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a while and a dozen intervening movies, I couldn't remember enough specifics to properly review them, so they remained unpublished.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!

"DEVO" Review

 Even if you know more about the Akron, Ohio's favorite spud boys, Devo, than their Big Hit from 1980 "Whip It", you probably aren't prepared for what you'll learn watching DEVO, the 2024 Sundance hit documentary which has finally arrived on Netflix to coincide with the band's 50th anniversary tour with The B-52's.

Director Chris Smith applies the style from his excellent WHAM! documentary to let the subjects - new interviews with Mark Mothersbaugh, Jerry Casale, and Bob Mothersbaugh as well as archive footage of deceased members Bob Casale and Alan Myers - tell their story rather than having various dinosaur critics from Rolling Stone or one of the dreaded doc trio of Henry Rollins, Dave Grohl and/or Questlove.

Their story starts with Mothersbaugh and Casale attending Kent State and having two of their friends killed in that infamous incident in 1970. Both were artists and had been active in protesting the Vietnam War, but underlying their Leftist ideology was a deep cynicism about the world and its promises and that rather than becoming a better place, society and humanity itself was sliding down the slope to devolution - de-evolving into primitives - thus the name Devo.

Their art provocateur antics didn't go over great with the townies of The Rubber City, but a short film they'd made won a film festival which got them invited to play in LA for a label. While that didn't result in a deal, it gave them a leg up on trying the Big Apple where they rapidly found celebrities like John Lennon and Jack Nicholson in the crowd. David Bowie even introduced them for one show and offered to produce them.

After signing to Warner Bros., Bowie kept being too busy to produce them, but handed them off to Brian Eno for some contentious sessions. When the album was complete, the label's marketing team suggested making life-size cardboard cutouts of the band to stand in record stores. The band asked for that money instead to make a video for their cover of "Satisfaction." This was several years before MTV (a cable channel that used to play music videos long ago) launched, so the label was baffled, but agreed.

A high-profile appearance on Saturday Night Live ahead of their tour put them in the spotlight, but eventually their sophomore album flopped and the ultimatum was given: Your next album better have a hit or else hit the bricks. They took it to heart and turned in their Freedom of Choice album and when the label's pick for leadoff single, "Girl U Want," flopped, the second was the band's choice: "Whip It" and the rest was one-hit wonder history.

Because MTV was starved for content in the beginning and the band had produced several videos, they were ubiquitous in those early days. Ironically, as everyone got in on the act, MTV suddenly got picky about showing Devo's videos, pointing the the charts as an excuse for not playing them because lack of promotion leading to poor charts isn't a self-fulfilling prophecy or anything.

Eventually, Warners would tire of declining sales and drop the band and when they tried another label, Enigma, it was just before it would fold. At which point the band packed it in with Mothersbaugh and "the Bobs" starting a scoring company doing movies for Wes Anderson movies and Pee-Wee's Playhouse and Casale becoming a commercial and music video director.

Running throughout DEVO is a constant frustration they had in getting their philosophical, ideological, and political points across when everyone just saw the goofy costumes and weird videos. While their clear Leftist bent is referenced, the movie doesn't harp on the subject beyond the typical Boomer hippie whining about Ronald Reagan beating Jimmy Carter and the obligatory atheist snark against religion. (i.e. the current resident of the White House is never evoked)

That they've occasionally reunited to tour - I saw them at NXNE in Toronto in 2011 - goes unmentioned and the beginning dwells quite a while on Kent State before moving to the band proper, so DEVO doesn't quite hit the mark between those who know little and big fans needs. I was never that into them, but I had no idea about their early years and political underpinnings. However, as they covered their commercial misfortunes, especially the banned-by-MTV video for "That's Good", I was familiar with much of what they discussed.

Score: 7/10. Catch it on Netflix.

For some reason there is no trailer for this. Weird.

"Eenie Meenie" Review

 I've been a fan of Samara Weaving for a while now. Unfortunately, due to my inconsistent completing of reviews (i.e. sometimes not even logging more than a date and score, sorry), you'd be hard pressed to tell I'd seen any of her movies beyond Mayhem, but she's had a remarkably consistent streak of projects including Ready or Not, Guns Akimbo, and The Babysitter (which I never even logged). I've called her "Margot Robbie's slightly-less-attractive little sister," but on further inspections she's hotter, looking like a cross between Robbie and Heather Graham.

So, when the trailer dropped for the Hulu Original movie Eenie Meanie promising a tale of a former wheelwoman for criminal activities - Babe Driver, if you will (yes, I'm proud of that) - I was onboard. The trailer loudly promotes it was produced by the pair who'd co-written all the Deadpool movies, implying profane hijinks will ensure. Unfortunately, the actual result is a frustratingly misbegotten tonal misfire which wastes what should've been a breakout performance from Weaving and a good time for the audience.

We first meet 14-year-old Edie Meaney (Elle Graham) in a flashback to 2007 when she walks to the Cleveland bar to drive her drunk parents (Steve Zahn and Chelsea Crisp) home. The cops pull them over and the combination of Edie being underage and unlicensed and Mom having a bunch of cocaine in her possession, which would be a third strike, so Dad encourages her to make a run for it as he taught her. We don't see what happens next, but are eventually told by inference it didn't go great for everyone.

We jump to the present where grown-up Edie (Weaving) is working as a bank teller. When inept robbers hit her branch and she's knocked out, she's taken to the hospital where she's informed that while she doesn't have a concussion, she is pregnant by her ex-boyfriend, John (Karl Glusman, The Bikeriders), a terminal loser for whom making poor choices is his default setting. When she goes to tell him of her being embabied, she finds him about to be whacked by unknown gunmen and helps his buck naked ass escape with her superior wheelman skills. Why was he in peril? Who freaking cares.

I have to pause to say that at this point only a half-hour into the movie, I said to the missus, "If this movie ends with her back in love with him, I'm scoring it a zero." This guy isn't a loveable loser, he's a L-O-S-E-R and frankly, I'm disappointed in her that she was shtupping this doofus. (Was Pete Davidson unavailable?)

To get this over with, he's $3 million in hock to crime boss Nico (Andy Garcia), so to save his worthless life Edie will need to be the wheelgirl for an audacious heist of a Dodge Charger with $3M in cash in the trunk being given as the prize for a poker tournament at the Hollywood Casino in Toledo. (Meaningless Factoid: I've driven past this place once, I think.) They have all the right connections on the inside and it's going to be a piece of cake, right? Well, not really, because betrayal, double crosses, blah-blah-woof-woof and Johnny being an effing psycho at the end.

As with all bad movies, the trouble begins with the schizophrenic script by writer-director Shawn Simmons (co-creator of the John Wick prequel series The Continental) which apparently the Deadpool writers who produced this didn't flag as ruinous. This mess rivals Alex Garland for face-planting in the third act, but the problems shoot through the entire length.

For example, we're desperately trying to understand WHY Edie is so stuck on Johnny and finally, well into the plot she explains that they met when he intervened to save her from being pimped out by her foster father when she was 15. Icky stuff, but OK, I get that. But why was she in foster care? Because as a visit to her father implies, that opening scene where she runs from the cops resulted in her mother being killed and her father paralyzed and wheelchair-bound. Yikes.

He'd allowed her to go into the system because he couldn't have cared for her, but when we visit him he has remarried and appears to have a young daughter Edie was unaware of meaning in the ensuing 17 years he restarted his life and never reached out to his first daughter. But he seems to know who Johnny is, so....ummmmm, whut?

The heist itself is laughable because one moment she's being chased by tons of cop cars, then it's as if they completely gave up and never attempted to pursue and capture the thief of $3M. It's harder to shake off a two-star wanted level in Grand Theft Auto than it is to get away with a casino robbery. No one has her on security cameras IN A CASINO, not to mention the eyewitnesses who saw her behind the wheel - how many hot blonde getaway drivers are there in Ohio? - so she gets away clean?

The way Eenie Meanie careens into a ditch is a shame because there are several genuinely laugh out loud moments and lines and if Simmons had just stayed in the comedic lane where colorful characters like a competing wheelman with an amusing backstory for his burns is appropriate. Or he could've gone gritty and dark. Pick a lane and stay in it because when most of the movie is amusing, the whammies at the end wipe out all the goodwill the movie had scraped together.

But the biggest victim is Weaving who really hits all the notes the Simmons asks her to only for it to not matter in the end. There's a sequel to Ready or Not coming next year and she'll be in a couple more upcoming movies which may be good. She deserves to be known as more than looking a lot like Margot Robbie, a role she played in Damien Chazelle's bloated misfire Babylon.

Despite Weaving and some decent practical car chases and laughs, the messy ending makes Eenie Meanie one to miss.

Score: 4/10. Skip it.