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Reviews
They Called Him Mostly Harmless (2024)
Can we move past this format?
If you've ever seen one of the interminable Netflix true crime docs where they cram 30 minutes of information into 3 hours, you have seen this documentary. The balance of this thing comprises people who don't leave the house talking about their online obsessions with people they don't know. The rest of the documentary is people opining, speculating, and drawing lines where there is no evidence. It's such a spectacular bore. You'd be better off reading a Wikipedia page and the. Getting on with the rest of your day. It's the documentary equivalent of this review, where you just keep going because you have space they're requiring you to fill.
Masters of the Air (2024)
Accent Salad
Pretty to look at, entertaining to watch. The only downside for anyone watching to be entertained and not for politics is that they managed to hire very few Americans for this American air force series. Instead, they hired an army of Brits doing something or other. At some point I wish producers would understand that we have actors from both Britain and America and only the best of them can avoid sounding incomprehensible. Leave the American accents to the Australians, j guess.
Other than that, you get the cartoony war series, cool looking war planes, and Elvis mumbling something heroic. It's not the worst entertainment.
Sexy Beasts (2021)
So dumb, so fun
Here's a show to clearly demonstrate the sanctity of heterosexuality. It's so stupid, so silly. I don't mind the concept and the prosthetics are amazing. They just need to find less dull contestants. The greatest disservice to this silly mess what the abject stupidity of the people competing for "love." Still, if you want to zone out and look at your phone a bit and wonder what is really going on with straight people, it's fine. If you're looking for haute cinema, this ain't it.
Coming 2 America (2021)
Silly and fun
A lot of these people have a lot of very lofty expectations for a film that's just as silly as the first. It's essentially a continuation the joke. It's lighthearted and kind. I'm not sure what people wanted from this movie, but I got exactly what I expected.
Utopia (2020)
It will come into its own
Everyone moaning about the UK series and not reviewing this on its merits. The show is fine. I'm sure like Shameless and Queer as Folk it will find it's own identity.
The show is a little thin on character development, but it's never plodding or dull. The violence often veers into gratuitous. The show is a bit humorless and a little too timely. But it has the great bones of the original with endless Amazon pockets. It's a great binge. It certainly doesn't merit horrible reviews for some fanboy's nostalgia.
Sex Education: Episode 8 (2020)
Assault is real...for women
This episode was clearly written by a straight white lady. The entire season deals with assault on a woman fairly effectively, showing that things that seem small in the grand scheme can have a profound and lasting effect on the victim.
But the writer doesn't seem to believe this applies to men.
She takes a queer Black character and considers his tormentor a "love interest." She's kind enough to give him a comfortable gay man as a love interest in the beginning of the show, but goes on to paint the self-hating, abusive gay man as sympathetic and ultimately so worthy of forgiveness that Eric leaves the man who is kind to him. It doesn't ring remotely true and it's a bizarre message to send out into the world. Kudos for an otherwise solid season, but this ending was trash.
Chi-Raq (2015)
Brilliant, emotional satire. Genius filmmaking.
With Bamboozled, Spike Lee established himself as one of the foremost satirists working in American cinema. He has perfected the satirical film with Chi-Raq.
Lee effectively demonstrates the absurdity of our violence, our racism, our immaturity by setting immediately recognizable crises in abstraction. We see places that are at once familiar and fictional, people who are every-men and caricatures. The names of actual dead men and children are rattled off in verse, set against the cartoonish villainy and clownish gangsterism of the men in the play. We see how ridiculous we have become through the ridiculousness of our excuses. It is absolutely satire at its best. We receive all of the message with word unladen of the guilt, the pain, the weight, and the emotion of the news on television every day.
Even as art, the film itself is a triumph. It is a rarely clunky blend of musical comedy, biting satire, exhausting drama, and somehow all presented by resetting an ancient play in a modern city. Lee's Lysistrata retains the historicity of the original and the punch necessary for modern film. It is beautifully filmed, beautifully acted, and a gut punch flashing us with our own behavior. Lee wants us to do better, and he importunes us to act by showing us our own foolishness. This film is as much as reflection of our time as Taxi Driver was of the destruction of New York City. This film deserves more understanding that it receives.
Skins (2011)
Disappointing
Perhaps MTV thought we wouldn't notice, but the "American" version of Skins is actually the Canadian version of Skins. I guess to MTV that Toronto looks exactly like Baltimore. To people, though, it really doesn't.
Worse yet, it's a word for word remake of the original rather than a truly new version with very noticeably Canadian accents. It would have been easy to get a new cast, film in the US, and write new scripts relevant to US kids that have the same themes as the UK version. There are plenty of great stories of American teen reprobate, but Canadian Skins opts instead to just repeat the same story lines, scenes and characters that made the original great, but without the same impact, ingenuity or power.
This is an unnecessary failure. I had high hopes as I loved the UK teen soap opera. This is a soulless pile of garbage replete with the main kid mimicking the original Tony's wise ass smile. So disappointed.
The New World (2005)
Racist, droll, and Colin Farrell
I could blame it on the Darth Vader wheezing coming out of the morbidly obese fellow behind me kicking my chair through the first fifteen minutes...or maybe the three rather angry ladies filling the row next to me, but I don't think I have to blame my bad movie experience on anything except the movie itself. The New World is a miserably slow movie that seems desperate to try and impress us with its obnoxious long shots and absolute crap narration. Colin Farrell's acting is so wooden that he wears the look of surprise for the film's copious length. What's worse, if there could be worse, is the "noble savage" treatment of the native Americans. I thought, foolishly, that we had moved far enough along that maybe we realized that the people that first inhabited the United States were, in fact, people. However, it appears Mr. Malick disagrees, turning the Native Americans into barking, sniffing animals who ponder only what any caricatured Indian would ponder...you know, water, wind, and spirit. Absolutely dreadful. If you have half a mind and the wherewithal to recognize crap when you see it, avoid this movie.