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Jul 27 2023
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TV Review – The Bear

Food! Angst! Chaos!

Let’s get this review started, 3.5 chefs.

There is a lot going on in this show, so I’ll begin with the premise. Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto” (Jeremy Allen White) has spent years working as a high-level chef at some of the best restaurants in the world, but when his older, alcoholic brother Michael (Jon Bernthal) commits suicide, Carmy trades glamor for grease when he returns home to Chicago to run the family business Michael left behind – a dirty old dive of a sandwich shop called the Original Beef.

OK, BUT WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

Your guess is as good as mine. In many ways, it’s like your own personal Rorshach test and what you see isn’t necessarily wrong. My initial thought is it’s about the dark side of the American dream. For many, business ownership is seen as the pinnacle of success, true freedom, the ability to know that money will come in yet if you want a day off, you can have it. While you’ll never have to worry about answering to a sucky boss, you’ll damn near answer to everything else. If something breaks, you’ll fix it. If a bill is overdue, you’ll pay it. If a government inspector wants a word, you’re the one getting an earful. When profits run short, you’ll go without pay to keep your staff in the black. And when disaster strikes, you’re the one up all night, picking up the pieces.

Carmy exemplifies this lifestyle as the living embodiment of a walking, talking human panic attack. The poor kid says very little or does very little outside of work and constantly looks like his head is about to explode. If owning your own business is supposed to be fun, someone needs to remind him.

Maybe it’s about family, or how the people we love drive us nuts, and that insanity can be magnified times a million when money is involved. Petty rivalries, jealousies and infighting abound as Carmy deals with Cousin Richie (Ebon Moss Bachrach) and sister Sugar (Abby Elliott.) (An SNL alum, Elliott really shines here.)

At the start of season 1, Richie is miffed that Michael didn’t leave the joint to him and undermines Carmy at every turn, while Sugar sees the shop as an insufferable money pit/giant ball of stress that should be sold and forgotten posthaste. Carmy knows he’s better than this greasy spoon, but he just can’t bring himself to let this place, wrapped up with so many family memories, go.

Maybe it’s a show about perfection, about being the best at something and all the time and stress that goes into being the best at a trade. You may not know it but the chefs behind the scenes at your favorite restaurant really do toil away to bring you exquisite dishes in a timely manner and make it look so easy you probably never thought about all the skill that goes into it. Here, we get a constant look at this labor of love, kitchen workers hustling about putting the finishing touches on their masterpieces.

At the start of the show, Carmy wants to turn the Beef into something better. He’s well versed in French kitchen style – the ranks and customs and so on – militaristic rituals that turn cuisine into a science and get food ingredients out of the fridge, into the fryer, onto your plate and into your mouth in record time without you ever knowing about any of the fuss that went into it. Speed. Timing. Precision. Respect. Calling each other Chef. And dang it, keeping the kitchen clean.

But the Beef crew are more or less fast food minimum wage schmucks at the start of the show. With the help of his right hand woman/sous chef Sydney Adamu (Ayo Edebiri), a fellow culinary school grad, Carmy whips the crew into shape in an arc similar to any down on their luck sports team movie. You know the movies I’m talking about. First they’re idiots who think trying is for chumps but when they try, they start to win and they start to like it so they try harder and win more?

Chaos is the name of the game. Episodes are loud, obnoxious, fast paced, and crazy, all meant to mimic the frenzied pace of a busy kitchen. It’s hard to keep track of what’s happening when the characters are screaming at each other while having secondary and tertiary side arguments with others. Richie is the loudest and most obnoxious of them all and one wonders when someone will just knock him the eff out but he eventually redeems himself and grows on you.

Season 2 changes things up a bit as Carmy closes the Beef and goes on a quest to reopen it as the Bear – a fine dining restaurant “bearing” his family nickname. Apparently, the show became very popular between last year and this year because it’s a star studded cameo fest this year- Jamie Lee Curtis, John Mulaney, Bob Odenkirk, Sarah Paulson, Olivia Colman, just to name a few.

Yes, to be the best, you really have to put in the time. Morning. Noon. Night. No time for a life. No time for love. No time for hobbies. No time for fun. No time for anything. Our intrepid food slingers often wonder whether or not it is worth it but then again, they love food so much they can’t imagine doing anything else. Further complicating matters, they love each other, but drive each other insane.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. With so many cooking shows like Gordon Ramsey’s Hell’s Kitchen gaining popularity, it was only a matter of time before someone figured out away to dramatize food production, raise the stakes, and make us realize that behind every cheeseburger we scarf, there’s some poor bastard of a restauranteur sweating it out over whether he’ll be able to keep the lights on for another month. It’s almost enough to make you want to go on a diet, and you should, because let’s face it, we’re all fat.

Watch on Hulu.

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Jul 04 2023
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Movies

Movie Review – Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

Da da da da…da da da!

Grab your hats and whips, 3.5 readers. It’s time for a review of Indy 5. SPOILERS ABOUND!

Hype is weird, noble readers. This movie got a lot of it. Bad hype. Hate hype. All the social media comments and online reviews, youtube videos etc – it all gave me the impression that this flick had taken a big huge steamy corn infested dump all over the legacy of America’s favorite fictional archaeologist.

Indy turned into a pathetic old man! Indy bossed around by a mouthy dame the whole picture! Four decades of a beloved franchise flushed down the toilet in the name of radical feminism.

I only bought a ticket with the intention of hate watching it and writing a scathing review for all 7 of your eyes, but to my surprise, I ended up liking it. It wasn’t that bad a movie at all.

Now don’t get me wrong. The original trilogy was fabulous with a perfect ending that wrapped it all up nicely, so other than the profit motive, I’m not sure Hollywood wants to keep tinkering with it. Well, the answer is because Disney bought the Indy franchise when it bought Star Wars and the rest of Lucasfilm’s IP, and I can’t blame them for wanting a return on investment.

The story begins at the end of World War 2 with a CGI de-aged Indiana Jones infiltrating a train full of Nazis making a run for it before the Allies arrive. They’ve packed the train with a buttload of stolen artifacts, all the relics and artwork they need to sell and fund their post war exile abroad.

With colleague Basil Shaw in tow, the duo is on the hunt for the famed Spear of Destiny, the spear said to have pierced Christ’s flesh when he was crucified. Truth be told, the legend of this spear and how it was passed about through various European rulers and how their downfall often coincided with when they lost control of the spear would, in and of itself, make for a great flick, but its only a premise for our heroes to discover an entirely new MacGuffin, namely that the train is carrying Archimedes’ Dial, an Ancient Greek device that Shaw has been obsessed with for years, due to claims that it can be used to travel through time.

Preposterous, surmises Young Indy, and dutiful suspenders of disbelief that we are, we’re totally supposed to forget that Indy has seen the Ark of the Covenant melt people who looked at it, went mano y mano with a voo doo priest who rips the hearts from people’s chests and turns them into mindless zombies and oh yeah, there was that time he met a still-alive ancient knight who was guarding the holy grail, which he used to cure his father’s bullet wound.

SIDENOTE: I gotta say, this beginning scene felt like it could have been from a lost cut of an old Indy movie. The effects are modern, but the CGI is brilliant, such that it looks and sounds like a young Harrison Ford. One wonders if we aren’t only a few years away from new Indy movies where Ford lends his voice and likeness and lets Disney techs work their magic to bring us new tales set in Indy’s golden age of the 1930s and 40s.

But I suppose that involves a debate of whether or not CGI actors are a good thing. That’s a whole other kettle of fish.

Flash forward to 1969 and Indiana Jones is very old, sad and lonely. It’s his retirement day as a college professor. He’s bummed for without his job he has little to look forward to. Marion, who he married in his 60s according to the Crystal Skull, truly the shittiest of the Indy movies with the exception that at least it left Indy in the happy situation of having a wife and newly discovered son, has left him, because of course she has. I get the online criticism here to an extent. I mean, they don’t ALWAYS have to leave our heroes sad and lonely but other than suffering the woes of old age, Indy proves he still has some piss and vinegar left, as does Harrison Ford.

Indy’s sidekick in this film is Phoebe Waller-Bridge, a woman so excessively British that she probably had relatives who spit shined King Arthur’s codpiece and her blood type is fish and chips. She speaks English throughout the film, but you know, Englishy English. I’m trying to say I have no idea what she’s saying half the time because she’s absurdly British.

Her character, Helena Shaw, to put it simply, is a total asshole. She is Indy’s goddaughter as her father and Indy were once BFFS. She approaches Indy under the guise of being a grad student researching Archimedes’ Dial, but this is just a pretense to steal it and sell it to the highest bidder. Throughout the film she insults and betrays our fearless hero, and I think that online critics didn’t quite get the point that the intention was that her character was written specifically so that she’d come across as a dick. Indy, however, isn’t that pathetic, and goes tit for tat with her throughout the flick.

My complaint is the writers never offer an explanation as to why Helena is such an unscrupulous d-bag. We see her father was a very nice, moral man. We see she was nice as a child. If there was an event, a tragedy, a something or other than turned her into a money hungry scumbag willing to screw over a close family friend in the name of cold hard cash, we weren’t told about it.

But Indy and Helena become frenemies as their larger goal is to keep the dial out of the hands of the villainous Jurgen Voller, a Nazi scientist who dreams of using the dial to rewrite history and turn the Nazi’s defeat in 1945 into a permanent, never-ending world tour.

There’s some great car chases. Incorporation of history. Thrills and chills. Twists and turns. Fun cameos. All in all, a decent flick. Does it outshine the trilogy? No. As good as the trilogy? No. Does it make up for the doody fest that was the Crystal Skull? IMO, yes. It’s a good movie, a fun time, and its far from the crapfest the internet tongue waggers are making it out to be.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. Worth a trip to the big screen.

My thoughts on the future of the Indy Franchise:

#1 – Key Huy Quan, who played Short Round in Temple of Doom, just had a major career comeback, winning an Oscar at 50. Maybe it’s time to see what Shorty’s doing as an adult.

#2 – If done right, I wouldn’t be against a Disney Plus animated series where Ford lends his voice and likeness to Indy cartoons of Indy’s younger days.

#3 – CGI actors are getting better and better so before you know it, we might actually see Young Indy movies where he looks as spry as he did in the trilogy.

#4 – There’s talk of Indy passing the torch. Maybe, but the thing is, the franchise is called “Indiana Jones.” If another character becomes an adventurer, they might be inspired by Indy but they aren’t Indy. They might make movies where a younger actor plays Indy in his prime, but the role is so much all about Ford.

#5 – But ultimately, this IP is worth big bucks. Disney bought it, so they’ll want to make bank off it. Let’s hope Harrison eats his wheaties.

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Jul 02 2023
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Movies

Movie Review – Joy Ride (2023)

Raunchy Asian gals take China by storm!

BQB here with a review of the raunchy R rated girls trip comedy Joy Ride.

So, this film actually doesn’t come out until July 6 but there was a sneak preview showing at my local theater and since I have no life, I decided why not check it out. I’ll say at the outset I took the bullet on this one so you don’t have to. It is worth a rental or a stream, and sure, it had heart and some laughs but all and all, you won’t miss much if you miss it on the big screen.

Adele Lim, screenwriter of Crazy Rich Asians in her directorial debut with producer Cherry Chevraparatdumarong (I’m not sure I spelled that right), she of Family Guy producer fame, join forces to give you a comedy best described as what would happen if you took a Hangover style movie but replaced the dudes with naughty Asian ladies who can’t stop talking about sex, penises, buttholes, vaginas, cocaine but occasionally they find friendship and meaning. Some of the jokes will make you laugh and some will make you groan. Some I’m not sure you’ll get unless you’re Asian as they’re somewhat Asian insidery but are fun anyway. Some you can tell are definitely coming from a disciple of Seth MacFarlane.

In the late 90s, little Audrey and Lolo (Ashley Park and Sherry Cola) become BFFS for life as the only two Asian kids in the town of White Falls, which in modern movie logic, is a terrible, horrible place because there are so many damn white people living there.

Flash forward to present times and Audrey the perfectionist has become a high-powered lawyer while Lolo waits tables at her parents’ restaurant to fund her true passion of crafting sexual art, which the viewer is treated to in excruciating detail.

With a big promotion waiting in the wings if she closes a deal in China, Audrey invites Lolo on the trip to be her translator. Tagging along on the trip are Lolo’s socially awkward yet lovable Deadeye (Sabrina Wu) and Audrey’s college roommate Kat (Stephanie Hsu), now a famous actress in China.

Upon learning that her new business associate is a family man and would be way more keen on the deal if he knew that Audrey was as into family as he is (because business deals totally rest on such things!), Audrey and friends set out on a trip across China in search of Audrey’s biological mother who gave her up for adoption years ago.

Hijinx ensue and various opportunities for hanky panky arise. TBH, from the trailer, I thought the movie was going to focus more on a fish out of water tale as American Asian women visit China and aren’t sure if they feel more out of place in America or Asia. That does come up often but the plot more or less serves as excuse for dirty jokes and naughty humor. At times, their travel plans are derailed, leaving them to hitchhike and depend on the kindness of strangers, which for a minute I thought it was going to be like Planes, Trains and Automobiles but in China but the stakes never get too high as the girls are never put into too much danger, at least nothing they can’t talk their way out of with a dirty joke.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. Its fun and funny, with insight into the ups and downs experienced by American Asians, not to mention the struggles friends go through to keep their friendships going as they grow up.

One complaint. There’s a scene where a little kid drops an F bomb and while the other kid’s character deserved it, I’m not a fan of this Hollywood trend the past decade where people think it’s funny to have kids say bad things. IMO, the joke is never funny enough to warrant asking a kid to say that, but that’s just me.

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Jun 25 2023
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Movie Review – No Hard Feelings (2023)

Fun! Sun! Naked J-Law!

BQB here with a review of one of the best raunchy comedies I’ve seen in a long time.

If video killed the radio star, then streaming definitely put a bunch of nails in the coffin of the R rated comedy. The last nail hasn’t been hammered yet, and flicks like this one might stave that off for now. At any rate, movie theater released movies tend to be made with young audiences in mind, as the kids tend to go to the movies while adults stay in and stream.

This movie reminded me of the good old naughty comedies of years gone by like The Hangover, American Pie, Something About Mary and so on. Mind you, this movie comes nowhere close to those greats, but its main goal is to produce an honest effort at making you laugh. There are moments that are heartfelt and touching, but there’s definitely no wokeness crammed down your throat or avoidance of problematic subject matter that seems to be the calling card of so many flicks the streaming services try to pass off as comedy these days.

Jennifer Lawrence, one of the funnier leading ladies in recent years, lets her comedy chops shine as Maddie, a bartender from the seaside vacation town of Montauk. About to lose the house her late mother left her due to high property taxes caused by an influx of rich NYC city folk who only spend their summers there, she answers a rather conveniently timed Craigslist ad placed by helicopter parents Laird and Allison, promising to sign over a used Buick to a woman willing to “date” (in quotation marks) their 19 year old son, Percy. Maddie needs the car so she can drive for Uber and pay off her taxes.

Percy, as his parents explain during a job interview of sorts, is brilliant and talented but very awkward and shy, a gifted musician who refuses to perform live due to his social anxiety. Unpopular and depressed, the lad just stays in his room and Mom and Dad fear the kid will just do the same when he gets to college if um, well, you know the rest.

Fearing she’ll let her late mother down if she allows the family homestead to be repossessed, Maddie takes the job, only to find that Percy is so epically clueless when it comes to women that he’s literally unable to be seduced. Hilarious gags ensue where Maddie’s advances are met with fear, shyness, attempts to call 911 and yes, as seen in the trailer, mace.

Indeed, the movie does adopt many tropes from films/sitcoms where one half of a couple is in it for the money while the other half is unaware, and yet, romance blooms along the way and the fear the other will be crushed when they discover the profit motive was once at play.

And truly, the film illustrates a big time double standard when it comes to men and women. Flip the script and have this movie be about an older man trying to seduce a younger woman and it would be downright creepy as hell. Here, 32 year old J-Law is so remarkably well preserved that she looks, at least to my old eyes, as though she could be one of Percy’s classmates, even though there are jokes about the couple’s age difference throughout the movie. At any rate, do I wish my 19 year old self had befriended a 32 year old JLaw type willing to teach me the ins and outs of love before going out into the real world? Yes. Would I call the police if a 32 year old man tried to do the same to one of my 19 year old female relatives? Also yes.

Long story short, blah blah blah, the relationship becomes less about money and more about companionship as the two enjoy spending time together, learning from one another and helping each other follow their dreams and so on.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. Come for the laughs. SPOILER ALERT: Stay for the naked J-Law!

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Jun 20 2023
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Movie Review: Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023)

This review is more than meets the eye, 3.5 readers.

The first live-action Transformers film from 2007 was pretty awesome, just as a showcase of what modern CGI can do. The franchise churned out several more Michael Bay helmed flicks after that, and they always lacked something that was hard to put a finger on. The 1980s cartoon show had heart, which may sound silly about a story about giant robots who turn into cars and planes and beat each other up, but there you go.

2018’s Bumblebee managed to capture some of that heart and we find it a bit more in this film, which is part prequel yet oddly enough, a reboot of sorts. FUN SPOILER ALERT: the movie opens the door for a future flick in which the Transformers team up with that other popular 1980s franchise, GI Joe.

Not gonna lie. Me 35 years ago would have soiled my tighty whities at the idea of such a film but today I already more or less know that Hollywood will get it wrong. Maybe they might surprise me but part of the problem is that these properties worked best during a long ago time, a time when people still believed in things like American exceptionalism, good vs. evil, doing the right thing, etc.

Anyway, the Maximals (robots who turn into animals) from the 1990s Transformers: Beast Wars cartoon get their turn to shine on the big screen. I was well into my teens then and more interested in Jenny McCarthy and Carmen Electra by then, so I missed out on the maximal craze.

One complaint might be the movie is called “Rise of the Beasts” yet the beast only show up at the beginning, a bit in the middle, then have their chance to shine at the end. This is still a flick largely about that old stalwart fan favorite Optimus Prime and his BFFs like Bumbleebee and Mirage. Also, there’s a girl bot named RC which is cool though I’ll leave it to you to think about how gender works when it comes to sentient robots sans genitalia.

Perhaps one of the greatest complaints about past Transformer films is that the humans add little to nothing but filler and useless blah blah blahing that delays the next robot fight scene. Here, the human friends to the bots include Noah (Anthony Ramos) and Elena (Dominque Fishback). Noah is an ex-soldier looking for work to support his sick younger brother. Desperate for cash to fund a life saving medical procedure, he steals a car that turns out to be Mirage, which I think the franchise has done the whole “a human thinks this is a car only to discover its a robot” routine a lot but WTF it’s Transformers so of course we’ll do it again. Meanwhile, Elena is a museum intern, knowledgeable in the ways of old artifacts and her knowledge of how the MacGuffin artifact the bots are fighting over comes in handy.

Plenty of celebrity talent in the bot voices. Pete Davidson is pretty great as Mirage, such that I didn’t even know it was Pete Davidson until I read it in another review. Pete Davidson usually just shows up in most of his roles and is like, “Hi. I’m Pete Davidson” and then he just acts like Pete Davidson.

Ron Pearlman voices Optimus Primal, the robot gorilla leader of the Maximals, Michelle Yeoh lowers herself to play a talking robot bird, fan favorite Peter Cullen returns to do his John Wayne-esque Optimus Prime voice, and Peter Dinklage voices scourge, the lead henchman sent to do the dirty work of the planet chomping Unicron.

SIDENOTE: I mean, the danger is that if the MacGuffin isn’t recovered, Earth will be chomped by a hungry giant planet eating robot but you never quite become afraid of that terrible fate because of all the action on screen vying for your attention.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. At the end of the day, it’s cartoony schtick meant for kids and for that audience, it’s certainly a crowd pleaser. I’m not sure any modern Transformers movie will be able to recapture the heart of the old 1980s franchise, but the good news is it seems the people behind the latest efforts are trying.

Oh! Hey by the way, did I mention this movie is set in 1994? So if you want to kick it to a bangin’ soundtrack filled with more 1990s rap than you can shake a stick at (Wu Tang Clan is the true star of this movie) then this flick is your jam.

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Jun 18 2023
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TV

Black Mirror Review – Season 6, Episode 1 – Joan is Awful

It’s the Twilight Zone style show for the social media age and it’s finally back after a long hiatus.

BQB here with a review of episode 1 of the long awaited sixth season.

SPOILER ALERT: This isn’t so much of a review as it is a discussion so if you haven’t seen this yet, go watch it then come back and talk.

3.5 readers, if you’re reading this then chances are, you’re a nobody. Don’t feel bad. Most of us are and the good news is there’s a lot of safety in anonymity. Unlike the rich and famous, we can get away with a lot because no one cares about what we do.

But what if your favorite streaming service were to suddenly decide that your hum-drum life makes for good TV? Such is the case for Joan (Annie Murphy) a middle-manager at a tech company. Like all of us, she had dreams once, but now she just spends her days doing her corporate board’s dirty work, firing beloved employees for no cause just to increase profits. She feels dirty about it but finds no solace in her fiance, who she views as bland. Yet, she feels damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t, for she also has an ex wild man boyfriend who she enjoyed but ultimately understands that he’ll bring disaster back into her life.

And so, poor Joan feels trapped in the mundane when one day, she turns on Streamberry, a thinly veiled Netflix replacement, to discover a show about her life with the great Salma Hayek playing her with all of her dirty laundry hung out to dry. All of her indiscretions, infidelities and immoralities are laid bare for the world to see and oddly, in record time. The show churns out episodes so fast that it seems like no sooner does Joan do some inappropriate act that she thought no one saw that sure enough, that inappropriate act is streaming for the world to see.

After her lawyer investigates, Joan discovers that part of the terms and conditions of the long contract she signed when she signed up for the streaming service was to give the company all rights to make a show about her life. Through AI, the company is picking subscribers at random, following their lives via their cell phones and home cameras and creating computer generated shows about them. No writers or actors are needed. AI just takes scenes from subscribers’ real lives and provides dramatic flourishes, while actors have signed away their CGI rights for profit.

That’s right. Salma Hayek isn’t playing Joan. CGI Salma is and real Salma thought it would a quick buck to sign those rights away. In the hopes of grabbing Hayek’s attention and getting her to put the kibosh on the show, the real Joan starts doing horrendous, unspeakable, darkly comical things to the point where the real Salma doesn’t want her likeness associated with such depravity.

Shenanigans ensue as the real Joan and real Salma team up for a clandestine attack on Streamberry’s AI computer server and I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.

This is a rare light-hearted episode of black mirror. Usually, the show is quite dark and gut punching, as characters suffer irreparable damage and loss, forever doomed to experience terrible consequences. This one is actually quite funny.

“Absurd” I thought. CGI replacing real actors? That’ll never happen. Then I went to see The Flash last night and a CGI Henry Cavill did a brief cameo as did a CGI younger version of Nicolas Cage. CGI past versions of actors from DC superhero films from long ago also stopped by. So apparently, yes, Hollywood is looking for ways to make content with computers at a cheaper rate than what they have to pay real live humans.

And low and behold there’s a writer’s strike underway, with one of the chief complaints being that human writers are worried about being replaced by CGI writers. Could a CGI writer write better fart jokes than a human writer? Time will tell.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. Credit to Netflix as with this episode, they basically admit that they invented the model of churning out unenriched crap at a rapid pace, content for the sake of content, just give viewers a neverending stream of new stuff to watch without worrying if its any good.

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Jun 18 2023
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Movies

Movie Review – The Flash (2023)

What a rush!

BQB here with a review of the Flash’s standalone movie.

3.5 readers, I’m going to separate this review into three parts: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Not to be confused with the Clint Eastwood film of the same name.

THE GOOD:

Overall, this is a good film. Worth your money and your time, enjoyable to see on the big screen.

The premise? Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) aka The Flash entered the criminal forensic profession as a young lad with the hope of proving his imprisoned father’s innocence and overturn his conviction for murdering his mother.

Alas, this plan is not going well. In fact, it’s going rather badly. So bad, in fact, that the Flash angry runs so fast that he discovers the ability to run through time. Ignoring everything he learned from Back to the Future, Flashy Boy tries to save his mother’s life but in so doing, enters an alternate world, similar to his own but in many ways different.

The Justice League as he knows it never formed, so instead, to foil an attack by General Zod (Michael Shannon), he teams up with Supergirl (Sasha Calle), Batman, but the elderly form of the 1989 film version (Michael Keaton) and a younger version of himself, obviously also played by Ezra Miller.

The film’s got a lot of heart, great special effects, and its good meditation on choosing to live in the present and make good decisions going forward, rather than dwell on past mistakes and tragedies. The scars from our past, painful as they may, made us who we are and one little change would throw everything off balance.

Fans of the 1989 Batman film will rejoice as their are many fun callbacks to that film, as well as to other old movies set in the DC universe.

THE BAD

While a fun movie, there are times when it feels like it’s not the best movie Warner Brothers could have made but rather, the best movie Warner Brothers is willing to pay for.

Gal Gadot, Ben Affleck and Jason Mamoa all reprise their Wonder Woman, Batman (the middle aged version from our timeline) and Aquaman roles from the Justice League film, but in brief cameos to help The Flash on his adventure. One wonders if WB would just drum up a great script and part with boku cash, they might be able to get the band back together for another go around.

But since they don’t want to, you get the Flash – and an alternate Justice League based in an alternate reality including Supergirl instead of Superman and 1989 Batman instead of Modern Batman, presumably because Calle and Keaton are cheaper than Henry Cavil and Ben Affleck.

THE UGLY

Ezra Miller has a lot of disturbing pervy allegations against him, so much so that it’s hard to believe this movie wouldn’t have been shelved if they’d been levied against a straight actor. The public will forgive WB for releasing the film this go around, though let’s face it, we’re all such lemmings we’d probably sit through anything released on a Friday night at our local cineplex. At any rate, WB spent big bucks making this movie and needed to get a profit by releasing it. However, in today’s “metoo” environment, I just can’t see WB allowing Miller to continue on as the Flash in a Flash sequel or any other DC movies.

A lot of squandered talent here because Miller really does play the role well. While we’ve seen many versions of Batman and Superman and we all have our favorites, I think Miller really captured the essence of the character as a spazzed out nerd, overworked and underappreciated, constantly dealing with the stress of superlife while suffering from anxiety and panic like the rest of us would in such a situation.

STATUS: Shelfworthy, though I get the impression that DC execs must have watched the last Spiderman movie where three film versions of Spidey teamed up and said “We need to do that!” There are times when the cameos of past DC film characters are a fun walk down memory lane and other times when you wonder why a studio gets to render CGI versions of long deceased actors into perpetuity.

Then again, there are a few CGI cameos from the likenesses of actors who are still alive and young enough to act but IDK why they’re digital except it cost less than it would to pay them to come to the set I suppose. I could be wrong but this might be the first film to capitalize on that.

SIDENOTE: 1989 Batman came out 34 years ago, but I remember being a little kid in the theater watching it with a sense of wonder like it was yesterday. Then I blinked and now I’m a middle aged geezer watching a film that’s partly an homage to it. Boy, this life went far too fast but I’d point out while movies today tend to be reboots, rehashes, and homages to older films, I wonder if 34 years from now, there will be many rehashes of films from today, when they rely so heavily on the nostalgia of past films now?

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Jun 12 2023
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Movies

Movie Review – Shazam! Fury of the Gods

Let’s get this Shazam on the road, 3.5 readers.

The bad news is that the DCU cinematic is in a sorry state of affairs. Warner Brothers, IMO, screwed the pooch, opting to rush flicks out in a frenzied attempt to compete with Marvel, rather than go the slow route and build a coherent universe where all the films connect to one another, as Marvel made. They might have lost profits by going slow in the beginning but now, as the Marvel universe begins to slow down and fizzle out, DCU would be hitting its stride.

Where DCU has done its best is with characters that heretofore never had much in the way of movie fanfare. Thus Wonder Woman and Aquaman have been knocking it out of the park. Meanwhile, Shazam, who is, one might argue, DC’s joke character (like how Antman is Marvel’s joke character), is also great. You would think old standards like Batman and Superman would be best but they’ve been done so much that apparently no one knows how to weave them into this world.

For those of you who don’t remember the first Shazam, Billy Badsen is a foster kid, very sad and lonely when a wizard bestows upon him god-like superpowers. By saying “Shazam!” he turns from wayward boy to adult champion (Asher Angel plays young Billy while Zachary Levi plays Shazam Billy.)

The cool part of a sequel is it gets to build the universe. You already learned the rules from the first film so now the writers can waste no time inviting you to play in the sandbox. Billy and his foster family of siblings all have Shazam powers now and they use them to save Philadelphia from catastrophe and villainy. Alas, they are often unappreciated as the populace wonders who appointed them to watch over the city and the news media focuses on their mistakes rather than all the lives they save.

Enter into this mix Hespera and Kalypso (Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu), daughters of the titan Atlas, who have a bone to pick with the Shazam family or Shazamily for an inadvertent mistake they made in the first film. The world, of course, is at stake and the sisters have all kinds of ghastly powers from being able to make people go insane to conjuring up dragons and monsters.

It’s up to the Shazamily to save the day and they’ll do so while navigating the pitfalls of growing up. When you have a movie about kids who sometimes operate in adult bodies, there’s always a line that has to be straddled about what is and is not appropriate, and the writers and actors walk it well with various jokes where the kids in adult bodies and adult actors playing those kids come across as naive and not understanding of various situations where an actual adult would know better.

Djimon Hounsou reprises his role as the Wizard who gave the kids their powers, at times glad and disappointed he did, depending on how well the battles are going.

Perhaps you might remember there was a Superman from the neck down cameo in the last film and at that time I opined it kinda sucked that WB/DC isn’t able to bring all their talent together in the way Marvel/Disney did. There’s a cameo from another top hero, this time from the neck up, indicating Shazam has convinced the execs that such appearances are worth the money. Still, while it’s a good movie, I just think DC missed an opportunity to really build a world the way Marvel did.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. Shazam it today on Max.

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Jun 01 2023
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Movies

TV Review – FUBAR (2023)

Ahh-nold is back, 3.5 readers.

BQB here with a review of the Terminator’s foray into Netflix television.

Every man has a soft spot in their hearts for the top action hero of his childhood. I love Arnold Schwarzenegger just as my father loved John Wayne before me.

I always thought Arnold made a big mistake when he ran for governor of Cal-ee-for-ya. First of all, he wasn’t much of a governor and second, he missed the chance to reinvent himself in the 2000s, as his old frenemy Sly did.

But better late than never in this, Gov-a-nator’s first TV series. Seems blasphemous. Anything not a movie is surely below our favorite commando.

The premise? Luke Brunner (Arnie) is on the verge of retirement, both in his covert and overt lives. That’s right. He pretends to co-own a fitness equipment supply business with his BFF Barry (Milan Carter) while in reality, Luke is a veteran, globe-trotting CIA agent and Barry is his handler/computer expert.

His ex-wife Tally (Fabiana Udenio) and daughter Emma (Monica Barbaro) have long grown accustomed to Luke never being there for the important events in life. In fact, it’s starting to feel like Emma is following in her father’s footsteps as her relationship with boyfriend Carter (Jay Beruchel) is growing rocky due to her globetrotting job for a charity that brings water systems to third world countries.

When their paths cross on one last assignment, Luke realizes he has more in common with his daughter than he thought. Yup. The water job is just a cover for the fact that Emma is also in the CIA. The two have been CIA agents, lying to each other and believing each other’s false covers for years.

Ironically, the plot is pretty close to True Lies, one of the last great action films that Arnold ever made in his prime. Network TV just put out a True Lies TV show reboot that fizzled, so one wonders had that not happened, maybe Netflix could have ponied up the cash to reunite Arnold with Jamie Lee Curtis and Eliza Dushku so we can see what the Tasker family is up to these days.

Oh right. Netflix wouldn’t pony up THAT much money. But hey, at least Tom Arnold, who played Arnie’s BFF in True Lies, stops by in a cameo. IMO, True Lies and this part are the Tom Arnold’s funniest roles.

Rounding out the cast are two spies that work for Luke – Aldon and Roo (Travis Van Winkle and Fortune, he a stereotypical hunky studmuffin self-absorbed pretty boy type and she an out and proud lesbian with a mouth that delivers a quip a minute. The odd couple so odd it works friendship between these two is a highlight of the show.

As you might expect, Luke and Emma put their shock at discovering the other’s lies behind them quick and join forces to take down an international villain, with Luke’s team playing back up. The series moves about, from international adventures to shenanigans as father and daughter struggle to keep their lies straight with family.

Structurally, the show reminds me a lot of NCIS, where there’s an intrepid tough guy Gibbs, surrounded with comic relief underlings like Abby and McGee…except Arnold pumps a lot of comedic iron himself. An episode where he must force himself to look away as his daughter “honeypots” herself i.e. dances the wild mambo with a villain to get some world saving information is particularly funny. Another scene where a CIA shrink forces father and daughter to communicate with puppets that are replicas of themselves is funnier.

Sure, there are plotholes galore. It’s hard to believe a father and daughter would be able to learn the other has been lying to them for so long and be able to instantly get over it, but we don’t have time for them to go to a few years of therapy. Strangely, some of Luke’s CIA counterparts were always aware of Emma’s CIA status but never told him and he isn’t pissed at them either.

Special effects wise, its typical Netflix fare. Better than your average network show but not good enough to be a major motion picture.

At first, Barbaro comes across as one of many standard issue Netflix actresses – hot and gets the job done but you’ll forget her next year – except, she shines here with a few raunchy one liners you wouldn’t expect to come out of the mouth of a classy babe. Fun fact, she was the fly-girl in last year’s Top Gun: Maverick.

Meanwhile, Fortune Feimster gets her long awaited moment in the sun as Roo. She has long stolen the show with minor parts where she does the funny lesbian who says obnoxious, rude statements with oodles of misguided confidence. I’m not sure I totally buy her as CIA agent material because, you know, she’s fat but then again, it’s a solid, linebacker fat. She could really clothesline a dude and walk away no worse for wear.

Perhaps one criticism is that while the show is very funny, there are times when the humor makes it hard to believe these people are CIA agents. Everyone other than Luke and Emma seem to exist for comic relief and surely there needs to be a few more serious people on a CIA spy team.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. I agree with Luke that all these damn kids these days just assume everyone born before 1992 is an idiot.

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May 29 2023
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Movies

Movie Review – The Little Mermaid (2023)

I wanna be a part of your world, 3.5 readers.

BQB here with a review of Disney’s latest live action remake of one of their classic movies.

Ah, the Little Mermaid, that classic fish out of water (pun intended) story of whether or not the grass is really greener on the other side of the fence, or as Sebastian the Crab tells us, the seaweed isn’t always greener in somebody else’s lake.

It’s been widely lampooned online, from the dead-eyed emotionless talking animals (I can’t tell if Scuttle and Flounder like Ariel or want to kill her and eat her body) to the casting of an African American actress (much ado about nothing), it seemed like this would be more of Disney’s wokesterism run amuck.

But I gotta be honest. Even an only anti-woke curmudgeon like myself enjoyed it. The fun songs, the pageantry, the bright colors, the animation effects that take people and turn them into mermaids, it was all a lot of fun.

It’s the same old plot. King Triton’s (Javier Bardem) youngest daughter/princess, Ariel (Hallie Bailey), is a mermaid obsessed with the surface world. That’s a dangerous place, warns Triton, who forbids her from visiting the surface ever again, but kids will be kids and Ariel continues to defy her old man with BFFs Flounder and Scuttle (Awkwafina and Jacob Tremblay) while royal lackey Sebastian (Daveed Diggs) tags along.

When Ariel rescues Prince Eric from a shipwreck and restores him to life with her magic voice, a romance blooms but alas it’s not to be, you know, because I don’t want to come right out and explain it to you but he’s a dude and her lady business is all mackerel, just for the halibut (pa rum pum pum.) Oh, what do you know? I did spell it out for you.

Alas, Ariel is tricked into striking a devil’s bargain with sea hag Ursula (Melissa McCarthy), trading her voice for legs. Creepo that she is, Ursula puts her thumb on the scales, and it’s a mad cap race for the bird, the fish and the crab to help the now human mermaid woo the prince into a smooch before the passing of three days.

Hallie Bailey captures a lot of that Ariel charm, a combination of ambition and naivete, where the youth really want something but have idea the fire they’ll have to walk through to get it, or the burns they’ll suffer and maybe even inflict on others to get there. Diggs does a fine Sebastian impression. Jonah Hauer King is a pretty standard Prince Eric, but plays Ariel’s match, as he too wants more than what his family wants for him.

Jacob Tremblay is a good Flounder though are fishy friend doesn’t get a lot to do, I can’t remember if he had a lot to do in the original. Scuttle gets a gender swap, which I squawked at, at first, but then I mean, I’m not knocking Awkwafina, but come on. She does sound a little bit like a bird. She gets to flex her comedy rap muscles too.

Hallie Bailey really does shine in the role and doesn’t deserve the crap she’s getting. Her renditions of classic songs like “I Want to Be a Part of Your World) match the quality of the original.

Whether it’s the original or the remake, I always found The Little Mermaid to be one of the most bittersweet of Disney flicks, as it mimics a lot of what most kids go through as they grow up. They have things they want to do but then there’s also what their parents want them to do. Their parents want them to do things that are largely considered the safest route, because they’re older and have been knocked around by the world and since it didn’t kill them, they came out wiser for it. The kids want to do something else but are young, dumb and trusting, easily taken advantage of by the unscrupulous. If they aren’t lucky enough to navigate such dangerous waters to achieve their wildest dreams, then they do may become the old world weary parent urging their offspring to be practical.

Is the seaweed always greener in somebody else’s lake? Maybe. Maybe not. The problem is a) you know the seaweed in your lake and you can’t help but see all its faults, so to you it stinks but you don’t see the greenery another might see. b) the seaweed elsewhere might be truly green, but you won’t find out until you’ve abandoned your lake and the family the comes with it.

That and there’s the whole Ariel has to change and become a human thing. It’s what she wants and um, well changing your body from one form to another takes on a whole new controversial meaning today, but one might argue that Ariel should accept herself as the half-lady, half-tuna, all mer-woman being that God made her as and if Eric doesn’t want any scales on his man business then that’s his problem.

It’s either a tale about a young woman who bravely defies the odds to follow her dreams or a young woman who completely changes her entire self to make a dude happy, depending on how you look at it.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. I know a lot of people wonder why Disney keeps making live action remakes. I think it’s just to keep their famous core IP properties going and introduce them to new generations.

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