"The Net" Review

 In 1995 a pair of movies came out starring Sandra Bullock, fresh off her appearance in the previous year's Speed, which caused me to coin the term "Sandra Bullock Syndrome" which is when a move expects the audience to believe a perfectly attractive woman can't seem to attract the attention of a man. (I've seen others use this term on teh Intartoobz meaning great minds think alike or something, but I made it up.) One was While You Were Sleeping where Bullock pined for Peter Gallagher while ignoring THE archetypical Decent Guy Who Has No Real Flaws But Is A Little Dull So Women Ignore Him For The Bad Boy Bill Pullman. The other was tonight's movie, The Net, which along with Hackers the same year were many Normies introduction to the existence of the recently invented World Wide Web. Unlike the latter Angelina Jolie flick, the representation of tech in The Net is fairly rooted in reality. Unfortunately, the movie itself is a slow-paced slog.

Bullock stars as Angela Bennett, a freelance computer analyst living in Venice, CA. She rebuffs attempts to meet people in real life, orders pizza online from Pizza-dot-net (which amazingly isn't a real site now, not even cybersquatted), and visiting her Alzheimer's-stricken mother who doesn't remember her. She doesn't even have a cat. (Wha??)

A tech colleague mails her a floppy disc - 'memba those? - that has a hidden feature which appears to give hackers access to government servers, airlines, power grid controls, all sorts of things you don't want malicious actors to have access to, but when he flies his Cessna to meet her to discuss it, his plane's navigation malfunctions and he crashes to death.

Angela goes on vacation to Mexico and attracts the attention of a British man, Jack Devlin (Jeremy Northham), who also takes a fancy laptop to the beach. While she's shy at first, she succumbs to his vanilla charms so that the movie could happen beginning with his staging a purse snatching then, after boinking her on his boat, attempting to murder kill her for the disc. Ruh-roh! She manages to escape on the boat's dinghy, but wrecks and is knocked unconscious for three days.

When she goes to the Embassy to get a temporary visa to get home, since her documents were stolen, she's presented a form with the name Ruth Marx on it. They ignore her protestations that she was Angela Bennett, so she signs the wrong name to get home. Except when she gets to her house, she finds it empty except for the real estate agent selling it. The cops are called when the neighbors can't vouch for her since they never interacted with her and while she's trying to explain who she is, Jack hacks the police database to add a criminal record to "Ruth's" file making her a felon fugitive.

She escapes the cops and is on the run to reclaim her life, turning to a former lover, her therapist Dr. Alan Champion (a woefully miscast Dennis Miller). Hijinks ensure as she tries to reclaim her life and stop the conspiracy Jack's masters, the Praetorians, are perpetrated to gain control over everything.

While a few of the specifics of the tech of the mid-1990s are BS, a lot of what The Net portrays is actually reasonably plausible with her using a Macintosh, not something running MovieOS. But it's weird revisiting one of these conspiracy thrillers that were so common in the Nineties, especially in the slooooooooow pacing where it takes about a half-hour to get the plot going, stuff that would've been chopped down to a tight 10 minutes nowadays.

Director Irwin Winkler is better known for his long career as a producer - he was nominated for Best Picture for Raging Bull, The Right Stuff, and Goodfellas, winning for Rocky (over Network, booooo!!!) - than as a director and The Net is a good example of why some people should just hire competent people to make their movies.

Screenwriters John Brancato & Michael Ferris would follow this bland story with the wildly overrated The Game (which has one of the worst endings ever, but is given a pass because David Fincher directed and until it faceplants it was an OK movie) then real winners like Catwoman. The irony is that the kernel of an idea at the core - that all our information is online and unless we secure it bad things will happen - is sound, even prescient, but the tepid potwarmer of a plot doesn't land.

At the center of this mediocrity is poor Bullock, trying her best with weak material and direction, eking out some sympathy because she's just so darn cute. But there are other, far better, movies with Nineties Bullock in them like Demolition Man, Speed, and Miss Congeniality. 

Score: 4/10. Skip it.

"Bugonia" Review

 Earlier this year Emma Stone was out on red carpets with a rather unflattering pixie cut. While some questioned her poor tonsorial judgement, when the trailer for her fourth collaboration with director Yorgos Lanthimos, Bugonia, dropped, the reason for her hairstyle became clear: She'd shaved her head for the role of a corporate CEO kidnapped by conspiracy theorists who believe she's an alien who can be tracked by her hair, so by shaving it off and slathering her skin with antihistamine cream to prevent her sending out a distress signal, they intend to force her to arrange a meeting with the Andromedan Emperor in four days during a lunar eclipse.

Her captors are Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and his autistic cousin Don (Aidan Delbis, making his film debut and is on the spectrum), who live in the country in a rundown house with bee hives out back. As the plot progresses, we're given hints as to their circumstances including bizarre flashbacks to Teddy's mother, Sandy (Alicia Silverstone), who has a connection to the company Michelle Fuller (Stone) runs which is also Teddy's employer. Lurking around the perimeter is Sheriff's Deputy Casey (Stavros Halkias), who was Teddy's babysitter and is apologetic about something he did to Teddy back then.

The bulk of the film is the battle of wills and wits between Michelle and Teddy as she tries to win her freedom and he tries to get her to admit she's Andromedan. After she withstands a massive amount of electrical current while he tortures her, Teddy decides this means she's part of the Andromedan royalty and begins to treat her better. But that doesn't last long and when the 3rd act rolls around, to quote Ron Burgundy, "That escalated quickly."

While the missus really liked it, I found Bugonia somewhat flat and drawn out for what it does. The script by Will Tracy - who wrote the cruelly snubbed by Oscar film The Menu - adapts a 2003 South Korean film called Save the Green Planet!, but as good as The Menu was with its biting morality play over several dinner courses, Bugonia ultimately rests on the question of is Michelle an alien or not? (FWIW, I guessed the answer correctly really early on.) The ending is rather downbeat in a bad way as well.

I've been a fan of Stone's since Superbad though I didn't really catch onto how special she was until The Rocker. She's developed further into a bold, risk-taking actress as anyone who saw Poor Things can attest and she's her usual excellent here as well. As she's spewing corporate diversity speak it makes one wonder if she has a soul. It's strange to see Plemons slimmed down from his previous Philip Seymour Hoffman Jr.-esque plump physique, but he's good in a narrowly written role where he's set up as a sweaty kook. 

After the constructed artifice of Poor Things, I looked at the limited settings of Bugonia - a country house, a CEO's luxury home, an office building - and figured Lanthimos wanted to make a smaller scale, lower budget film, but apparently this was the most expensive movie he's made with a $55 million budget which means its $35M gross made it a big flop. I can understand it having limited appeal, but can't fathom why they didn't keep the budget commensurate to its likely box office for a movie about a CEO kidnapped, head shaved, battle of wills with weirdos.

Score: 5/10. Catch it on cable/streaming.

"Nobu" Review

 You know you've made it to the top tiers of culture when you're referred to by just your first name and everyone knows who is being referred to like Madonna, Cher, Oprah, Woody, Bruce, and Nobu. Wait, No WHO? Oh, you're not familiar with Nobu Matsuhisa, the proprietor of Matsuhisa restaurant in LA and partner with Robert De Niro and others in a globe-spanning empire of restaurants and hotels which bear his name: Nobu? Well, if you watch the slick documentary Nobu, you will know a bit more about him.

Starting in his post-war childhood in Japan, the doc briskly recaps his life, how he got into making sushi and how being sent to Peru to open a restaurant exposed him to local flavors and ingredients that he integrated into his food to create a new fusion. His early years were fraught with disappointments and disaster, such as when the restaurant he'd partnered on in Alaska burned down, an event which would turn out to be the best thing that could've happened.

Relocating to Los Angeles, he opened a small (only 38 seats) Matsuhisa where he quickly developed a following in the elite LA celebrity foodie scene. In 1988, De Niro first came there, brought by The Killing Fields director Roland Joffee, and after more visits when he was in town, broached the subject of opening a spot in NYC's Tribeca District where De Niro had opened the Tribeca Grill. Nobu demurred because he wanted to focus on securing his home base. But when De Niro asked again four years later, he felt the time was right and signed onto the partnership which launched Nobu in NYC and has since expanded to over 56 restaurants, hotel and other ventures as it became a luxury brand as much as a restaurant.

In fact, much of Nobu feels like propaganda for Nobu Hospitality, the corporation, rather than a documentary about Nobu the man himself. It would be easy to write off the whole exercise except for a few segments. One shows him visiting one of his locations and repeatedly ordering a chef to remake a dish because if fails to meet his precise standards. Another shows De Niro quite exasperated that his partners have signed deals for new outposts that seem more intended to make a quick buck than thoughtfully serve the brand ideals. (While De Niro has been mostly phoning in his acting for years and his Trump Derangement Syndrome is at Stage 12, he comes off as a savvy businessman while Nobu is mostly silent.) 

Finally, there is a heartbreaking passage when relates that when he returned to his Japanese home for his traditional month's stay and he called his best friend who seems troubled, he didn't press the issue. When he called back the next day he reached his friend's wife who informed Nobu he'd committed suicide the previous night. Nobu's guilt at not noticing his friend's state has prevented him from visiting his grave until he does so in the movie.

It's natural to compare Nobu to the far better Jiro Dreams of Sushi, but there was more insight into the latter's subject than we get here. It's interesting, but too slick and promotional to really fill the viewer up.

Score: 5/10. Catch it on cable/streaming. (Currently on Prime Video)

"Being Eddie" 4K Review

 Going into Being Eddie, the Netflix Original documentary about the life of Eddie Murphy, I was hoping for a bookend to John Candy: I Like Me which would tell the story of the Saturday Night Live phenom who effortlessly transitioned into being one of the biggest movie stars in the world as a counterpoint to Candy's smaller success, not to mention that Murphy is still alive and working while Candy died in 1994. Unfortunately, it ends up a sanitized and superficial exercise.

Just as with Candy, Eddie Murphy was a fixture of my Gen X teen years with his arrival on the first season of SNL after the original cast and Lorne Michaels left. While those early-Eighties seasons are rightfully scorned as a pale imitation of the original, there were still some bright lights and it's arguable that the 19-year-old Murphy may've saved the show in that fraught era with his characters like Mr. Robinson, Gumby, Velvet Jones, Buckwheat, and more.

He was such a bright light, Hollywood came calling and he launched his movie career with a hat trick of classics: 48 Hours, Trading Places, and Beverly Hills Cop which was groundbreaking because it proved a black lead could draw massive audiences globally. The fame allowed him to hook up with Rick James and score a pop hit with "Party All The Time."

When you're young and living history, you have no perspective of how unique a situation Murphy found himself in. As I went to his movies in high school, I didn't know this was a paradigm shift that would open doors as an inspiration to black comedians like Dave Chappelle, Tracy Morgan, Kevin Hart, and Chris Rock and film actors like Morgan Freeman and Denzel Washington. Murphy was inspired by Muhammad Ali and in turn inspired others.

But while trying to make the point of Murphy being a Black Pioneer, they run into a weird self-own. While discussing the bit in BHC where Axel Foley is walking down the street and a pair of guys in leather Thriller-style jackets pass by him the other way and he starts laughing, film critic Elvis Mitchell (who briefly wrote for the Detroit Free Press and always sought to inject race politics & somehow has always lost jobs intended to be DEI spots for him) pontificates that this was Murphy mocking his own image. However, a bit later Murphy points out a friend of his in a magazine and explains that he was one of the pair in jackets and had made a face at Murphy as they passed and that cracked him up. (UPDATE: After posting this review, YouTube fed me this short with both clips.)

While owning the 1980s, the turn of the decade brought some box office comedowns which culminated in the flop of Vampire in Brooklyn and David Spade's vicious crack on SNL, "Look, kids, a falling star. Make a wish," while a photo of Murphy was shown. He was so incensed at the dig that he boycotted appearing on SNL except for a brief, non-performing appearance on the 40th Anniversary special, until he returned to host in 2019. The doc focuses at length on a bit where Rock, Chappelle, and Morgan appear during the monologue and how they tweak a joke, but at the expense of showing that almost 40 years after beginning his career in Studio 8H, he still had the fire & moves to deliver an ace performance.

But after Vampire in Brooklyn he bounced back with The Nutty Professor and Bowfinger while branching into family friendly fare owing to his having young children like Doctor Doolittle and Daddy Daycare before stepping up to the mic to voice Donkey in the Shrek series which probably paid for the palatial mansion we see him living in.

However, the new Millennium brought more flops like The Adventures of Pluto Nash and Meet Dave (of which Murphy advises, "Never play a spaceship.") and taking a break from movies. His big comeback, 2006's Dreamgirls, won him a Golden Globe and earned an Oscar nominations, but in a case of self-sabotage for the ages, as much as Murphy tries to downplay it, they released the critical and commercial flop Norbit while Oscar voting was still in progress.

All the promise of his dramatic turn was erased by a brash comedy that begged the question, is this what Oscar-worthy actors do? There are plenty of cases of Oscar winners debasing themselves AFTER they've won for a paycheck - helloooooooo, Nicolas Cage! - but one can only imagine the career he would've had if they'd simply held Norbit a few weeks longer. Murphy claims he was more upset about getting dressed up for nothing, but come on. It wouldn't be until 2019's Netflix movie, Dolemite Is My Name that he'd regain some respect, though he promptly squandered it on fluff like Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F which at least is the second best BHC movie of the four.

While there are some interesting insights and stories, Being Eddie is too polished and protective of its subject. Recent documentaries about Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger were more candid about their lives, but here while Murphy goes on about how he does it all for his kids because they're so important to him, it omits the detail that his 10 kids came from five different baby mamas, two of which he was actually married to at the time.

It ends with heavy hints that perhaps he may return to stand-up comedy, something he walked away from after his 1987 concert film Eddie Murphy Raw. Is Being Eddie meant to be a trial balloon to gauge interest in a comeback? Because it falls short of presenting its subject in sufficient depth. While the promo for this hypes director Angus Wall's two Oscar wins, those were for editing The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, both for David Fincher (along with a nom for editing The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, also for Fincher) and this is his first big directing gig and he shies away from digging into Murphy's soul.

Oddly, in the end credits where various stylists and makeup people for interviewees are listed, are credits for those assigned to "Mr. Piscopo" and "Mr. Pharoh", presumably being Joe Piscopo, who was in that cast with Murphy and was one of the other bright spots, and Jay Pharoh, who was an ace impressionist (his Denzel Washington makes it impossible to take Denzel seriously now) on SNL between 2010-2016 and now, come to think of it, was an odd omission. Why the credits for people who didn't make the final cut?

As with most Netflix 4K Dolby Vision products, it's not necessary to have the top tier to access the HDR visuals.

Score: 6/10. Catch it on Netflix.

"The Perfect Neighbor" 4K Review

Documentaries used to be a fairly bland genre in which the subject matter was documented (thus the name) and the viewer was reasonably safe in presuming what they were viewing to be the truth, more or less. But with the success of slovenly, lying, fat bastard Michael Moore's dishonest agitprop works masquerading as documentaries winning an Oscar for staged scenes of banks giving away guns and raking in millions with the lies that 9/11 was an inside job, and Al Gore's ManBearPig fantasy film also winning Oscar, the documentary has been mostly a tool of Leftists to push agendas under the guise of honest filmmaking.

Into this environment comes the Sundance hit The Perfect Neighbor, Netflix's doc about the killing of Ajike "AJ" Owens by Susan Lorincz in June 2023 by Geeta Gandbhir. Comprised mostly of bodycam footage, we witness the escalating tensions between Lorincz and her neighbors in Ocala, FL as she repeatedly calls the Sheriff's Department over a period of 16 months about the boisterous children in the neighborhood she claims are initially trespassing on her property then becoming more provocative in taunting - or threatening according to Lorincz - "the Karen", as they call her.

The dispute arises because the owner of the open lot adjoining Lorincz's rental duplex, who lives on the other side, has given his permission for the kids to play on his lot, and kids being kids they're loud and annoying. It comes to a head when Owens knocked on Lorincz's door and the latter fired a shot through the door, mortally wounding Owens. Lorincz claims Owens was pounding on the door so hard she feared for her life, but details in the investigation raise questions about her version of events.

What The Perfect Neighbor does well is show the mutual antagonism on both sides of the tension. As the saying goes, it takes two to tango and while nothing justifies busting caps over disturbing the peace, you can sense that the kids with the support of their parents aren't trying to deescalate matters. As deputies are called back, they're familiar with Lorincz's constant calls and trying to chill her out, but she's clearly frustrated; not that this excuses her poor choices.

But where Gandbhir crosses the line into propaganda is an ending title decrying "stand your ground" laws which entitle people being threatened to defend themselves without having to run away until trapped. The card suggests that (paraphrasing) "...white assailants get away with killing Black victims..." with the woke capitalization of black in keeping with the current black supremacist zeitgeist in the wake of St. George Floyd's overdose death near a cop in 2020 which set race relations in America back 60 years.

The reason the inflammatory end title is such dirty pool is because under the end credits we're shown footage from Lorincz's trial for manslaughter which ended in her conviction and sentencing to 25 years in prison, which for a then 60-year-old is effective life in slam. That she had no previous criminal record and a history of childhood sexual trauma didn't get her any mercy in a time where black criminals with dozens of arrests walk free while white convicts are punished severely. Also not disclosed is the factoid found in the movie's Wikipedia page that Gandhir's sister-in-law was Owens best friend and began documenting the case with the expectation the white woman would get away with it.

What such poisonous tactics obscure is the core tragedy of this incidents. While some excessive form of "justice" may've been served, there are no winners. A woman who really should've moved's life is over because of a rash choice she made - somehow left out was that Owen's 10-year-old child was next to her when the shot was fired - and four kids are now without a mother because they chose to antagonize "the Karen" rather than try and coexist. By trying to make it another race war example doesn't cool temperatures, but agenda-driven filmmakers aren't seeking to back off the steam when the money is in stoking outrage.

While in 4K and Dolby Vision, the source material doesn't lend itself to the benefits of the format and paying for Netflix's top tier.

Score: 6/10. Catch it on Netflix.

"F1: The Movie" 4K Review

 In the post-Hot Fad Plague world that Hollyweird helped create in 2020, huge crowd-pleasing blockbusters have become harder to come by. One exception was 2022's Top Gun: Maverick which grossed $1.5 billion and showed that audiences would come back to theaters for simple crowd-pleasing movies. With that success, the creators - producer Jerry Bruckheimer, director Joseph Kosinski, and writer Ehren Kruger - have reteamed with another aging yet seemingly ageless star, Brad Pitt, to make another popcorn munching crowd pleaser about men in fast vehicles, this time Formula One race cars for F1: The Movie. Currently #7 in the 2025 global box office rankings with $631 million grossed, it was the only non-IP, non-sequel movie in the top 10. While it *only* grossed 41% of Top Gun: Maverick's haul, it's still a decent take though how much profit it made depends on whether the budget was on the lower end of the reported $200M-$300M scale.

Pitt stars as Sonny Hayes, a once-promising F1 racer whose career was cut short after a nearly fatal crash during a race 30 years previously. Since then, he's been a driver-for-hire picking up work wherever he can like when we're introduced to him living in his van awaiting his shift in the 24 Hours of Daytona race. Even though he gets the team into position to win, he doesn't seem interested in the trappings of the victory as he heads off looking for his next race in the Baja 1000.

While on the road, he is located and approached by Rubén Cervantes (Javier Bardem), Sonny's former teammate back in the day and now the owner of a struggling F1 team, APXGP (read: Apex GP). Rubén offers Sonny a job as the #2 driver to try and improve their fortunes and to mentor his #1, Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris). Joshua is talented, but undisciplined, and unless the team wins a race before the end of the season, the F1 bosses and investors may force a sale of the team. Sonny says he isn't interested, but naturally still shows up in London so the movie can happen.

Naturally, Joshua doesn't care for the old guy stepping to him with his old-fashioned ways. While he runs on a treadmill with a breathing apparatus to gather biometrics and uses computerized reaction timing devices to train, Sonny merely jogs around the tracks and bounces tennis balls to keep his eye-hand coordination up. Joshua is all about posing for cameras, being on social media, getting sponsors, so how dare this old man tell him how to drive and win?

Needless to say, things get off to a bumpy start - literally - as they crash into each other, taking the team out of the first race. While Sonny manipulates things to give his teammate an advantage, everyone seems puzzled as to what he's doing. He suggests a combat-oriented strategy where they tweak the cars' aerodynamics to allow for more speed in crowded curves and aggressively hold position to make it harder for others to pass, within the limits of safety and F1 rules. But Joshua continues to buck the advice which leads to a horrific accident. Will be be able to come back and will the team be able to save itself from being sold off? Are you really wondering like it's in doubt?

To say that F1 is predictable almost understates how by-the-numbers it is. At times I was saying dialog ahead of the characters. A scene involving a poker game between Sonny and Joshua to determine who is the #1 driver of the team has a twist so obvious they should've had Joshua catch on to what was happening. Care to guess whether Sonny and Kerry Condon's team technical director hook up? It's that kind of easy crowd-pleasing movie.

Brad Pitt was just shy of 60 when filming began and he's definitely straddling the boyish charm/older Robert Redford line that comes from good genetics and a (likely) deal with Satan. He's charming and laid back which is a weird vibe for a guy who wants to win. If there's a fault, it's that he's basically replaying his Oscar-winning Cliff Booth character from Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood. I guess if it worked once, why not work it some more. I've been seeing a bunch of clips from Moneyball and The Big Short lately so perhaps I wish he did more, not that the by-the-numbers script demands it.

I haven't seen Idris in anything before, but he's good in his equally narrow role. It's easy to dislike his cocky demeanor when he - in the words of Morrissey - hasn't earned it yet, baby. And it's downright weird in today's times when Hollyweird seems to want to cram THE MESSAGE into everything that the friction between the drivers has absolutely no hint of racial component, just young vs. old. Helps that Joshua is British and even more so that the producers wanted to invite all audiences in rather than drive them away preening their wokeness to their fellow wokesters.

The race sequences are good, but I felt the scenes in Ford vs. Ferrari were more exciting. A friend saw F1 at IMAX and was raving about it due to the huge screen and deafening sound. Granted, my THX-compliant viewing distance home theater can't boom like IMAX, the action in Top Gun: Maverick came across fine. They used tiny cameras on remote heads to get driver's eye view shots and be able to show the stars driving the cars, but it still feels a tad static.

At 2h 35m (with credits) long, I went into F1: The Movie with a bit of dread because movies these days are just too padded out, but to risk punning, the time raced by due to the streamlined formulaic script which was probably timed out with a Save The Cat beat sheet. The missus really liked it, not just because Brad Pitt gets her tingly in the nethers, but because it was just a fun, entertaining movie that delivered what was advertised on the tin. I wanted a bit more, but this probably isn't the movie for more.

The 4K Dolby Vision presentation was sharp and colorful. They filmed with a mix of Sony Venice and DJI Ronin 4D cameras and they intercut seamlessly. The audio mix was enveloping and while I'm sure IMAX really sold the experience, my 5.2.4 Atmos setup did OK.

Score: 7/10. Catch it on cable/streaming. (Coming exclusively to Apple TV in mid-December.)

"Downey Wrote That" Review

While much credit for the enduring success of Saturday Night Live goes to the stars over the years, what made the show live and die throughout has been the quality of the writing. When the writing is good, the show soars; when it's bad, oooof. (It's why I DVR the show so I can skip bad musical acts and tedious sketches.) Now in its 51st season, the writing was deadly bad early on, but things have improved with more adventurous writing.

But while some writers like Al Franken and Tom Davis in the early days or Seth Meyers and Tina Fey have crossed over into general public consciousness, one who has been more of a legend to writing nerds who actually care about this stuff than to the rubes is Jim Downey, who joined SNL in 1976 (sharing an office with fellow rookie Bill Murray) then proceeded to work for 30 non-consecutive years before retiring in 2013 as the longest-running writer in show history. During an early break from the show when he left along with nearly everyone else when creator Lorne Michaels stepped away in 1980, he was the head writer for Late Night with David Letterman, helping form his subversive & influential brand of comedy.

Thus we have the Peacock Original documentary Downey Wrote That, which follows along the series of docs produced earlier this year in conjunction with the 50th Anniversary of SNL by gathering a bevy of past writers and cast members including Adam Sandler, David Spade, Maya Rudolph, Bob Odenkirk, Ben Stiller, Conan O'Brien, David Letterman, and Lorne Michaels to sing their praises of Downey's oddball & specific wit. They reminisce about how they'd line up outside his office to have their scripts appraised and how to have his blessing meant everything.

The amount of memorable sketches over the decades is amazing. Fred Garvin: Male Prostitute, Lord & Lady Douchebag, The Change Bank (in which he appeared as the bank spokesman), The People's Court with Satan, Colon Blow, the coining of the word "strategery" which people believe is something George W. Bush actually said (like how people believe Sarah Palin said, "I can see Russia from my house," because Tina Fey did it in a sketch), the legendary Chippendale's audition with Patrick Swayze versus Chris Farley, and so many more.

The time he focused solely on doing the Weekend Update segment when Norm MacDonald was the anchor gets its own segment and they include one of my two favorite Norm Update jokes, "And in music news, #1 on the college charts this summer was Better Than Ezra. And at #2...Ezra." Seth Meyers tells of, and we're shown, a joke about a birthday party for the world's richest girl, to which Meyers admits, "My favorite joke is one which didn't land but I still thing about 30 years later." The infamous way MacDonald & Downey were fired because they took NBC President Don Ohlmeyer's offense at their jokes about his best friend O.J. Simpson as a sign to quintuple down on the savagery towards Simpson. (Look up the compilations on YouTube sometime. It wasn't a few jokes. It was years of brutal stuff flat-out calling Simpson a murderer.)

His film appearances are also touched upon including his small role in There Will Be Blood and as the quiz host in Billy Madison who berates the stupid answer Billy gives - "We are all dumber for having listened to it" - which Sandler admits was all Downey's writing, becoming "the most quoted bit of the movie."

While the general interest in comedy writers may be debatable, if you're an fan of creativity and SNL and you happen to have Peacock, take 66 minutes and watch Downey Wrote That to see how many of your Gen X/Millennial laugh memories he's responsible for.

Score: 8/10. Catch it on Peacock.

"John Candy: I Like Me" 4K Review

 Older Gen Xers grew up in a Golden Age of televised comedy as tag team of Saturday Night Live and it's lesser-known syndicated cousin SCTV introduced a Murderer's Row of comedic titans from Canuckia to audiences, most of whom not only are household names, but many are still working today especially from the SCTV crew as Martin Short (Only Murders In The Building), Catherine O'Hara and Eugene Levy (Schitt's Creek), Andrea Martin (The Gilded Age), and even Rick Moranis ending a nearly three-decade long absence from performing to appear in Spaceballs 2.

But one of those lost along the way like SNL's John Belushi and Gilda Radner was SCTV's John Candy who died of a heart attack at only 43 years of age in 1994. The creator of wild characters such as Johnny LaRue, horror movie host Dr. Tongue, Gil Fisher the Fishin' Musician, William B. Williams, Mayor Tommy Shanks and many more on SCTV, he left his mark in big screen comedy as well appearing in The Blues Brothers, Stripes, Splash, Spaceballs, Volunteers, and Planes, Trains and Automobiles which also showcased his dramatic depth.

Taking its title from his big scene in the last, John Candy: I Like Me is an interesting rundown of his too-brief life from his boyhood in Canada where his father died at only 35 when Candy was 6, a trauma that haunted his entire life. Charismatic, but at times desperate to please, the regard he is held in by his peers, collaborators and family is summed up by Bill Murray's early sardonic wish that the documentary may finally "dig up some dirt" on Candy because for all his foibles, being a terrible person didn't seem to be one of them. In fact, Murray's "negative" story boils down to a staged reading of something in which Candy "milked" during one part to the annoyance of director Sydney Pollack. That's it, he "milked it."

Director Colin Hanks interviews Candy's widow, children, SCTV co-stars (minus Joe Flaherty, who is dead, and Rick Moranis, who is absent perhaps due to his retirement from show biz until very recently), movie co-stars Steve Martin and Colin's father, Tom, who worked with Candy on Splash and Volunteers. There are interesting tidbits like how Candy tried to enlist with the US Army to fight in Vietnam and his late-in-life co-ownership of the Toronto Argonauts Canadian Football League team along with the occasionally melancholy recapitulation of his inability and/or unwillingness to reign in his excesses of food and drink which ultimately did him in. 

While one can quibble that Hanks (along with producer Ryan Reynolds) could've spent more time on one thing or another, overall John Candy: I Like Me is worth watching especially for those who grew up on his performances.

While it's presented in 4K HDR10+ (for those who didn't pay extra for ad-free Prime Video and get Dolby Vision), it's not a showcase for the format due to the nature of the film and material.

Score: 8/10. Catch it on Amazon Prime.

"Roofman" Review

It always raises suspicion when a movie opens with a notice that it's "based on a true story" because so often dramatic license trumps reality, but judging from the end credits of Roofman, it seems like this one sticks fairly close to the details for its dramedic beats resulting in a pleasant story of a guy who can't stop making bad life choices.

Channing Tatum stars as Jeffrey Manchester, a divorced former Army veteran who struggles financially, leaving his young daughter disappointed in her (admittedly bad) birthday gift (the little gold digger). Using his talents of observation, he decides to improve his living situation by working hard and saving money. Whoops, sorry, what I meant to say is he robbed nearly four dozen McDonald's by breaking in through their roofs - thus earning him the nickname of "Roofman" (roll credits!) - and in one robbery, where he was surprised by the morning shift's arrival, coaxing them at gunpoint into the walk-in freezer, but giving his coat to the manager so he wouldn't freeze while awaiting rescue.

As kind as that gesture may've been, the gun and herding of people is considered armed robbery and kidnapping and he gets the book thrown at him resulting in a 45-year prison sentence and his ex cutting off all contact with his kids. After several years in slam, he devises a clever plan to escape from the prison, but with the cops staking out his place he ends up hiding in the ceiling of a Toys "R" Us bathroom. After the store closes he explores the store, finds the security camera system and disables recording so he can move freely at night.

He eventually sets up a hideaway behind the store's bicycle display, taking clothes from the donation bins, subsisting on candy, and using baby monitors to keep tabs on the staff and the store's Napoleon Complex manager, Mitch (Peter Dinklage). When Mitch refuses to work with single mom Leigh's (Kirsten Dunst) schedule request, Jeffrey gets into the stores computer and changes her schedule.

Wanting to meet her, he steals toys and takes them to the church where Leigh was running a toy drive, catching the eye of the pastor (Ben Mendelsohn) who makes Jeffrey participate with the members, leading to a dinner with the church's Singles Club and, of course, Leigh falling for this sensitive hunk of a man who claims to be "John Zorn", a government intelligence operative undercover from New York.

As Jeffrey and Leigh's romance blooms, even winning over her cynical older daughter, Lindsay (Lily Collias), especially when he helps her get a car and teaches her to drive. But a close call with Mitch while Jeffrey was washing up in the store's bathroom tells Jeffrey that he needs to get going before he gets caught. He contacts a fellow soldier (LaKeith Stanfield) who now makes fake IDs and when the price tag for the documents and passage out of the country is more than he has, he embarks on a final run of bad life choices.

During the end credits they do the typical thing of showing the real people we just saw dramatized by more attractive Hollywood folk, but they also show clips from news reports and you can tell co-writer and director Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine) didn't hype up the details excessively. That said, the idea that Jeffrey was eating so much peanut M&Ms that his teeth need a bunch of fillings but he still has Tatum's washboard six-pack abs is some hooey, gosh darn it!

Because the facts of the story preclude a Super Fun Hollywood Ending, Roofman closes on a bit of a downer, but due to solid performances across the board and Cianfrance's low-key direction, it's worth watching.

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

"Bedazzled" Blu-ray Review

Previously reviewed here.

Score: 7/10. Catch it on cable. 

"Good Fortune" Review

 Comedian Aziz Ansari makes his feature directorial debut with Good Fortune, a sweet-natured comedy that he also wrote.

He stars as Arj, a wannabe documentarian stuck working gig economy jobs in LA. Also working a low-prestige job is Gabriel (Keanu Reeves), a guardian angel whose job is to protect people from texting while driving. One day, he takes an interest in Arj after saving him and follows his life, working at a big box hardware store (think Home Depot), doing gig work, while living in his car.

One day while delivering food to a mansion owned by Jeff (Seth Rogan), he notices the garage is cluttered and offers to organize it for some extra cash. He does such a good job that Jeff offers him a job as his assistant, giving him a company credit card for expenses.

When Arj has a date with Elena (Keke Palmer), a woman he works with at the hardware store, Jeff suggests he take her to a trendy restaurant and recommends menu items. Naturally, when the bill comes it's waaaay more than what Arj has on him, so he reluctantly uses Jeff's credit card to cover dinner. The next day, Jeff confronts Arj about it after being alerted by his accountant. Arj apologizes profusely and promises to pay him back, but Jeff fires him because all the good work he was doing mattered little compared to a few hundred dollar dinner bill and besides those $250,000 watches he collects don't pay for themselves.

Back on the street, forced from the motel he was able to stay at while working for Jeff, Arj discovers he has been banned from the gig app he was using due to poor reviews by ungrateful customers and has to sell plasma for money. When he dozes off in a Denny's, his car is towed for unpaid parking tickets. Seeing Arj's desperation and wanting to make more of a difference in humans lives than just babysitting texting drivers, Gabriel reveals himself to Arj to try and inspire him.

In order to convince him that wealth won't solve his problems, he switches Arj's and Jeff's lives making Arj the wealthy tech investor and Jeff his assistant. Unfortunately for his plan, Arj finds that money pretty much solves all his problems. Making matters worse, Gabriel's angel boss, Martha (Sandra Oh), takes his wings and some of his angel powers for his meddling in matters outside his brief. When Arj refuses to switch lives back, Gabriel gives Jeff his memories back revealing what had been taken from him.

From there things spiral as Arj gets into an auto accident because no angel was there to prevent him texting, ending up in a coma, then pretending to have lost his memory to prevent switching back. Fed up, Martha turns Gabriel human which leads to him having to find a job to buy food he now needs while he and Jeff struggle to scrape by in LA's brutal cost of living. And Raj's wealth doesn't impress Elena whose passion is unionizing the hardware store.

What Ansari wisely does is not make the struggles of gig workers versus mansion-dwelling elites into a ham-fisted screed about late-stage capitalism - other than one clanger line at the end - because no one wants to be lectured by a Hollywood celebrity. Instead he sketches things by showing Arj getting one-star from a client who was mad that the donut shop Arj waited in line for hours to purchase from ran out through no fault of his. (It's like stiffing your waitress on the tip because the kitchen made a bad plate.) Elena's quest to unionize the workers doesn't go as well as she'd hoped. Arj learns to move forward without money.

He also takes a more laid-back pace in his direction, letting scenes breathe to allow character moments either than hammering joke-joke-joke. Rogan pretty much plays his a-hole studio boss character from The Studio, but Ansari and Palmer are more toned down then their noisy comic personas. Reeves is an actor of, to be kind, limited range, but it works to his advantage here because he brings an earnest childlike innocence to Gabriel, especially when he's turned human and washing dishes at a restaurant. Human life is alien to him and he plays it straight.

While not a laugh riot, Good Fortune is a pleasant, often amusing, sweet comedy which doesn't just go for cheap cruel humor or spoil it with agitprop. It's too bad it flopped at the box office, but who goes to the movies for stuff like this anymore?

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

"Primative War" Review

The trailer for Primitive War almost seems like something cheesy "mockbuster" studio The Asylum (makers of Snakes on a Train, Transmorphers, The Da Vinci Treasure, and motherf***ing Sharknado, baybee!) would make: It's 1968 during the Vietnam War and soldiers are fighting dinosaurs in the jungle. That's it. That's the movie.

 Ryan Kwanten (True Blood) stars as Sergeant First Class Ryan Baker, the leader of long-range recon patrol Vulture Squad which has been dispatched by Colonel Jericho (Jeremy Piven, Entourage) to find out what happened to a unit of Green Berets he'd sent on a classified mission then disappeared. We know from the cold open that they were wiped out by dinosaurs, a storytelling mistake too many movies make. (More on that in a bit.)

 It doesn't take long for Vulture Squad to be attacked themselves then separated with Baker and a sidekick whose name really doesn't matter rescued by Sofia Wagner (Tricia Helfer, Battlestar Galactica), the sole survivior of a Russian research team who were responsible for accidentally bring dinosaurs to modern times. She's also a morphine addict because characterization. Baker makes her help find his squad then they go after the secret project that caused this weirdness and could destroy the world. Hijinks ensue.

 On the plus side, Primitive War - a movie with a reported $7-$8 million budget - joins reportedly $15M Godzilla Minus 1 in shaming megabudget extravaganzas with shoddy visual effects like Thor: Love & Thunder with impressive VFX that even Corridor Crew gave props to. Several species of dinos have feathers which even ILM & Weta hadn't done and almost all the dino shots look very good, so it's weird how the helicopters are so clearly fake when solid body objects are generally the easiest to render. The action scenes are appropriately chaotic without becoming incomprehensible.

But on the down side, the Vietnam War tropes - when I become Emperor of the Universe I will ban the use of CCR's "Fortunate Son" and The Chambers Brothers "Time" in Vietnam-era movies - & cliched dialog made me ponder whether this was supposed to be a parody of war movie soldier speak or whether the makers thought this would sound tough. The 2-1/4 hour running time doesn't help flesh the characters out beyond their cartoon outlines. Helfer still looks hot at the half-century mark, but her Natasha Fatale accent is distracting.

Multi-hyphenate Luke Sparke - who seems to be the Australian Robert Rodriguez having directed, co-written, co-produced, edited, and supervised the VFX - shows definite talent in stretching the budget beyond belief, but would benefit from a better screenwriter and an editor who knows how to whittle things down to a lean & mean 100 minutes.

Coincidentally, before I wrapped up writing this review Corridor Crew did an episode focusing on The Asylum, so what Sparke accomplishes is even more impressive, albeit flawed and overlong.

Score: 5/10. Catch it on cable.