Wars fatigue.”  Absence makes the heart grow fonder and when 10-20 years passed between sequels, you really got excited to see a new film.  I was 20 when “The Phantom Menace” came out and while today, I think that movie does not hold up, at the time, I was just so excited to see light sabers being whirled around on screen again.

Say what you will about the prequels, but they did, absent an occasional hiccup, at least attempt to follow the pre-established rules of the universe.  Plus, the characters were put into peril, so the stakes were high.

Sure, you know faves like Yoda or Obi Wan weren’t going to buy the farm, but faves like Mace Windu or Qui Gon Jinn were kicking the bucket so the peril made you grip the edge of your seat.

Cliffhangers and new threads meant something.  When new questions popped up, you’d get answers.  Maybe not answers you wanted but you got something.

Here in the new saga films, there’s a lot of jerking us around.  Too clever by half writers saying, “Ha!  Fooled you!” and not realizing that if there’s no payoff we are losing interest.

So, if we’re getting a new film once a year, plus the films aren’t paying off for the super fans, I don’t know, this doesn’t bode well for the franchise.

I think either they should have cast new actors to play Han, Luke and Leia (younger actors) and start a new three part saga right after the end of “Return of the Jedi.”

Either that, or they should have put it far into the future and just wracked their brains to create all new characters, perhaps some older aliens who live longer coming in from the old films, but a whole new setup with heroes and villains.

Instead, they tried, just as King Solomon once did, to split the proverbial baby and as we all know, babies don’t split well, they are much better off intact in one piece.  A future that was just an homage to the past didn’t bode well.

My two cents.  What say you, 3.5 Jedis?

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Jun 09 2018
5 Comments
Movies

Movie Review – Ocean’s 8 – (2018)

Women can be criminals too!  It’s the current year, after all.

BQB here with a review of  “Ocean’s 8.”

As a knuckle dragging caveman/vile misogynist pig according to today’s standards of political correctness, I went into this movie thinking it would suck with the gale force wind of a thousand hoover vacuums.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not against the idea of all female casts.  I’m not against taking a role that is traditionally male and turning it female.  While I do despise the idea of taking actual male characters and making them female (Jane Bond or Indiana Jane just seems patronizing to women and saying that they’ll never be complete unless they grow a dick), I realize there might be some wiggle room (i.e. female Ghostbusters might have been great if better writers had been involved) or here, that it is possible that infamous thief Danny Ocean might have had a sister with the same last name, capable of pulling off an intricately planned heist.

At any rate, I enjoyed it.  Does that mean I’m losing my misogyny?  I don’t know.  I’d argue that I never had any, just that I don’t think its enough for women to show up to a traditionally male endeavor and proclaim they’ve taken it over because they have vagina power and not do more.  Here, the women do more.

The film does follow George Clooney’s early 2000s remake of the film of the same name, originally starring Frank Sinatra.  Debbie (Sandra Bullock), just as her brother years before, is fresh out of prison, promising authorities she’ll lay low and turn her life around, only to go straight into planning a magnificent act of thievery, here, the swiping of a $150 million necklace from the neck of a famed actress played by Anne Hathaway.

Cate Blanchett is Debbie’s #2, just as Brad Pitt’s Rusty helped Danny assemble his crew so many years ago.  The thing I liked about this movie is we get to see two actresses, Cate and Helena Bonham Carter (who plays a down on her luck fashion designer) play themselves.  Over the years, we’ve grown used to seeing this pair play fantasy characters (Blanchett as the elf Galadriel in “Lord of the Rings” or Carter as any one of the grungy Goth characters in Tim Burton films) that is interesting to see them play characters straight without all kinds of weird voices, makeup, costumes, and so on.  For once, you get to see them, although they have to lose their respective Aussie and Brit accents and pose as Americans.

If Matt Damon as Linus was Clooney’s #3 in command, then that job goes to Sarah Paulson as the fence in charge of selling the hot jewels.  She plays the role well, as a suburban mom who has been out of the game (at least on a direct level) for a long time and is reluctant to get back in.

Rounding out the cast is Awkwafina as a plucky pick-pocket and I gave props to anyone who gets their start on YouTube with funny vagina rap songs only to end up starring in an Ocean’s remake.  Her humor is contained, her jokes fairly standard i.e. when you recruit a pickpocket, you’ll have to ask for your watch back.  Still, this was big for her and perhaps her own film will be in the works someday.

Rihanna, the fabulous diva who should really have to share screen time with no one, is believable as a hacker.  Her turn in “Battleship” is often cited as a weak performance though in her defense, that was a pretty weak movie that is, to this day, unwatchable and her presence is the least of the flick’s problems.  Here, she gets quick, easy lines, often staring at a computer and saying witty things as the hacker magic happens.

And of course, Mindy Kaling of “The Office” fame gets her big screen time, here as a jeweler who can work wonders with hot stones under pressure.  Alas, all of these women have to share the film, clipping their individual wings just enough for the ensemble cast to work.

At times, the plot fumbles and gaping plot holes are patched with rubber cement and silly putty.  Giant, lingering questions about how the heist is pulled off are treated casually but in the film’s defense, the Clooney films did that as well.  I recall one of the Clooney films in which the heist depended on Clooney’s girlfriend, played by Julia Roberts, tricking people into thinking she was Julia Roberts and, hell, if we were willing to give that franchise a nod and a wink then we can do so here.

One complaint I’ve always had about “women taking over traditionally male roles” is that perhaps men haven’t always been right about everything and maybe women were right all along.  When women want to play crude, perverted partiers (i.e. last year’s “Rough Night”) or become MMA fighters (i.e. Ronda Rousey) I wonder if they ever realize that women who avoided becoming drunken lechers or sweaty fighters were in the right all along and the boorish men they yearn to copy were nothing to idolize.

Thus, as trendy as the Clooney Ocean’s films were, is a crook really something to aspire to?  Maybe women should focus on the good roles that men traditionally played, like astronauts, scientists and business tycoons and, you know, forget about the men who do dreadful things.

While I won’t give it away, the film is at least self-aware enough to acknowledge that complaint with a joke, so it earned my applause.

I draw the line at turning male characters into women though.  James Bond didn’t oppress women with his penis and if Hollywood feels the world could benefit from a series about a female MI6 agent, they can create a new one with a different name and back story any day, just as they can if they feel the world needs a female treasure hunter.  Actually, they did that years ago with Lara Croft with no need to chop Indy’s dick off.

Original, never before seen female characters in comic-booky films are possible, if Buffy taught us anything.

As for roles that were male in the past but could be women without cutting a hypothetical male character’s dick off, it all depends on the writing.  Ghostbusters aren’t required to have dicks, and good writing could have sold a dick-less ghostbuster crew.

Meanwhile, thieves can have vaginas (perhaps many of us jilted menfolk knew that all along) but as in any film, it must have good writing or at the very least, as happens here, gloss over writing problems with pizazz and style.

STATUS:  Shelf-worthy.

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