Welcome To DirkFlix!

UPDATED 4/1/2025: Completely revised the When To See scale to reflect the extinction of rental stores and 2nd run dollar show theaters in today's streaming world. The original version of this can be visited here.
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Oh, fercryingoutloud! ANOTHER movie review blog?!? Another guy who thinks his opinion matters and wishes to inflict it on the overloaded Information Superhighway? (What ever happened to that buzzword? Haven't heard it in ages.) Why should we care?

A: Yes, yes, and why not?

The purpose of this blog when started after seeing Avatar in 2009 was to allow me to get back into the habit of reviewing movies and DVDs like I used to between 2004-2008 for IGN and The Digital Bits before life stuff and editorial differences ended those associations.

 Initially intended to not be 1000-2000 word chin-stroking epics, but mostly a few paragraphs about what I've been watching and whether they might be of interest to you, I unfortunately got slack about actually writing anything. While I logged and scored everything I've seen, I didn't write reviews in a timely manner and after a while and a dozen intervening movies, I couldn't remember enough specifics to properly review them, so they remained unpublished.

Since fixing hundreds of unwritten reviews is impossible, I've dedicated myself to knuckling down this year (2025), and as of this revised update only a few reviews need to be finished off out of over 40 this year. I may also go back and start publishing older reviews, even if they're just scores; perhaps adding a sentence or two. Use the hashtag options and search box to see if I saw something in particular.

With movies even more outrageously expensive and even an all-you-can eat service like Netflix and Amazon Prime can still cost you time (which is worth more than money because you can't make more of it), I give movies a numerical score (wow! original!) and how urgently it is for you to see it. Since the Hot Fad Plague of 2020-2022 completely upended going to the movies and everyone and their dog started subscription streaming services (as well as good old cable for Boomers), I have radically revised the When To See scale from six to basically three points:

 1. Pay full/matinee price to see it at a theater. Pretty self-explanatory. The rare times I now go see a movie theatrically, I'll rate whether it's worth going to the show and how much you should pay.

2. Catch it on cable/streaming. This is the most common recommendation now because I see the overwhelming majority of movies at home, but also not every movie needs the theatrical experience. Whether you choose to wait for it to come to your streamer/cable channel of choice, rent or buy it digitally, or hoist the black flag to obtain it, is up to your budget and/or morals. Movies with this ranking are worth your time.

3. Skip it. Even for free, life's too short to waste on bad movies.

For Blu-ray/DVD reviews, I'll recommend whether they're worth buying since there's no rental options anymore now that Redbox has joined Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, Family Video in oblivion. The quantity and quality of extras or the audio-visual quality factor heavily here.

As always, these reviews are just one lifelong movie fans opinions, except that unlike other critics & fans, mine is the only opinion that matters and all reviews are 100% correct in their judgements. If you disagree, that's fine, but understand that you are incorrect in your opinion. ;-)

 Enough of my yakking, let's review some movies!

"Desperately Seeking Susan" Review

 Following last week's spin of The Linguini Incident, the missus & I decided a trilogy of 1980s Rosanna Arquette movies was required and thus our second stop was 1985's Desperately Seeking Susan, a shaggy dramady most notable for being then-megahot pop star Madonna's Big Movie Debut as the titular (in both meanings) Susan and its inclusion of her hit "Into The Groove."

Arquette plays Roberta Glass, a young New Jersey housewife married to Gary (Mark Blum, Mozart in the Jungle) who sells bathtub spas, saunas and hot tubs. She's obsessed with personal ads in the paper headlined "Desperately Seeking Susan" (roll credits!) to arrange meets between Susan and her boyfriend Jimmy (Robert Joy, CSI:NY).

Meanwhile we meet Susan in a hotel room where she's been shacked up with some guy not Jimmy who's passed out after a long night of getting into the groove, if you follow. She orders room service, steals the silverware and towels, and a pair of big earrings. As she leaves the room, she passes a creepy guy, Wayne (Will Patton, Armageddon), who's heading for the room. She arrives at the Port Authority bus terminal, stashes her drum case-turned-suitcase in a locker by jimmying the lock, to avoid paying. She puts on one of the earrings and leaves the other in the case.

When Susan meets up with Jimmy in Battery Park, Roberta is watching and after Jimmy has to take off with his band for a gig in Buffalo she follows Susan around the city and when she trades her distinctive jacket for some boots, Roberta buys the jacket and discovers the key. Wanting to return it, Roberta runs her own Desperately Seeking Susan ad to set up a meeting, signing it "A Stranger," which concerns Jimmy because who's trying to meet his girl who was banging a guy who fell out of a hotel window the day before and some priceless Egyptian earrings were involved.

Jimmy calls his friend Dez (Aidan Quinn, Reckless), a movie projectionist, and asks if he'd go to the meet to make sure Susan's OK, describing her as a blonde with a distinctive jacket. (Getting where this is going yet?) One thing leads to another, identities are mistaken and things are complicated by Roberta getting lightly bonked on the head, losing her purse and her memory, and with Dez calling her "Susan," assumes that's who she is. Hijinks ensue.

Whereas The Linguini Incident was a haphazard attempt at a screwball comedy, Desperately Seeking Susan is a lackluster, tonally off mess with a patchy screenplay and unlikable characters. I know this is heresy for older Gen Xers who are nostalgic about it because they aped Madonna's thrift store trampy style of mesh tops, exposed bras, rubber bracelets, etc., but the truth is the script by Leora Barish (making her screenwriting debut here and whose only other script of note was her last, 2006's Basic Insinct 2, so hackery was the constant) both relies on viewers overlooking the gaping plot holes and logic gaps, but also have no knowledge of how human beings behave.

The problems start with Susan herself. I don't think I've seen DSS since the 1980s and pretty much all I could I remember about it was Susan was a jerk and, yep, she still is. She's a thief, a tramp, and a sociopath, but because she looks and acts like Madonna, we're supposed to be smitten with Susan. Yeah, no. I was a teenager who thought Madge was hot while having a squeaky voice and bought both of the competing Playboy and Penthouse issues with her pre-fame nude modeling photos in them, but Susan still sucks.

Arquette is, well, Arquette. The fact Roberta ends up at one point as a magician's assistant ties neatly into her Houdini obsession in The Linguini Incident, but her character is as thin as her skull apparently is as she gets conked into forgetting who she is then rebooting back into her Roberta self later. While it's understandable that she'd boink Dez since he looks like Aiden Quinn, the fact he does her when he think's she's Susan, his bro's girl, and does so about five minutes after bailing her out of jail (where she'd somehow been busted for prostitution) was randomly abrupt and he's a bad bro.

It's more interesting spotting actors in early roles such as John Turturro, Richard Edson, and Giancarlo Esposito several years before they were in Do The Right Thing, Laurie Metcalf, Steven Wright, and a slew of art scene folks like Anne Carlisle, John Lurie, Richard Hell, and Ann Magnuson.

As a time capsule of mid-1980s New York with lots of big names before they were big names and Madonna totally loving herself, Desperately Seeking Susan may serve a purpose. But as a movie unable to decide what it's about and how it goes about it, it's less successful.

Score: 4/10. Skip it.

"The Wedding Banquet (2025)" Review

I didn't even realize that The Wedding Banquet was a remake of the 1993 Ang Lee film of the same name until the missus claimed we'd seen it at a local art house theater. I honestly don't recall seeing it, but if so it was 32 years ago, so let's see what this updated version has to offer. (Obviously, I can't compare it to the original.) 

Kelly Marie Tran (Star Wars: The Last Jedi) stars as Angela Chen, a Seattle lesbian whose mother, May (Joan Chen, Twin Peaks), is such a performative ally with the local PFLAG chapter it's driving her crazy. Her partner, Lee (Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon), is struggling to have a baby and after their second attempt at IVF fails, there's a question of whether they have the finances to try again and whether Lee's body can handle it. Angela doesn't want to carry the baby due to her fraught relationship with her mother.

Living in their garage is Angela's bestie from college, Chris (Bowen Yang, SNL), with whom she had a one-off fling, and his boyfriend Min (Han Gi-chan in his film debut), an artist and fashion designer whom Chris is refusing to marry though his visa will soon expire requiring him to return to South Korea. Adding to the pressure is a call from Min's wealthy grandmother, Ja-Young (Youn Yuh-jung, Oscar winner for Minari), telling him it's time to come home and join the family business empire.

While marrying Chris would get Min a green card, Chris fears that since Min isn't out his intolerant grandfather will cut him off. Fed up, Min proposes to Angela with the added benefit that he will pay for Lily's next IVF treatment. During her bachelorette party, Angela and Chris manage to PO Lee and Min, making them leave the club, and after a lot of drinks they wake up together in the garage and you have one guess as to what happened and what the ramifications will be.

Things escalate when Min calls to say that Grandma has come to America and they have about 45 minutes to "de-gay" the house before they arrive. After a frantic scramble, Min arrives with Ja-Young, introduces her to his fiancé Angela, and within minutes Ja-Young calls BS on the whole charade proving she's old, not stupid. After explaining the truth, she agrees to cover for Min if they go through an elaborate wedding ceremony which will be publicized back home. Of course, everything goes wildly wrong and hijinks ensue.

What's refreshing about The Wedding Banquet is that rather than being the usual Hollyweird celebration of the cartoonish perfection of gay people, the characters are messy complicated people who happen to be gay. Too many movies with gay themes believe the only thing that matters is the sexuality and how perfect it is and how mean straight people oppress them. Here the story is about people who are gay, not GAY people and the difference makes all the difference. With some tinkering the story could've been about blacks and whites, different religions or nationalities because at its core it's about people and their foibles and fears whereas lesser GAY movies are all about the GAY all day, forgetting the people. (See my review of the horribly-titled Bottoms for similar observations.)

Poor Tran has had a hard career road since a-hole spudboy "Ruin" Johnson abused her in his vandalism of Star Wars by stuffing her in a formless jumpsuit costume with a bad haircut as Rose Tico in The Last Jedi. Johnson wanted to deconstruct attractive Asian characters in movies (along with destroying the most valuable IP in entertainment) and the fandom-hating media promulgated the smear that RAAAAAAAAACIST nerds bullied Tran off social media when the reality was that racist liberal media hacks were protecting pasty potato Johnson's travesty by using her as a human shield. Note that co-star John Boyega, whose Finn character was also mistreated, wasn't used even as Disney shrank him down on the posters for China because those audiences don't like black actors. (But it's Americans who are racists?)

But I digress. Anyway, Tran first resurfaced on my radar as a heavy on the final season of Netflix's Sweet Tooth and she's really good here as well, finally showing off some acting. Gladstone is good as well and Yang manages to get away from his usual "Gaysian" persona he's plied for years on SNL. Youn shows her Oscar wasn't a fluke with another sly savvy performance where she leverages her age and others presumptions of it against them.

Co-writer James Schamus - a frequent collaborator of Ang Lee's having written eight films for him including the original Wedding Banquet (which is sadly unavailable to stream anywhere at this time) - has updated his original story of a gay man who offers to marry a woman needing a green card to keep his boyfriend secret from his family (I skimmed the Wikipedia synopsis. Sue me.) changing Chinese to Korean and tweaking the genders. Since I can't compare with the original, I'll withhold judgement other than to wonder why this version of The Wedding Banquet doesn't include, well, a wedding banquet? It should've been retitled The Wedding Ceremony or something.

Heartfelt and amusing, The Wedding Banquet may be overlooked because of people's aversion to gay themes or dismissed as a remake, but it's not woke and actually quite traditional in the end, in a manner of speaking. 

Score: 7/10. Catch it on cable/streaming.

"The Luckiest Man In America" 4K Review

Ever heard the phrase, "Big bucks! No Whammies!"? Know where that's from? If you're a Gen Xer, you're likely to know that was from a game show called Press Your Luck. A mash-up of Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, it had a trivia question phase where contestants garnered "spins" leading to the centerpiece of the show where a square of 18 screens would flash various dollar amounts and prizes while a lighted rim on the screens indicate what you'd win when you slapped down the Big Red Button. Hit a dollar amount and win money. Hit the cartoon demon "Whammie" screen - like Wheel's "Bankrupt" space - and you lose it all.

On May 19, 1984, an ice cream truck driver from Ohio named Michael Larson appeared on Press Your Luck and after a shaky start began to live the title of DJ Khaled's "All I Do Is Win" by nailing a seemingly impossible string of big bucks with no Whammies leading to an at-the-time highest winnings ever on a game show, relieving the show of over $110,000 in cash and prizes. This achievement and the freakout behind-the-scenes with the show's producers is dramatized in The Luckiest Man in America.

It begins with the slovenly and somewhat creepy Larson (Paul Walter Hauser, Richard Jewell) attempting to audition for the show by assuming the identity of another applicant. Despite being escorted off the property by security, the show's executive producer, Bill Carruthers (David Strathairn, The Expanse), takes a shine to him and allows him to participate in the next day's taping provided he tidy up his appearance and get better clothes. Larson goes to a thrift store, rips a button off a jacket to get a discount for its condition, and returns with a nice shirt and jacket over khaki shorts.

As mentioned above, ones he gets rolling, he gets ROLLING, and the bulk of the movie is about the freakout of the production team as they try to figure out how he's doing it. They deduce that he has somehow memorized the patterns of the board which appeared random but weren't. Is he cheating or could he be a boon in publicity? (And if memorizing the limited patterns - there were only five variations - is cheating, would studying trivia be cheating for Jeopardy.)

While the movie opens with a disclaimer about creative license being taken in its dramatization of real events, the script co-written by director Samir Oliveros (whose sole previous feature was something called Bad Lucky Goat) really stretches credibility as a producer, Chuck (Shamier Anderson, Mr. Nobody in John Wick 4), breaks into Larson's truck, finds video tapes, watches them, and deduces how Larson figured out the patterns, but also calls someone with a restraining order against him, all while the show is taping. TV shows generally go "live to tape" with minimal editing and the pauses shown and the amount of gumshoeing Chuck does simply couldn't happen. The details about his family are also muddled and enhance Larson's creepiness.

Hauser has cornered the market on tubby, creepy characters and he does the same here. From the bits of the actual show I've seen, Larson wasn't that oddball. The supporting performances from Straithairn, Anderson, and Walton Goggins as show host Peter Tomarken are good, but why is Maisie Williams (Throne Games) here as a production assistant? She's not bad, but it's distracting that an English girl is working at CBS Television City.

While The Luckiest Man in America isn't a bad docudrama, it could've been tighter and structured differently rather than trying to cram everything into 90-minutes. If you want to see the real, the Press Your Luck episodes are on YouTube along with GSN's - Game Show Network - documentary Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal exploring the events. (Haven't watched it yet, but hear it's good.) There's also a substantial Wikipedia entry which illuminates the differences between reality and dramatization.

Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable/streaming. (Currently on AMC+)

"M3GAN 2.0" 4K Review

 The 2023 slasher flick M3GAN was a sleeper hit, grossing $181M off a $12M budget. So a sequel was ordered up and a few weeks ago M3GAN 2.0 arrived, flopping massively with an opening weekend gross one-third of the original's leading to a rapid trip to streaming after just a few weeks. Complaints were that it changed genres - from horror to sci-fi - and attempted to turn the memeable moppet murderbot into a good girl a la Terminator 2: Judgement Day, but even more problematic is that the story is a convoluted mess that I don't even want to try and synopsize, but let's get on with it.

It's a couple years after the events of the first film and the military, having never seen the Jurassic Park sequels has decided to make a new murderbot called AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno, Pacific Rim) copied from M3GAN's designs. During an operational demonstration, it goes rogue after revealing it was sentient and not working for the Army any more.

Gemma (Allison Williams, Get Out), M3GAN's creator has become an author and advocate for AI regulation who, along with her (I think) boyfriend Christian (Aristotle Athari, SNL) has been developing an exoskeleton device which could provide mobility to the paralyzed or turn people into human forklifts capable of lifting great weights. Her niece, Cady (Violet McGraw, M3GAN), lives with her and is studying computer science.

After Gemma is informed of AMELIA's existence, M3GAN (body: Amie Donald; voice: Jenna Davis; the same team as before) reveals that she'd been living in Gemma's smart home after uploading her program before being killed, a la The Lawnmower Man. She offers to help them take down AMELIA in exchange for a physical body. Gemma doesn't trust her, so puts her into a Moxie unit - a toy robot thing clearly copied from Black Mirror's "Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too" episode (the one with Miley Cyrus as a pop star performing a rewritten version of Nine Inch Nails' "Head Like A Hole") - in order to hack into wealthy tech billionaire creep Alton Appleton's (Jemaine Clement, Flight of the Conchords) servers to find out what's going on.

After AMELIA kills Alton, the group retreat to a massive bunker under Gemma's house that M3GAN had constructed with plans that they'd hide there when AMELIA triggers an AI Apocalypse. It was at this point my feelings on the movie flipped from "this isn't so bad" to "what the heck is this crap?!?" How the actual how does a secret underground lair get built under a residential home without anyone knowing?!? This isn't some billionaire superhero with the means to have Lairs 'r' Us build a Batcave under his estate where trucks full of mined earth can be removed without notice. If M3GAN can have this done, why does she need to beg Gemma to build her a body?

From there the plot gets even more convoluted and ludicrous involving a Xerox motherboard created in the early-1980s which as been learning for four decades and if someone were to remove it from its air-gapped Faraday cage it would provide Total Control Power of all tech in the world, blah-blah-woof-woof. There are so many red herrings, fakeouts, "oh no, M3GAN's dead, oh wait, no, she's not" twists and turns I stopped caring because the movie was just trying to be clever when it was braindead.

While director Gerald Johnstone came up with the story with M3GAN co-writer Akela Cooper, the final script was his and he sabotages himself with the spaghetti plot and cringe-worthy dialogue like, "Hold on to your vaginas," which is so dumb that a Speak & Spell wouldn't say it. While his direction is workmanlike, he limits himself by his on contrivances.

The 4K presentation is clean and has some good highlights at times, but who cares when the story is dumb?

The first M3GAN caught on with meme culture thanks to the goofy murder dance she does in the trailer, but under the hype was a neat 8/10 score (never finished the review) B-movie that delivered the goods promised on the tin. But in their desire to force another social media craze, they forgot that it's impossible to make fetch happen by brute force. Blumhouse head Jason Blum admitted they botched this one and while there's a spinoff film, SOULM8TE ("soulmate"), coming in January 2026, it's going to be difficult to resurrect the girl again without an exceptional concept and script. Too bad.

Score: 4/10. Skip it.

"Becoming Led Zeppelin" 4K Review

For a dozen years from 1968-1980, Led Zeppelin were Titans of rock & roll, putting out eight albums (not counting the posthumous outtakes collection, Coda, nor the live The Song Remains the Same) and filling the playlists of AOR FM radio stations until the tragic death of drummer John "Bonzo" Bonham in 1980 just ahead of a massive stadium tour, their first in three years, after consuming about 40 shots of vodka in a 24-hour period and choking on his vomit at the age of only 32. (Drink responsibly.) The band disbanded with singer Robert Plant launching a successful solo career, guitarist Jimmy Page briefly having a band called The Firm with Bad Company vocalist Paul Rodgers, and bassist John Paul Jones continuing with producing and arranging including string arrangements on R.E.M.'s Automatic For The People album.

But that's how they ended, how did Led Zeppelin begin? That's the story told by Becoming Led Zeppelin, the first documentary project produced with the full cooperation of the band. Comprised of new interviews with the surviving members and a previously unheard interview with the usually press-shy Bonham and a wealth of never before seen concert footage, it briskly summarizes the members' memories of how they got into music leading to the rapid career ascendance of Page and Jones as they worked as session musicians including both playing on the iconic Shirley Bassey Bond theme "Goldfinger."

After his stint in The Yardbirds - with fellow guitar heroes Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck - Page wanted to strike off into new directions and the seeming fairytale ease with which the players came together in 1968 and instantly melded into a fully formed group with killer songs - their debut's nine tracks included "Good Times Bad Times", "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You", "Dazed and Confused", "Your Time Is Gonna Come", and "Communication Breakdown"! - beggars belief. Page produced the entire album then shopped it to labels with a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum meaning no label interference, shut up and sell it. Oh, and it's not going to be called The New Yardbirds, but Led Zeppelin.

Considering how modern record release schedules often result in YEARS between albums, it's especially mind-blowing that the Led Zeppelin debut began recording a MONTH after their first rehearsals in August 1968 (and a quick Scandinavian tour as The New Yardbirds, footage of which is included), was released in January 1969, followed by a grueling seven months of tours of North America and Europe, writing and recording Led Zeppelin II in various studios on the road, culminating in its release in October 1969. (And contrary to the "sophomore jinx" trope, it's arguably got even more bangers than the first album.) For those of you keeping score, that's two albums of classic rock created, recorded and released within 14 months of the blokes first getting together.

The live footage is both revelatory and a bit of a drag. It's funny seeing early audiences kind of staring blankly at them, seemingly unimpressed by what they're witnessing, but after a time and the songs which lean more heavily on jamming running longer, it gets a bit tedious. (The missus fell asleep and I was tempted to fast-forward through them.) If you're a Led Zep fanatic, feel free to ignore this comment, but there's a reason why when I used to be a soundman in clubs and I told bands that when I gave the "two songs" warning to wrap up their sets I added, "And I don't mean do the live versions of "Free Bird" (which ran 14-15 mins) and "Dazed and Confused" (27 mins on The Song Remains The Same)."

 At times the members are shown archive clips and their reactions are fascinating, like Page seeing a 13-year-old him appearing on a TV show strumming an acoustic or their reacting to Bonham's interview. It's also nice to have a documentary with only the subjects talking about themselves and not surrounded by various Rolling Stone hacks or some combo of Dave Grohl, Henry Rollins, and/or Questlove talking about Led Zeppelin.

But while it's not wholly sanitized, it doesn't delve much into how the songs were created, what lyrical inspiration Plant drew from (to be fair, we all know it's Tolkien the way Rush's Neil Peart was all about Ayn Rand), or square how a band where most of the members were married dealt with the friendly women they met on the long, yet rapid road to stardom.

The speed of their ascendency cannot be understated either. On Jan. 9, 1969, just four days before their debut dropped they were playing San Francisco's Fillmore West, desperately trying to make an impression in America. Exactly one year later, touring Led Zeppelin II, they took to the stage of London's Royal Albert Hall as conquering rulers of the rock world. And this is where Becoming Led Zeppelin ends, so anyone wanting to hear about Led Zep IV and "Stairway To Heaven" are out of luck.

If you approach Becoming Led Zeppelin with the proper expectations, you're likely to quite enjoy it. The concert footage is terrific even if I thought it dragged on at times. (I'm a power-pop fan who'd rather have four songs in 13 minutes rather than a wanked-out blooze jam.) The members are fairly forthcoming in their recollections, though it's not as deep as one could wish for and they are filmed separately depriving the audience of seeing them interact. Production of this doc was announced in 2019 and a work-in-progress cut was screened at the Venice Film Festival in 2021, so it's unlikely follow-ups covering the rest of their career are in the offing. 

I must single out director Bernard MacMahon for doing one thing right that most documentary filmmakers militantly refuse to do to my endless annoyance: He provides dates for the events we see so we're never confused as to what year it is when recapping their lives. It's a small detail so often ignored.

Score: 8/10. Catch it on cable/streaming. (Currently on Netflix)

"Brick" 4K Review

 Not to be confused with Ruin Johnson's 2005 debut, Netflix's Brick is a small high-concept sci-fi flick imported from Germany and dubbed fairly well. The premise is the plot: A couple - Tim (Matthias Schweighöfer, Army of Thieves) and Olivia (Ruby O. Fee, Army of the Dead) - whose relationship has collapsed to the point she's leaving him, discovers their apartment's doors & windows are blocked by mysterious black brick walls which seem impenetrable & can become dangerous at times.

Where did this come from and how do they get out? Those are the questions as they proceed to meet their neighbors by drilling and sledgehammering through the walls and floors, attempting to get to a basement bomb shelter which may connect to tunnels. Some want to help, others are more of an impediment, and one is a threat as they don't believe it's safe outside due to anything from a chemical spill or alien invasion.

Brick is an OK chamber thriller where there are a few too many convenient turns like the couple having a big industrial drill in the drawer, someone having a sledgehammer, another having a ladder which makes getting between floors easy, and the owner of the building putting spy cameras in the apartments during renovations which allows for a lot of convenient information discovery. It's also convenient that while cellular, landline, Internet and even the water is cut off, the electricity remains on. The final reveal is visually interesting, but still begs some questions.

The 4K Dolby Vision presentation is fine, but nothing those not paying for the 4K tier will miss out on.

Firmly landing in the "may as well watch it because you're paying for Netflix" zone, Brick is a passable time-killer.

Score: 5/10. Catch it on Netflix.

"The Amateur" 4K Review

 With so many movies these days being massive VFX-heavy epics about invincible superheroes, it's a little disorienting to watch a small revenge thriller of the kind that was common in the 1990s. So it is with The Amateur, a modest global caper flick with some twists.

 Rami Malek (Mr. Robot) stars as Charlie Heller, a CIA cryptographer who's married to Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan, Superman), a businesswoman who was attending a conference in London when she was taken hostage and killed by terrorists who were fleeing a botched arms deal in the hotel she was at. It was a random event and she was just an unfortunate bystander.

Using the CIA's Yeah, Right technology (i.e. tech in movies/shows which does the impossible like enhance a full-color hi-rez image of someone off a few pixels in a reflection and makes me say, "Yeah, right!") he determines who the terrorists were and approaches his boss, CIA Deputy Director Alex Moore (Holt McCallany, Mindhunter), with the expectation they'd be brought to justice, but his request is denied because the leader, Horst Schiller (Michael Stuhlbarg, Men in Black 3), who pulled the trigger was a terrorism kingpin and they want to roll up his entire network and to capture this handful would interfere.

 Outraged, Charlie uses information from a secret source that Moore and others were hiding malfeasance, blaming accidental US military killings on terrorist IEDs, to threaten Moore with exposure unless he's sent to The Farm, a CIA facility, for training so he can personally hunt and terminate the bad guys. He claims he has a dead man's switch which will send the evidence to the media if they try to disappear him, so they reluctantly agree while frantically tearing his home apart to verify whether he actually has the goods.

 At The Farm he's handed over to Robert "Hendo" Henderson (Laurence Fishburne, Pee-Wee's Playhouse) who rapidly determines Charlie simply doesn't have it in him to kill someone. He's a terrible shot, barely able to hit a target unless he's within nearly punching distance, but he does show an aptitude for improvised explosives. After a time, Moore decides Charlie was bluffing and orders Hendo to whack him. Fortunately for Charlie, he'd already bugged out with the fake passports the CIA had cooked up for him and headed to Europe to hunt his wife's killers with Hendo in pursuit.

In contrast to the usual superspies like James Bond and Jason Bourne, Charlie not only lacks their JB initials, but is actually pretty bad at vigilantism. He comes up with a clever way to deal with his first target, but the way they die is a total fluke. He manages to get better at it - the trailer gives away the most spectacular case - but his final takedown is a bit convenient.

While adapted from a novel which was also made into a 1981Canuckian feature starring John Savage and Christopher Plummer, the screenplay by Ken Nolan (Black Hawk Down, but also Transformers: The Last Knight, a movie I bought in 2017 and still haven't watched because everyone says it's so bad) and Gary Spinelli (American Made) feels generic and formulaic. It suffers from the thing where the world's population is limited to just the characters in the movie so Charlie seems to have no friends or family or in-laws also mourning Sarah's killing. Jon Bernthal appears twice as a CIA field operative, but contributes nothing so why is the character even there?

Malek is OK in his usual twitchy bug-eyed Eliot Alderson way and Fishburne basically plays a cross between Morpheus (The Matrix) and the Bowery King (John Wick 2-4). Brosnahan is appealing in her flashbacks, but everyone is playing the script which isn't stretching many boundaries.

The Dolby Vision presentation has some brief moments of bright highlights, but the generally gray spy movie color palette limits eye candy opportunities.

Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable/streaming.

"The Old Guard 2" 4K Review

Remember The Old Guard? It was released on Netflix in July 2020 during the Scamdemic lockdowns (Thanks, Trump!) and was a hit because with nothing else to do, everything on streaming became a hit. I somehow failed to log watching it and only know I scored it a 7/10 from my IMDB. (I'd guessed 6/10 based on a reference in another review here.) A sequel was inevitable, but thanks to various writers and actors strikes, The Old Guard 2 shuffles into view for the Independence Day weekend five years laer and that's the reason I ask if you remember it is because if you haven't rewatched it recently, you will very likely be lost for most of this dull and incomplete sequel.

It opens with Quỳnh (Veronica Ngô) being hoisted out of the ocean where she's spent the last five centuries trapped in an iron maiden. Her savior is a mysterious woman named Discord (Uma Thurman, My Super Ex-Girlfriend) who is eventually revealed to be the Original First Immortal, a title that Andromache "Andy" (Charlize Theron, Atomic Blonde) thought she held.

Meanwhile, Andy and her gang of immortals - The Old Guard - are raiding a Croatian mansion with some questionable art choices to stop a weapons sale. After the mission, the two gay men on the team - Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli) - are having relationship trouble because one (don't recall which and don't care) feels he needs some space after 1000 years together. Not trusting his partner, the other guy follows him along with Nile (KiKi Layne, The Old Guard), who was the last movie's newest immortal to where he was headed, the apartment of Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts, probably some European movies), a former teammate who was exiled for betraying them in the last movie, only to find him missing thus paying off the end-credits scene of the first movie where he came home to find Quỳnh there.

You know, I don't want to recap this thing anymore. The plot is nonsense involving Discord claiming Nile is the Last Immortal due to a matching birthmark and that she wants to use Nile to kill everyone else to stop Immortals - not to be confused with Marvel's Eternals or Inhumans - from meddling in human affairs. Why? Don't know. Then there's also the theory of newly-introduced Immortal Librarian Tuah (Henry Golding, Crazy Rich Asians) that anyone wounded by Nile would lose their immortality, but if they freely chose to they could pass their powers onto someone who'd lost theirs so yes, Andy will get her groove back. (SPOILER ALERT!)

And after spending five centuries literally drowning, resurrecting, rinsing, repeating in the icy darkness of the sea, shouldn't Quỳnh be pretty much insane & madly seeking vengeance, not just acting pouty as if Andy said her flan was "mid"?

It ends in a cliffhanger which presumes that audiences will be desperate to see how it turns out, but with a third movie depending on this one fared, that's unlikely. Then again, Netflix handed the Russo Brothers over a half-BILLION dollars to make The Gray Man and The Electric State, so perhaps they won't mind burning more cash if the budget is under control.

Despite the script being co-written by the source graphic novels' co-creator, Greg Rucka, the mythology is flat and laden with mumbo jumbo that alludes, but never concludes. The action scenes are shakycam/edit fu and if you were looking forward to a hot, sexy throwdown between Beatrix Kiddo and Aeon Flux, prepare to be disappointed.

As for the A/V presentation, other than some Atmos effects in spots and some OK highlights, you're not missing much if not springing for the top tier plan.

Score: 3/10. Skip it.

"Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story" Review

 If you've watched any of the documentary features on previous releases of Jaws then much of what's included in Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story will be very familiar with tales of the mechanical shark not working, the production running waaaaaay over schedule & budget and how Steven Spielberg was looking down the barrel of career annihilation with just his second feature, but ended up inventing the "blockbuster" and securing final cut in perpetuity.

Featuring new interviews with Spielberg, co-star Lorraine Gary (Elaine Brody), the widow and son of novel author Peter Benchley, son of Robery Shaw (Quint), and various shark extras and townies who were in the cast - one new detail is that only eight cast members were from Hollywood (and one was the co-writer); the rest were locals civilians - it treads familiar ground while popping in new details even for extras junkies like me like that there were three mechanical sharks made for use depending on which side would be facing the cameras.

While this was added to my existing digital 4K copy of Jaws, it's also available it appears on Hulu, Mouse+ and National Geographic's services. If you're a fan, but haven't watched extras before, you'll get some new insights on a favorite film of many.

Score: 7/10. Catch it on streaming. (Coming to Hulu July 10, 2025)

"Heads of State" 4K Review

Ah, summer - the time of year when temperatures rise and the IQ of movies drop, not that that's always a bad thing. People want escapist popcorn fare and on this Independence Day weekend that means dinosaurs running amok in theaters and streamers treating the stay-at-home crowd to a sequel like Netflix's The Old Guard 2 and the high concept action comedy Heads of State from Amazon Prime.

It opens with a prologue in Spain where a joint CIA-MI-6 operation goes horribly sideways resulting in the deaths of everyone including team leader Noel Bisset (Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Quantico) - spoiler: she's not dead; it's in the trailer - and allowing a hacker (Stephen Root, Office Space) working for Russian arms dealer Viktor Gradov (Paddy Considine, Mobland) to access the super spy network Echelon which holds all the secrets and sees everything.

We then meet our titular heads of state: Recently inaugurated American President Will Derringer (Jon Cena, Peacemaker) is a former action movie star nicknamed "the Venom in Denim" for his Water Cobra series and British Prime Minister Same Clarke (Idris Elba, Pacific Rim) has been PM for six years, is suffering poor approval ratings, and thinks Derringer is a clown. Derringer isn't too chuffed about Clarke either because during the campaign he had fish & chips with his leading opponent & considered that interference in the election.

After their personal beefs erupt during a joint press conference, their respective chiefs of staffs suggest Clarke riding on Air Force One with Derringer to the upcoming NATO Summit in Trieste, Italy with a side stop in Warsaw, Poland. It will make for a good photo op to tamp down the negative press. Unfortunately, a bad guy posing as a chef on AF1 kills the comms officers and turns off the radios, then attempts to kill the leaders while a cargo jet filled with attack drones appears and launches an assault on the plane. The plane critically damaged, a Secret Service agent gets them into parachutes and off the plane before it crashes into the woods of Belarus. (If you're thinking, "Wait? Isn't Belarus past Poland?" then give yourself a cookie because it is.)

While Derringer wants to call home to let his family and government know they're alive, Clarke believes that whoever could've pulled off such an audacious attack would be listening for such a call and probably had moles in their governments, so best to keep quiet and get the the CIA safe house in Warsaw that the agent directed them to. Through a series of hijinks they make it to Warsaw and into the hands of CIA station agent Marty Comer (Jack Quaid, Novocaine). On the downside, with control of Echelon Gradov's goons immediately show up to kill everyone.

The pair almost escape, but are caught and basically dead until a car appears out of nowhere to run down their captors. And who is this driver ex machina? Duh. It's Bisset! (Told you she wasn't dead!) The trio then make their way to the NATO Summit which is in a state of uproar because Gradov has leaked documents showing that everyone was spying on and interfering in their supposed allies business. While Acting President Elizabeth Kirk (Carla Gugino, Sin City) tries to hold the alliance together, things aren't looking good. Will the Prez & the PM (Free Band Name!) learn to get along and save the day?

While not breaking much new ground in the antagonist frenemies buddy Odd Couple genre, the script by Josh Appelbaum & André Nemec (Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, the 2014 & 2016 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles flicks) manages to be slightly better than necessary as it takes some time in between the punchy-shooty and mutual disrespect wisecracks to flesh out the characters more than the cartoons you'd expect.

Derringer gets ragged on for being "gym strong as opposed to strong strong" by the actual military vet Clarke, but they don't turn him into a punching bag for "stupid ugly Americans" or an avatar of a certain former pal of Hollyweird celebs who they decided was worse than Satan a decade ago because he changed team jerseys. Derringer is a bit of a goof, but he's a kind family man who's trying to do good in the world. Conversely, Clarke's dismissive snootiness is a front for being a lonely bachelor in a job he's getting jaded about as he still pines for the girl who got away but comes back into his life in time to run bad guys down with a car.

Director Ilya Naishuller (Hardcore Henry, Nobody) sometimes wobbles a bit on the tone when dealing with Gradov's brutality, but it's only briefly, unlike someone like David Leitch (Bullet Train) who wobbles for entire movies. The action is clear and there are a couple of genuinely brilliant instances of showing not telling to explain how characters got from one point to another.

While Heads of State may not be a towering achievement in action cinema, it's a notch above the usual dumped to streaming dreck we get served and watch only because we're paying for it anyway. A post-credit scene hints at possible sequel action and I wouldn't be opposed to more in this vein. 

Score: 7/10. Catch it on Amazon Prime.