horsebeaverfoxman's Reviews

8 Bodies (2017)

2/10

14 November 2023

I like Jennette McCurdy and Nathan Kress. But God almighty is this awful. A newlywed couple runs someone over by accident and decides to bury the body and tell nobody. Like.... okay. On paper that's stupid. And if you give it five seconds of thought that's stupid. But in practice... it's really stupid. They then go from one social encounter to the next, meet someone who immediately clocks that they're murderers, and then they kill that person. It's not interesting. It's not funny. It's just Terrence Malick's "Badlands" with more blood and it's only 14 minutes long.

Jennette McCurdy is a great performer here, but overall there's just no tone struck here, no style, only empty flourishes like shocking jump cuts, a murder counter on the screen, lots of spraying blood, and intense sound effects.

It's a disgustingly L. A. movie too. And I love that they go to Zion but clearly are just in the wood somewhere in Griffith Park or whatever. At the end of the movie, it's like, this sucked, but at least it has nothing to say and is boring as hell.

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The Grand Bizarre (2018)

5/10

Bizarre Bazaar

24 April 2020

An experimental exploration of the world of textiles, their manufacturing, their sale, and their consumption. It's not really worth sitting down, having a tea, and paying close attention to, because that's not the sort of purpose experimental docs like this serve. "The Grand Bizarre" is best suited for a screening room in a museum, where its 61 delightfully frizzy epileptic minutes can run on loop for days on end, where you can pop in, sit down, watch a few minutes of it until you get the point, and then leave. It's a diversion of a film, but in that context, it's really tremendous.

Especially because it's basically a music video that goes on for an hour. Put this on at a house party and dance around to it. The music slaps.

A couple of highlights:

A surprise swastika! Formed by textiles tied to the ends of the blades of a ceiling fan in motion.
Surprise "Rhythm of the Night," continuing the trend of "Rhythm of the Night" appearing in every movie in the late 2010s.
The only film I've seen that ends with a sneeze, cut to black.

None of these are spoilers. This is an experimental documentary, not "Inception."

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Five Minutes (I) (2017)

3/10

Comedy that didn't make me laugh

5 March 2019

The mark of a comedy is the six-laugh rule. For a short, if it gets two laughs, I think it's done its job. "Five Minutes" has wonderful performances from Rob Benedict and Bre Blair, but the material veers more toward cringe than proper comedy.

Cringe comedy is the most subjective form of an already subjective mode of storytelling. It plays directly off our personal experiences. Anyone can watch Buster Keaton and get the jokes, but a significant chunk of people who might watch "Bridesmaids" or any Judd Apatow production won't laugh because they lack the experience to relate to the awkward situations. This is the central issue of "Five Minutes" -- I know the short is comedic, but it didn't make me laugh.

Justine Bateman's short truly looks good, and she gets good performances from her cast. But I'm not a parent -- the material doesn't do it for me. I understand WHY someone might think the film is funny, but to me, it isn't. I appreciate it more for its subtext about sensitivity and modern attitudes toward censorship, and most of all for its indictment of adults who don't know how to listen.

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PEN15 (2019–2021)

2/10

Hulu's "PEN15" can't keep it up

16 February 2019

Hulu's new middling middle-school cringefest, "PEN15," has the specificity that comes with hindsight and the embarrassment that comes with disinhibition. The show, created by Maya Erskine, Anna Konkle and Sam Zvibleman and executive-produced by The Lonely Island, will surely be hailed by older critics as intelligent, bold - maybe even sincere.

But this is a middle-school series. The staleness pervading "PEN15" isn't because every situation and joke has been tapped before, better, elsewhere - this material has been strip-mined. Decades of John Hughes movies and Nickelodeon TV series exposed every stereotype and laugh and excavated them for all they're worth. When some girls pull a beer out of their backpack, time slows down and dramatic music kicks in. When the hot kid at school (Lincoln Jolly) walks into the school dance, time slows down again and a mournful love ballad commandeers the soundtrack. When someone tries to stick up for themselves against the popular kids, they keep awkwardly mangling the insults. These tropes have grown so weary that it was a miracle when Bo Burnham put a fresh spin on them in last year's "Eighth Grade." Erskine and Konkle are no Burnham.

The supporting cast looks appropriately middle school-aged (except those brawny, cool eighth graders, who appear to have been cast right out of college). But Erskine and Konkle play themselves. The only wrinkle is that they're 31 and 24, respectively. Maya and Anna freak out in "PEN15" about smoking their first cigarette - they find it on the floor of the girls' bathroom - but the women who play them are old enough to have children of their own. It's 30 going on 13, and the wrinkles show.

Ostensibly, the formula beneath "PEN15" works. It's unoriginal but watchable. It's the lead performances that push "PEN15" into insufferable, irritating territory. Maya can be stubborn and abrasive, Anna naïve and eager to please. Every interaction between them spirals into a loud, passive-aggressive muck of childishness. The aggravating, provocative behavior might ring true, but a chasmal gap exists between truth and entertainment, and an even bigger one between provocative and effective.

The season's best episode (and also the most problematic) sees the Japanese-American Maya bullied by other kids at school. "Me love you long time," someone shouts at her. An Asian-American voice in this rotten genre would be a breath of fresh air, but this is the sole episode (out of 10 30-minute episodes) that deals head-on with Maya's race. After that, the matter vanishes, dissipates into the wind.

The episode begins with Anna witnessing Maya being bullied. On the heels of this, Anna Asks Jeeves "am I racist?" and the rest of the episode unfolds about as sensitively as one might expect. She becomes woke overnight and accuses the principal of ignoring racism in his school. She pledges to go on a hunger strike until the prejudice ends. One episode later, the world has been made right, and Anna never again brings up the plight of minorities in their privileged white suburbia.

Had the writers supplied the episodes with jokes, some of this poor storytelling might be forgiven. But in this post-"Bridesmaids" world, awkward humor reigns supreme. Why write jokes when your audience can laugh at how uncomfortable your characters are? Squirming in your seat is the new belly laugh.

Erskine and Konkle created a show in which they play 13-year-old versions of themselves and suffer the indignities of middle-school life: Getting your first period, masturbating for the first time, freaking out over boys. It feels like witnessing an odd, self-indulgent form of Hollywood therapy to see Erskine curl up in her mother's lap (her mother, Mutsuko Erskine, also plays herself) and ask, "When you said I'm not your little girl anymore, did you mean that?"

"PEN15" misfires on nearly every level. Even the cinematography from Andy Rydzewski (who also shot the wonderful The Earliest Show) has too many shadows, looking less like Mean Girls and more like Hereditary. To recut PEN15 as a horror show would be an easy task. Scenes of Anna checking AIM look like they've been pulled right out of Cam, and Maya's masturbating in her room, alone, looks like a demonic ritual. Perhaps that's part of the point, but PEN15 is too flaccid to have any sort of point at all.

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Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)

3/10

A marshmallow sandwich between two slices of white bread

31 January 2019

Mythical heroes are hard to make movies about, especially rock 'n' roll stars. After all, how can a wild, prolific celebrity like Freddie Mercury possibly be brought down to Earth with the rest of us?

"Bohemian Rhapsody" tries to humanize him, and it affords Rami Malek plenty of showboating in the role. If for nothing else, it's a movie that's in love with its subject. The rags-to-razzmatazz Queen biopic worships the ground Freddie walks on with a devotion that borders on fetishistic. Hell, sometimes it just makes Freddie into Rock 'N' Roll Jesus. (A pivotal scene in the third act finds Freddie confiding a secret to his bandmates inside a church, as if they're his feather duster-haired disciples.)

The original director, the troubling Bryan Singer, abruptly left the project, and how much of the film he completed before dropping out is unclear. Yet his fingerprints are all over "Bohemian Rhapsody." The concert scenes - and it feels like there are hundreds - have all the coldness, sterility and grandiloquence of one of his "X-Men" films. Like the rest of the movie, they're edited within an inch of their lives and too often confuse blinding backlights for dramatic heft.

The movie tracks Freddie's rise, as well as the band's, in a blurry, relentless cavalcade of dramatic arguments and shows. Freddie, in his 20s and with a garish fashion sense, yearns to break into the music world, and he meets his would-be bandmates (Gwilym Lee and Ben Hardy) outside a pub. They need a lead singer, he wants the gig, and one hour and many montages later, they've added a bassist (Joseph Mazzello) and recorded four albums, and Freddie's realized he's bisexual.

All that hurried hullabaloo envelops a blustery record producer (Mike Myers), a serpentine manager (Aidan Gillen), and Freddie's romance with Mary Austin (Lucy Boynton). Boynton is underutilized in the film, but so is everyone. The other members of Queen have zero personality apart from their tremendous wigs - their interchangeability is a bit like those homogenous dwarves in The Hobbit series.

Yet the film's larger problem lies in its failure to find deeper substance to the band and their continued popularity. Queen, an ordinary band with an extraordinary lead singer, has been turned into a myth on par with more interesting musicians like Elvis Presley and The Beatles. They've been the basis for a wildly successful blockbuster stage musical, "We Will Rock You," and everything from "Guitar Hero" to "A Knight's Tale" has cashed in on their legacy. They feel less like a band than a product, and "Bohemian Rhapsody" happily hawks said product at sixteen bucks a ticket.

The movie jitters between subjects, sometimes examining Freddie's sexuality or raucous personal life, sometimes looking at the band's musical process, but never marrying these focuses together into anything coherent. This rote structure recalls Freddie's own opposition in the film: "I'm tired of touring," aren't you?" he says to the band. "Album, tour, album, tour. I'm sick of it."

That Malek manages to act through his ridiculous prosthetic teeth is the film's biggest achievement. But his peacocking and hip-gyrating only thrust skin-deep. Malek, like his other talented colleagues, never gets to play a human being. Nobody in "Bohemian Rhapsody," least of all Freddie, wants anything, has any goals. Malek simultaneously brings something liberated and something robotic to the role, as if every step, every tilt of the head, had been carefully choreographed weeks before shooting.

And yet, despite the film's litany of problems, there were moments I was drawn into the action. Some of the quieter, slower scenes gripped me, and for all its playing fast-and-loose with the band's history, I left "Bohemian Rhapsody" feeling that it's largely harmless. It doesn't bring any of the subtlety or emotion to Queen that, say, "Love & Mercy" did for Brian Wilson, but "Bohemian Rhapsody" is a comfort film first and foremost, a marshmallow sandwich between two slices of white bread. Surely (and hopefully) there will be better movies about Queen, but few, if any, of them will have performances as virtuosic as Malek's.

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The Image Book (2018)

5/10

Godard's at it again

31 January 2019

To be brief: With regard to Jean-Luc Godard's later work, what you get out of it depends entirely on what you bring to it and expect from it. "Goodbye to Language" nauseates me; I think it's unbearably pretentious, poorly constructed, and struggling for meaning. But I had some modicum of fun with "The Image Book." Granted, it's still montages layered on montages on montages, so it's dense, but it's still good, academic fun.

Nowhere else but in late-era Godard can you find a reference to the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge scene from "Vertigo" moments after a shocking ISIS execution video. Godard lost none of his edge as a filmmaker, for better and for worse, and "The Image Book" proves he's retained his ability to shock and inspire audiences.

The editing and voiceover are precise and hyperaware, with more wit and levity than "Goodbye to Language" brought, and the references are deeper-cut as well. I enjoyed the throwaway cut to "Kiss Me Deadly" as much as I loved his allusion to Buster Keaton. But at the end of the day, Godard's latest is simply too abstract, too formless, too high-brow to recommend to anybody. As much fun as I had, it went on for too long and had more non-endings than "Return of the King." There's a solid four or five minutes of film after the credits, as if Godard is begging us to leave the theater as he's laughing in our faces.

But if you approach "Goodbye to Language" not only prepared but enthusiastic about what the director has to offer next, as I know many people were, you may well walk out of "The Image Book" claiming it's a masterpiece.

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Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018)

7/10

"Samsara" for the American South

31 January 2019

With documentaries, we are used to being explicitly told the narrative. We are used to linear storytelling. We are used to talking heads, some witty banter with the filmmakers, an occasional irreverent interviewee, and some title cards at the end to explain what happens to everyone after the project has finished. With "Hale County This Morning, This Evening," not only are these items nonexistent; there's barely any context for the film we're left with.

The only context we're given is delivered quickly, right up top, explaining that RaMell Ross, the director, began the project in 2009 as he was tracking the local basketball team. There's a considerable focus on these teens in the final cut of the film, but there's much, much more, too.

There's Daniel, the basketball star who dreams of getting his family out of poverty through attending Selma University. There's Boosie, caring for her child with two more on the way. There's Quincy, Boosie's husband, whom we first meet crying as he has his nose pierced. And there's, of course, Quincy and Boosie's kid, a hyperactive youngster who adores the camera.

Through each of these characters and a handful of peripheral personalities, "Hale County" constructs a dreamcatcher of moments -- I hesitate to call them stories, given how loosely the film treats them, so "moments" is more appropriate. But in those moments, the African-American, low-income world of Hale County breathes deeply, forcefully. A police officer stops a car, and a deer steps out, trepidatiously, onto the road to get a better view. Its breath comes out in billows of condensation. At another point in the film, a young man stands with his father as a thunderstorm crackles over the horizon. The wind tugs at their clothes and threatens to pull them away.

Beyond these standout moments, aided by Ross' divine cinematography and precise editing, the majority of the film is told through the perspective of children. The best shot in the film sees a plane gushing a smoke trail as it falter in mid-air and falls, dramatically, plumes running behind it. As it falls, in one continuous shot, we find ourselves staring at Quincy and Boosie's child, crying, so close to the camera that you can see the tears sparkle.

For narrative lovers, "Hale County" will understandably disappoint. It fires on the levels that "Samsara" and "Baraka" do -- this is a tonal piece more than a narrative one. To this end, however, the sound recording leaves a lot to be desired. Some of the flourishes work, like leaving in a rough, barely audible background conversation between the filmmaker and a chatty subject. But most of the film features poor recording, and much of it with unmic-ed subjects. At a certain point, I stopped trying to understand what people were saying and just watched for the visuals and the music.

If you go with the film and let it take you on its winding, existential journey, "Hale County" travels the breadth of the human experience, from a blissful two-plus-minute shot of an infant running to and fro across the room like an excited puppy to a solemn view of smoke from a burning tire, cascading over trees as it reaches toward the sky.

Some parts of "Hale County" hit me harder than "Won't You Be My Neighbor," another, more widely seen doc from this year. In those scenes and in the more quiet, reflective moments, the movie calls to mind that trope about the "long night of the soul." "Hale County" isn't THAT dramatic, but its humanism and its experimental storytelling capture, hauntingly and beautifully, the morning and evening of the soul.

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The Stressful Adventures of Boxhead & Roundhead (2014)

3/10

Scrappy animation and Kafkaesque kookiness

26 January 2019

"Something feels familiar," the short, stumpy Roundhead says. He and his taller, more straight-laced brother, Boxhead, have traveled to a filthy city to get their home back, and they can't shake the feeling that they've been here before. And though the world of "The Stressful Adventures of Boxhead & Roundhead" ignores logic, though, in their world, jungles appear out of nowhere, cities are held together by their muck, and giant purple wolves lurk in the tall grass, you might watch the film with more than a little sickening familiarity.

The simple existential quest at the core of the narrative unwinds as Boxhead and Roundhead travel from their humble prairie over mountains and seas to reach the city, snowballing into a clever denouement but failing to stick the landing. Scrappy animation projects such as this are at once inspiring and patchy. In "Boxhead & Roundhead," Elliot Cowan's voice as an artist shines through, but so do the missteps.

As carefully composed and delightful as some of the film's best sequences are, the film is not consistently worthy of praise. The chase scenes so excessively recycle assets that the film feels at times like a "Scooby-Doo" parody. The character designs feel trite, especially in the city, and maybe that's the point, but the sound work accompanying them is slipshod and poorly mixed. Many scenes take on a minimalist feel, more out of necessity, it seems, than art.

Fortunately, the film is bound together by its kooky, Kafkaesque plot, and animation junkies might appreciate the unpolished production more than other, more casual viewers.

But the real heroes here are The Gadflys, a beautiful, folksy-sounding alternative band whose music is a constant presence in "Boxhead & Roundhead." The Gadflys try to do for Cowan's film what Cat Stevens did for "Harold and Maude" -- use cutting, resonant music to elevate an odd story to art. And sometimes, The Gadflys succeed, but the more the film gets bogged down in the capitalistic malaise of its dirty city -- itself able to be a metaphor for Los Angeles or New York City, any filthy place where dreams go to die -- the less The Gadflys are able to pierce through the muck.

So something indeed feels familiar here. A dirty city, corrupt officials, and perpetual hopelessness. I only wish the film were strong enough to live up to the themes it's trying to explore.

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The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

8/10

Spooky as can be, and a heck of a lot of fun

9 October 2018

I'll just leave it at this: in 1971, there were two great revelations that shook the Western world as we know it; the first was the publishing of the Pentagon Papers. The second, which was unveiled to the world one month earlier, is "The Abominable Dr. Phibes."

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El Mariachi (1992)

4/10

"El Mariachi," a dust devil emptily swirling through Mexico

1 September 2018

Taking a set-up worthy of minor Hitchcock or a blockbuster Western, Robert Rodriguez directs his first feature film "El Mariachi," an uneven symphony of gunfights, footchases and the occasional glimpse of a turtle.

In the great pantheon of modern commercial filmmakers' first films, Rodriguez's debut ranks far below the Coen Brothers' in terms of the might of its screenplay. "El Mariachi" hews closely to the Clint Eastwood Western conventions of its premise. A man in black enters a town and needs to fend for his life while mysterious gangsters try to do him in. It's a simple affair, with a very streamlined execution and nary an unexpected turn in the film, save for the final minutes.

Even Justin Lin's debut "Shopping for Fangs" packs more energy, passion and wit into its runtime. Rodriguez's film, save for a few whimsical scenes, is filled with a dreadful dullness. The "action scene" that opens the film has action too awkward, y too cheesy and stilted, and editing too lurching to be entertaining. Even after the slow cold open, only a handful of scenes thereafter approach a sense of kinetic action. Watching our mariachi hero vault himself onto a stairwell or finally take up arms against his assailants contains a modicum of satisfaction, mostly due to the top-notch, gut-punch stuntwork and the commitment of the central performance. But the editing and the camerawork lack panache, and it is not in a way that can be attributed to the admirably small budget. Each shot has a nauseating useless gimmick to it. Within thirty seconds, Rodriguez and his team will squeeze in a crash-zoom in, an extreme-closeup (usually on nervous, darting eyeballs), a cutaway to the crowd, a crash-zoom out, a closeup of a gun, and a handful of other ridiculous movements. To say the camerawork and editing are schizophrenic is to understate the zaniness of the film.

Few scenes genuinely affected me on my initial viewing, and there are too many inconsistencies, gaps of logic and overwrought moments say the film is of genuine worth aside from an interesting start to a career and a great example of low-budget prowess. Great films can be made on smaller budgets, and as a film student, I can say they sometimes are. Budget does not correlate to the quality of the film, which is why I maintain that Rodriguez's debut is more underwhelming than most critics and historians give it credit for.

It's most poignant moment is also its it's most uncharacteristic -- a bathtub serenade while the mariachi has a letter-opener to his testicles. Even then, some editing hiccups exclude necessary bits of action, but the connection between our leads is palpable. We feel a relationship forming. The sound is dominated by a gorgeous song, calmly and softly reaching out to us and to his bartender benefactor, a lovely island of music amid a sea of overindulgent and pulpy slaughter.

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REW FFWD (1994)

8/10

A puzzle worth solving

25 November 2017

As Denis Villeneuve's first crack at filmmaking, "RWD FFWd" is pretty damn good. It isn't coherent or logical, but it works if you meet the film on its own weird, disjointed level.

Its story -- if one can call it that -- is fractured, both by design and by the way it's told. The narrative is told from the perspective of the "black box" of memory, and the events unfold as if your uncle sat on the remote control while the film was playing and the movie is skipping or rewinding through entire sequences and scenes.

The story we are provided with, therefore, is broken twofold. Once by Villeneuve's writing and another time by his editing. Yet the film recalls "Memento" in that Villeneuve gives us a narrator, Lorne Brass, to explain the madness.

The narrative style may alienate some, as might the precise, directorial voice-over from Brass, but the rambling story and the poetic execution of its Jamaican- documentary premise is worth investigating. It's only 30 minutes, after all. But what an enigmatic thrill those 30 minutes are.

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The Dressmaker (I) (2015)

6/10

If Tim Burton Were Trapped In Australia For A Year

18 November 2017

The Aussie Outback is one of those lonesome frontiers, like the Arctic and the Southern American swampland, that we don't really see much in American cinema. We've had a few "Max Max" adventures and that 2008 film from Baz Luhrmann, but for the most part, its exploration is limited to indie films and foreign productions. And it's usually earnest and expansive, like "The Rover" taking on the wild Western genre, or it's scary and mined for horror, like in "Kangaroo Jack" -- wait, what was I talking about?

"The Dressmaker" drives Kate Winslet's titular seamstress Tilly out to the middle of nowhere, her way-out-back hometown where some unspeakable horror has occurred years ago. And supposedly, she's the perpetrator, though she doesn't remember. Neither does her senile, lunatic mother Molly (Judy Davis), who rambles about possums and presumably hasn't had a bath in years.

There's weirdness afoot in town as well, where every character, from Hugo Weaving's delightful cross-dressing police sergeant to the hunchbacked chemist (mind you, it's the '20s), feels like a "Twin Peaks" small-town oddity on steroids.

This is all helped along by the screwball execution of a rather dark story. Reminiscent of a Tim Burton film, there's slapstick antics and clever visual gags that shove a rocket up the ass of a considerably more somber tale of clearing one's innocence and seeking vengeance on some silly town gossips. Who says we can't have fun while we're exploring one woman's dark past?

Well, the script, for one. Sometimes the story gets a little too deathly for its own good, and while writer/director Jocelyn Moorhouse knows when to slow down and let these moments breathe, much of the third act decides the film has been twiddling its thumbs for too long (it hasn't) and rushes forward with many shocking developments and hurried character beats.

But what a strong first two acts! Moorhouse has a knack for zany scene construction, and the montages, arguments and introductions all bear the beautiful feeling of brevity. Tilly takes up the local trailer hunk (Liam Hemsworth) on his offer for a date. Fifteen seconds, tops. Tilly momentarily decides to give up dressmaking for good. Two minutes, in and out. Bam. Done. And while sometimes, this hampers the overall flow of the film, it sets up an exuberant tone out of the gate.

The problems come with tone, and with how that energy can be kept up throughout the entire film. Moorhouse commits, thank goodness, to the wackiness, and she dials the Burtonosity of it all up to 11 for some inspired scenes on top of a silo at night, in a ostensibly innocent kitchen, or in a bride-to-be's frantic rush to Tilly's doorstep.

The central relationships of Tilly with the hunky Hemsworth brother (sorry, was there more to his character that I was missing?) and with her mother are given ample attention, and we feel the weight they have in Tilly's life. Winslet's soulful performance cuts through her anxiety and fear with her smiles and her tenacity, which brighten up the first act and keep the fantastical, folksy machinations of the story as grounded as possible.

But unlike Burton, Moorhouse knows when to pull in the reins. Her story is by no means "Edward Scissorhands," though she tells it as if it were. "The Dressmaker" is as enamored with its endearing strangeness as it is with its characters and their history. Gorgeous shots of sunset over the Outback are given as much care and focus as the dresses Tilly crafts for the townspeople.

The story itself, though, tends to divert its focus from where we want it most to be. The more fun townsfolk drop out of the story around the sagging middle of the film, and there's a sizable portion thereabouts where "The Dressmaker" suddenly doesn't have anything to do with Winslet's making dresses.

But it's nothing Moorhouse doesn't try to overcome by indulging in her bizarre characters and screenplay. This isn't a bad thing at all, especially if, like me, you feel as if Hugo Weaving gets far too many serious roles and needs a good scene or two where he orgasmically heaves over fine fabric.

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My Journey Through French Cinema (2016)

6/10

Passionate, thorough, hollow and dull

1 October 2017

It's hard not to smile at the giddiness in Bertrand Tavernier's voice as he recounts the French films that inspired him in his youth and fascinated him in his later years. "My Journey Through French Cinema" is a French-language film documenting Tavernier's love for the rich French history of film, reaching back as early as Jacques Becker and extending as close to the present as Jean Renoir and Lino Ventura. Tavernier's passion carries much of the film, as does a very well-edited and well-selected series of clips from the films in question. But ultimately, the film's own nature undermines it.

This is by no means the most excitingly framed documentary ever made. It features only Tavernier as an interview subject, with famous French directors and actors popping up intermittently in historical footage.

Tavernier wonderfully narrates the odyssey through his youth, and the amount of personal history he brings to it is charming, but there isn't enough effort put into the presentation outside of the film clips. It's fun to see Jean Claude Belmondo in "Léon Morin, Priest" and Alain Delon in "Le Samourai," but when we cut back to the same stale office setting with Tavernier for a few brief, fleeting seconds before being thrust back into a three-hour film history lecture, the film only nurses its disconnect between subject and audience.

Consider "David Lynch: The Art Life" or "Listen to Me, Marlon," two documentaries of immense power that draw all of their flair, excitement, intrigue and depth from how they choose to approach their subjects. Here, Tavernier structures his film as a lecture. There, those documentaries are art. The final product of Tavernier's work is a passionate study of French cinema, but one that cannot hold appeal for those unfamiliar with "Le Grande Illusion," "Army of Shadows" or "Breathless."

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Florence + the Machine: The Odyssey (2016 Video)

5/10

Another Conversation With No Destination

29 August 2017

Few modern bands combine soul, spirit and rage like Florence + the Machine. With such heavy thematic lines running through their music and a very clear religious pulse to each album, what writer/director Vincent Haycock and co-writer Florence Welch --who also stars in the film and, of course, is the namesake of the band -- chose to do with the material from their latest album, "How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful," is really no less surprising than if Of Monsters and Men made a short film for "Beneath the Skin" in the form of a 40-minute puppet show.

Opening on a distant neon cross shining above an unnamed city that I can only assume is Rio de Janeiro, tucked away in the background behind rolling hills and busy highways, Haycock establishes the film's (and the band's) love of symbolism right out of the gate. And with a name taken from Homer, the film isn't exactly working hard to obscure its influences, either.

From there, we join Florence in a car talking with a man, and the tumultuous relationship of the two is externalized in the film's first song, "What Kind of Man." Musically, the film interacts well with the song, finding key moments of breathiness to emphasize its cinematography and using a car crash to jerk the viewer into the electric-guitar-and-drums portion of the song.

But something feels off. For all of the clearly allegorical imagery on display, where a battle against eight or ten men feels instead like Florence battling for her soul, or a dark, dirty cell where Florence lies emphasizes her nakedness and vulnerability, the film feels curiously flat about these images. Florence imbues every scene with the outrageous level of passion characteristic of her live performances, but the scenes feel less like specific, well-crafted metaphors and more like broad strokes. And other numbers feel completely hollow, rather like blank canvases than fleshed-out ideas.

Take "St. Jude," for example, the most straightforwardly religious of the album. The sequence set aside for that song finds Florence once again wandering around with wet hair as she rubs up against various men like a cat to a scratching post. We see shots of starlings flowing through the air like someone watched too much "True Detective," a double of Florence kneeled in front of a cathedral (get used to seeing them around), a bunch of men carrying large rocks, and someone carries Florence, limp, down the street. When you cram too many images and ideas together into a sequence, it breaks the scene. It becomes confusing. And by the time the shamanic man approaches Florence at the conclusion of the song and asks if she's lost, there's no sense of resolution because Haycock's images are hard to follow.

There's a surplus of intent and craft on display here, but it's in the service of thinly sketched metaphors. And on a technical level, every song has something distracting happening on-screen. "Ship to Wreck" has the same distracting double work -- we never see the second Florence's face, I guess we're supposed to know it isn't her -- that shows up in "St. Jude" and "Delilah." The same sexual, repetitive Florence-versus-a-bunch-of-guys choreography rears its head again in "Delilah" and "Third Eye," and some poorly executed stage-fighting ruins the effect of "Queen of Peace." The other numbers range from soulful to confusing, but they all have something going on in front of the camera to distract the viewer from the feeling.

It's good to have purpose, it's good to have meaning, but when your film has only meaning, it can feel like we're watching it from across a chasm with neither good filmmaking nor good writing there to bridge the gap for us.

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Broke (2016)

6/10

"Broke" is light and airy, but funny and progressive

22 January 2017

The worst thing about this show is its poor IMDb page. One would think the producers would care enough to at least put all 11 episodes on the website!

But IMDb aside, "Broke" is a brisk, enjoyable show. Its wonderful 10-minute sitcom structure allows for brevity in its storytelling and focus on its core characters. Its all- black main cast is a breath of fresh air, and its broke-20-something angle is equally new and different. The Los Angeles location also allows for plenty of rich locations and bright backgrounds, and the amount of time these characters spend outside is a welcome departure from most network sitcoms on-air today.

Each episodes' stories are well-written and executed, with a series standout being "Passin' the Blunt." In the episode, Miloh mourns for her deceased great uncle while her two housemates get incredibly high from some strong marijuana. The writing is smart and concise, even if the three main characters aren't very well-rounded.

For a show about three college graduates trying to follow their dreams, it's never made clear why they want to follow THESE dreams. With the exception of Paul, we at least know what their dreams are (Paul is kind of an enigma, though). But why does Miloh want to be a writer? At least the finale attempts to answer why Mo wants to be an actor, but it's too little too late for the character. Even though the episodes are short, it's hard to get sucked into them when the stakes aren't very high, when we can't feel why it's important that these characters get on the right path.

Such poor motivation would work in any other show, but "Broke" is specifically ABOUT these people following their dreams, which makes it have to work harder to stray from the mold. While it stays in the typical sitcom format, it does hack out a new path for itself. For example, it's delightful to have (presumably) millennials working on the production -- when characters FaceTime one another, it's so comforting to see that the powers that be actually CARED about making it look like a realistic FaceTime call.

Production values are good all-around, save for a few bit locations, and the camera-work is mostly crisp, though with an aggressive surplus of camera shake. I know earthquakes are common in California, but it seems like all 11 episodes were shot during one long earthquake. The camera has no business being that jittery.

But all things considered, "Broke" is the sign of something really good coming from BuzzFeed Video. This show is not the best they can do, but it's a step in the right direction. And with all the garbage on YouTube Red, even above-average content like BuzzFeed Video's "Broke" has to be applauded.

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Fight of the Living Dead (2015–2017)

1/10

Seven episodes of lumbering, comatose nonsense

21 January 2017

"Fight of the Living Dead" is a Frankenstein's monster of a series. Mercifully, it's only seven episodes.

The series drops 10 "famous" YouTubers and Vine stars in a zombie-infested hospital and tasks them with fast-paced challenges to get them to safety. From securing safe rooms to assembling a zombie-killing device, the show certainly keeps them busy. Or rather, CONOP, the fictional scientific/military organization the YouTubers and Viners are told is in charge, keeps them busy.

In its zombie premise and dedication to dropping at least one cast member an episode, the show's clearly influenced by the likes of "The Walking Dead" and its spin off show, "Fear the Walking Dead."

But in its video-confessional style and attempts to convince YouTube and Vine stars that what they are living is real, "Fight of the Living Dead" seems to mostly be a reality series first, zombie show second.

Nobody is remotely convincing in this show. Cast members start drama almost immediately, people begin taking it *way* too seriously, and the show goes to "Scare Pewdiepie" lengths and then some to try and sell its premise to its own cast.

If it tried to be either a reality show or a zombie show and didn't stitch the two genres so clumsily together, this might have worked. But instead, the rips in the proverbial dress show at every corner.

Character deaths are rushed and arbitrary, are given no weight, and due to the amount of prosthetics and makeup, they're obviously filmed separate from the rest of the series. Cameramen are present at every turn. When cast members are on deadly missions, we cut suddenly to their video confessionals, even though those same cast members die DURING THE MISSION WE ARE WATCHING and would therefore have no time to return to a camera and record the confessionals.

It's a lumbering, boring disappointment of a show. The acting is bad, the cast is unbearable, the writing is dull, the cliffhangers are unengaging and resolved too quickly, and the entire production reeks of the worst clichés and tropes of reality television.

It's a show that, after the first terrible episode, challenges you to sit through the other six.

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Alexander IRL (2017)

1/10

The worst thing on YouTube Red

15 January 2017

Warning: Spoilers

"Alexander IRL" is a student film masquerading as a professional production.

I expected a trite, unfunny, clichéd comedy when I started watching this movie. I was a little excited to see Nathan Kress in something, since he hasn't done much of note since "iCarly," but other than that, I didn't know any of the names involved with this movie.

And let me emphasize something I've been saying for all of my other YouTube Red reviews: The films and series that these YouTubers create for this service should not be exclusive to their fans. Meaning: I should not have to be an existing fan of (checks YouTube video) MrBrent98 to like his movie. I would feel comfortable, for example, recommending "Rhett and Link's Buddy System" to people who've never heard of Rhett and Link, or "Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares" to people who've never heard of the titular angry British chef.

But even if I knew who MrBrent98 was, I would not have enjoyed this movie.

Whereas other YouTube Red original films were brought down by single Death Star- like fatal flaws -- Smosh's "Ghostmates" had abhorrent writing, while the editing of "The Keys of Christmas" utterly destroyed the movie -- there isn't a single thing "Alexander IRL" does right. Not a single thing worthy of praise that wouldn't turn into a backhanded compliment.

The acting is overstated and unconvincing. The performers look as if they have no idea what they're supposed to be reacting to, or what they're supposed to be communicating in their scenes.

The music choices make the first 30 minutes feel like a music video that never ends. Songs are played far too frequently, and there's even an incredibly out-of-place "Nutcracker Suite" during a film that couldn't have anything LESS to do with Christmas, but I'm not even sure I want the alternative, which would be more of the original score, because the music composed for this film is equally incompetent. There isn't one original piece of music played in this movie that doesn't sound like Stock Film Score Track #32.

On top of that, a lot of the post-production work is incomplete. People talk into microphones but nobody edited the audio to sound like it was coming from a mic.

There are more problems, too, with dialogue not syncing up to actors' mouths, random dropped frames in the middle of the movie, superimposed images not blending with the environments, and populated bars in which you can't hear the other patrons talking. It's like Nathan Kress wandered into a bar for the deaf, where everyone can only communicate by reading lips.

But the real Achilles' heels of this film are its direction and cinematography. For one thing, whatever camera "Alexander IRL" was recorded on is something made for skater videos, or maybe really hip (read: pretentious) music videos. The center of every shot is in focus. The edges are always out of focus. The only exceptions are the extremely unwarranted bird's-eye-view shots and the lousy iPhone video footage.

This odd depth of field wouldn't be jarring if there wasn't stuff to pay attention to on the perimeter of the frame. People walk and talk off to the far left, or Kress' character holds his phone toward the top of the shot. We're supposed to be looking at the edge of the frame, but the edge of the frame is BLURRY!

All of this is not to mention that there are far too many Dutch angle shots in this film, and they're not even used properly! AND every single shot is so overblown, so whited- out to the point of incomprehension!

And it all culminates in the worst party ever put to film, where only the lead actors were mic-ed and the extras don't even have the benefit of ADRed-in dialogue or sound effects.

There's a single instance of freeze-frame that never happens again.

There are plot threads that cease to be the instant the party begins, and they never resurface.

And it is all in the service of nothing.

No message that it doesn't shamelessly double-back on in the end.

No reason to be.

"Alexander IRL" is aimlessness incarnate.

I couldn't even watch it all in one sitting, just in 5- to 10-minute chunks. I'm not expecting any YouTube Red content to be worse than this. This was a major release from a supposedly professional video service, but I know student filmmakers that could make infinitely better movies with none of the budget.

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The Keys of Christmas (2016)

1/10

"The Keys of Christmas" is 12 to 15 minutes of decent ideas stretched into 47 minutes

13 January 2017

For YouTube Red "original programming," there is barely anything original to speak of in Rudy Mancuso's holiday musical comedy "The Keys of Christmas."

In it, Mancuso plays a fictionalized, grumpy version of himself, a holiday grinch who has had enough of the commercialization of Christmas and the completely nonsensical traditions therein, all the while obsessing over his cell phone. He's a hypocrite, yes, but gosh, is he ever an unpleasant one.

He drops his phone, loses his girlfriend Bella (Mariah Strongin) and inadvertently meets his guardian angel -- D.J. Khaled, naturally, playing himself. The good D.J. must then act as the Clarence to Mancuso's George Bailey and teach him the Keys of Christmas. Don't get too excited; we never actually learn what these titular Keys of Christmas are. To help him is Mariah Carey. She plays herself, because apparently, YouTube Red shows and movies can't cast celebrities and have them actually play characters.

As for the plot, it's a story as trodden and overused as that of Smosh's YouTube Red film "Ghostmates," if not moreso. It at least comes as a relief that Mancuso -- I'm assuming he's the writer, as no one is credited for writing this garbage -- finds some fun twists to add into the most predictable of Christmas tales. From a sassy Latino puppet to an overworked and underpaid elf worker (Anwar Jibawi), there are some good comedic ideas floating around in the undercooked holiday stew of "The Keys of Christmas."

The comedic tangents the film takes are humorous, but they don't progress the plot. The movie stops for a few jokes, and just as it builds up steam again, the movie stops again for another comedic bit.

If it's not for laughs, it's for full-length songs, of which the film squeezes TWELVE into its 47-minute runtime. (And at 47 minutes, it's barely feature length. In fact, it ISN'T if you remove the six-minute end credits.)

Take that in. 47 minutes to tell a story.

And there are 12 full-length songs in the film.

The film's surplus of music exists to pad out an otherwise 12- to 15-minute short film. I wouldn't be so mad at "The Keys of Christmas," its nonexistent writer, its seven editors and its 25 producers if these songs served a purpose in the story. They never progress plot or character, however, and most of the time, they don't even have to do with Christmas!

The only two times the music fleshes out the characters is when Rudy is singing, and his song (the second time is a reprise) only repeats things we've already established in Rudy's conversation with Bella at the beginning of the film!

The movie is best as disposable entertainment, something to put on in the background while you do the dishes or iron some clothes. Its meandering plot, incompetent editing, and useless musical sequences make it worthless to sit down and enjoy.

It at least looks and feels a lot more like a movie than a lot of the other material YouTube Red has to offer (*cough* *cough* "Ghostmates") and it's certainly funny, but its horrible ending completely ruins the entire film. Correction: The problem is that the film doesn't HAVE an ending.

When the conflict is at its peak, when the story is at the end of its second act, the film abruptly ends with a rushed voice-over and a crammed-in, lazy moral. There's at least 15 minutes missing from this movie. As bad as "Ghostmates" might be, at least it has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

It's like if, in "It's a Wonderful Life," George Bailey is about to jump into the river and end his life when all of the audio fades out and we hear Jimmy Stewart say in a cheesy voice-over, "So in the end, I learned that Christmas isn't terrible. Family rocks! Uncle Billy is just the worst, though," and then credits roll! As if THAT'S a satisfying ending!

Although I'd like to have learned what the true meaning of Christmas is, or at least earn some semblance of resolution for Rudy's story, I at least got a chuckle out of Mike Tyson punching a grown man in the face and knocking him to the floor.

And that's kind of like the true meaning of Christmas, right?

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Rhett and Link's Buddy System (2016–2017)

7/10

"Buddy System" is amazing... let's talk about that.

6 January 2017

I was trepidatious when going into "Buddy System," afraid all of the personality of Rhett and Link, one of my favorite comedy duos on YouTube, would be lost in an expensive and corporate production. But one minute into the first episode, when the camera smoothly immerses itself onto the "Good Mythical Morning" set and follows Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal behind the scenes as the two discuss tucking their shirts into their underwear and whether or not it boosts confidence, I knew I was in good hands.

All of the fast-paced, zany, random, family-friendly humor that they showcase on GMM has made it into their YouTube Red debut. The story of "Buddy System," though it doesn't even take off until the second episode, is that Link loses his cell phone and their mutual former girlfriend steals it, intending to flood their channel with bad infomercials -- vengeance with a side of publicity.

But like I said, the story doesn't really begin until the second episode of this eight- episode series. The focus here is on the friendship of Rhett and Link, the anchor around which the show is constructed. The back-and-forth banter the two of them have is either so well-written that it feels like really good improv, or so well-improvised that it feels like really good writing. Their charisma carries every minute of "Buddy System," and when they're not on-screen, the supporting characters are equally ridiculous and fun.

Leslie Bibb shines as their ex-girlfriend, now dubbed "The Infomercial Queen" because of her empire of bad commercials, and though she mostly acts as the scenery-chewing villain, the more the plot develops, the more we get to see of her character, and of Bibb's range as a comedic actress. One outburst she has in the show's penultimate episode is riotous and makes one wish she had even more time on-screen.

Also in every episode is a musical number, full of the random lyrics that normally accompany Rhett and Link's songs. I appreciated that every song's style was different, as there's a rap song, a '90s boy band song, an early-2000s-era rock song, and even a barbershop quartet number. My personal favorite was a song about rollerskating that cleverly acted as, and this is just my interpretation, a satire of religious conflict. Pretty deep stuff coming from a lighthearted comedy show.

My only flaws with "Buddy System" are that one rather introspective episode toward the middle feels a little drawn-out and less entertaining than the others, and some of the joke reincorporation feels overdone at points, especially when we're on the sixth or seventh episode and we're still referencing jokes from the first instead of coming up with new ones.

Also, some of the visual effects don't really work, often feeling jarringly artificial and cheap, as is the case in the first episode, when we get a green-screen peek of a nighttime sky. But the comedic nature of the show and its own willingness to poke fun at itself save it, and the lackluster effects feel like jokes of their own rather than detriments. Most of the effects work is outdone by the outstanding production design in the musical sequences, anyway.

The most beautiful thing about "Buddy System" is how easy it is to recommend to people who don't even watch GMM. It certainly helps to be aware of Rhett and Link and the YouTube show they run, as their show is the McGuffin that launches the entire plot, but it isn't necessary to know who they are. As long as you like fun, ridiculous, and family-friendly humor, it's easy to recommend "Rhett and Link's Buddy System," and that this show probably has the most creative integrity, wit, and charm out of anything else YouTube Red offers is certainly worth a commendation.

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Ghostmates (2016)

1/10

Even Smosh fans have a right to hate "Ghostmates"

6 January 2017

Smosh's second feature film, "Ghostmates," is so unbelievably incompetent that I don't know where to begin.

It's a movie starring YouTube comedians Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla, known for their channel Smosh, as Eddie and Charlie. On the day he wants to ask his girlfriend Jessica (Francesca Galassi) to move in with him, he inadvertently chokes himself to death on his necktie when it gets caught in the door. But instead of going to heaven, Eddie is doomed to haunt the apartment until he can make things right on Earth and put himself at peace.

Enter Charlie, an unemployed cartoonist and electronics salesman who's been out of work for six months, yet somehow has money to shell out for a new home. He moves into the dead Eddie's suite, and Eddie twists his arm into helping him set things right so he can ascend to heaven. All of this is in spite of Eddie having the ability to interact with the world, like using a ketchup bottle to write on the wall or being able to enter people's bodies to possess them, and with a skill set like that, it's anyone's guess why Eddie needs Charlie to help him at all.

Even with a premise as worn and as overused as this one, the Smosh team still manages to make a mess of it. They don't add anything new, exciting, or surprising to a very predictable story, but that's not even the worst part of it. Even the easiest things they manage to muck up. There's no consistency for how Eddie the Ghost behaves, for example. He's able to walk through walls and inhabit people's bodies, but when his ex-girlfriend tries to touch his hand, hers doesn't phase through his. Eddie is also only able to lift up objects, it seems, when the plot demands it, because there are numerous circumstances when conflict could have been resolved if Eddie had just picked something up to prove he's actually a ghost.

On a technical level, the direction is lazy, the sound mix is abysmal, and the cinematography is that of a YouTube video with no effort being made to make it appear cinematic. Shadows on people's faces at nighttime? Really? For being produced by YouTube Red, this is a film that shows very little production value.

Its pacing is also abhorrent, and we don't even meet Padilla's character until we're almost at the 10-minute mark. Eddie doesn't even have a goal until 20 minutes into the movie. The middle is paced just fine, but there aren't any stakes for our awkward goofball leads, and the ending third is just speedy and weightless.

Yet the film's main folly is that its target audience is one that doesn't even know what the word "folly" means. Plot points are repeated over and over again, messages are hammered into the viewer like a brick to the face, and all of the comedy completely lacks both humor and subtlety. The "jokes" screenwriter Ryan Finnerty and stars Hecox and Padilla have devised for this film are uncannily bereft of any punchlines. And when there are comedic situations in the film, they exist only for a joke and not to serve the story. Why is T. Pain in this film? Because someone thought it'd be funny. Why is there a conversation about corn dogs that goes on for a full minute and serves no purpose to the plot? Because someone thought it'd be funny. Why does the story grind to a halt for an out-of-nowhere and probably offensive Bollywood spoof? Because someone thought it'd be funny.

That the film's jokes are aimed at such a young demographic that its audience wouldn't even care about the lack of punchlines would be forgivable if not for how seriously the film takes itself.

The things that people love about Smosh, based on their Food Fight videos alone, is their unabashed goofiness, their absurdist sense of humor, and their fast-paced, zany action. "Ghostmates" has none of this. It's taking two comedians known for their silliness and placing them in a grounded, dramatic piece that puts a dull story before the comedy, and I'm sure that's something that no one -- not even Smosh fans -- wants to see.

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Scare PewDiePie (2016–2017)

2/10

"Scare Pewdiepie" bores more often than frightens

5 January 2017

"Scare Pewdiepie" is the natural product of the Internet's obsession with reaction videos, of our willingness to waste hours of our lives watching other people be shocked, joyful, sad, or scared.

The show's conceit is that, for ten episodes, you get to watch YouTube celebrity Felix Kjellberg get scared by a variety of artificial haunted house setups intended to shock him or gross him out. Except most of these situations don't scare him so much as startle him.

They don't creep him out or frighten him, they merely provide a series of unending and uncreative jump scares. In four of the episodes -- the first, second, eighth, and tenth -- the producers don't even bother trying to scare him at all. The first and tenth episodes are essentially con man schemes, with the producers tricking him into believing he's either attending a doctor's visit or a wrap party before shocking him with weird characters, twists, or events, while the second and eighth episodes place Pewdiepie in an "Alien: Isolation"-esque environment and a mock-"Call of Duty" game, respectively. Points to the second episode are warranted, however, because although it isn't frightening for him, it's one of the only episodes that truly feels like he's living a video game.

If that was the goal of the entire show, then most of the other episodes fail miserably. The rest, particularly the third and fourth, feel too much like walking through a haunted house, which would be entertaining if anything was intended to scare the audience.

Watching Felix traverse these dull, repetitive horror mazes on his own would be torturously boring were it not for the infrequent guest star. It's no coincidence that the show's most fun, most entertaining, and most effective episodes are episode 2, "We're Not Alone," featuring Markiplier, and episode 6, "The Ultimate Hang," featuring Arin from Gamegrumps and Matpat from The Game Theorists. (Yes, I know I said episode 2 wasn't scary, but it was more entertaining than the scary ones.)

Felix wandering around alone in these episodes is like watching Lou Costello aimlessly stroll through an Abbott and Costello movie without Abbott. Pewdiepie is naturally goofy and silly, but he's also terrible at video games, and having someone around to call him out on his s--- feels essential to the show's structure. When a season 2 gets made, I would only tune in if there was a guest star in every episode because without that banter, it really is just one 20-minute reaction video after another, with very little innovation or attempts at comedy.

I could go on and complain about the repetitive episode structure, the bad acting, the lame visual effects, or the lack of consequences for Pewdiepie's constant f---uppery. But you know if you want to watch this show. It's called "Scare Pewdiepie." If you don't already like him as an entertainer, then there's nothing here for you.

This was made exclusively for Pewdiepie fans, and its second and sixth episodes are genuinely excellent. One just wishes they put more thought and care into the production, and didn't rely so much on the title. Because as Felix himself says in the fourth episode, it's not really "Scare Pewdiepie" as much as it's "Mindfuck Pewdiepie," and when your namesake star starts smelling the bulls---, you know something's gone wrong.

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Hideaway (1995)

2/10

Jeff Goldblum Serves Garbage on a Silver Platter

22 October 2016

You sit down in a cozy diner. It's familiar, like you've been to a thousand diners like that one before. Maybe you've been to them once a week, if you're into diners. And maybe when you go, they don't let you in because that particular diner — for whatever reason — only admits customers 17 years of age or older. I don't know.

You order the "Hideaway" omelet, which you think will be good because the menu assures you that the ingredients come from an organic farm. The Dean R. Koontz Organic Farm, let's call it.

The waiter comes out with your omelet and, lo and behold, your waiter is Jeff Goldblum!

Goldblum says, "Here's your... ah... omelet, sir... or... or madam — I'm not sure of the... ah... exact... gender of the person I am speaking to," and then he puts the plate down in front of you.

And it's just awful. Everything is lousy. Nothing works. Nothing is memorable. It looks like any ordinary omelet, except the ingredients all look fake and taste even worse. The bacon, which the menu brags is added in to make the omelet look cool, looks like it was made in the '90s, a decade notorious for its fake-looking bacon. To make matters worse, the whole thing reeks of cheese. It's all so cheesy.

And though the ingredients are normal, everyday omelet ingredients — mushrooms, cheese, tomatoes, onions — they come together in an odd and confusing way. Not only that, but you also taste chocolate and apples and the faintest whiff of shrimp, even though none of these things fit in with your omelet. Plus, the more you eat the omelet, the messier it becomes. It isn't long before the undercooked eggs are splayed out all over your plate, and you consider leaving the diner right at that minute, but you remember that you're paying about $6 in 1995 money for this omelet. You can't just get up and leave it. Plus, you owe it to Jeff Goldblum to listen to what he has to say, even though he's talking about how he lost his daughter in a car accident and you don't even remember how he got on that subject to begin with.

In fact, the only thing that makes the experience worthwhile is Jeff Goldblum, who just rambles to you the entire time you're eating that garbage omelet. He's holding a shotgun, too, for some reason. That's cool, you think to yourself. Jeff Goldblum looks like a badass when he's holding a shotgun.

And when you've finished eating the omelet, Jeff Goldblum thanks you for your time and takes the plate back to the kitchen. You never see him again, but you decide that, in two weeks, when you've forgotten that you've ever eaten the "Hideaway" omelet, with its synthetic ingredients, confusing recipe, messy eggs and overwhelming cheesiness, you'll remember who it was that gave it to you: Jeff Goldblum.

So maybe you'll be back to that diner to eat another meal with him, but you know one thing for sure: You're never going to order that goddamned omelet again.

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Space Cop (2016 Video)

6/10

Of course it's good, it took 12 years to make

23 September 2016

There's a special kind of joy that comes when the opening credits of "Space Cop" are rolling and you realize that you're not watching just any low-budget sci-fi movie, you're watching a labor of love from a group of friends who really wanted to make this movie.

Even when the script falters, or when the acting falls flat, it's this heart that powers the film and keeps you invested.

You can see the care and effort in the miniature Moon sets, in the production design for the alien spaceship, and in the props used by Space Cop and the rest of the Milwaukee precinct. Certain elements of the production are intentionally cheap, an elbow jab at the low-budget movies the gang discovers on "Best of the Worst."

The filmmakers were obviously inspired by these cheesy, goofy, often over-the-top buddy cop actioners they saw on their show, because from obvious stunt doubles to overacting police chiefs, this movie goes right down the list, checking off every box.

As Space Cop, Rich Evans is devotedly stoic and straight-faced, adopting a gruff, no- nonsense voice to mask his character's gross incompetence. But one yearns for the lovable presence Evans has in "Best of the Worst," or on "Half in the Bag." Mike Stoklasa, on the other hand, also hams it up as a detective from the past. There's a childish fun to their scenes together, and to their scenes with Jay Bauman's character Griggs. But too often does the pacing overwhelm the film, and we're left marooned for minutes on end with no jokes to latch onto.

How much you enjoy the film will ultimately rely on how much you share Mike, Jay and Rich's absurd, awkward sense of humor. If a nearly minute-long scene of Space Cop punching in the code for his refrigerator only for a single bottle of beer makes you smile, or if you're delighted by three minutes of Space Cop and Patton Oswalt's character awkwardly watching each other on a video call, Oswalt scrambling to figure out how to log out of the call, then this movie is made for you.

Stoklasa's character gets some good mileage out of his fish-out-of-water character, and he's dumbstruck to discover that not only can you not smoke in the police station, but you can't "have sex with a woman against her will," either.

But on top of it all is Evans, whose Christian Bale–type gruffness anchors much of the film, and whose "Don't Think, Act" attitude provides many hilariously violent scenes. A certain sequence involving a train and a seven-year-old on a bicycle made me laugh so loud, I probably scared my neighbors, only for the scene to be matched a half an hour later by an out-of-nowhere shootout in an alien spaceship that leaves several innocents dead.

Only those who truly love the team of RedLetterMedia should check out "Space Cop." It's not as consistently funny or as well-paced as "Black Dynamite" or other farcical '80s-nostalgia films, but the care and love put into the production is undeniable. And, hey, it has to be good — it took 12 years to make, after all.

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Mr. Robot (2015–2019)

5/10

Polarizing Show with the Horrendous Writing of a Middle Schooler

15 May 2016

Warning: Spoilers

If for nothing else, "Mr. Robot" is a show that definitely resonates with you.

It's a show tailor-made for this world of big corporations, looming terrorist threats and technological cultures just as much as it is geared toward a very generation-exclusive ambition of changing the world by empowering the everyday citizen against the billionaires, the people Elliott, the show's protagonist, believes to be the shadowy figures pulling all the strings.

"Mr. Robot" runs with Elliott's persistently cynical worldview, his paranoid ideas that the corporations are controlling everything and his vexing belief that money is a governing force, not a means of trade. These viewpoints propel the show forward and provide it with its momentum, which makes "Mr. Robot" instantly different than every other show on television and every show in recent memory: it's not governed by plot, it's governed by character and perspective. Specifically, just the character of Elliott and just his perspective.

How much you enjoy the show is nearly entirely dependent on how much you like Elliott as a character. Rami Malek does an excellent job when it's time for his violent bursts, and performs the nervous fits and the neurotic small-talk just as convincingly, but it ultimately comes down to the writing — about half of Elliott's lines in the show are done in a monotone voice-over. That's an incredibly bold decision to make for your lead character and your chief method of communicating thoughts to the audience, but it's also the show's deepest flaw, in my opinion. If you love his voice-over, it's because you have a heightened tolerance for a very specific type of writing, which I do not.

The foremost issue with this type of voice-over — the persistently monotone kind — is that Rami Malek could be the best actor in the world and still not be able to elevate the material. It will only ever be as good as the writing, which unfortunately pendulates between slickly entertaining and eye-gougingly irritating and amateur.

It takes talent and care to painstakingly create an atmosphere for your show, but it's the laziest and easiest tactic to get your main character to tell the audience everything they need to know to have the most involving time with the narrative.

Let's talk about the narrative, which is about as clean and well put-together as an alcoholic man in a gutter. The first two episodes have no driving force, they're just showcases for Elliot's annoying character. It's one thing to have a character as charismatic and likeably slimy as Frank Underwood leading a show with no narrative except "Hey, let's follow this character around and see what happens!" but this show's lead is the most uncharismatic, unlikeable lead I've seen in a TV show in a long time.

But back to the narrative. Our hero spends a few episodes dating with his drug dealer, then some guy who knows her kidnaps her, and Elliott must break said guy out of prison if he wants his girlfriend back. These shenanigans last an entire episode and, at the end, she's not even still alive. It sets Elliott back so much that the rest of his little hacker unit doesn't hear from him for months. But the worst part is that, not only is the episode irrelevant because the characters and events don't meaningfully effect the rest of the season, but it's irrelevant because there's absolutely no need for Elliott to "go dark" — to borrow some hip hacker lingo — for months on end. It doesn't change the story at all. Speaking of changing the story, we never get an explanation for how Elliott didn't know his family was in his hacking group. We also never get an explanation for how he was hallucinating his father. Or how he could have a conversation with Tyrell in the back of a van but have Tyrell talk to Elliott later like the conversation never took place. The most we get is Christian Slater's character telling Elliott in a throwaway line that he must have been taking drugs that had been fixed by E-Corp so Elliott would forget his family. But even that is called into question because Christian Slater's character is just a figment of Elliott's imagination, so what he's saying is what Elliott just wants to tell himself.

On top of that, a ridiculous portion of our time is spent with the main antagonist, a lizard wearing human skin that's trying to become the CTO (I know, I think it should be CEO too) of his company, Evil Corp. (The show is so enamored by its own assured intelligence and its own assuredly interesting main character that every time the company is mentioned, its name suddenly becomes Evil Corp instead of E-Corp. How clever us writers are!) But yet, the MAIN ANTAGONIST of the show doesn't even interact with our hero more than about three very brief times during which nothing of consequence happens. It's quite bizarre. His dealings with the company also have little to no influence over Elliott's story and it is Elliott's story, so it is puzzling as to why we spend so much time with this character.

If you like the show, then fine. Honestly, the writing is pretty good when we're unnecessarily feeding focus to the villain and the camera-work is impressive because of the intent behind the style. Isolate the characters in the frame to show they're alone against this big, uncertain system. But for me, the characters are all far too annoying to invest any time in, the writing is too sophomoric for me to not groan twice a minute, and the talking-to-the- audience gimmick gets old before Malek finishes the opening monologue of the pilot episode.

So yes, it's different. It's a show held up by viewpoints, not plot and not characters. But it just doesn't draw me in when I find all of the viewpoints represented here to be annoying, droning garbage.

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