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The Last Stop in Yuma County (2023)
Only Stopping in to Give an 8
No in depth review.
If you like a snappy crime thriller, see this movie.
It's like Reservoir Dogs, mostly in that you wish there were more of it.
Like RD, it's so tasty, yet so brief, that you're left longing for more footage.
Oh no. I'm only at half my character count.
Remember Mr. Blonde? What's up with him? Give us a few more minutes with Mr. Blonde. Oh wait--he's dead?
What happened to Mr. Blue?
Why can't I have more of these guys?
That's what Yuma is like.
Dismiss any review that calls it slow.
The setup is meticulous and the payoff is brutal.
As the credits roll, for once, in an ocean of overlong movies, you'll be wishing Yuma had been bloated.
It isn't. It's trimmed so lean that you'll almost feel like you didn't get a full serving.
That's a compliment.
I gave the film 8/10 instead of 10/10. I deducted 2 points because I have a problem with the bathroom arrangement.
Send people out and around to the motel? What? Does Yelp not exist in 1974?
Unfrosted (2024)
It's a Film about Nothing...
I knew Unfrosted would be a complete waste of my time before I even hit the Play button. I was okay with it. I was laying on my heating pad, and I had a full cup of coffee before me, and two packs of cigarettes. I was completely prepared to be non-thrilled. (Especially considering my personal pancreatic cancer, named Amy Schumer, is in the cast list.)
My friend was over. They are a trans-person. They hated the film. Mostly, they reacted to my laughing at all the nonsense. They said things like, "You're actually enjoying this?"
I was. And, maybe, I will again
Unfrosted is ludicrous, and it's garbage. Two characters combine Sea Monkeys with ravioli and accidentally create sentient pasta. Another character dies in an extreme toater incident. Someone else makes stale jokes about Gus Grissom's horrible demise. And I thought, "This is basically layer-season Seinfeld!"
And it was. (And it is!)
Jerry recruits two dumpster-diving kids to help him brainstorm a new breakfast food. He befriends a cereal mascot who commits brand insurrection and then defecates in the hallway. Jerry becomes fascinated by Jack LaLanne's under-padding...
This film is ludicrous.
It is also utterly Seinfeldian, and plays like three or four episodes lazily strung together..
Perfect.
Three thumbs up, out of four.
Watch this while you're bedridden. Wonderful. Expect nothing. Even better.
Fallout (2024)
Food For Junk-Thought
I don't play video games, so the trailer had me expecting an dystopian thriller with a satirical edge, perhaps along the lines of Robocop. And the sheer number of 10/10 reviews, right here, calling it "phenomenal," "clever", "mind-blowing," etc., sure had me stoked...
I was not expecting slapstick.
Be warned: Fallout is the "Dumb & Dumber" of apocalyptic series. In fact, that's far too kind. Fallout is the "Dumb & Dumber To" of apocalyptic series. It is all gags, relentlessly, and about 1 in 9 land.
The characters use bottle-caps for currency, love Jell-o cake, enjoy having their codpieces polished, and sometimes have great-uncles who are amphibians.
"Clever," remember.
The attempts at satire are so nonstop, the jokes so never-ending, that it makes Rick & Morty feels like a drama. I'm not being hyperbolic. Episode 1 of Fallout starts out like a thriller with layers of dark comedy, but "thriller" and "dark" are dropped entirely by Episode Two. It's just zany, goofy low-stakes gore and potty humor after that.
"You had your finger hacked off?" Asks a crazed robot-doctor. "There! I've given you a brand new finger! Now I'm going to harvest your organs!" (That scene actually happens.)
I do enjoy idiotic TV, as much as the next guy... I just prefer to know what I'm buying into, ahead of time. This show is complete idiocy, by design, and that's fine... My review is only to warn you that this is nothing in the vein of, say, The Last Of Us or Silo. There is no drama, there is no darkness, and there are no thrills to be had.
Just jokes. One after the other. Infinitely.
On the technical side: A major fight between an Iron Man and a zombie gunslinger, in Episode Two, is filmed with the skill of Godzilla vs. Megalon. (By the lesser of the Nolan Brothers, apparently). If they were aiming for Monty Python, I guess they nailed it.
So, 4 stars, since this is probably intended for people who laugh at farts, and they're obviously thrilled about it.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
My Exit Text Review To My Son
Well, I saw Indy 5. Sigh. The set designs were great, for the most part, and the sound was amazing (at least in the theater I attended). Much of the cgi was fine, except in the 1945 prologue, with the de-aging and rubbery stunts. But then there's the plot, which is mediocre, and the execrable dialogue. I think I hated all the characters, including Indy himself. The film is 150 minutes, but that's not because more happens than in the other films--it's because every scene is twice as long as it needed to be. I think this is the first Indy film that joyfully kills off inconsequential innocents, which feels weird. And then, most egregiously, the first-act college lesson is explicitly related to the plot that will follow, by some magical coincidence. And, in the end, the whole movie was just a best-of collection of previous bits. Was this worse than Crystal Skull? Probably not. But it's hard to say it was better. It's a tie for last place, I think.
Addendum: It really belongs in the Goofs section, but this movie seems to be asking us to believe that the corpses of "100 Roman Soldiers" have been resting, intact, on the floor of the Adriatic (?) for 22 centuries.
Poker Face (2023)
Your Mom's Favorite New Show!
Poker Face is fine. It's exceedingly fine. Perfectly, awfully fine. Just passable enough to while away 50 minutes while you're waiting for some other show to begin. You won't have a terrible time, but neither will you feel like your time was well spent.
Natasha Lyonne is excellent. That's for certain. If nothing else, this pleasant/mediocre series allows her to crackle and shine. Perhaps she's the only reason I'm still watching, since a bland, generic lead would force the viewer to realize there's nothing else going on. That is to say, it's The Natasha Show, and without Natasha, there'd be no show.
It's an episodic murder-of-the-week show, just like CSI, but about 2 or 3 percent smarter... and presumably bookended by a "grander" narrative about Natasha's flight from the clutches of Vegas gangsters, one of whom is played by Benjamin Bratt. Ho hum.
Natasha has the super-hero ability to know immediately when someone is lying, which is an ability she used to employ while gambling, hence the show's title. Once she goes on the run from Benjamin Bratt, she decides to use her super-hero ability to solve murders across America.
Every week, Natasha ends up in a new town, and, every week, someone Natasha meets gets murdered. Perhaps it's a BBQ chef in Texas, or a shoeless drummer in Wisconsin, or a homeless busker in Florida... Natasha will use her super-hero ability of detecting any lie to nail their killer. While fleeing from Benjamin Bratt.
The show's biggest problem is that it's script machinations are painfully convenient, for heroes and villains alike. One fellow scratches one Lotto ticket every night, and then he scratches a $25K winner while hanging out with the villain, and yada yada... Natasha is able to solve the case by backtracking through serial numbers. (And then Cliff, from TV's Cheers, magically repairs her sabotaged brake line in less than one minute. Don't ask.)
None of it is smart. It's not clever. And, if it weren't presented with a comedic tone, it wouldn't even be tolerable.
Stephen King has praised this show.
Remember, he wrote Tommyknockers and Under The Dome, and also heaped drooling praise upon the Dark Tower film, so I'm not sure ol' Steve can be trusted.
Poker Face is lite fare, and mostly harmless. I'm hoping there's an episode where Natasha suffers an existential breakdown based on the fact that everyone she meets seems to get murdered.
Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
Praise, Faint
Had I viewed this movie by myself, I probably would have rated it 2/10. But I took my grandkids (8, 10), and their response is the reason for the addition of extra points.
Full disclosure: I was no fan of the 2009 original, but appreciated the technical work on display. The story wasn't merely simple, but fundamentally simple-minded, as though reverse-engineered from pre-existing set and character designs.
The sequel, The Way Of Water, is so hollow and pointless that it makes Avatar 1 seem dense and complex. It is a story that could easily have been outlined in a single pencil sketch, yet the resultant film is somehow over three hours in length. Which means that the middle third, more than 60 minutes, is all shots of blue people swimming with eels and clownfish.
That's not hyperbole. This movie is fully 33% swimming... but it looks gorgeous. If you're the type of person who gets nostalgic for the screensavers of yore, this is the movie for you.
I was reluctant to take the kids because of the excessive runtime, but realized they'd never experienced 3D in the cinema (and may never get another chance), so I bit the bullet. I told them, "It's a long film. We don't have to stay to the end. Just tell me if you're getting tired of it."
At the 2-hour mark, though, it was I that longed to check out and go home.
Those two went right to the end, and wanted more. The 10 year old declared, "Best movie I've ever seen!" And the 8-year old allowed that it was "pretty awesome."
And that was the true joy of the thing.
Avatar 2 is a childish movie, but, unlike Avatar 1, it may actually be FOR children. And that's a whole new context. Five kids are the narrative focus, and the youngest two had my youngest two absolutely enthralled.
So... Thumbs-up, with reservations.
Beautiful emptiness for grown-ups.
Pure magic for kids.
Tenet (2020)
Fennel
I watched Tenet...
And then, finally, I watched Tenet with subtitles, because it's on Netflix, thinking I would enjoy it more...
I did not.
Sure, I had better access to the exposition, which is fine, but the grander plot was no more sensible than when I first watched, Sam's subtitles.
In brief, Tenet is far less clever than it imagines itself.
Time travel is complicated, certainly, proven by the fact that we haven't yet accomplished it. The best time travel movies establish their loose rules, then dance to Chuck Berry tunes, because time travel logic can never adhere to itself. Back To The Future and Avengers: Endgame succeed despite their failures. That is, "Let's get on with the rest of the plot, because this time travel thing is never going to stand up to scrutiny."
Tenet is a film that has no other plot to move on to, because it is entirely concerned with making its non-logic logical.
I imagine that writer-director Christopher Nolan lost precious sleep because he convinced himself that he could concoct a perfect time travel MacGuffin... but in doing so he sacrificed any kind of narrative that the audience could invest itself in.
Marty McFly saves his family. Tony Stark gets the Infinity Stones and palavers with his dad. Sarah Connor goes to the playground... these popcorn moments don't exist in Tenet.
Nolan has inserted his head so far up his own bottom, trying to concoct a logical time travel narrative, that he forgot to include a fun adventure.
His greatest failing, however, is that his time travel dynamics don't stand up to scrutiny... and the dull mess he's left behind make even less sense than when Marty McFly woke up to a family of happy, succesful siblings.
I mean... did some contractor actually build Freeport facilities using pre-shot glass?
How It Ends (2018)
Astoundingly Incoherent
If you enjoy shouting at your television, as I sometimes do, then this is the perfect film for a slow Sunday night. Nothing about How It Ends makes sense, and the characters babble on about stupid things while making even stupider decisions... and I had a good time, mostly because I was baffled by all the the idiocy.
Is this an actual film, or is this a prank?
Will is an attorney who finds himself in Chicago, visiting Forrest Whittaker, when the world suddenly ends. Will and Forrest then go on a roadrrip, to Seattle, to rescue Will's fiance from a volcano, maybe (?).
I'm not sure if it's a volcano, exactly, because the film itself isn't sure if it's a volcano. Sometimes there are pyroclastic flows, and sometimes there are earthquakes, and sometimes there are tsunamis. Most of these things happen off screen. There's also a heatwave and a pandemic, I think.
When the first earthquake (?) hits, all of Earth's communication satellites die. Also, a train crashes on the prairies, for some reason.
Will and Forrest coerce a young woman to be their ride-along mechanic while they drive toward the hurricane (?). Everyone they encounter on dirt roads tries to kill them. Then, Forrest wants to visit an abandoned water park to look for "stuff".
Upon arriving, he declares, "We NEED to split up!" So he sends the young woman to siphon ten gallons of gas from abandoned cars while he and Will briefly look inside of a restaurant and find nothing. The music swells. Then nothing happens. The young woman has retrieved ten gallons of gas AND found some potato chips! Soon after, she decides she no longer wants to be in the film, so she vanishes, offscreen.
Everything I just typed is 100% accurate, and there's still an hour to go!
I haven't been this engaged with my TV in a long time. Neighbors must have thought I was arguing with my dachshund.
Utterly, utterly fascinating.
Spoiler alert: The film will never tell you what The Catastrophe actually is, because there is no explanation that could possibly link it all. And so they don't even try.
I hope this film received many awards and accolades.
The Watcher (2022)
Facts Are For Losers
I was looking forward to this series. It's based on a true story that I've been casually interested in for years. An odd little mystery about a family being "terrorized" after purchasing a new home. Sort of like The Amityville Horror, but without Satan or physical violence, and with more mail.
The Watcher series claims to be "based on a true story", a phrase that TV and films rendered meaningless decades ago.
George Lucas could have claimed Star Wars: A New Hope was based on a true story, simply because "young men have been mentored by creepy, older men since ancient times." He could say similar for Raiders Of The Lost Ark, since Jewish mythology references a strange artifact, and "archeologists are people who definitely exist." Who could argue with that logic?
So, The Watcher is indeed based on a true story in the most threadbare of ways. A family purchased a house that may have been outside of their price range, and then some letters arrived that may have been a "prank" or a "hoax". It was as bloodless an affair as the first episode of WandaVision, and even lacking a character so much as choking on their dinner.
Point being, I suppose you could enjoy The Watcher as pure Halloween fiction, but it's a wet slap to anyone who is interested in the real world mystery.
Gold (2022)
Sometimes, Mediocre is Just Fine
I once had access to a large abandoned property, plus certain derelict vehicles, and I thought, "I could take a weekend and film a whole movie here." (I was about 20, so whatever thing would have filmed would surely have been stupid garbage, and starring buddies who would have been too drunk to play their roles.)
I think "Gold" happened like that. "We have access to the desert, and a truck, and an old airplane carcass. If we can get some funds to hire an actual actor, we could make something."
I think it all worked out pretty well.
Extremely high concept, somewhat goofy, completely predictable, low stakes, terribly on-the-nose, slogging and not terribly exciting... But still, somehow, completely effective.
The filmmakers accomplished precisely what they set out to, and, for the most part, even imbued it all with a wee bit of veritas.
For a lazy Saturday afternoon watch, it really hits the spot.
The Book of Boba Fett: Chapter 2: The Tribes of Tatooine (2022)
A Vast Improvement
I found the first episode rather... tepid... but this one has more to offer, including a "train fight" like we saw in season two of The Mandalorian.
I noticed that two critics featured on Rotten Tomatoes wondered how the flashback story would tie into the present story, but perhaps they're just being coy. It's a bit glaring and obvious that Fett's present-day confidence (and power) is rooted firmly in his relationship with the Tusken Raiders. I'm sure there will be a scene, toward the end of the series, where our man is outnumbered and outgunned, and a thousand sand people will turn up to cover his ass...
I'd sure love to be wrong about that. But I doubt I am.
So, we're left with yet another version of Dances With Wolves slash Avatar... our "white"/human hero helps save the day, and is in turn saved by his new indigenous friends.
A droid once said, "Here we go again."
Ho hum.
The Book of Boba Fett (2021)
A Juicy Sand-Gourd For Me, Please
I think, to paraphrase Leonard Cohen, Is this what I wanted?
Everything is here, I guess. We're on Tattooine again. That's nice. And the Tusken Raiders mine water-filled gourds from the sand. I don't know how those get there, and I'm going to have to be okay with that.
I suppose the story of how Boba Fett escaped from the bowels of the Mighty Sarlaac plays out more-or-less the way most of us imagined it would. (Not sure why he emerges from the sand and not the creature's orifice, but Star Wars has always farted silly situations toward us.) And then other stuff happens.
Ho hum.
Later on, I was reminded of the stop-motion magic of Ray Harryhausen. Then I thought about how Ray's monsters, a whole lifetime ago, were more convincing.
I hope we get a Rancor in this series. Why not?
Things just seem to be happening, and I'm not sure why I'm supposed to care.
Do I even like Boba Fett? Am I supposed to wonder about him? Root for him? When I was 11, he was my favorite action figurine. Of course, onscreen, Boba had very little actual character or personality, so it was easy for a small boy to project himself into this sweet-ass vinyl toy. But the more I learn about this "bounty hunter" the more I actually admire about my co-worker, Neil, whose life is essentially diabetes and digesting McDonalds food.
Thumbs... up? Uppish, maybe? For Neil, at least. Don't quite know about TBOBF.
I believe this premiere episode is about 32 minutes long. I find that fascinating. The chapter that is designed to introduce the entire series, set the tone, establish the world, etc., is about the length of 1.5 chapters of FRIENDS (sans commercials). Ross couldn't even properly screw up his London Wedding in so little time.
I don't know how to feel. I'm not sad, and I'm not happy. I'm just sort of existing. Maybe I'll switch over and watch the news.
Goodnight, and God bless.
Old (2021)
Finally, The Twist
Spoilers. Honestly. Spoilers.
Other than mentioning that this film is garbage, the only thing I have to say is this: The Filmmaker has finally used the Twist that has seemed the obvious explanation for most (maybe all) of his previous "twisty" films.
I think he was sitting on this one when he wrote Unbreakable, and I was positive it was going to happen in Signs and The Village (and, from a certain POV, it DID happen in The Village).
Is Mel Gibson being abused by aliens, or is this a weird experiment? Is his family inside of a jar or petri dish? Is Mark Wahlberg also inside of a petri dish when the wind chases after him?
I think M Night has wanted to go full on petri dish since forever.
The reason his films have become more irritating over the years is because all of his twists require an obscene amount of disbelief suspension to work.
We let it slide when Bruce Willis couldn't deduce that he was dead, and when Mr Glass orchestrated mass murder to locate a single superhuman to square off with, and when hydro-susceptible aliens invaded earth while naked, and when a non-blind father sent his blind daughter on a dangerous trek to find modern antibiotics...
At some point, the joke is on us.
Infinite (2021)
Fuqua This Movie
I usually get halfway through an Antoine Fuqua movie before I realize, "Oh no! I'm watching an Antoine Fuqua movie!"
That's because Antoine Fuqua kinda half-asses everything he does, which means, for awhile, his movies are half-competent, and you kinda shrug and keep watching, but then they turn half-incompetent, and you feel stupid for having invested so far.
Aside from Training Day, he has utilized the half-ass method on every film that I have been tricked into seeing.
King Arthur, The Magnificent Seven, Tears Of The Sun, two Equalizer films, Shooter, Southpaw... all sorta competent until they turn into liquid garbage.
The good news is... Infinite never once seems half-competent. It is utter crap from the opening scene and only gets worse.
I am glad Antoine Fuqua has finally committed to being the terrible filmmaker I always knew he was.
Cheers. Fuqua you, buddy.
Between Two Ferns: The Movie (2019)
The Only Great 2019 Movie Of 2021
After suffering through an ocean of garbage like WW84, Army Of The Dead, Cruella v. Godzilla, and The Father, my faith in cinema has been restored by the Ferns movie.
Top notch writing and acting, high production values, and cinematography that would make Christopher Nolan weep into his cravat. How come this wasn't nominated for a Tony award?
I will watch it one more time, and then probably one more time after that.
If you loved A Night At The Roxbury, you are certain to like this film almost as much.
A perfect score for a perfect film.
Army of the Dead (2021)
A Beautiful Trainwreck
Army Of The Dead is okay, which is the best I can bring myself to say of it. I usually like Zack Snyder films, except Sucker Punch, so I didn't expect to be so un-wowwed by this. (Yes. I enjoyed BvS, so AotD seemed like a no-brainer. However, it really is a "no-brainer.")
Technically, it's excellent. Art direction, set design, cinematography, bursting heads, CGI... All perfectly fine. Top-drawer, even, for the most part. Unfortunately, the best of production values can't fix a script that is rotten at its core... a script that is a brazen retooling of Aliens (and which actually dares to tack on the worst elements of Alien 3, for good measure.) One character literally spews Ripley's dialogue about aliens not screwing each other over, verbatim.
Mr Tanaka (essentially Aliens' Weilland corporation) hires Dave Bautista's Merc squad to rob the safe under his own casino, inside the Zombiopolis that used to be Vegas. Tanaka gives Dave the schematics to the safe, which contains $200 million, but urges Dave to hire a safecracker, rather than just giving him the code to open the safe. Now, spoiler alert, Tanaka doesn't actually want the safe's contents, but that doesn't mean Dave shouldn't have asked about that.
"You're sending me into your own casino, to steal your own money, but you won't tell me the code for the safe, nor how to bypass the booby traps? Very good. I will take this job."
So Dave puts together a crew, analogous to Aliens' space Marines, and brings along his daughter, who will be playing Newt--but a much stupider version of Newt, and one who actively tries to get everyone killed.
There's a nuclear deadline, as in aliens, and even an apparent last-minute betrayal at the landing pad. (Tig Notaro seems to be playing Bishop, at this point.)
Instead of an Alien queen, the film gives us a zombified King/Queen combo. They ultimately amount to nothing.
Everything amounts to nothing.
The zombie queen's head is basically the equivalent of the alien embryos that Weilland coveted, and Garrett Dillahunt plays Paul Reiser. Like all villains set up in AotD, his ending is basically a tiny fart.
All set up, no payoff, nothing of substance.
It all ends like Aliens did, except, as I said, it continues into Alien 3, just so you feel like your time was completely wasted.
But, it does look good.
Hannibal: Shiizakana (2014)
The Episode Where All The Wheels Come Off
The Hannibal series, to this point, was a weird mash-up of premium cable drama and cheap network shlock--mixing, maybe, the best elements of Breaking Bad with the worst elements of CSI. Like, "Here are some great characters, and we'll give them good dialogue, and then we'll wrap it all in the stupidest plot-of-the-week as we possibly can. How about if there's a killer who puts wasps in people's bottoms? Or a totem pole that stalks its victims using echolocation? What if one of the main characters became good friends with a tiny sardine?"
In Season Two, I think, one writer looked at another writer and said, "I don't think we will ever be able to make sense out of half the crap we've pooped into the narrative," and the other writer said, "You're correct, so let's agree to never try to make any of it make sense, and we can just throw all logic and believability out the window!" Then they high-fived one another.
That pact happened just before those writers penned this very episode... about a werewolf. Of course the werewolf is just a man with an Iron Man/cave bear costume, and of course he's also a former patient of Dr Lecter, and of course Dr Lecter will coerce the werewolf to attack Will Graham, and of course Will Graham will murder the werewolf, rape his corpse, mutilate it, arrange it into a rape-werewolf-corpse statue, and... Wait, what?
Later, it will have turned out that Jack Crawford, at the FBI, sanctioned this insanity, in a rather labyrinthine scheme to possibly get himself eaten at the planned end-of-season dinner party, so you know there is no chance this series will ever remotely resemble real life ever again. And it doesn't!
Shows like this require a suspension of disbelief, no matter how well written they are. (How did Walter White get poison into Brock? Is Sherlock Holmes a confirmed psychic? How can 989 serial killers be at large in Baltimore at the exact same time?) but Hannibal passes into the realm of dream-logic parody just past the midpoint of its total series run.
From here onward, I believe there are seven characters who will each die four times (not counting the four previous characters who each died seven times). Time will cease to have any meaning at all (not that it did before, exactly, given that killers can compose exquisite corpse installations in public buildings in under twenty minutes). Any sort of investigative protocols are chucked out the window by cops on TWO continents. We will even meet a young adult, coming up, who has been in Hannibal's employ for three or four decades. (she is also a skilled assassin, despite having lived in a secluded Lithuanian tool shed.)
I'm all for trippy comedy-horror... Hannibal plays like high camp, by the end. Nonsensical, absurd, over produced, hilarious. The problem is that it didn't begin that way. The shift came at this halfway point, this very episode, when the writers finally realized they couldn't bring it all together, and decided to not even try. In a way, it would have been better if they'd taken that route from the very beginning, rather than pretending like they were crafting a narrative.