"Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial vs That's the Weight of the World)" Review

In honor of it being the 21st night of September, it's time to catch up on Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial vs That's the Weight of the World), director Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson's documentary about the seminal 1970s R&B/soul/funk band that influenced many artists including Prince, Michael Jackson, and even Stevie Wonder.

Focusing on founder Maurice White, who was abandoned by his mother at age 5, an event that would color his personal and professional relationships forever, the doc traces his interest in music which led him to move from his birthplace of Memphis to Chicago where he became a session drummer for Chess Records and then joining noted jazz figure Ramsay Lewis's trio. Wanting to express himself more, he left the prestigious jazz gig and formed what would eventually become Earth, Wind & Fire.

It was initially a bumpy start as White and company struggled to find a focus that would cross over. One show opening for Parliament-Funkadelic resulted in such a musical beatdown by the headliners that one EWF member jumped over to P-Funk, the band members who were still around after White reshuffled the lineup were haunted by the grooves, and mastermind George Clinton would taunt them for a decade about it. But they took the lessons they learned and evolved to the point where their massive breakout hit, "Shining Star", was the inspiration for Stevie Wonder's "I Wish" (which later became the music for Will Smith's "Wild Wild West"), a tidbit that shocks an off-camera Questlove during the Wonder interview.

White also realized they needed a SHOW to go with the music and he hired the Tony Award-winning choreographer of The Wiz to stage the show and magician Doug Henning to create illusions like a levitating his half-brother/bassist Verdine White while he played. Fortunes were spent on elaborate costumes in an Afro-Futurist style, but eventually the costs of putting on such as an extravaganza took a toll on the operation, much to the chagrin of the band members who weren't being paid very much considering. White's complicated personal life and business distractions drove further wedges between family and colleagues.

While Questlove does an OK job of laying out the life and legacy and influences EWF had, the overall pacing feels a bit slow and the coverage superficial at times. Since White died of Parkinson's disease in 2016, only archival footage and audio is available and his brief was clearly not to tear down the reputation and renown of seminal artist and his band. While flawed, Earth, Wind & Fire is a good primer of one of the Seventies biggest acts.

Score: 6/10. Catch it on HBO Max.

"If These Walls Could Rock" Review

If These Walls Could Rock is a brisk documentary about the legendary Sunset Marquis hotel which was the scene of massive parties and debauchery committed by and reminisced about by a parade of stars including Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Starr, Dave Grohl, Simon Le Bon, Roger Daltrey, Billy Gibbons, Nancy Wilson, Gene Simmons, Sheryl Crow, Cyndi Lauper, Slash, Richard Marx, and even Morrissey, who is interviewed in bed with a huge poster of X-Ray Spex signer Poly Styrene next to him.

Running parallel to the rock star antics is the relationship between the founder and builder of the Marquis, George Rosenthal, who opened it in 1963 in the area of the Playboy Club, right as rock & roll became the dominant cultural force, and his son Mark, whose nickname of Marky provided the hotel's name. Because George was both domineering yet inattentive, the hotel became increasingly run down in the Eighties and Nineties, but rockers who sought other accommodations in town often found their antics not appreciated like they were tolerated at the Marquis.

The hotel's general manager also relates how Green Day repeated got banned from the place only to come back a day after the ban's expiration to trash something else, earning another ban, rinse, repeat. While some of the stories are amusing like Keith Richards sauntering by the pool in a Speedo with a pack of smokes and a knife tucked in while holding a pina colada and a beer in both hands, a some of them are just dumb excesses.

As the place evolved, many stars set up residence there including the self-proclaimed Unofficial Mayor of the Sunset Marquis, Billy Bob Thornton, who tells of having sex on an outdoor stairs while a famous actor and his actress wife passed by and that he'll stay there for months despite having a 13,000+ sq. ft. home nearby.

The pace begins to lag in the last third as people clean up their acts and the clientele changes, but over 60 years later the Marquis is still absorbing stories within its walls.

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

"Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing" Review

 If you're nervous about flying already, you'll be downright panicked if you're booked onto one of a couple Boeing models after watching the Netflix original documentary Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing, which details how a string of bottom-line obsessed CEOs dismantled the previous culture of safety and quality in favor of outsourcing, inexperienced workers, ignoring quality problems, and retaliating against those who tried to blow the whistle, even after a pair of 737 Max crashes which killed hundreds of passengers and crews.

A sequel to the 2022 Netflix documentary Downfall: The Case Against Boeing (which I didn't even know existed until I mistyped the title of Freefall into Wikipedia) which covered the 737 Max crashes, Freefall focuses on troubles with the 787 line which the bean counters decided would have various sections fabricated all over the world to save money then assemble them in America only to find many things didn't fit and subcontractors didn't observe the same quality standards, not that Boeing was as well. 

The death of Boeing whistleblower John Barnett, who was testifying against his former employer, who'd forced him out after his constant attempts to save his company from cheap bosses is played up as a murder (it was ruled suicide) for drama, but other former and current quality managers also appear to bemoan the crash dive profit chasing has put the firm in.

While it's tempting to read the slant of these documentaries as the usual Leftist attacks on capitalism and the ever-popular "corporate greed" - presented on a streaming platform that keeps jacking up their prices to the point where many are forced to drop it - the reality remains that forgetting that you make a product with the potential to kill hundreds of innocent people at a time and billions rely upon for travel to chase more profit is a sin that needs to be called out and shamed into correction.

Score: 7/10. Catch it on Netflix.

"I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not" Review

 I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not was the signature intro line to his Weekend Update segments on the very first season of Saturday Night Live as well as this CNN Films documentary about the comedic actor born Cornelius Crane Chase. Recounting his life as a student at Bard College in the Sixties to becoming a writer-performer of the seminal National Lampoon Lemmings stage show to his being hired as a writer for SNL before slipping into the last cast slot and creating Weekend Update, the doc speed-runs through his career and life.

I have to admit to being not much of a fan of Chase and his oeuvre. Whether playing angrily smug in movies like Fletch or hysterically dumb (Vacation movies), I've never worn the "he's a comic genius" goggles most view him with and this doc doesn't really offer much of a counterpoint. If you think he's an a-hole, he lives down to that impression especially when he tries poorly to spin cruel comments he allegedly made towards Terry Sweeney, the first openly-gay cast member of SNL. Other times he claims to have no memory of antics due to a major health crisis he suffered a decade or so ago which had as a side effect memory impairment. Convenient.

Probably the only bits of new info I took from I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not was that when he bailed from SNL after its first season (clearing the way for the much funnier and versatile Bill Murray to replace him) it was just because Hollywood was calling and he wasn't under contract (whoops!), though that was part of it, but rather his then-girlfriend wanted to live in California. (Flying out for the wedding, former colleagues were betting on how long it'd last; they'd divorce in under a year.) With two failed marriages under his belt, the third time was the charm as he met his missus while making 1981's Under The Rainbow and they're still together with three daughters.

If you're more of a fan of Chase's schtick, you may enjoy this somewhat superficial documentary more than I did. Have at it.

Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable/streaming. (Currently on HBO Max)

"Travis Barker: Louder Than Fear" Review

Filmed over a nine year period from 2017 to 2026 (which is why Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, who passed away in 2022, briefly appears), Travis Barker: Louder Than Fear profiles the life and drama of the Blink-182 drummer. From his childhood where his mother died when he was 15 through his rapid ascent in bands due to this monster chops and subsequent descent into such heavy drug use that when he survived a plane crash in 2008 with burns over 2/3rds of his body, doctors had difficulty managing his pain due to his elevated tolerance due to all the drugs he'd taken. In the aftermath of the crash he refused to fly, resorting to taking the Queen Mary to get to Europe for gigs. Most recently, he's best known to non-music fans as Khloe Kardashian's latest husband/baby daddy.

While I'm not a fan of Blink's juvenile mall punk music, I know Barker's regard amongst drummers. I didn't know what all he was doing beyond Blink and how bad his injuries were from the crash, though I knew his fellow crash survivor, DJ AM, struggled with survivor's guilt and fell off the wagon, eventually ODing less than a year later. I had no idea the stylized F logo with a star in it was for his Famous Stars & Straps clothing line. I'd ignored the Kardashian relationship because that entire family is a cancer on society and it's insane that they all got wealthy off Kim banging Brandy's brother on tape. 

For some reason the doc makes it sound like he's still angry about his childhood when he patched up his relationship with his father, has established an enduring musical career, has wonderful children and even began flying again. Little, if anything, is wrong with his life.

While not particularly essential, Travis Barker: Louder Than Fear is a decent basic primer for those unfamiliar with the subject.

Score: 7/10. Catch it on Hulu.

"My Grandfather Charles Manson" Review

As far as true crime documentary premises go, My Grandfather Charles Manson has a heck of a hook: The father of filmmaker Sophia Maddox (who co-directs with Alexandra Orton), Daniel Arguelles, who never knew who his father was, discovers via a half-brother who finds him via Ancestry.com that their father is Charles Manson, thus Sophia is Manson's granddaughter. (Free Band Name!) Wondering whether this connection explains her father's moods or her creativity, she embarks on a quest to research the origins of the notorious cult leader upon whose orders seven people, including actress Sharon Tate, were murdered in 1969.

Using her genetic relationship, he travels to Indiana, Manson's childhood home and where his life as a career inmate in reform schools and prisons, subjected to brutal corporal punishment as well as rape - both as victim and perpetrator - began twisting him into the infamous figure he became. This also begins to hint at forming an apologist case for Manson, that he's a victim of the system so it's really the system to blame. Uhhhhhhhh... She also interviews former members of the Manson Family along with a surviving prosecutor of the case and an author who met Manson hundreds of times and wrote about him. 

While some of the backstory stuff is illuminating, the bulk of the film consists of Sophia crying while talking to an unseen therapist as she "processes her feelings" and navel-gazes about What It All Means. Dad, who had no idea his mother had hooked up with Manson in the late-1950s for a one/two-night stand or why she was beating him with a lamp cord when Manson and Fam were arrested, reacts especially badly to what she's doing, storming out of an interview he sat in on and cutting off his daughter, blocking her phone number, prompting more crying.

I've always had an aversion to documentarians who put themselves in front of the camera as if they're the subject (e.g. Michael Moore's slovenly obese presence in his fabricated scenarios) but considering Sophia is as much of the subject as Manson, it's inescapable. But it's also meaningless when it's not being annoying. Where's her mother in her backstory? What's the deal with the footage of dad screaming at her in the backseat which initially appears to be part of the current drama but then seems to be from her teenage years?

Most baffling is how after 1-3/4 hours of crying and obsessing over how she will be perceived as Manson's granddaughter, she decides to reclaim her identity by changing her surname from Arguelles, which was the name of Daniel's adoptive father, to Maddox, which was Manson's mother's maiden name (Manson was his stepfather). That's right - after agonizing about what it means to he the descending of a monster, she ditches her father's name for her grandmother's. What a self-absorbed brat.

Could My Grandfather Charles Manson been better if it had been directed solo by Orton so that Sophia's constantly being the center of things been more understandable and potentially better contextualized? Perhaps. But as it stands, like most self-obsessed Zoomer twits, Sophia mistakes her feels for her importance. 

"A Toxic Love Story" Review

 One of the few things Netflix is fairly consistent with quality-wise is their original documentaries, especially their true crime ones. While the Oscar-nominated The Perfect Neighbor and The Crash had their issues, they were compelling fare and the "Whoa!" factor definitely bumps up a notch with their latest, A Toxic Love Story. 

US Marshal Ian Diaz had met and fallen for Angela Connell in January 2016 after meeting her at a Starbucks. They were married within weeks and she was pregnant with twins shortly thereafter. However, Angela began getting increasingly threatening emails from someone calling herself "LilithIsTruth" threatening her for stealing the sender's life with Ian, threatening to have Angela raped and killed. 

They believed Ian's ex-fiance, Michelle Hadley, who'd left in August 2015 the condo they'd purchased together after they'd broken up, was the sender. Matters escalate when an ad appears on Craig's List, supposedly from Angela, seeking random men to participate in her rape fantasy, encouraging them to show up at the condo and force themselves upon her. One respondent who went to the condo then chickened out because the setup seemed hinky is interviewed, but Angela soon calls the cops again - they had made repeated reports about the emails and gotten a restraining order again Michelle - reporting that a masked man had attacked her in her garage, but left. With this latest transgression, Michelle is arrested and tossed in slam with a million dollar bail. Sensationalistic media coverage ensues.

 But the story takes a turn when we're introduced to an ex-boyfriend of Angela's who recounts a wild tale of his relationship with her which seemed to be repeating with Ian. This leads to a series of revelations about Angela and the wrap-up of the story only halfway through the doc's runtime which made me wonder what more was to be told. Plenty, it turns out as Michelle steps into the spotlight to explain her side of the story which gets pretty crazy.

 It's best to go into A Toxic Love Affair as cold as possible because the initial twists are very easy to guess - I'm pretty sure Netflix rewrote the description on the listing because it gave it away and was updated between noticing it was available and watching a day later - but director Alexandra Lacey cleverly lays out the story for maximum WTFness. However, with Ian and Angela refusing to participate, we never truly understand their motivations in this clusterfark and a couple of final revelations raise more questions that go unanswered.

Still, A Toxic Love Story delivers what it promises in the title in a tidy package. 

Score: 7.5/10. Catch it on Netflix.

"Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea" Review

 In January 2012, the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia was run onto rocks near Giglio Island off the coast of Italy, causing the boat to sink, flipping over onto it side killing 32 passengers and crew. The Netflix documentary Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea is the typical exercise using videos taken during the disaster with interviews of survivors - passengers and crew - detailing how it went down for them.

While they use graphics to show where various areas of the ship where people were located, they really whiff on zooming in to show exactly where they were like when a family with an infant child have to slide down a hallway to access the only lifeboats able to launch.

When the inquest, recriminations and charges are covered, details are introduced then never adequately followed-up. One surprising detail is that one of the interviewees was convicted of....something, it's never specified, and he never addresses it. They also omitted a ton of interesting and should've-been-included details as tallied in this Entertainment Weekly story.

Overall, Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea falls short of the much lighter Trainwreck: Poop Cruise episode also on Netflix last year, but is worth watching as a warning against 2nd-rate cruise lines. (Not reviewed because TV episode.)

Score: 6/10. Catch it on Netflix.

"I Was A Teenage Sex Pistol" Review

Most people wrongly believe useless junkie loser Sid Vicious was the bassist for the legendary and notorious punk band Sex Pistols. He's been the poster boy for "punk" for almost a half-century when he was universally derided as a mess who couldn't play and then there's the whole he probably murdered his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, aspect.

But then who was the bassist for the Pistols? Moderately knowledgeable music fans know that would be Glen Matlock, the subject of the Sky adaptation of his autobiography I Was A Teenage Sex Pistol. In this relentlessly-paced doc, Matlock along with fellow Pistols, guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook - singer John Lydon (bka Johnny Rotten) has been famously feuding with the band for years and only appears in archived interviews - and contemporaries like Billy Idol; Blondie's Debbie Harry, Chris Stein, and Clem Burke; Cheetah Chrome and Stiv Bators of the Dead Boys, and more.

Blazing through his early life then co-founding of the Sex Pistols and his eventual ousting by manager-Svengali Malcolm McLaren (who falsely claimed he was sacked for liking The Beatles), the doc is quite efficient on delivering the facts without a lot of folderol, covering his rather active post-Pistols career.

Which is why it's very weird that when addressing the falling out between Lydon and the rest of the band (which is currently touring with a ringer singer) he speaks as if possibly they could reunite which completely overlooks the inconvenient fact that they DID reunite in 1996 for the Filthy Lucre Tour which I saw.

Compared to the slightly disappointing Billy Idol Should Be Dead, I Was A Teenage Sex Pistol efficiently covers its subject, resulting in proper knowledge and appreciation.

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

"The Crash" Review

In 2022, on a pre-dawn morning in a suburb of Cleveland, OH, a Toyota Corolla traveling nearly 100 mph sailed through a T-intersection and into a building, tearing the car in half. Inside the wreckage, first responders found two dead young men - 20-year-old Dominic Russo and 19-year-old Davion Flanagan - as well as the driver, 17-year-old Mackenzie Shirilla, who was critically injured and was the girlfriend of Dominic. But the shock the residents of the town at this senseless loss of life was doubled when Shirilla was charged with murder of the boys on the basis of her never letting off the gas or touching the brakes before impact.

This is the story of The Crash, the new Netflix documentary recounting the investigation and her trial and conviction for murder. (Spoiler alert!) Interviewing her friends, her parents and those of the dead boys, and Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Tim Troup from the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office who assembled the case, along with copious video from her social media where she lived her best party girl life, we're given a portrait of a spoiled narcissistic brat who was enabled by parents who even now don't seem to feel their little princess did anything wrong. They didn't see a problem with her smoking Snoop Dogg amounts of weed or shacking up with Dom at only 17. At the sentencing, the judge admonished her mother for being so blithe about the deaths.

 Apparently this case has been covered in a couple of other shows and I've seen some comments that details were left out here like she may've checked out the route she took indicating premeditation, not a spur of the moment impulsive decision. When she appears to make her claim that she didn't do it - she claims she blacked out from a medical condition - it's just as contrived and remorseless as how she acted after the accident. (And according to stories that are running after this doc's release, she's just as bad in slam as she comes off here.) 

 Perhaps the filmmaker's intent was to just let Mackenzie and her folks speak for themselves, but it feels like some more details could've been included like amplifying what exactly was Dom's sources of income beyond some vape selling and a desire to make a fashion line. The terminally online nature of youth is also appalling to this old Gen Xer. No wonder life is meaningless and worthless to the soulless brats of today. 

Score: 6/10. Catch it on Netflix.

"Marty: Life Is Short" Review

 There's been a glut of documentaries recently examining various comedic performers like Steve Martin and Mel Brooks (whose two-part documentaries on Apple TV and HBO Max, respectively, I didn't review because they were more TV miniseries; they're OK, but not as exceptional as the subjects), Eddie Murphy, John Candy, Stiller & Meara, and even SNL writing legend Jim Downey as well as SNL's creator Lorne Michaels (haven't seen that yet).

Following this parade comes director Lawrence Kasdan's (Body Heat, The Big Chill) Netflix Original documentary profile of Martin Short, Marty: Life Is Short. Short has been a comedic mainstay for over 45 years first rising to prominence in the brilliant SCTV, before doing a year on SNL, then branching into movies of varying regard, stage work (winning two Tony Awards for Broadway musicals), up to his current run on Hulu's hit Only Murders In The Building with his longtime collaborator Steve Martin.

As someone who has watched Short since SCTV there wasn't much career-wise shown that I was unaware of but for young'uns who may only know him from Only Murders it is too superficial in rattling off clips of some of his roles with little insight. Why anyone thought having a then 40-year-old Short playing a 10-year-old in Clifford is never discussed. It's just chalked up as another commercial disappointment to move past, which he did by branching into Broadway.

The parallel theme is his 38-year-long relationship with Nancy Dolman whom he'd met in 1972 when she was Short's then on/off-again girlfriend Gilda Radner's understudy for the infamous production of Godspell which also starred Victor Garber (Alias) as Jesus; Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, and Dave Thomas (all to go on to SCTV); as well as Paul Shaffer (musical director) and Howard Shore (saxophone) who'd go on to play on SNL with Shaffer moving on to become David Letterman's bandleader and sidekick and Shore moving into film scoring, winning three Oscars for his Lord of the Rings work. (Sorry for the digression; I just find this confluence of talent wild and want to share.)

Anyhoo, Short and Dolman were madly in love and when they couldn't get pregnant adopted three children. (The oldest daughter committed suicide earlier this year and the film is dedicated to her and Catherine O'Hara who also passed this year and is heavily featured.) They had a storybook romance as indicated by one interviewee relating that when she and her husband were in marriage counseling and were asked by the therapist if there was a couple whose relationship they wished theirs was more like, she said, "Marty and Nancy's," to which the therapist replied they weren't the first couple to reference them.

Chock full of home movies capturing their home life and festive parties filled with Hollywood A-listers like Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw - both of the couples had young families so all the kids would play together - as well as his SCTV co-stars, it's all very warm and wonderful and ultimately a bit dull.

Director Kasdan is longtime friend of Short's and just as when Rob Reiner did a recent documentary on his friend Albert Brooks, he's too friendly to the subject to be objective. I doubt Kasdan was covering up a history of meth-fueled hooker murders, but when everyone loves Martin and Nancy and was sad when she passed from ovarian cancer in 2010 after 30 years married and the only other really dark period was between 12 and 20 years of age when his eldest brother and parents died, the lack of career introspection leaves us at a remove when Short clearly isn't shying away from discussing anything. Kasdan simply doesn't care to dig in.

There is one hilarious home movie that Spielberg shot where Hanks and Short recreate the cliff jumping scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid but with them playing the parts as Forrest Gump and Ed Grimley. Spielberg is audibly laughing at the spectacle. There are also some clips of his Jiminy Glick character and it's clear where Zach Galifianakis got his Between Two Ferns premise from. 

While it lacks depth, Marty: Life is Short has plenty of warmth as it casually recounts what appears to be a rare decent bloke in the entertainment biz's life. 

Score: 7/10. Catch it on Netflix.

"Billy Idol Should Be Dead" Review

 Billy Idol was announced as an inductee to the grievously-misnamed Rock & Roll Hall of Fame along with fellow rockers Sade and Wu-Tang Clan, so it was a fine time to watch prolific music video director Jonas Åkerlund's recently-released documentary Billy Idol Should Be Dead.

Covering his life and career from childhood to founding Generation X in the wake of the Sex Pistols to going solo to having years of massive drug abuse issues, it combines archival footage, impressionistic animated sequences and interviews filmed in in the harshest, least flattering black & white ever to make everyone appear as old and haggard for some reason. While the film came out in 2026, it includes interviews with Billy's mother, Joan, who passed in 2020.

As an old Gen X and solo fan who once made a Billy Idol logo t-shirt in printing class, most of the early career material was fairly familiar to me and generally superficial. What I wasn't aware of was how deep his drug abuse was and his attempted forays into acting including a major project that collapsed when his manager, Bill Aucoin (who also managed KISS), who'd started smoking crack pulled it away from up and coming at the time producer Joel Silver and that he filmed a screentest to play the T-1000 in Terminator 2, only losing the part due to the lingering effects of his nearly fatal motorcycle crash (whose gnarly scars are shown) preventing him from running as would be needed.

Very little time is spent discussing his music, the 40+ year collaboration with guitarist Steve Stevens or the handful of albums he's put out since the misfire of 1993's Cyberpunk album which may've been ahead of its time. Åkerlund also weirdly edits the beginning starting with a 1984 heroin overdose, then going back to the beginning, then leaping forward to the OD, then going back to the timeline. Foreshadowing is one thing, but why the second preview? There's more time spent on his tempestuous relationship with baby mama Perri Lister and the two kids he fathered with groupies than his music process.

I saw Idol last year in concert and he still had it at 69 years old, delivering an even better show than he did in 2019, in the Before Times. It should be a good Rock Hall performance. While Billy Idol Should Be Dead, it's an adequate primer for those unfamiliar with the Prince of Punk (I made that title up now) or older fans needing a refresher as well as some drama.

Score: 6/10. Catch in on cable/streaming. (Viewed on Hulu.)

"The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother, Hillel" 4K Review

The little-known formative years of the members of punk-funk-rap-rockers Red Hot Chili Peppers are given the documentary treatment in the Netflix doc The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother, Hillel, with Hillel being the founding guitarist, Hillel Slovak, who played on the band's first three albums - The Red Hot Chili Peppers (1984), Freaky Styley (1985), and The Uplift Mofo Party Plan (1987) - before succumbing to a heroin overdose in June 1988, just two months after his 26th birthday.

Covering how the band came together with the meeting of bassist Flea (an immigrant from Australia), Slovak (from Israel), and drummer Jack Irons at LA's Fairfax High School where Irons and Slovak played in a band named Anthym led by Chile-born Alain Johannes (who's had a long, diverse career), adding Flea when Slovak taught him bass because they weren't happy with their existing bassist. Vocalist Anthony Kiedis was a fan whom Slovak met after a show and invited to hang out and they all became fast friends, hanging out, taking drugs, being young and dumb.

What was new to me, a casual RHCP fan, was that the Peppers were considered a side project to Irons and Slovak as Anthym, renamed to What Is This (somehow an even worse name than Anthym), had a record deal. Flea came and went a couple of times to play with LA punks Fear and Kiedis's involvement was more of a joke than a serious thing at first.

As the band got more notoriety they eventually got signed and Irons and Slovak played on the debut album, but were also sticking with What Is This until RHCP got big enough to dominate their attention. As the years passed, the drug use of Kiedis and Slovak crossed beyond heavy recreational to debilitating junkie levels culminating in producer Michael Bienhorn firing Kiedis during the Uplift Mofo sessions because he finally showed up with no lyrics written. Kiedis went through detox, got clear, and became productive, but of course when it came time to celebrate completing the album, he and Slovak got wasted.

With interviews with all surviving members, Slovak's brother and girlfriend, and other contemporaries along with lots of archive footage, The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother, Hillel is an interesting overview of the band's origins and struggles with success and substances.

While the members are candid about their drug habits and how they contributed to the environment that claimed their brother, the doc completely omits the irony that Slovak's replacement, John Frusciante, who speaks about how he devoted himself to transforming his playing style to mirror Slovak's, also picked up his crippling heroin addiction habit which led him to quit the band after their Blood Sugar Sex Magik album made them too popular for his taste. (He would come and go several times since.)

The first album with Frusciante, Mother's Milk, which also marked the debut of drummer Chad Smith (from Detroit and who taught at the music store I took guitar lessons from a member of Sponge at) is completely Memory Holed with no mention of Smith even though Irons left the band upon Slovak's death. Weird.

On the A/V front, I didn't notice anything particularly special about the Dolby Vision and Atmos presentation. Netflix has announced they're jacking up the Premium Tier rate to a whopping $27 and that's my tapout point. I'm cutting back to the Standard Tier with only HD streaming for a still too much $20. Jerks. 

Score: 7/10. Catch it on Netflix.

"Paul McCartney: Man on the Run" Review

 If I had to pick a favorite Beatle it'd be Paul McCartney because he was the most pop sensible member of the Fab Four. While not a Beatlemaniac by any means, I was interested in Morgan Neville's (last seen doing the Lego Pharrell doc, Piece By Piece) Amazon Prime documentary Paul McCartney: Man on the Run which covers the decade between Paul's leaving of The Beatles, releasing his first solo albums then assembling Wings. A bigger fan friend of mine was raving about it, so I stepped up to check it out. Sadly, it wasn't particularly engaging.

Comprised of oodles of home movies, rehearsal videos, live footage, etc. supplemented by voiceover only remarks by Macca and others like members of Wings, musical contemporaries like Chrissie Hynde and Elton John, extended family like Sean Ono Lennon, etc. it marches through Paul's post-Beatles career as he tried to figure out who he was without the others. With many fits, starts, missteps, and misadventures, it took him longer to get his band on the run (heh, me clever) than I'd thought, but it never really digs into things because it's covering so much.

The fact I was listening more than watching as I played solitaire on my iPad says it all. While you can say, "You didn't like it because you weren't paying attention," the fact that I felt I could split my attention was strictly due to Neville's presentation not grabbing me. I'm not the Netflix viewer whom they feel the need to dumb down writing so that people on their phones can still follow the plot. I focus on the movies exclusively and if something comes up on my phone needed immediate attention, I pause playback. That Man on the Run lost exclusivity is on it, not me. Frankly, the fact I finished the movie was only because I was doing something else.

Your mileage may vary, but Man on the Run never took wing for me. (Again heh.)

Score: 5/10. Catch it on Prime Video if you're a fan, otherwise Skip It.

"Aliens Expanded" Review

 James Cameron's 1986 magnum opus Aliens was his announcement to the universe that The Terminator wasn't a fluke and he was going to be a cinematic force to be reckoned with. I remember seeing it at the show then telling my then-girlfriend that "It was like being shoved through a screen door...without the door breaking." (Even as a young lad I had a way with words. May not have been a good way, but it was a way.)

Back in the good old days of the Aughts when DVDs came with massive special features packages, the 2003 Alien Quadrilogy box set of the (then) four Alien movies included Superior Firepower: Making Aliens, a 190-minute long documentary by Charles de Lauzirika which combined behind-the-scenes footage shot during the filming with interviews taped about 17 years later with the participants. It's been ages since I watched it (probably in 2003 when I got the set), but de Lauzirika is renowned for his production documentaries including Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner which accompanied Blade Runner: The Final Cut and I recall it was good (I've started rewatching it) and comprehensive.

But director Ian Nathan felt there was more to be told so, backed by a massive crowdfunding campaign, he has made 2024's Aliens Expanded, clocking in at a daunting 4 hours, 42 minutes (hough the actual content is 4h 15m and the rest a credits roll of the legions of donors with brief testimonials that I'm guessing higher tier donations purchased) and features the participation of pretty much the entire living cast and key filmmakers including Cameron, producer Gale Ann Hurd, various production personnel, as well as numerous superfans, novelists, scientists, and pop culture experts to comment on the legacy of Aliens after nearly four decades. (Also participating is Charles de Lauzirika, upping the Inception quotient!)

If you're already a superfan of the film, there will be a lot of familiar material like how Hicks was originally played by James Remar until early in production he made the poor life choice of buying a speedball (cocaine & heroin) from an undercover cop, necessitating Hurd to scramble to get Remar deported rather than end up in slam for years. But there are a lot of new details like Cameron's dustup with the tea cart lady and tidbits from the cast like how the initials on the Colonial Marines' monitors were the actors first initial (e.g. Vasquez is "Vasquez J" for actress Jeanette Goldstein).

While the running time seems excessive, it's actually quite manageable by a chapter structure where the movie is gone through sequentially with sidebars "transmissions" for related subjects like the connection to Joseph Campbell (both Alien's Nostromo and Aliens' Sulaco came from Campbell books) and a nice tribute to Bill Paxton whose Hudson had so many quotable lines. ("Game over, man! Game over!") I watched a few chapters per session, nibbling through it over a couple of weeks.

It's a testament to Aliens Expanded's editing and focus that there's nothing that I thought was too extraneous or unnecessary. Having every bit player whose names you probably didn't even remember sounding off could've been a drag, but their comments and insights tie together nicely. And with nearly 40 years of the film's legacy to assay, the perspectives of what the movie meant beyond its own story are interesting.

And I'd really like to commend Nathan for heading off one of my biggest pet peeves about most documentaries by putting up title cards for every person EVERY time they are shown. Most documentaries introduce speakers once and then the viewer has to remember who they are. With over three dozen cast members, podcasters, commentators, etc. participating it could've been confusing as to who that non-cast member person is, but Nathan just puts up a friendly reminder every. Single. Time. Huzzah! 

In length and comprehensiveness, Aliens Expanded reminded me of another four-plus hour documentary, RoboDoc: The Creation of RoboCop, which also interviewed everyone - and I mean EVERYONE down to the woman being assaulted whom RoboCop shoots the guy's crotch through her skirt and the bimbos at Bob Morton's house that Boddicker dismisses ("Bitches, leave.") - including director Paul Verhoeven and stars Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, etc. about that seminal cult classic's production. I didn't review it because they broke it up into four hourish-long episodes, but it's definitely worth watching for fans of RoboCop just as Aliens Expanded joins Superior Firepower to form a tag-team 7-1/2 hour making-of fest.

Score: 9/10. Catch it on cable/streaming. (Viewed on AMC+)

I don't know why Sigourney Weaver isn't shown in the trailer, but she's in the movie plenty. Odd.

"Bowie: The Final Act" Review

 In conjunction with the 10th Anniversary of David Bowie's return to his homeworld, Britain's Channel 4 has produced Bowie: The Final Act which primarily focuses on his life from the late-1980s when he was in a post- Let's Dance career slump and started his band project Tin Machine, through his joining the infinite just two days after releasing his final album, Blackstar, on his 69th birthday.

The theme of the doc is that Bowie was a great friend or collaborator until he didn't need you anymore and it's told by jumping back and forth in his career timeline contrasting the way he dispatched Tin Machine after two unloved albums - one brutal UK press review made him cry - and the way he sprung on the Spiders From Mars during their tour finale for the Ziggy Stardust that he was packing in the band or how he played the first Glastonbury Festival in 1971 at an ungodly 5 am slot to his career reigniting set at the 2000 festival which almost didn't happen at several steps along the way.

Using interviews with friends and collaborators from his earliest days to the engineer for his last two albums, including guitarists Reeves Gabrels, Earl Slick, keyboardist Michael Garson, producer Tony Visconti, his tour manager, various UK press and radio/video presenters, etc.  

Previous documentaries David Bowie: Five Years (which covered the span following the end of Ziggy Stardust era through his Berlin Trilogy) which came out shortly after his death and David Bowie: The Last Five Years (which covers his last two albums and the Lazarus stage show) the following year were quite comprehensive for those periods and Bowie: The Final Act works to fill in a chunk of the time in between. By no means comprehensive - His Earthling album gets some time as does Reality, due to it being his last tour when he had a heart attack and retired for 9 years, but he had four other albums which are Memory Holed even though Outside was followed by a legendary tour with Nine Inch Nails - it's still a tidy worthy watch.

Bowie: The Final Act is currently available to watch on Channel 4's website, but only for residents of the UK and Ireland. Even alternate means of obtaining content are sparse as what was out there disappeared forcing new sources to be located.

Score: 7/10. Catch it on cable/streaming. (Currently unavailable outside the UK)

"Secret Mall Apartment" Review

 It's the stuff of urban legend: Someone built a secret apartment in a shopping mall in Rhode Island. Except it's not a myth, but a stranger than fiction tale of a bunch of artists who collaborated on something more than a prank, but less than the name implies. Thus we have Secret Mall Apartment, a documentary by Jeremy Workman that recently popped up on Netflix.

The Providence Place Mall was built and opened in 1999 to revitalize the depressed former industrial areas of Providence, RI. As part of this gentrification a neighboring block of tenements and artist spaces were condemned, displacing artists, musicians, etc. in order to open a shopping center near the mall.

One of those artists was Michael Townsend, who had a penchant for art in odd places like an elaborate statue installation underneath railway bridges and in tunnels where no one would find them without being informed how to locate it. While exploring areas inside the mall in 2003, he and friends came across a space that was in a sort of void between parts of the mall left due to the odd shapes of the building on the oddly-shaped parcel.

Intrigued, they decided to convert this space into an ersatz apartment, buying furniture from the Salvation Army and lugging up a steep staircase to where the area was. A couch, table, china cabinet(??), a Playstation and TV, it was set up as spot to discuss their artistic endeavors. They'd use the food court for food and use the mall's bathrooms. Realizing that the area was open for anyway to stumble over, they decide to enclose it with a cinder block wall and a locked door.

Throughout they documented what they did with a tiny point-and-shoot camera that had rudimentary video capability and could be concealed in an Altoid's tin and their footage raises serious questions as to how terrible the mall's security was? They would move huge pieces of furniture through a door that's alarm would go off when opened and they even got stopped by a mobile unit patrolling the parking structure while they were offloading cinder blocks for their wall.

While most of modern "art" is rubbish, what's interesting about this group - all of whom escaped accountability when Michael was ultimately caught, but come forward for the first time for the documentary, including Townsend's ex-wife - is that they focused on projects like tape art, using masking tape to create murals in hospitals as well as memorials for 9/11 and Oklahoma City bombing victims. The apartment was their clubhouse and they weren't looking to cause harm or rob the stores.

While Secret Mall Apartment goes a bit long on the art project stuff, the group come off as bright and likeable, probably because their art was positive and not the usual nihilistic agitprop that's pawned off as "art" these days.

Score: 7/10. Catch it on cable/streaming. (Currently on Netflix)

"Breakdown: 1975" Review

1975 was one of those pivotal years in movie history with serious Oscar-winners like One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and contenders like Dog Day Afternoon, thrillers like Three Days of the Condor, Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, freakout musical adaptation of The Who's Tommy, the ur midnight movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and the ur summer blockbuster which put an end to much of serious adult movies, Jaws.

With that in mind, Netflix's documentary Breakdown: 1975 was advertised as being about the movies that came out that year against the backdrop of the Vietnam War's end and the post-Watergate as commentary on the times. Unfortunately, the actual doc is a Boomer therapy session where Nixon was bad, Vietnam was bad, Nixon was bad, the CIA was bad, Nixon was bad, and also Nixon was bad. I'm sensing a theme here.

Narrated by Jodie Foster, the warning signs cropped up early as they showed Network (which came out in 1976) and other movies not from 1975 like Chinatown (1974). As it slogged on, it started just randomly jumping into genres like Blackploitation with examples from the early-70s. Commenting were various female and black chin-stroking professors types as well as Martin Scorsese (director of Taxi Driver), Patton Oswalt (who was six years old in 1975), and Seth Rogen (who was born in 1982).

As they intercut footage to create scenes of Travis Bickle (from Taxi Driver) watching Howard Beale's "Mad As Hell" monologue from Network, I lost interest in whatever this was supposed to be that wasn't what was advertised. I'm genuinely surprised Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom) directed this mess.

Score: DNF/10. Skip it.

"Tear the Roof Off: The Untold Story of Parliament Funkadelic"

 George Clinton is one of the pioneers of funk and hip-hop who evolved from being part of a New Jersey-based doo wop group called The Parliaments to founding Parliament-Funkadelic to ride the rising psychedelic tide of the Sixties as well as double-dip on record deals to a solo artist whose biggest hit, "Atomic Dog", has been sampled plenty of times along with much of P-Funk's grooves.

Director/editor/narrator Bobby P. Brown's 2015 documentary Tear the Roof Off: The Untold Story of Parliament Funkadelic is a brief (57 mins) no-budget attempt at an oral history of what it was like working with and eventually surviving the maelstrom that Clinton orchestrated. With interviews with many of the many more musicians who made up the various projects and side projects, the picture of Clinton being a hustler trying to maximize revenues by loading bills with his sub-acts is drawn.

But eventually his greed and escalating drug use tore everything apart as members accused him of not paying them, forging signatures to steal their publishing rights on hit songs, disbanding projects or thwarting promotion so no one outshined him. He'd pay band members in drugs then bill them for the drugs. After everyone quit and/or was fired, the recording of "Atomic Dog" is a trip as he showed up to the studio so messed up he had to be held up in front of the microphone and from that the song was built by others. 

While it's an interesting subject, the cheap production and amateurish camera work (most interviews are shot in extreme close-up with poor lighting, but mercifully adequate sound) as well as no rebuttals from Clinton leave an incomplete picture of both his legacy and whether he was a total dirtbag on top of being a mad genius. Also, the "where are they now" coda isn't much use as this movie was made in 2015, so even more of gap in knowledge occurs. In fact, when looking up his age on Wikipedia, I discovered he had worked as a staff songwriter for Motown, a fact totally omitted by the documentary.

While incomplete and one-sided, there is some merit in perusing Tear the Roof Off: The Untold Story of Parliament Funkadelic. However, the subject deserves a fuller appraisal by someone like Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom).

Score: 5/10. Catch it on cable/streaming. (Viewed on Amazon Prime Video. Also on YouTube, see below)

Full movie:

"Moonage Daydream" Blu-ray Review

It's New Year's Eve and the missus wanted to watch this to cap off a positively miserable year which included her mother passing in February. I've previously reviewed it here and score is unchanged.

In the intervening years it has been re-released by the Criterion Collection adding a director's commentary and some interviews. Since she's not interested in that stuff, I won't be getting it for her, but figured I'd mention it for those who want even more from this superfans-only experience.

Onward to 2026!

Score: 6/10. Skip it if you're a casual Bowie listener; catch it on cable if you're a more in-depth fan; buy it if you're a mega-fan.