Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is one of those movies that I mildly disliked upon first viewing, but has come to grow on me. It is based on a Canadian comic book series that I have never read. I recently watched the first four episodes of the new animated series, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, which… Read More Things That Annoy Me About Scott Pilgrim
Last week, I sat through the second Jurassic Park movie for the first time since seeing it in theaters. That’s Jurassic Park II: The Lost World, from 1997, which Spielberg directed. The previous week, we introduced the kids to the first Jurassic Park film. It still holds up. The sequel does not. There are many… Read More The Joys of Watching Stuff You Hate
Of course I watched it. And I laughed really hard. Tiger King is the best mockumentary since Spinal Tap. All mockumentaries rely on filming the Dunning-Kruger Effect, the gap between someone’s perceived competence and their actual competence. All the principle characters are not in on the Joke: Joe Exotic is a lunatic, a narcissist, a… Read More When Humans Attack – Tiger King 2
I may have made fun of it a while back, but honestly, I don’t hate the concept. I might scope it if it rolls through one of the apps I have. I cannot, however, promise that I will do that. Movies in this era are largely an individualized aesthetic exercise, not a community one. The… Read More Maybe I’ll see Nomadland, Maybe I Won’t
No, I’m not going to write about the Riots or the Election or the Virus or any of that stuff everyone’s already right about and mad about. Go infect your brain with Twitter if you want to read the latest hot takes. I have other things to think about. Specifically, I want to write about… Read More I Should Care About Witcher But I Don’t.
It was boring. There. Actually, let me be fair. The first half is kind of boring. The second half describes the conflict between the mob and Jimmy Hoffa, and it’s more interesting than you’d think. Obviously it was dumb for Hoffa to get in bed with organized crime, and obviously that was only gonna end… Read More Quick Review: The Irishman
Stranger Things is starting not to get the 80’s right. Probably it never did. Nostalgia coasts on dusting off old images, making people say “Hey, remember this!” and that’s only fun if it’s in the brightest possible colors. So much of the charm of Stranger Things lay in seeing boys riding around on bicycles, unattended, just… Read More Quick Review: Stranger Things 3
I detest serial killers. By which I mean, I detest the attention paid to them by popular culture. There is a sickness in being as aware of them as we are, something concupiscent in our fascination with twisted pyschopathy. That being said, I am hardly less guilty. I regard From Hell (the graphic novel, not the movie)… Read More Quick Review: Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile
This little NetFlick represents the third time Kevin Costner has played an historical lawman up against a famous criminal. In 1987, he did the Hollywood version of Elliot Ness, playing a bright-eyed young crusader forced to get rough to take down Al Capone. In 1994, he did the opposite of that, giving us the grim… Read More Quick Review: The Highwaymen
People always make the mistake of thinking art is created for them. But really, art is a private language for sophisticates to congratulate themselves on their superiority to the rest of the world. As my artist’s statement explains, my work is utterly incomprehensible and is therefore full of deep significance. -Bill Watterson Modern art is… Read More Quick Review: Velvet Buzzsaw
Content Blues 