Tag Archives: movie reviews

Mar 07 2024
4 Comments
Movies

Classic Movie Review – Jackie Brown (1997)

Across 110th street, I’m bringing this review to my 3.5 readers.

This oldie but goodie popped up on Netflix and I couldn’t help but watch it. IMO, it’s one of Quentin Tarantino’s best though in history, it tends to be forgotten when ranked up against the likes of his more popular works like Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs.

The plot? I’ll be honest, I’ve seen this movie a few times since it first came out in the late 1990s and it still confuses me but my best description is its like The Sting but at a shopping mall and with shopping bags instead of briefcases. Money is changing hands and you’ve got to follow where it’s going.

Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) is a mid-forties stewardess for an airline that flies between Mexico and California. She makes low-pay and subsidizes her $16,000 a year salary by running cash for illegal gun runner Oddell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson.) Robbie keeps his cash stored in safety deposit boxes at a bank in Mexico to keep it from being confiscated in case he is ever arrested. He brings it up as needed from time to time with Brown’s help and her stewardess gig is the perfect cover.

Or so they thought. ATF agent Ray Nicollette (Michael Keaton) is onto the scam and pinches Jackie on a money run. When Brown is bailed out by grumpy yet kindly, middle-aged bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster), Nicollette gives her an option – she can either go to jail for a long time or she can help with a sting operation and catch Odell in the act of accepting the illicit cash.

The problem? Jackie could dummy up and do her time but Odell has a bad habit of bailing out past accomplices who have been pinched through Cherry and killing them before they can testify. Cherry sees the pattern and fears he’s being used. Brown sees the pattern and fears she’ll end up DOA like ex-Odell accomplice Beaumont (Chris Tucker).

And so, a crazy, convoluted plot begins, one in which Jackie and Max conspire to bring in the cash, keep it for themselves, yet still somehow con Odell into thinking Jackie is on his side and con the Feds into thinking she’s on their side, fulfill the requirements of the Feds’ sting and get off the hook while evading Odell’s tendency to murder potential witnesses.

Robert DeNiro and Bridget Fonda round out the cast as Odell’s henchman and girlfriend.

So, where to begin?

Pam Grier was at the height of her career in the 1970s with several funky blacksploitation films. Go check out some of those films and she is truly a foxy mama. However, the 1970s was an era of low standards in Hollywood. Many 70s flicks, when looked at through today’s eyes, come across as glorified student films with all kinds of crazy, nonsensical things going on.

Tarantino loved those films dearly and brought 70s nostalgia to his 90s filmmaking and gave Grier a film made with modern techniques that she so greatly deserved. Though she’ll be remembered for classics like Foxy Brown and Coffy, this movie is a love letter to those films lone gone by. She’s absolutely beautiful in this, a tragic figure, someone who is smart but obviously had some bad breaks, wishes she had achieved more and is finally given a chance to run off with a score that will change everything late in life if everything goes off without a hitch.

Cherry’s character is the same. He’s spent his life running down crooks and is tired of it. He wants out of the bond game and could use a cash infusion. My one criticism is it’s implied early in the film that he’s going to retire after the scam but doesn’t. I can see why he doesn’t but I don’t want to say here so as to not give it away. At least I assume he doesn’t retire. It looks like he doesn’t at the end of the film. The romance between Cherry and Brown is touching and understated, much different than say, the young love you see on film. Young love, the stakes aren’t that high. If it doesn’t work out, they’ll find someone else but Cherry and Brown, you want them to end up together yet understand there are many obstacles in their path. At the same time, they are at an age where this is their last chance for love.

Quite literally, this may be the best movie for all the actors involved. Jackson is legendary but he’s Jackson in every film. He’s Jackson here too but Tarantino creates a menacing character in the form of a man who has spent his whole life amassing a fortune through evil deeds and isn’t about to lose it lying down.

SIDENOTE: Jackson wears a different Kangol hat in every scene in this flick. When I saw it as a young man, I thought those hats were so awesome that I bought a couple, wore them often, then eventually realized I was the only white guy I knew wearing them, felt a bit pretentious and self-conscious and stopped. Alas, I never made them look cool, but Jackson surely did. I’ll be honest though, looking at this movie through modern eyes, I realize, yeah, Kangol probably gave Tarantino a boat load of money to turn this movie into a commercial. In one scene, Jackie and Odell both wear Kangols and its like, come on, even back then no one was wearing that many Kangols.

Tarantino was the great resurrectionist of 70s careers. He did it with Travolta in Pulp Fiction and did it again with Grier and Forster, who was a 70s tough guy. Sadly, I don’t recall Grier going on to do too many things though I think she was in a few more 90s flicks after this. Forster went on to do a ton of movies after this up until his recent passing.

Keaton’s career had cooled in the 90s so this movie was good for him though I’d say his rehash happened more recently.

DeNiro is also legendary but like Jackson, he just plays DeNiro, except he’s different here. He really comes across as a dumb guy who is easily miffed and annoyed by little things. I won’t say how that feeds into the plot.

And then there’s Bridget Fonda. Ahh Bridget. I think this will be the part she is long remembered for. She’s so beautiful and naughty in this. She had a lot of parts in the 90s and then went away and I was sorry to see online that she got fat. Hey, I can’t complain. I’m fat myself. Time is a real SOB. At least she had this movie though. What did I have?

I think this is the first or maybe one of the first movies I saw Chris Tucker in too.

STATUS: Shelf -worthy. God, it feels like I saw this movie yesterday.

Tagged , , , , , ,
Mar 05 2024
4 Comments
Movies

Movie Review – Dune: Part Two (2024)

3.5 readers, I’m going to make this review short.

I like Dune but I don’t understand it.

Dune, to me, is like dating a really hot woman. I like being in her presence but honestly, it’s so much work to please her that eventually I just zone out and stare at all the pretty shapes and forget about making sense of it all.

I had no idea what was going on in Dune: Part One and have even less idea what’s happening in Dune: Part Two. There are space politics afoot. The fighting involves space business. Space romance blooms and space religion intersects with space magic and space powers. All I know for sure is George Lucas definitely bogarted some of this shit and if I represented the late Frank Herbert’s estate, I’d demand some money. Then again, George’s defense would be that he took all of Frank’s heady shit and dumbed it down for us general movie going slack jawed yokels.

So, the good news is that the movie is really good and if you understand what is going on, more power to you. I did not but I enjoyed it anyway. I admit I could have enjoyed it had I felt like expending the mental energy to care about the space politics, space religion and space business and so on, but I don’t. I can barely figure out my life so I don’t have time to figure out the lives of people in a fictional space saga.

Have you ever since that Amadeus movie from the 1980s? I’m like Salieri. I can tell you this movie is good. I just can’t tell you why it is good. Or maybe Salieri could tell you why music was good. He just could not write music as well as Mozart could and it drove him mad. I wish I could write something as good as Dune but then again, it seems a bit busy. But it’s good. I swear its good.

If anything else, go see it on the big screen for the part where they ride the sandworms.

“BQB what is the plot?”

My best attempt at an explanation is Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet), the hero from the first film, is on the run from the villainous Harkonnen Clan. He is recognized as a prophet by the desert dwelling Fremen but maybe he’ll take this newfound power too far his girlfriend Zendaya’s liking. I’m sorry. I don’t remember Zendaya’s character’s name.

Christopher Walken is in it, so that’s cool.

That’s about it. It’s Star Wars for intellectuals, basically. Enjoy, unless you’re stupid, then you probably won’t, because you’re too stupid, unless you’re like me, and be just smart enough to know you’re too stupid to get this but its ok because its still fun.

Tagged , , ,
Feb 18 2024
5 Comments
Movie Reviews, Movies

Movie Review – Bob Marley: One Love (2023)

Jah, 3.5 readers. We jammin, we jammin, and I hope you like this review.

BQB here with a review of the Bob Marley movie.

Most musician biopics follow a pretty standard cradle to grave structure. We first see our favorite singer as a kid, maybe they test their pipes out at a family gathering or a church social. Next thing you know, they’re a rebellious teenager starting a band. Blah, blah, blah, they sign a record deal. They fall in love. There’s some turmoil. They have a falling out with their band and their significant other. Hopefully they reconcile and find great success only to die a tragic death before they have a chance to sit back, relax and enjoy the fruits of their labors.

SIDENOTE: Why the heck do so many musicians fall into this pattern? Being a musician is a tough life.

Anyway, this movie ditches the linear path and chooses a zig-zag structure, starting with the most turbulent moment of Marley’s life, then moving forward to his super stardom and flashbacks to his youth to explain how he got there.

The story begins in the mid-1970s, a time of great strife in Jamaica. A turbulent election is underway and two warring factions are engaging in violence in the streets, almost to the point of all out civil war. Reggae musician Bob Marley, Jamaica’s number one celebrity known for his songs about rastafarianism, overcoming poverty, strife, yearning for peace, equality, ending racial injustice and so on, organizes a peace concert. His goal is to bring both sides together, bid them to lay down their arms for an evening and enjoy some music but alas, one of the factions misunderstands his intentions.

Under the mistaken assumption that Marley is throwing the concert to lend support to their enemy, one of the factions sends assassins to his compound to strike. Fortunately, the assassins prove to be quite incompetent. Marley and wife, Rita, his lead back-up singer are shot but survive while their manager, Don Taylor, gets shot six times, miraculously survives, yet becomes bitter and takes this tragedy as an excuse to later rob Bob.

Finding Jamaica unsafe, Marley goes into exile in the UK and there he puts out his best album, Exodus, which propels him into super stardom, giving birth to songs that you know and love today (and alas have been absconded with by the Carnival cruise line.)

The good? The movie doesn’t spoon feed anything to us. It goes with the show, don’t tell structure, which is important for quality writing. It brings us into the world of 1970s Rastafarian Jamaican singers and if we don’t understand it, that’s our problem. And when I say we don’t understand it, I mean, A) as Westerners, a lot of us won’t understand the ins and outs of the Rasta lifestyle but also B) the Rasta accents are pretty thick and heavy. Get ready for a lot of “Jah mon ya bombaclot” for an hour and 47 minutes. I’m not knocking it. I wouldn’t want an inauthentic Rasta movie where everyone talks like they’re from America. To the film’s credit, there’s a joke where Bob meets a white American. They converse and the guy blinks and is like, yeah, you’re going to have to say that to me again. Irony is, Bob is speaking English, just a form of English we Americans are not used to.

The movie doesn’t pull any punches either. It doesn’t sugarcoat anything. It shows a lot of the good Bob did, being a worldwide ambassador for Jamaica, Rastafarianism, peace, unity, ending racial strife, shining a light on the plight of the poor and downtrodden. But it doesn’t give Bob a pass for the bad, namely all the affairs despite having a wife who had his back from childhood and walked through all sorts of fire for him. We do see Marley had a lot of kids, both with his wife and through affairs. It doesn’t get too deep into him being an absentee father though as a viewer you can put two and two together and wonder who is being a Dad to all these kids when he’s busy making music and going on tour.

The bad? While the show, don’t tell is a plus, it’s a minus in some ways. This movie is probably the biggest commercial Rastafarianism will ever get and they probably could have spoon fed a little more to the average Western viewer who doesn’t know anything more about this religion other than Rasta dudes wear funny, colorful hats and smoke a lot of weeds. You still do learn a lot but the religion is central to the plot and I had to google a lot when I got home to figure some things out.

They probably could have fleshed out a little more about the civil strife in Jamaica, what everyone was fighting about, and they might have fleshed out “the wailers” i.e. Bob’s band. Bob’s bandmates are pretty one dimensional other than they’re presented as pretty loyal to him all throughout his youth well into his fame.

For a biopic, it’s short and I suppose if it had been longer, we’d be complaining about it, but I don’t know. If they could have fleshed out some more details, I wouldn’t have minded an extra half hour. All in all, a decent movie though.

Kingsley Ben-Adir plays Marley well and it must have been a challenge to match his funky dance moves on stage. Lashana Lynch plays Rita, Bob’s long suffering wife who eventually becomes so sick of Bob’s cheating that she does some cheating of her own. Sopranos fans will be pleased to see Michael Gandolfini in a small part as a record producer.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy, mon.

Tagged , , , , , , ,
Feb 08 2024
Leave a comment
Uncategorized

Movie Review – Wonka (2023)

Oompa loompa doopitty doo – BQB here with a review for you.

I avoided this movie for awhile. Why? I admit I suffer from woke movie PTSD. Also, lame movie PTSD. I have seen so many of my favorite franchises get the woke streaming treatment, where Hollywood takes the bare bones of the film, cuts out anything good, adds a few random lesbians fighting the patriarchy and a nonsensical filler plot that goes nowhere that I just assumed they would do that here.

But I was wrong and when you watch a movie expecting it to stink only for it to turn out good, it’s a nice surprise.

This is a prequel to the 1970s film and/or the 2005 re-do based on the book by Roald Dahl. Here, a young Wonka played by Timothee Chalamet is orphaned by the death of his choclatier mother, but inspired to carry on her passion by sailing to Europe and starting his very own chocolate shop at the Galeries Gourmet, a land where only the most savvy candy lovers congregate.

Naive, dim witted and poor, Wonka is tricked into signing his life away to the evil Mrs. Scrubitt, forever doomed to join a cast of downtrodden folk sentenced to a lifetime of washing laundry. He befriends another orphan, Noodle and together they inspire Mrs. Scrubitt’s captives to make a break for it in the name of finding a better life as employees of Wonka’s future chocolate shop.

Ah, but there’s the rub. To establish a chocolate shop, Wonka must take on the infamous chocolate cartel, comprised of three comically evil chocolate robber barons who employ the chief of police (Keegan Michael Key) to take out any and all competition to their chocolate monopoly.

I always saw Chalamet as an overrated, weaselly little doofus who somehow wandered into Hollywood by accident and everyone just shrugged and allowed him to stay, but he really wowed me here. This was the role he was born to play and he does the role justice with all of Wonka’s eccentric imagination and whimsy.

Meanwhile, Hugh Grant steals the show as an oompa loompa hot on Wonka’s tail, looking for revenge as Wonka inadvertently ruined his life when he unwittingly stole the cocoa beans under his watch.

So yes, it is possible to sometimes teach an old dog new tricks. And yes, it is possible for Hollywood to dust off an old property without making it all about lesbians fighting the patriarchy. Who knew? I sure didn’t but this flick proved me wrong.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

Tagged , , , , , ,
Feb 04 2024
Leave a comment
Movies

Movie Review – Argylle (2024)

Spies fly off the page and into action, 3.5 readers. BQB here with a review.

At the outset, let me say I give this movie a solid C +. It passed the minimum standards required for me to not demand a ticket refund but it didn’t razzle dazzle me either. It had cute, funny moments but ultimately, I’ll never watch it again and won’t think of it much a year from now. It was made by Apple and had all the earmarks of a streaming movie, so much so that I wondered why I didn’t just wait two weeks until I could stream it in the comfort of my own home.

Sidenote – A couple of weeks ago I noticed the Beekeeper was made by Amazon and this week this movie is made by Apple. Alas, when I was a kid I thought the movie business was out of my reach. If only someone had told me that I just need to learn how to code. Oh well. Moving on.

This is one of those films where the trailer is better than the movie. On paper, the idea is pretty solid. A spy novelist (Bryce Dallas Howard) pens the fabulous adventures of Agent Argyle (Henry Cavill) who, with the help of his handler (John Cena) and tech specialist (Ariana DeBose) fights the evil femme fatale LaGrange (Dua Lipa).

In reality, the novelist’s life is quite bland and mousy indeed. She’s scared of everyone and everything, her only friend her cat Alfie who she takes everywhere in a special backpack with ventilation holes. Alfie is the best part of an otherwise paint by numbers movie.

One day while on a train ride to visit her mother (Catherine O’Hara), novelist Ellie is attacked by mysterious assailants in a scene straight out of one of her bestsellers. Real life undercover spy Aiden (Sam Rockwell) comes to the rescue, and he’s far from the buff, studly, sophisticated Argylle but he gets the job done.

It turns out that Ellie is such a great writer that somehow, she has managed to predict with stunning accuracy in her novels what an actual spy agency is up to in her books, and they want her deep-sixed before she keeps blabbing away to her readers. Far-fetched? Yes. I could go into further detail but I’d ruin the movie for you and well, it does a good enough job of doing that on its own.

It’s a star studded cast. Samuel L. Jackson and Bryan Cranston stop by. Bryce, daughter of Ron “Opie” Howard, gets a chance to shine in her own vehicle. She does a better job in the first half as a mousy character but falls a little flat when she’s asked to be a bad ass. I’m not sure if it’s her or the written material she was given. Probably the latter.

Cut scenes throughout the first half of the movie refer to Ellie’s spy novels in which Cavill and Cena fight Dua Lipa and I couldn’t help but think how much more awesome the movie would have been if it had just been about Cavill and Cena fighting Dua Lipa than about Bryce Dallas Howard being in trouble for writing about Cavil and Cena fighting Dua Lipa. In true streaming movie fashion, it’s a lot of star power in that everyone was probably paid big bucks to show up for five minutes yet the trailer hoodwinks you into thinking they’ll be a huge part of the movie throughout.

So maybe just skip it and watch the trailer instead. Or wait until it streams on Apple Plus. It’s not a bad movie. It’s just not a good movie. It’s a C Plus movie. If you compare it to a term paper, its not the A plus paper that the honors kid stayed up every night for a month writing. It’s the paper the goof off kid wrote on the bus ride to school ten minutes before it was due. It got the job done but you can’t help but thing there was some wasted potential.

Sidenote. I hate to say this because I’ve whined extensively about my own weight problems on this fine blog, so I’m going to say this in a positive way. Bryce Dallas Howard is pleasantly plump and…you know what? She really isn’t. She just is for movies. She’s normal size for everywhere else. Most women in film, nay, most men in film for that matter, look like they eat three almonds a day and maybe, just maybe, if they’re good, they’re allowed one cup of spinach if they run a five mile marathon after. For example, I bet Dua Lipa only ate three celery sticks last year so she could film that cool scene where John Cena plucks her off her motorcycle that they put in the trailer that makes you want to buy a ticket to this otherwise lackluster film. But the Bryce-meister has a little bit of chub going on which works when she’s mousy novelist Ellie and a little surprising later as she tackles the a tougher kick ass role.

I’m not knocking it. I like curvy babes. It was nice to see a woman on screen who isn’t afraid of a sandwich. And I noticed the female lead in the beekeeper looked like she never shied away from the BK drive-through. There seems to be a trend in Hollywood as of late to put chubby chicks front and center and I applaud it. I’m just saying, where are the fat dudes? Where’s Special Agent Wayne Knight (Newman from Seinfeld) chasing down the bad guys? I’m not sure we’ll ever get equal time for portly dudes on screen, but there seems to be a cabal of chubby chicks who are doing a PR offensive to get husky babes on screen. Large dudes need their own PR team. All I’m saying.

Again. I’m fat. I applaud it. To an extent. Don’t get too fat, people. You don’t want the health problems that come with it. Trust me.

But Bryce is far from that. She and her cat are tres adorbs.

STATUS: Moderately shelf-worthy.

Tagged , , , , , , ,
Jan 28 2024
2 Comments
Movies

Movie Review – Poor Things (2023)

Brain surgery and world travel, 3.5 readers. That’s the stuff this Oscar contender is made of.

Your old pal BQB here, dodging dog ducks and goat chickens with a review.

I rarely say this about a movie, but if this one doesn’t win the Best Picture Oscar, then all 3.5 of you should write a sternly worded complaint letter to the Academy. It’s that good and if it doesn’t sweep all categories, especially of the acting variety, I’ll eat my hat.

Why? Because it’s that different. It’s that strange. It’s that unique. In a world of prequels, sequels and reboots, director Yorgos Lanithmos has brought us something that we’ve never seen before. He has a history of making strange, bizarre dark comedies such as “The Favourite,” another past Oscar contender starring Emma Stone in which two lesbians fight for a 1700s Queen of England’s affections and all the power that comes with it.

Here, Yorgos and Stone renew their creative partnership to bring you a feminist Frankenstein that is bold, message laden, yet not too preachy and laugh out loud funny, yet morbid, sick and twisted. Every actor involved – Stone, Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo appear as you’ve never seen them before, frankly as no one as seen anyone before and while Stone’s and Ruffalo’s noms are deserved, I feel like Dafoe was quite cheated as he was passed over as a potential gold statute winner this year and wrongfully so.

The plot? Mad scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) is horribly deformed, his mangled face and body the result of years of bizarre experiments performed by his own mad scientist father. He explains his various deformities in terms of his father’s mad science findings i.e. “when he removed that he discovered we need that” and so on.

Dr. Baxter discovers the body of a woman who has just committed suicide by jumping off a bridge. When he finds the body washed up on shore, he discovers the very much dead woman is carrying a living child in her womb so naturally he, ok this is where you would think he would write off the deceased mother and save the live baby but no, he cracks open the dead mother’s skull and swaps out the live baby’s brain for the dead mother’s brain, bringing mother back to life with a baby brain and essentially making her her own daughter and mother.

To Godwin, this makes perfect sense. To everyone else he tells this story to, they think he is quite mad indeed. Such is the life of a mad scientist.

Godwin names his new creation Bella (Emma Stone) and though she has an adult’s body, she has the mind of a baby. Throughout the movie, we see Bella, despite her adult form, progress in mental state from infancy to toddler-hood, to childhood, rebellious teenager and finally, full blown adult hood, all in a relatively short time span, and Stone’s ability to pull off these various stages make her very deserving of the Best Actress Oscar. Extra credit for having to run around with those caterpillar eyebrows and crazy, frilly, big shouldered, Victorian outfits.

Of course, a baby’s brain in an adult body yields all sorts of hijinx. For the first part of the film, Bella walks and talks like a toddler and throws temper tantrums like one when she doesn’t get her way. Perhaps we’ve all dealt with a precocious tyke who screams and throw things when they are upset but when a 30 something old woman acts like this, definitely hide the sharp objects.

Dr. Baxter takes on a teaching assistant, Max McCandles (Ramy Youseff) who is given the task of observing Bella and taking notes vis a vis her mental growth. Her exploits as she learns basic things and discusses them matter of factly are quite humorous indeed. Bella and Max fall for one another and are engaged to be wed. Dr. Baxter calls in nefarious cad/lawyer Duncan Wedderburn to draw up a marriage contract only for the perverse Wedderburn to take advantage of Bella’s naivete and lead her astray.

Off they go on a worldwide adventure, and as Bella’s mind expands she becomes increasingly more difficult for Wedderburn to control (comically so), the underlying message being the smarter a woman is the less likely she’ll be controlled by men but this is done with a lot of laughs rather than rammed down your throat.

Perverts who have the hots for Stone will be glad to know she’s naked and having hardcore sex for literally half the movie. Bella refers to this as “furious jumping” and enjoys the fun of it, doing it indiscriminately with anyone interested and unaware of all the potential negative ramifications, thus taken advantage of quite a bit.

Ruffalo, who usually plays a typical straight man, is fun as the lecherous rake who seduces Bella into a life of debauchery, only to go mad when Bella becomes an expert hedonist and engages in transgressions that send Wedderburn into a frenzy.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. It would surprise me if this doesn’t win several Oscars including Best Picture. It is rare for a comedy to win Best Picture, but its that good. Visually, it’s at times pleasing and shocking, like a trainwreck you don’t want to look away from what with all of Dr. Baxter’s twisted experiments brought to life on screen. Superb acting from all involved. Original in a time that lacks originality.

Tagged , , , , ,
Jan 14 2024
1 Comment
Movies

Movie Review – The Beekeeper (2024)

He keeps bees and kicks ass, 3.5 readers.

BQB here with a review of this awesome action flick.

There was something strangely satisfying when Jason Statham straps a sleazy cyber scam artist to the bumper of a pickup truck. The fraudster, responsible for conning countless people out of their money, including his beloved landlady Mrs. Parker (Phylicia Rashad), promises Statham’s Adam Clay a fortune in NFTs and crypto if he’d just let him go, but Clay prefers vengeance to riches and rigs his truck so that he can hit the gas without being in it, sending truck with attached fraudster flying off the side of a bridge.

Yup. It’s THAT kind of movie. Think Deathwish for the modern age, if Charles Bronson were called back into action to mow down the trashier side of Silicon Valley, no obviously not the tech gurus that bring us all kinds of neat gadgets but rather, the ones who pray on the innocent and swipe their loot. TBH, in real life I’m not sure how closely related those fraudsters are to the legit technosphere, though this film imagines them working hand in hand as secretive wing that finances the otherwise legit wing of a tech wunderkind’s empire (he played by Josh Hutcherson).

Jeremy Irons and Minnie Driver lend star credit to the film and while it is full of plotholes and has a B movie vibe (no pun intended), it is, IMO one of the best action flicks I’ve seen in awhile, though I’m not sure if that is saying much as Hollywood hasn’t done well with the genre in a long time.

Statham stars as Clay, who at first appears to be a humble keeper of bees, renting a barn on the property of retired schoolteacher Mrs. Huxtable, I’m sorry, Mrs. Parker and BTW it’s cool to see Phylicia Rashad in a movie. When she is conned into losing all her money to online fraudsters, she commits suicide. Unfortunately for the fraudsters, Clay is no ordinary Beekeeper but rather, a member of a secret organization called “the Beekeepers” and there’s a whole schtick about how they “maintain the hive” and “smoke out hornets” and TBH all of that seems a bit silly and unnecessary but it works as a device to explain how Statham’s character got to be so kick ass and how these chumps chose the wrong lady to mess with given her friendship with a badass hombre.

Clay is hunted by FBI Agent Verona Parker, the daughter of the late Mrs. Parker, who at first suspects Clay in her mother’s death, then starts rooting for him, but then as Clay’s carnage starts taking out scores of bad guys and numerous exploding buildings, realizes this mayhem can’t continue and he has to be stopped. It does seem a little silly that a daughter wouldn’t just sit back and relax while an ex clandestine agent cooks her mother’s tormentors in one great big weenie roast but there needed to be some drama to the film.

I have long been a Jason Statham fan but it has saddened me that in recent years his films, IMO, have been lacking. His best years seemed to be behind him as Hollywood didn’t know what to do with him, perhaps just because his brand of action went out of style and the poor guy seemed like a pit bull who would gladly attack if his handlers would just let him off the chain.

Well, he’s let off and then some and it’s classic Statham you haven’t seen since he’s early Transporter days, where he’s fighting multiple dudes at the same time and kicking ass, taking names, rattling off one liners, making the bad guys crap their pants with fear. Irons and Driver build up the suspense – it’s a bit hokey as they launch into this whole routine of “Oh, you’ve incurred the wrath of a beekeeper, you’re done for” but it works.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun watching a movie in January.

Tagged , , ,
Dec 24 2023
4 Comments
Uncategorized

Movie Review – Anyone But You (2023)

They hate each other AND love each other?

What wacky nonsense is this?

BQB here with a review of this fun rom-com.

Romantic comedies. You either love them or you hate them. By and large, I usually hate them. They’re cheap. They’re dumb. They’re cliche. They’re the same old movie over and over again. But I have to admit, this one grew on me. It was cute. It was charming. What can I say? I liked it.

Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell star as a duo who two years ago, had one fabulous date where they fell madly in love. Alas, through a comedically tragic misunderstanding, they accidentally offended one another and vowed to despise each other for the rest of their days. Normally, such a situation wouldn’t be a problem except, as it turns out, it’s a small world after all, and they each share a mutual connection (she a sister and he a friend) to a couple about to get married in an Australian destination wedding.

So, off they go to Aussieland. They vow to be adults about it and not let their mutual disdain ruin the wedding. The barbs they trade are hilarious indeed. Hijinx ensue. For various reasons, let’s just say to get the wedding party off their backs, they pretend to actually be in love and well, from there I’ll let you watch the rest of the film on your own.

There’s no other way to say it. Sydney Sweeney is adorable. She’s beautiful, but also oozes with cuteness. She’s the hot girl who wouldn’t totally eviscerate you when she turns you down. She’d ask if you’re alright and give you cab fare, maybe even suggest a few self-help books for you to read while you lick your wounds.

Glen Powell’s abs are the true star of the show and holy shit, does that MFer make me wish that in my youth, I’d done more sit ups and less pizza chomps. You know how every dude says they wish they were as hot as Chris Hemsworth? I think in a few more movies, Powell’s going to give Hemsworth a run for his money as the male physical specimen standard.

Based on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing with several references to the play thrown in, the film doubles as an homage to the bard’s play, some might say the very first romantic comedy that started it all and gave us all the romcom tropes that we know and love or hate today.

Speaking of tropes, Dermot Mulroney stars as the bride’s dad because it wouldn’t be a rom-com about a wedding if Dermot Mulroney wasn’t the father of the bride. Meanwhile, if you’re old enough, you might recognize the other dad as Aussie actor Bryan Brown, star of the 1980s movie F/X about a Hollywood special effects artist charged by the FBI to fake a witness’ death only to be doublecrossed, blamed for it and have to go on the run.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

Tagged ,
Nov 25 2023
2 Comments
Uncategorized

Movie Review – Napoleon (2023)

Will this review be your Waterloo, 3.5 readers?

BQB here with a review of the biopic of history’s most reviled short Frenchman.

It was a time when the French actually won wars and weren’t the cheese eating surrender monkeys you’ve come to know and love or chronically lampoon today. In the wake of the French revolution, where the rabble got way too guillotine happy and didn’t just guillotine the king and queen but also the king and queen’s friends, cousins, dog walkers, second cousins, pool boys, confidantes, and literally anyone who had ever sneezed in the same room for such was the hatred of the monarchy that they just lopped off the heads of anyone with even the most untenable six degrees of seperation to the monarchy, a power vacuum arises and Nappy Old Boy steps up to fill it.

Joaquin Phoenix plays Napoleon as an awkward nerd, a doofus obsessed with power but lacking the social skills to acquire it, relying on constant coaching from his mother and wife, Josephine (Vanessa Kirby) to drag his ass across the finish line. True enough, Nappy is a warrior through and through, a great strategist who knows how to kick ass, win battles, and conquer Europe, but he needs the ladies to teach him how to carry on with diplomacy and talking to heads of state and so forth. In Phoenix’s performance, we’re almost led to believe that Napoleon was somewhat of the Zuckerburg or Steve Jobs of his day, a true nerd’s nerd, brilliant but socially inept, full of great ideas but struggling to express those ideas, better at recruiting other geniuses and taking credit for their genius. Although make no mistake – he was a battlefield genius.

Vanessa Kirby steals the show as Josephine and this is arguably just as much her movie as it is Napoleon’s. The French power couple fall in love and theirs is a love that is equal parts nourishment and poison. They lift each other up – Napoleon pulls her out of low social status caused by her deceased cheating husband and years of false imprisonment from the revolution. Josephine quite literally bangs the self-confidence Napoleon needs to be a better ruler into him with her vagina. The whole thesis of the flick is literally that if Josephine had not been so good at banging, Napoleon would not have conquered Europe, so ladies, the next time you’re down on your husband for his lack of ambition, consider upping your sex game.

Alas, they hurt each other as well. Old Josie can’t go long without the wang and Nappy’s job takes him on long work trips, so she goes in search of said wang elsewhere, which causes Nappy great pain and sorrow. Meanwhile, Nappy wants an heir, not just for his personal ego but for the stability of Europe, and Josie’s old dried up cooch can’t produce one, so he casts her aside, even though to do so causes him further great sorrow. Theirs is a great love story of two people whose love was so strong that when it worked they caused each other great joy and when it didn’t they brough each other great misery. There wasn’t much of a middle ground.

Phoenix is great in this role, playing the fumbling nerd well. In one scene, he psyches himself out, preparing to deliver a clever, biting ultimatum to a rival king but once in his presence, the best he can do is shout, “You think you’re so great because you have boats!” and then storm off. I could see Phoenix getting noms, though he has won before.

Personally, I believe this will go down as Kirby’s big breakthrough role. She’s been piling up solid performances for years. You might know as one of the villains in the latest Mission Impossible flicks. She’s delightfully British in a playful sort of way. Not to be gauche but I added her to the top of my fap list awhile ago and soon she’ll be a household name as I’d be very surprised if she doesn’t take home an Oscar for playing the woman who humped Napoleon into emperordom.

The movie take a structure of Nappy’s greatest hits, so if you know the history, you might already know the story. A little more depth into his childhood, why he was such an awkard doofus and so on would have been nice. Josephine is also a prolific ho-bag and it would have been nice to explore what made her such a ho-bag. But the movie has a lot of ground to cover so it doesn’t get into the nitty gritty deets. Still a great flick.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. I’d like to thank Hollywood for not effing this up. In recent months, I’ve lost faith in Hollywood. I’d been looking forward to this one, but I’ve looked forward to other movies, only to find them to be woke stinkburgers. I feared this would be the same. Perhaps Napoleon would be turned into a gay trans biracial lesbian fighting the patrarchical Wellington at Waterloo and I’d demand my money back. But nope. They played the history pretty straight.

Tagged ,
Nov 12 2023
Leave a comment
Uncategorized

Movie Review – Fool’s Paradise (2023)

Hollywood ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, 3.5 readers.

BQB here with a review of Hulu’s latest comedy.

You might know Charlie Day as the loveable janitor on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Here, he breaks out in a movie of his very own, and becomes a veritable Charlie Chaplin, bringing a modern take to vaudeville schtick.

Day plays a helpless, homeless, mute mental patient, dumped into the middle of LA by an overburdened mental facility that doesn’t have the funding to take care of him anymore. He’s instantly snatched up by movie producer Ray Liotta (one of his last roles and it’s so sad to see him so full of life only to realize, well, that he no longer is). Liotta’s Western film is struggling due to a troublesome actor who bears a striking resemblance to Day’s mental patient, but who simply won’t cooperate.

Said mental patient is accidentally named Latte Pronto, due to a mixup with a coffee order, and through a series of comedic misunderstandings, he goes down the rabbit hole of super stardom, never saying a word, never doing anything of any importance really, just lucking out as he happens to be in the right place at the right time each step of the way, getting ushered from one opportunity to the next from a cavalcade of all-star cameos, from his energy drink addicted down and out publicist Ken Jeong, to his fast talking agent Edie Falco (perhaps her best role since the Sopranos), to his whirlwind tabloid marriage to a famous actress (Kate Beckinsale) to a foray into politics aided by John Malkovich.

Aided by the various cast members of the Always Sunny gang, Latte achieves great fame and glory with all its ups and downs, but like iron pyrite, discovers that Tinseltown is only a paradise for fools.

As a comedy fan, I enjoyed this flick because it had plenty of classic jokes that were just there for the sake of comedy. No lessons or story behind them, nothing of real value, just there for a setup and a punchline. The downside is that while I appreciated all the gags, none of them were real gutbusters. I never really openly guffawed, just a mild smirk here and there. Day’s overall premise is that fame boils down to being in the right place at the right time and any fool can do it, even a bumbling idiot mental patient with nothing to say…so I don’t know if that means if all of us nobodies should be happy that we avoided such a silly business or mad that we didn’t get our piece of the action if getting it is so easy? (The title of the film would suggest the former, though I assume Day is happy with his lot in life.)

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

Tagged , ,
← Older posts
Newer posts →