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May 28 2023
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Movies

Movie Review – Fast X (2023)

Yowza. What a stinkburger with extra turd fries this franchise has become.

BQB here with a review of this drek.

Believe it or not, 3.5 readers, but there was a time when for me, a new Fast and Furious movie was the action flick gold standard. I went it believing I would have a great time watching the wacky car stunt mayhem unfold across the big screen and ever since 2011, when the franchise reinvented itself, the flicks never failed to disappoint.

The first, which came out in what, 2001? It was new and original. It was quite toned down compared to today’s installments, but no one had really ever made a good movie about underworld street racing before. Flicks 2 and 3 were so-so, though 2 didn’t have Vin Diesel and 3 didn’t have Vin or Paul Walker. 4 tried to get the band back together but was kinda meh.

But then low and behold, 5, released in 2011, brought us to Rio, where the crew steals a villain’s ill-gotten loot safe by hooking it up to cables and dragging it down the highway whilst attached to twin Dodge Chargers with the Rock chasing them and boy howdy, did that ever signal that the series finally found a way to kick ass.

The next few flicks, all the way through 8, upped the game. They were always over the top and at times, quite stupid if you bothered to think about the physics and logistics of all the out of control stunts, but this new world of street racers and car crooks turned into a multi-ethnic, diverse group of hip hop spies working for the government to take down villains whilst driving awesome cars really, really fast was a lot of fun.

I was disappointed with Fast 9. Jason Statham and the Rock weren’t in it and their absence was felt, such that I realized they had been carrying the flicks on the backs for quite some time. Also, the metoo era had begun, so the movie was completely devoid of the scantily clad female tushies shaking around at underground street racing competitions, the loss of which were a blow to me, because where else will I get to see underground street racing tushies?

Ah, but then the Fast X trailers came out this year and they looked good. I was prepared to forgive the franchise for one stinker. Jason Statham was even featured in the trailers and he’s a personal fave.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. This one cranks up the stink to eleven, so let’s dive in and get this over with.

The film takes us back to Fast Five, the movie that took the franchise off life support and made it awesome. As it turns out, the Brazilian villain bested by Dom and company had a heretofore unbeknownst to us son played by Jason Mamoa, who at the time was really pissed off at the fast gang for his father’s death and vows revenge.

Why the revenge plot took 12 years from 2011 to 2023? Your guess is as good as mine but at any rate, son comes back to destroy and humiliate the fast crew at every turn. To his credit, Mamoa is the one saving grace of this film. We’re used to him being quiet, stoic and angry in other movies but here, he reminds me of the Joker, but a twisted version of the criminal clown who pumps iron and pops steroids. Constantly laughing, prancing about, cracking funny jokes and one liners – Mamoa chews scenery with glee and it was fun to watch him nail a completely different style than what he is used to.

But it’s not enough to bring the film from stink to pink.

Cameos abound. I noticed this trend in 9 and it continues in 10, I think largely because the loss of Statham and The Rock left a void they’re trying to desperately fill. Sometimes these cameos come in the form of the return of long lost characters who played minor roles in the films like, over ten years ago, and I supposed if we were true fans we’d remember them but we don’t. Helen Mirren, who played Jason Statham’s mother, stops by though if she hadn’t, you wouldn’t have missed it.

Other times, there are new characters played by famous celebrities, often playing relatives of characters once played by celebrities who apparently now want no part of this bloated behemoth. Remember Mr. Nobody? Kurt Russell’s fun spy who recruits the fast gang to work for the government? He’s been replaced by his daughter, Miss Nobody, played by Brie Larson.

Remember Dom’s Brazilian girlfriend Elena who died a few flicks back? She’s got a younger sister now, played by Daniella Melchior. I’ll give the film some credit in that Daniella looks like she could be related to Elena while Brie doesn’t look like she could be related to Kurt Russell.

BTW, in case you forgot Elena, Dom longingly glares at a photo of her on the wall, a photo that looks like it is a publicity shot of Elena in full police gear taken to promo one of the past movies. Dom misses Paul Walker too and has several similar, well-produced publicity style photos of Paul hanging around his shop. I miss Paul Walker too, one of many reasons being that if he were alive, I doubt he would have allowed this franchise to become so stinky.

Rita Moreno, really for no reason, stops by one of those oft parodied “It’s all about family” barbecues as a long lost Toretto auntie, to give the gang a pep talk. Like several other cameo characters, if you’d gone to the bathroom during her scene, you wouldn’t have missed.

Really, from what I gather, Universal must have decided to go with a strategy where they skimped on the writers and just hired a bunch of famous folk to stop by and have unnecessary chats with Dom every five minutes.

There are two other tropes abundant in this flick that I didn’t care for:

#1 – Like that crappy Matrix sequel that everyone hated, this film is kind of meta and refers to itself and past sequels often, doing highlight reels of past films. Done well, flashbacks are fine but there’s a lot of them such that the movie becomes a promo for itself.

#2 – The gang splits up and goes on a lot of side-quests. Perhaps you noticed the fan backlash for the recent season 3 of the Mandalorian, where there is an incoherent plot, where either Mando or friends of Mando go on side-quests all eventually leading up to a weak story line. (Think of a video game where the end goal is to defeat a villain, but first you must go on a mission to find a weapon to defeat the villain, then you must go on another side quest to find a friend who will help you defeat the villain and so on.)

Here, the Fast gang goes on a number of side-quests. Letty and Cypher get whisked away to Antarctica, prisoners of Nobody’s elusive “agency.” Ramsey, Roman, Tej and Han go to London on a mission to buy gear the gang needs. John Cena’s Uncle Jake goes on a superfluous road trip with “Little B,” Dom’s son named after Brian. Ultimately, if you’re a cynic, you begin to wonder if the point of all these side missions isn’t just a ploy to make production easier and cheaper in that the cast can come to set for less time in smaller numbers and no one is paying for, say, Dwayne the Rock Johnson to hang out on set all day for weeks at a time.

I feared that streaming would turn movies cheap and sucky and my fears are coming true.

Was Statham in this? Yes, for absolutely no reason and for all of five minutes, despite what the trailers show. Spoiler alert: the Rock is in it too for a quick post credits scene. Big cameos. Big stars stop by quickly. It looks like the studio can’t come up with a script good enough to spend the money needed for big celebs to come to the set and be involved for more than five minutes.

STATUS: Borderline shelf-worthy, but it goes way, way back on the shelf so I won’t be embarrassed by it, and it only gets a spot on the shelf due to Mamoa’s fun performance. This film is billed as the first of a franchise concluding trio and it ends on a cliffhanger which frankly felt less like a cliffhanger and more like the chimps on typewriters they hired to be writers decided the movie got too long and it needs to be over now so we’ll end it here and pick it up in the next trainwreck.

I say this with love because I loved films 5-8. This can get better if they really put the effort in. Or then again, maybe it can’t. Movies are made by and geared toward the young and this generation doesn’t care for machismo or fast cars or scantily clad women unless it’s the dudes dressing like scantily clad women, so the glory days of the Fast and Furious franchise may be over.

But if they rub some brain cells together, I think they could come up with some great scripts and even they can’t get big stars like the Rock or Statham to be in it for more than five minutes, then they could go in a new direction with entirely new characters, that’s fine but they have to bring the story. I know the past stories were ridiculous too, but they were still better stories.

One more sidenote – the franchise may be suffering from the fact that the car stunts have become played out. We’ve seen cars jump out of planes. We’ve seen cars ransack big cities. We’ve seen cars flip around on cables. We’ve seen cars heist big things of value and cars narrowly jump across great divides. We’ve even seen cars fly into outer space. Is there something new for the cars to do? I don’t know but come on Hollywood, you can think of something.

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May 27 2023
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Movies

Movie Review – About My Father (2023)

Italians marrying WASPS?!

How utterly controversial…had this movie been released in 1953.

BQB here with a review of this silly rom com flick.

Let me say this at the outset. I had no intention of seeing this movie. I’m sure I would have eventually caught it on streaming, but to actually go see it in the theater? No. I went to my local multi-plex last night in the hopes of seeing Fast X only to find it was sold out. Figuring I’m there so WTF, I bought a ticket to this delightful semi-trainwreck and before I poop all over it, I’ll say that I bought one of the last tickets before it too was sold out, so hey, Old Seabass must have down something right.

In the 1990s, at the height of Jerry Seinfeld’s fame, Jerry most likely could have gotten any studio to greenlight any flick he wanted. Ah, but Jerry knew himself. He knew he was no leading man or great thespian. His talent lied in stand-up comedy and his sitcom was but a mere vehicle for his observational humor. The characters never grew. They never changed. They never got better. There was never a very special episode. It was just a series of situations highlighting the ironic stupidity of life. So popular was the show that NBC famously offered Jerry millions for a season 10 but at that point, even Jerry knew the show was getting over the hill and it was time to move on.

I’m not sure Sebastian Manisculco has gotten that memo. (Then again, as great as a standup comic Sebastian is, I’m not sure he’ll ever reach Seinfeld heights, so I can’t blame him for cashing in on this flick.)

As a comic, Sebastian nails his routines and is riotously funny. As an actor? Let’s just say that while there might be an unproduced script out there somewhere that would launch Sebastian into the stratosphere as an actor, he hasn’t found it yet, and I have doubts as to whether this movie is it. Note that I say I have doubts. To me, it felt like a glorified Hallmark Channel movie, with just enough sass that your grandma might think it is edgy. Frankly, it reminded me a lot of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, another movie where a WASP falls in love with someone from Greece, Italy’s Mediterranean neighbor, and there’s a a culture clash to overcome as the extended family gets involved. MBFGW was the surprise hit of the early 2000s, and I’ll admit I observed a packed theater laughing at his schtick, so you never know.

But if you forced me to bet, I’d bet not.

The plot? Middle-aged Sebastian falls in love with Ellie Collins (Leslie Bibb with a different haircut that made me not recognize her until the credits rolled.) We know they are in love not because we see the romance blossom, but because Sebastian narrates this and practically every other plot point of the film. There is a whole lot of narration, such that you wonder if Seabass will start narrating his bowel movements any minute now.

Sebastian plays a semi-fictional version of himself. I assume he brought a lot of bits from his personal life to this movie. He too is the son of a hard working Italian-American family and married an artist, like Ellie. How much of the film mirrors his real life and how much is made up to be funny I don’t know. I’m not a Manisculco historian.

The great Robert DeNiro plays the film version of Sebastian’s father, Salvo, a hard-working self made man who immigrated to America 50 years ago, got married, had a son and built a career as a popular hair stylist in Chicago. Salvo has no trace of an Italian accent, but that’s ok. We’ll let that slide because Robby D faking one would suck.

Reminiscent of his role in Meet the Parents, DeNiro keeps the movie afloat with his no-nonsense style. He tags along with his son on a Fourth of July weekend to the Collins family’s Virginia estate, one of many as they are heirs to a vast hotel empire. He does so as a condition of turning over his late wife’s engagement ring, agreeing to turn it over to Sebastian so he can use it to propose to Ellie if he approves the family.

The culture clash ensues. The Collins live an extravagant lifestyle. Mom (Kim Cattrall) is a Senator and if there is one good thing to come out of this movie, it might be a Kim Cattrall comeback in that she’s so fabulous as Ellie’s tough talking mother that you wonder why Hollywood hasn’t utilized her more in recent years. Then again, she was at the height of her fame in the 1980s and this film feels like it should have been made in the 80s.

Fans of Workaholics will be happy to Anders Holm as Ellie’s frat boy dufus older brother, who plays the part of a dum-dum born on home plate yet acts as though he personally hit the home run well. Brett Dier plays Ellie’s clueless younger brother Doug, a dippy hippy who loves kombucha, bowl music and socialism. David Rasche rounds out the cast as the father of the henpecked father of the family.

You know, I could go on. The film has some fun moments but nothing that made me laugh out loud. There’s no great conflict to overcome. Similar culture clash rom coms usually have one family member who takes an “over my dead body” stance when it comes to accepting a relative’s significant other, but that never happens here. The Collins are built up as this obscenely stuck-up rich family, but then they pretty much accept Sebastian, warts and all. Salvo has a clear disdain for all the excess but ultimately comes to like his new in-laws and the only real controversy comes from him being an old widower afraid his only son will move away with his new wife and never see him again.

STATUS: Moderately shelf-worthy, but I wouldn’t bother seeing it in theater. I did it so you don’t have to. It’ll be worth a watch when it comes to streaming, but it’s one of those movies where you could do your laundry while its on and still get the gist.

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May 24 2023
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Movies

Movie Review – White Men Can’t Jump (2023)

I can’t jump but it’s not because I’m white. It’s because I like pizza too much.

BQB here with a review of the Hulu remake of the 1990s comedy classic.

I have never seen 1992’s White Men Can’t Jump. I have no idea why. It’s just one of several movies I never saw and I never think of it when I’m scrolling through the various streaming services, unable to find anything appealing.

And therein lies the rub. The reviews are in and the critics agree this flick is a pale imitation of its original predecessor. I on the other hand, liked it but maybe I wouldn’t had I seen the Woody Harrelson/Wesley Snipes original.

Jack Harlow (who is apparently, a rapper and I only know this because I’m so old now that I learn of the existence of new celebrities when I see them for the first time hosting SNL instead of the past, when I was hip and knew who they were years before Lorne Michaels noticed them) and Sinqua Walls play the odd couple duo of Jeremy and Kamal, two young men who in many ways, could not be more different, yet they bond and become fast friends over their shared love of basketball.

Both were once stars whose careers were tragically cut short. Kamal was a high school all-star on the way to the NBA when a lost temper incident with an unruly fan cost him everything. Jeremy was a college player on the way to the NBA when an injury blew his knee out.

Now they’re in their late 20s, far from being washed up in most respects, though when it comes to sports, they’re circling the drain. Kamal has long accepted he’ll never play with the greats, but is rife with bitterness as he works a menial job and lives in poverty, depressed over what he lost.

Meanwhile Jeremy is cluelessly optimistic, popping all manner of dangerous pills in the unlikely hope of curing his knee and getting back to the game before its too late.

Both in need of dough, they team up and start hustling in street games for money, winning bigger and better bets, all in the hopes of winning the entry fee to a big neighborhood tournament with a hefty grand prize, not to mention public exposure that could turn their hoop dreams into reality.

I know very little about sports, so a lot of the technical details about b-ball went over my head. I have, late in life, become a health food junkie in the past 6 months, so I recognized a little bit of myself in Jeremy as he runs around preaching the benefits of veggies and turmeric. (Yes, he admits he is a walking contradiction as he pops pills but is also a vegetarian.)

You know what I liked most about this film? It was woke without being preachy. Two dudes who come from very different backgrounds who can’t stand each other at first but they grow closer over a shared dream and a shared love of something. Most streaming films these days (I’m looking at you, Netflix) feel a need to spoon feed the woke message to the viewer.

Here, it’s self explanatory. Jeremy helps Kamal make his comeback with yoga, meditation and green drinks while Kamal helps Jeremy navigate a whole new world of street ball, trash talking and not saying the wrong thing that will get his butt kicked.

In short, we’re all more alike than we are different. If we share a love of something, we’re even more alike and if we listen to each other, we can learn from each other. We have all experienced different things in life and we have a lot to teach each other.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy, but I really need to watch the original now. P.S. – all the bright colors of the court in the final scene really pop on an HDTV.

Double PS: This is, I believe, the last film starring the late, great Lance Reddick who passed too soon in March. Lance stars as Kamal’s dying father Benji, who Kamal feels he has terribly disappointed, despite Benji’s best efforts to convince Kamal this is not the case.

SPOILER ALERT: It’s eerie that in the last two films Lance starred in, his characters die. His character, Charon the Concierge, dies unexpectedly in the recently released John Wick 4. I always liked him in the Wire. RIP Lance.

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May 24 2023
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Movie Review – The Super Mario Brothers Movie (2023)

It’s a me! Mario!

BQB here with a review.

It’s no easy task to make a movie based on 40 year old IP that will please both the middle aged adults who loved the brand as kids as well as today’s kids who have completely different childhoods than their parents, but darned if the geniuses at Nintendo and Illumination didn’t come together to find a way in one heck of a picture.

Truth be told, Mario’s adventures in the Mushroom Kingdom have been low hanging fruit, just dying to be turned into a good movie for decades, but Hollywood execs could never figure it out. There was a live action abomination in the 90s starring the late greats Dennis Hopper and Bob Hoskins as well as still alive John Leguizamo, but it had little to do with the subject matter.

That’s where I take my hat off to the producers here. Sometimes you have source material that is timeless and if you stick with it, albeit it with a few modern upgrades, it will stand the test of time for today’s kids as well as tomorrow’s kids.

The plot? Mario and Luigi (Chris Pratt and Charlie Day) live in a cramped Brooklyn apartment with their extended family. They just left a plumbing company run by frenemy Spike (Sebastian Manisculco) to start their own business, subjecting them to mockery from a fam that doesn’t believe in them.

Whilst on a job, the bros get sucked down a pipe into the Mushroom Kingdom and are separated. From there, it’s up to Mario to team up with Princess Peach (Anya Taylor Joy) and Toad (Keegan Michael Key) to rescue Luigi from Bowser, who does a few vocal performances in this one because he’s voiced by Jack Black. Oh and of course, they’ll need to convince Donkey Kong (Seth Rogen) to lend his furry muscles to the rescue mission.

That’s pretty much it. The film does not even try to explain anything about how the world works, why there are pipes that lead from earth to the Mushroom Kingdom, why there are all these boxes that give you special powers and so on. Many video game movies fail when they get bogged down in long explanations of why nonsensical things exist when ultimately the answer is because they’re fun when you see them in video game form.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. Illumination is really kicking Disney’s butt as of late.

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May 21 2023
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Movie Review – Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 (2023)

Genetic experiments most foul dominate the latest adventure for the galaxy’s favorite collection of super schmucks.

BQB here with a review.

My initial observation: it’s not their best, but it’s still worth the price of admission.

Why?

Well, the GotG movies have always depended on humor but quite understandably, the plot leaves our heroes rather sullen and depressed. This is Rocket Racoon’s (Bradley Cooper) movie, but he’s far from the lovable trash talking, wisecracking comedy fodder who carries the previous films. An attack orchestrated by the evil High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji) takes Rocket out of commission, though through a series of flasohbacks, we learn how Rocket began his life as a hyper intelligent experiment, one in which the HE has taken animals and tinkered with their DNA to give them human traits like speech and higher intelligence. Much to the evildoer’s dismay, Rocket is smarter than his creator, his brain holds the key to making the experiments work, and the Evolutionary has been hunting Rocket for years ever since his escape.

It’s up to the Guardians to save their furry little buddy’s life but if you expect them to fill in with the funny…eh, I mean they do here and there but it’s nothing compared to previous films. Starlord/Quill (Chris Pratt) is depressed, having turned to alcoholism to dampen the loss of his GF Gamora (Zoe Saldana) who died in one of the previous films. There’s an alternate reality version of Gamora in this one because multi-verse theory has ushered in a new era of deaths in Marvel movies having little to no consequences, except the main consequence is this Gamora has no idea who Quill is and has no interest in dating him, which makes Quill sad and not the comedian we’re used to. Without his furry sidekick to bounce jokes off of, it’s like watching an uber depressing Daron Aronofsky movie with occasional quips and a space theme.

Don’t get me wrong. The special effects are there and then some, all best seen on the big screen. And while it lacks the joke a minute pace of previous films, there are still a few big laughs. The overall look of the film is a bit gross as many of the High Evolutionary’s genetic experiments will make you want to puke, thus bringing an overall message against tinkering with nature.

My main complaint: swearing. An f bomb is dropped an someone’s called an asshole. I will admit that sometimes it is possible to craft jokes that depend on swears that are so funny that the swearing can be forgiven but the problems are a) this is a Disney movie and b) it’s primary audience is children so…though I laughed (the only laughs of the movie) I still thought it was a bit much.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. You might want to watch the Guardians Holiday Special before you watch this as it sets a lot of stuff up. The plot gave us a lot of character development and the lack of laughs is understandable, but I hope they remember their comedic routes in the next one.

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Apr 10 2023
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review – John Wick 4 (2023)

Thrills, chills and kills!

BQB here with a review of the latest John Wick installment.

How do I review a movie that seems more like a thrill ride than a film?

The first John Wick was a breakout success because it was so dang original. A seemingly mild mannered man’s wife dies and the death of the pooch she left behind drives him so mad that he comes out of retirement as an assassin and returns down the rabbit hole of an underground secret, global society of hitmen that operate underneath our noses?

Sign me up.

But with each installment, the franchise became less about the story and more about the fight scenes. The sequels are, by and large, just very long, well choreographed fight scenes. There’s always some premise about how Wick has cheesed off the hitmen society so all the hitmen want to kill him because of the high price on his hitman head.

From a writing standpoint, it’s novel. Superfluous backstory is unnecessary because Wick’s reputation precedes himself, so new characters can always be introduced as either an old comrade or an old villain. In this film, both are played by Donnie Yen, a blind man forced to fight his old friend to save his daughter. Donnie Yen has done the blind fighter routine before in Star Wars: Rogue One, but he does it well again here. Sidenote: If you haven’t seen him in the Ip Man flicks, Netflix them ASAP. If movies with subtitles aren’t your bag, at least YouTube the scene where Donnie fights Mike Tyson.

Overall, the movie satisfies the desire for fight scenes and mayhem. The story kind of got lost after the first film and its really just about the fights at this point.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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Feb 26 2023
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Movie Review – The Greatest Beer Run Ever (2022)

War! Spies! Beer!

BQB here with a review of The Greatest Beer Run Ever.

I’ve got streaming services, 3.5 readers. I’ve got streaming services out the wazoo. No, seriously. Check my wazoo and you’ll see nothing but services streaming out of it.

Apple TV is one of those streaming services and for the most part, I wonder why I bothered to sign up for it in the first place, though occasionally, I find a rare gem like this flick that makes the expense worthwhile.

The premise? It’s the 1960s and merchant marine John “Chickie” Donahue is a wayward bum. Yes, he does work on commercial shipping vessels, but then does nothing but sleep and drink all day during the months between voyages. He and his father disagree on this. Dad calls it sloth. Chickie calls it his downtime, like a professor’s sabbatical.

The Vietnam War is in full swing and every day, there’s news of one of Chickie’s high school friends who died in action. Upset by protesters (his sister is one of them) and negative news coverage, Chickie and his fellow barflies at a dive run by an old WW2 colonel simply called “The Colonel,” (an almost unrecognizable Bill Murray in terms of haircut, voice and demeanor), lament over booze that US soldiers aren’t getting enough support. Press and protesters suck, in their point of view, and while people are lining up to criticize America’s fighting men, no one is doing anything to thank them.

And so, a scheme developed in the mind of a bunch of boozehounds is hatched. The Colonel donates a giant gym bag full of brewskis that Chickie will take to Vietnam, where he will then seek out every one of his enlisted high school classmates and give them a beer and a thank you.

At first, it sounds ridiculous. But then when you realize Chickie has access to commercial shipping vessels, it sounds less ridiculous. Chickie takes a job aboard a cargo ship hauling ammo for the military and for a brief moment you wonder if he can pull it off only to realize there’s an enormous difference between bringing supplies to a port controlled by the US Military and a civilian traipsing around a war zone.

Personally, I wondered why Chickie just didn’t pop the gym bag full of brews down on an ammo crate, shake the hand of one of the soldiers who came to pick it up and tell him to pass the beer out to as many boys as he could. But when it comes to beer, Chickie does nothing half-assed.

I won’t spoil the rest other than to say from thereon, Chickie goes on a whirlwind adventure as a civilian traipsing around wartorn Vietnam. Attacking Vietcong, shady CIA spies, and US military appalled by how stupid anyone could be to come here if they don’t have to are among the many threats that Chickie has to contend with.

At times, the movie feels silly and one wonders how much of it is real and how much of it is embellished for film. Chickie survives by the skin of his teeth through a series of lucky breaks, miracles and misunderstandings (many soldiers help him move around under the false assumption that Chicky and his truthful story of being on a beer run is just a wink, wink, nudge, nudge cover story because the truth, that some idiot from New York thought it would be a good idea to run around a war ravaged country handing out beers, is too unbelievable.

Bonus points for the movie bringing home some serious points about war. On one hand, as the Colonel points out, television has ruined America’s chances of ever winning a war again, for, as he argues, if America had received daily live reports showing the carnage of the Battle of the Bulge, Americans would have demanded an immediate end to WW2 and the Nazis would reign supreme all over the globe today.

On the other hand, Chickie, aided by a warzone correspondent played by Russell Crowe, comes to learn that press and protestors have valid concerns about the war, that there’s no way to win it so to continue to let US soldiers die in a hopeless quagmire is wrong and those who make this argument aren’t trying to hurt the soldiers but rather help them.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. A great performance by Zac Efron as Chickie. There is a book this movie is based on but I haven’t read it yet. I would be curious to know how much of the film is real and what was fictional just to make the movie watchable. If it is all real, then Chickie must have had a guardian angel watching over him during his epic beer run.

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Feb 20 2023
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Movie Review: Antman and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)

Ants! Wasps! Tiny tomfoolery!

BQB here with a review of Marvel’s latest joint.

The good news is that this flick is a special effects extravaganza, a veritable CGI fest for the senses.

The bad news is that only works if you like that sort of thing. Otherwise, it’s a giant, expensive, computer-generated cartoon with people spliced into it. Roger Rabbit on acid, if you prefer.

The plot? The titular Ant-Man aka Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is finally in a good place in life. His ex-con days are behind him. He’s gotten over trauma incurred from past adventures. He’s living his best life with his family, including daughter Cassie (now a teenager) (Kathryn Newton), girlfriend Hope aka the Wasp (Evangeline Lilly), and in-laws Hank (Michael Douglas) and Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer).

Alas, things go awry when budding young scientist Cassie accidentally opens a door to the uber mysterious and creepy Quantum Realm, a world so tiny that it exists right under our proverbial noses but it is so inexplicably tiny that we can’t see it. Can you imagine that? Sub-atomic beings living in a society so small that it is invisible to the naked eye. And yes, opening doors to alternate realms is something that teenage scientists can totally do in the Marvel-verse, so shut up.

Ah, but the Lang/Pym/VanDyne family have mastered the art of shrinking and enlarging themselves, thus simply by shrinking they are able to navigate this treacherous world.

It’s all a matter of perspective. :::pa rum pum pum:::

Upon arrival to the Quantum Realm, the LPVs (boy what a modern blended family with so many different surnames), are tasked with the missions of finding each other, finding a way out and most importantly, defeating Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors), a villain who has, as his name suggests, conquered the Quantum Realm, ruling over its inhabitants with an iron fist and bending their will to his dictatorial reign. Oppressed inhabitants are a hodgepodge of humans and wacky creatures. If Kang escapes, he will wreak havoc across the multiverse.

Some random thoughts:

#1 – We first saw Kang the Conqueror in Disney’s Loki and TBH, I felt that series was so confusing that its good parts were lost on me. Here, things start to make sense. Majors nails the role and is shaping up to be the most formidable villain since Thanos.

#2 – The MODOK (Mechanized Organism Designed Only for Killing) character is stupid and an example of something that might work in a comic book but just looks very dumb on the big screen. To the film’s credit, the characters opine on how dumb it is early and often. I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better to have just left it out, though that might have enraged true comic book nerds.

#3 – Fun as the CGI adventure is, one of the coolest parts of the Ant-Man series is Ant-Man and company using their shrinking/growing tech to make random objects big or small. In past films, they have carried around a shrunken building on wheels with a suit-case like handle, kept a tank on a keychain just in case they need to make it big and use it against baddies and who could forget the scene where a Hello Kitty Pez dispenser is lobbed at villains during a car chase and grown to a crushing size?

To be fair, there is a lot of growing and shrinking and you need to take a minute to wrap your head around it. The fam were human sized in human world. They shrunk to visit tiny world. In tiny world, everything and everyone is tiny such that everything (because of perspective) seems normal sized. Ergo Ant-Man can shrink or grow and it still looks like he is getting smaller or enormous (even though enormous Ant Man in tiny world would be tiny subatomic not even as big as bacteria to us.)

#4 – It was nice to see everyone come together as a family in this film. We have seen the various characters work together but they really are a fun, fighting family unit in this film.

#5 – I might be the millionth person to offer an opinion on this but I’m not a fan of Evangeline Lilly’s haircut. Actually, I take that back. In one of the Ant-Man promos she was rocking a weird, short yet curly, almost hobbit-like do that should have gotten her hairdresser fired for malpractice, even if Lilly asked for it. There are just some cuts that should be straight up verboten. Here in the movie the short look is fine and I get it. She’s a scientist and a superhero and doesn’t have time to style and blow-dry a long do.

#6 – Has Michelle Pfeiffer made a deal with the devil to look more or less like she looked when she was early 90s Catwoman? Some aging actresses try to fight Father Time with plastic surgery but I don’t see any traces of that here. I don’t know if it’s good genes, a healthy lifestyle or what have you but dayum girl.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. It’s funny how sometimes the most unlikely and humorous characters can carry a series during its downtimes. With Marvel, we come for Captain America and Iron Man and the main Avengers but sometimes the lesser knowns like Ant-Man can be developed into a franchise of their own. I mean, Ant-Man did come up with the solution to save the day in the last Avengers film, after all. Similarly, many of the DC films have been crap, yet Shazam! always seems to leave audiences happy.

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Feb 18 2023
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Movies

Movie Review – A Futile and Stupid Gesture (2018)

You’ll laugh! You’ll cry!

BQB here with a review of Netflix’s A Futile and Stupid Gesture.

Brace yourself, noble reader.

What if I were to tell you that the man most responsible for the modern state of comedy is a man you most likely have never heard of?

Heck, I’m a comedy lover from way back and I had never heard of the late, great Doug Kenney. As a 1980s kid, I had a vague notion that National Lampoon was a company that made funny movies like Chevy Chase’s Vacation series but until I saw this film I had very little knowledge about how National Lampoon really started it all.

It’s the tale of Doug (Will Forte, perhaps in a role he was born to play) and Henry Beard (Domhnall Gleeson), two 1960s Harvard buddies who had a lot of fun when they were writers/editors for the Harvard Lampoon, Harvard University’s long-running comedy magazine.

When graduation threatens to tear the dynamic duo apart, wacky Doug talks straightlaced Henry into ditching law school (he has been accepted at several top schools) to run to New York to start a comedy magazine, “The National Lampoon” (done by leasing the name rights from Harvard.)

Numerous publishers tell the duo to eat dirt and/or pound sand but all it took was one yes and away they went. After struggling to get the publication off the ground, soon anyone interested in comedy is knocking on their door and their office becomes a veritable who’s who of the 1970s comedy scene, with pretty much every big name you can think of from that era getting their start in those hallowed halls.

Bill Murray. Chevy Chase. Gilda Radner. John Belushi. Christopher Guest. PJ O’Rourke. Harold Ramis. Anne Beatts. Michael O’Donaghue. The list goes on and on, many you have heard of, others you might not have but who were instrumental behind the comedic scenes. All got their start, not at Saturday Night Live as you (and even I) always thought but at National Lampoon.

Doug and Henry become big time successful dudes. While Henry maintains a level-head and handles the business side of things (sadly might be why you might not have heard of him until this movie and don’t worry I hadn’t either), Doug cracks under the pressure. All the deadlines, the demands from the publishing company, having to deal with the talent, working on a magazine and a radio show plus the need to continuously top his last project (always be funnier than your last project or else you lose fans) lead to Doug becoming an emotional wreck.

Alas, Doug falls victim to the twin vices of cocaine and women. He indulges in the white powder liberally, stuffing enough up his nose to kill a horse throughout the film. Though lucky to have a wonderful wife, Alex, he can’t control himself around women. Technically, most men can’t but most men never get the temptation. A comedy all star raking in the dough on the other hand? Too many babes to count. He loses his wife through cheating. He finds a loving girlfriend and just when you think he might have learned the error of his ways, alas, more cheating.

While Doug’s personal life is a wreck, his comedy success is non-stop. Becoming a millionaire from writing jokes would satisfy most people, but Doug is understandably irked when legendary comedy producer Lorne Michaels hires away all of his talent – his writers, his actors, pretty much everyone, to staff a new show you might have heard of, Saturday Night Live, Doug is bummed. To be fair, the movie claims that NBC pitched the idea of a National Lampoon comedy TV show to Doug’s publisher first and said publisher turned it down without Doug’s knowledge.

At any rate, Doug is forlorn from missing out his own opportunity to create TV gold and worse, that someone else spun gold from his yarn. While many would take their money and run at this point, Doug is motivated to go Hollywood and produces Animal House, what was at that time the highest grossing comedy movie ever made, ushering in a new era of raunchy comedy – all basically Doug’s revenge for SNL hiring his talent away.

I could go on but to do so would be a spoiler. Needless to say, the drugs wreck his brain. The loneliness of the cheating on and losing good women lifestyle takes its toll. Ultimately, he is his own worst enemy. While he has plenty to be proud of, he feels constant pressure to always top his last project. If his next project isn’t as funny, then he feels he has failed. Sadly, some family trauma from his youth comes into play, as he strives to be a success in the eyes of his parents but feels he can never please them.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy and I’m surprised it has taken me this long to see it. The film is mostly an homage to Kenny, but also a love letter from today’s comedians to the 1970s heavy hitters who started it all. Various comedic actors play those 1970s legends but to be honest, the film doesn’t really go out of its way to hire actors who look like those legends or at least try to make them up so they look like them. The film makes fun of this and of itself often. The story of an underdog who took a very unlikely project, turned it into a multi-million dollar empire, become filthy rich before he hit 30, got screwed by a greedy corporation only to come out on top with a hit movie of his own, all while dealing with drug and sex addiction…this is the stuff that Oscar films are made of and while the cast does great, I can’t help but think that if Netflix had invested a bit more money into this, they might have won some gold statues and been able to give Doug more of the recognition he deserved.

BONUS POINTS: Doug also made Caddyshack, which he thought was a lackluster sell-out movie, which is sad because I always thought it was very funny. Joel McHale, who starred alongside Chevy Chase in Community, does a decent Chevy Chase impression, though none of the actors really go out of their way to mimic their alter egos and you just have to pay attention to when the movie says who they are.

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Jan 30 2023
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Movies

Movie Review – You People (2023)

Meh, it’s ok.

But honestly, when I first heard about it, I wanted to love it, given the cast of famously funny people, but I’ll give it a solid C. Not a total waste of time but not something I’d rush to watch again either.

Let’s get to the review.

In a modern re-telling of Sidney Poitier’s classic film “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” Jonah Hill plays Ezra, a stockbroker who hates his job and yearns to podcast full time with his buddy Mo (Sam Jay.) An Uber mishap brings him together with Amira (Lauren London) and the duo fall in love.

Six months later, the kids are ready to get married but alas, they have to navigate the waters filled with their wacky in-laws. Sounds like a typical rom-com in which the protagonist couple is getting married.

Eh, but then the waters get choppy. Julia Louis Dreyfus, she of Elaine on Seinfeld fame, plays Ezra’s mother as a walking, talking, living parody of liberal white guilt, constantly showing off her perspective African American daughter in law to friends and family as though she has won a “See?! My Black Daughter in Law is Total Proof that I’m Not Racist!” trophy. Ezra’s Dad, played by David Duchovny, he of X-Files fame, attempts politeness only to drone on and on in his first meeting with Amara about what a fan he has always been of the rapper Xzibit, culminating in him cluelessly asking if she has ever met him.

Meanwhile, Amara’s parents, Akbar and Fatima (Eddie Murphy and Nia Long) are devout Muslims and no fans of Ezra. They are, however, huge fans of Louis Farrakhan, culminating in a clash with Julia over Farrakhan’s controversial remarks about the Jewish people. I think this scene was intended to be funny but it is a bit cringe, IMO. Akbar later invites Ezra on a series of escapades designed to trip him up and prove his lack of worth as a future husband and son-in-law.

The shenanigans culminate in the happy couple splitting up, deciding that their cultural differences are too great to get around. Somehow, it’s up to Julia and Eddie to come together and find a wake to fix what they broke with their parental meddling and make their kids happy again.

On one hand, there are some good messages. The first is a tale as old as time in many a flick, namely, that at some point in your adult life, if you’re ever going to become an adult yourself, you have to tell your meddling parents to stick a cork in it and back off. This could have been a chance for the film to show how despite our cultural differences, parents trying to run their kids’ lives well into the kids’ adulthood often occurs. Parents of all different backgrounds love their kids, think they know what the right path is for their kids, but don’t always understand what their kids are going through, what their kids want, that sometimes they just need to chill out and if they are right and the kid is indeed making a mistake, then the kid needs to fall flat on their face and pick him/herself up and learn the lesson on their own. Then again, maybe what they are doing is the right move for them even if it isn’t what makes the parent happy.

On the other hand, the film takes the Netflixian hype woke approach of demanding that everyone be constantly, and I mean CONSTANTLY aware of racial differences at every turn. And look, I’m not saying that such awareness is a bad thing. It’s a good thing but holy smokes, I spent the whole film waiting for the part where the Ezra’s and Amari’s fams figure out that they’re more alike than they are different, that they all just want the best for their kids, that the more time they spend together, the more they’ll start to trust and respect one another.

Maybe I just didn’t get it but the film almost comes across as arguing that interracial marriage sets up such a difficult minefield – that the black half of the couple must keep their head on a swivel, constantly on the lookout for oppression from their white love interest, and said white half of the couple must constantly walk on eggshells, as any comment, any mistake, any foot in mouth moment will be taken as a horrendous offense, as if black people aren’t able to tell the difference between true racism and someone who said something boneheaded but they still love them.

In other words, it almost comes across as saying that interracial marriages are too much work, too filled with hostility, destined to fail because neither side could ever possibly understand the other. Honestly, I can’t say I understand that because I’ve never been in a racial marriage but of all the interracial couples I know, I don’t get the impression that they spend all day tip toing around with their words, making sure the other understands that their words and actions should not be misconstrued as racial offenses. They just seem to love, respect and get each other, as all healthy, happy couples do.

SIDENOTE: Eddie Murphy, one of the GOATS of comedy, in a role where he barely cracks a smile and is given nary a funny line. Julia Louis Dreyfus, one of the greatest sitcom funny ladies of the 1990s also in an unfunny role. Jonah Hill, one of the funnier actors in modern times…so many funny people in a movie that’s about as funny as watching paint dry.

STATUS: Borderline shelf-worthy. To be fair, there are a few good one liners. Ironically, David Duchovny, the one actor in the cast known for having a dramatic, not funny resume, rattles off some of the flick’s best hits, at one point schooling Amari’s parents about how his wife is so not racist that she hated “Gone with the Wind” long before white people became aware that they were supposed to.

It had the potential to be good but all in all, I don’t get the idea of a streaming service that casts practically every couple in their movies and TV shows as interracial making a movie that paints interracial marriage as an arduous chore such that both parties must spend every waking moment worrying about how their actions might be misinterpreted by the other, how they might accidentally offend the other, how it’s all too difficult to bother with…eh…I just…it had the potential to be moving and funny but I have to agree with the majority of critics who call this flick too heavy handed. It took a jump but just didn’t quite land the dismount.

Still worth a watch but not something I’d watch again and again. We live in America folks. Love is love and life is short and in a country where people of so many different races, religions, ethnicities, backgrounds all live so close to one another, interracial, inter-religious, inter-this or that marriage happens all the time. It’s not a bad thing and it shouldn’t be seen as an arduous chore.

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