An Unfortunate Fact

Almost everyone

over 50
finds self-checkout
an inscrutable
labyrinth

The Bare Minimum

Maybe I'm getting older

into that inevitable

mind your Ps and Qs

phase of life

but I find

I'm more concerned with

how I'm treated

how I treat others

than almost anything else

Aretha said it best:
All I'm askin'
is for a little respect

'Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted' A Review

Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted is a documentary about Swamp Dogg a cult country/soul/R&B musician. Through talking head interviews, fly-on-the-wall footage, and archival video his life but mostly his career is explored.

He's an eccentric and talented figure who's been influential but never achieved mainstream success. The film unspools part classic rock-doc but part experimental art project and celebrates Swamp and his two roommates Moogstar and Guitar Shorty.

Interesting, breezy, and fun. A just celebration of a mostly unknown but important artist who went his own way. It focuses on creativity, individuality, and artistic expression almost as much as Swamp Dogg's bio.

Currently in theaters, coming soon to VOD.

Rent It.

Doing/Being

the alarm

the commute

the job

condition us

coerce us

to act

to pursue

the river

the meadow

the mountain

show us

urge us

to exist

to simply be

'Friendship' A Review

Friendship is a surrealist dramedy about a suburban man Craig(Tim Robinson) who's life falls apart after he is first befriended then rejected by his new neighbor Austin(Paul Rudd).

It's wonderful to see Robinson in the lead of a feature, he brings commitment and energy as he always does but he's not able to manage the the uneven script and direction from first-timer Andrew DeYoung to make this a bonafide homerun. He's funny and some individual scenes and sequences are effective but the movie never really comes together as a whole. Rudd brings his ineffable charm and there are moments of real depth and complexity but the character, as written, is inconsistent and as the story progresses doesn't really make much sense. Kate Mara as Tami Craig's wife is underutilized and misdirected. She's always stunning on screen, she has a unique poise and presence, but she's just not given enough to do. The supporting cast is equally kind of confused and this is a result of DeYoung's mismanagement of tone.

Shot on location(ish) New York for New Jersey(opposite of Nonnas oddly) it feels and looks real and authentic. The creeping score and the occasional heightened bits of lighting and action are effective. But the whole is not equal to the sum of it's parts. There's an implication that this will be some kind of satire or comment on male loneliness and/or become some Lynchian fever dream but those feints from the screenplay never go anywhere. What were left with is just a stupid and terrible guy, Craig, being stupid and terrible. The surreal moments tease at something more lofty and interesting but never go above a certain volume, never crescendo. It's not bad it's just not great and it so clearly could have been.

Lots of promise, mostly under-realized.

Currently in theaters.

Stream It.

Cousins

If you can remove

disfunction

avert contention

there's nothing like family

when it's good

it's really good

connection

context

history

a sharing

a belonging

a bond

immune to time

unassailable

'Nonnas' A Review

Nonnas is a dramedy about a Brooklyn MTA worker Joe(Vince Vaughn) who, after the death of his mother, opens an Italian restaurant where nonnas(grandmothers) are the chefs.

Vaughn brings his patented ease and charm to the role but he's not really let-off-the-leach comedy wise and some of the scenes veer into exposition dumps and melodrama, a script problem not his, and he does a decent job navigating those bumps and anchoring the movie. The real treat though, no surprise, is the titular nonnas- Lorraine Bracco, Talia Shire, Brenda Vaccaro, and Susan Sarandon. Bracco, Shire, and Vaccaro go hard and it's an absolute delight. Sarandon is a bit more restrained but balances out the foursome's chemistry well. The movie, unfortunately, gets sidetracked with plot- money problems, permit problems etc.- when the real juice of the whole thing is just the nonnas cooking and hanging out(which we get some of but could use quite a bit more). Joe Manganiello and Drea de Matteo round out the cast as Joe's best friends, Manganiello maybe giving maybe the most grounded performance of his career(which we love to see!) and Matteo always a stunner.

Visually the movie is pretty pedestrian with a few wonky greenscreen shots. Although not shot on location it's shot not too far away in New Jersey so it has a decent feel of authenticity(i.e. Toronto or Atlanta as stand ins for every city in existence). Soundtrack works, the cooking/food scenes really work you just wish there was more of them. The movie has a lot of heart, a great message, the screenplay just gets bogged down a bit in trying too hard to be a screenplay i.e. unnecessary conflict.

An incredible cast elevates an uneven, but sweetly sincere, script.

Currently streaming on Netflix.

Rent It.

The Heaviness

It's always there
to one degree
or another

the daily goal

is to endure it

to go beyond it

to subsume into

the collective

consciousness

the Truth that

there is no otherness

there's just us

'Thunderbolts*' A Review

Thunderbolts* is a superhero team-up movie featuring the misfits of the MCU. Yelena(Florence Pugh) has been working as a black-ops agent for CIA head Valentina(Julia Louis-Dreyfus) but is plagued by an increasing ennui. When Valentina attempts to pit her black-ops agents against each other to kill each other off it back fires and they team up.

Pugh proves her A-list bonafides and is absolutely, incongruously, arresting as the lead. She gives an emotional depth and complexity that you'd usually find in an Oscar bait movie not an MCU installment. The other big surprise is Lewis Pullman as Bob, a damaged but powerful stranger that pops up. Both Yelena and Bob's mental health struggles form the real backbone of the film and as a result Thunderbolts* is probably the best MCU film, as an actual story not some kind of franchise chess, in quite a long time. The supporting cast help to build this out, everyone is committed, having fun, and allowed to be more lived-in than in their previous appearances- Wyatt Russell, David Harbour, Dreyfus, Hannah John-Kamen. Sebastian Stan is almost a supporting-supporting character but he is, as always, totally assured, totally comfortable, and delightful to watch. 

Visually the movie doesn't vary that much from the standard MCU aesthetic but within those confines it's able to be pretty compelling, with a darker color pallet to reflect the theme. Most of the scales are small, there are some cool set pieces, but it appears a fair amount is practically shot. There is, unfortunately, a big NYC is threated sequence at the end but there isn't a huge body count and the heroes are quickly sucked into a psychological space, a series of 'shame rooms', which is one of the big inspirations and triumphs of the script, funneling the MCU typical big-bad face-off from CGI skyscrapers collapsing to a more intimate confrontation.

Why Thunderbolts* succeeds where the past dozen MCU entrees have fallen short is because, although the various characters are tied to other projects, knowledge of those other projects are absolutely not necessary and the actors are given the space and trust by director Jake Schreier to create characters that exist within the story that they are in(not what they were in or will be in) and as a result it feels like a satisfying stand-alone, complete on it's own, no strings attached, movie. The last of which for the MCU was probably 2018's Black Panther, seven years and and 16 movies ago!

Overall, honestly, a pretty good flick.

Currently in theaters.

See It.

Office Criminal

Someone
threw away
my lunch

because I put it

in the ice maker

sanitation

was their justification

although I know

this nameless thief

is not

ServSafe Certified

and they did not then

empty out the

contaminated ice.

Gauche I may be

from a class

that never blinked

at putting popsicles

or breakfast burritos

in the ice basket

(it's extra storage)

but I am no coward

no mincing, faceless

pretentious, sniveling

office narc.

The millionaire bosses are vindicated!

The office is indeed a fertile place for collaboration and community!

'The Accountant 2' A Review

The Accountant 2 is an action movie, a sequel to the 2016 original. Christian(Ben Affleck), the titular Accountant, gets roped into investigating a convoluted human trafficking/child imprisonment ring by his former frenemy at FinCEN Medina(Cynthia Addai-Robinson). He calls in his brother Braxton(Jon Bernthal) for back up.

Affleck gives Christian a little less stoic menace and a little more personality and eccentricity which is great. Same with Bernthal who allows Braxton to be less cool and more depth. Both give oddly emotional performances, odd in that the emotion is genuinely potent in the scenes with the two of them(together or separate) not being violent. There's a great scene at a honky-tonk another as they sit on top of Christian's airstream and have a beer. But these hang-out scenes are extremely at odds with mowing down human traffickers across the boarder and freeing kids as they are literally being put into a mass grave. Addai-Robinson does well but the script makes her hammer by-the-bookness which feels bizarrely preachy and, again, tonally discordant. Daniella Pineda as a rival assassin/fixer is good but her storyline just kinda adds to the circuitousness of the plot. The big surprise and delight is how front and center autism is and how it's framed as a superpower not only with Christian but backed up by his handler Justine played by Allison Robertson and a room full of hacker kids all of whom are on the spectrum. It's good casting and this pretty mainstream B level action movie actually feels like it has something powerful to say in this respect given recent comments by RFKJr.

The action is competently shot but this, like many sequels and action movies in general, fails to understand bigger is not necessarily better, making the stakes BIG sometimes back fires. The best piece of action is Christian beating up security in a pizza factory not the climactic battle which kinda looks like it'd have been more appropriate in an Iraq War movie. Still you can at least see the action and it is something both Affleck and Bernthal excel at. The real issue is simply the tone is inconsistent but, in aggregate, it works.

Surprisingly effective and fun when it goes intimate and emotional, unsurprisingly flabby and unwieldy when it attempts to go beyond that.

Currently in theaters.

Rent It.

A Lesson I Learned After Mildly Irritating New Acquaintances For Years

Do not shorten

someone's name
unsolicited

always Michael

not Mike

always Megan

not Meg

unless Mike says so

unless Meg says so

undue familiarity

is not appreciated