The Films of 2026: Citizen Vigilante (dir by Uwe Boll)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In Citizen Vigilante, Armie Hammer returns to the screen as Sanders, a former American military operative who is now living in an unnamed European country.  The people in the country are terrified because the country has been flooded with violent refugees and the liberal judges and the ineffective police and the corrupt government can’t or won’t keep anyone safe.  Sanders makes it his mission to mete out justice.

When he sees a group of arrogant young people refusing to pay to ride the bus, he pays for their ticket and then shows their leader that he has a gun.  He explains how one person refusing to pay leads to everyone else having to pay more.

When he visits with a prostitute, he is disgusted to see that the building she works in has mold.  Sanders is especially upset because his company owns the building.  Sanders say that people have to start doing the right thing.  Then he pays a woman for sex.

When a judge allows a group of rapists to go free because they’re struggling to “integrate into society,” Sanders drugs the judge and slits his wrists.

Sanders goes to the office of his father’s company and orders the any of his tenants who aren’t paying their rent should be immediately evicted.  It’s explained that the government won’t allow Sanders to immediately evict anyone.  In fact, the government wants Sanders to hand over his open units so that they can be used to house migrants.  Sanders says that he’ll talk to the tenants himself.  Uh-oh.

When the cops come looking for Sanders, he blows them up.

Sanders kills an innocent motorist in order to make a point about how people are scared to break the law.  Wait, what?  This is our hero?

Sanders kills a lot of people.  He’s the Citizen Vigilante.  He sends out distorted videos of himself in which he rambles about Nietzsche and justice.  The fact that he sends out visually distorted videos would seem to suggest that he’s trying to hide his identity but he also spends almost the entire film wearing the exact same outfit and making no attempt to disguise his appearance while out in public.  Interpol is determined to catch him but the average citizen, the people being victimized by “woke liberalism” (to quote Sanders), love him.

Lord help us.  It’s 2026 and otherwise reasonable people are currently debating the merits of a Uwe Boll film.  For all the talk about how this film is politically incorrect and right-wing, it’s really not that much different from Boll’s Assault on Wall Street.  Both Assault on Wall Street and Citizen Vigilante are crude, heavy-handed films that capture the fantasies of people who currently feel powerless.  Assault on Wall Street was designed to appeal to the Resistance morons, the same people who would later insist that Luigi Mangione’s vapid manifesto was a call for revolution.  Citizen Vigilante is designed to appeal to the most simple-minded of the populists.  Running through both Citizen Vigilante and Assault on Wall Street is a contempt for anything that reeks of “the system.”  Both films are fueled less by politics and more by paranoia.  Germany made the mistake of banning Citizen Vigilante, which just added more fuel to a fire that would have otherwise burned itself out.

Citizen Vigilante opens with a scene of shocking violence.  It’s one of the more effective moments in the film, largely because it captures the randomness of modern crime.  It’s also one of the few scenes not to feature Armie Hammer.  One can make the argument that Armie Hammer was treated unfairly when he was canceled.  (I mean, there are people out there who still think that Hammer is a cannibal!)  Before his career collapsed, Hammer was a busy actor.  His piercing eyes and his deep voice made him ideal for both heroes and villains.  Citizen Vigilante has been touted as Hammer’s comeback, or at least it was until it was actually released.  Hammer wanders through the film in almost zombie-like trance, refusing to show a hint of emotion.  Every time he speaks, the deepness of his voice only reminds of how shallow the character (and the film) really is.  The film works best when its lead character and actor are nowhere to be seen.

Citizen Vigilante is crude.  Is it effective?  Occasionally.  Like most revenge films, it gets at the type of primal thoughts that a lot of people pretend not to have.  That said, Uwe Boll is not a good director.  Uwe Boll is an interesting media presence.  I respect the fact that, when he challenged his critics to a boxing match, he actually followed through and knocked most of them out.  I imagine there are many directors who are envious of that.  But, as a filmmaker, Boll has never shown much skill or concern when its come to concepts like pacing, continuity, or getting the best out of his actors.  Citizen Vigilante is a slow film that’s built around a character who registers as a big blank.  It’s neither as dangerous nor as revolutionary as you may have heard.  In the end, it’s just another film about people getting shot, blown up, and stabbed.  I imagine that some scenes will achieve a second life on YouTube.  That’s just the way of the world nowadays.  But the film itself will be forgotten in a few months.

Wow.  I just watched and reviewed a Uwe Boll film.  I should get hazard pay.

 

Scene That I Love: The Opening of All That Jazz

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Showtime!”

Since today is Bob Fosse’s birthday, it’s only appropriate that today’s scene that I love comes from his 1979’s masterpiece, All That Jazz!

This sequence captures everything we need to know about Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider).  We see his talent.  We see his self-destructive habits.  And, though we don’t realize it until the end of the film, we also see that death is patiently waiting for him.

 

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Bob Fosse Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today, we celebrate the birth and legacy of Bob Fosse.  It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 Bob Fosse Films

Cabaret (1972, dir by Bob Fosse, DP: Geoffrey Unsworth)

Lenny (1974, dir by Bob Fosse, DP: Bruce Surtees)

All That Jazz (1979, dir by Bob Fosse, DP: Giuseppe Rotunno)

Star 80 (1983, dir by Bob Fosse, DP: Sven Nyvkist)

Music Video of the Day: Pay No Mind (Snoozer) by Beck (1994, directed by Steve Hanft)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

This song finds Beck in a folk mood.  It took a lot of people by surprise in 1994, when Beck was still best-known for Loser.  This is one of the songs that showed Beck wasn’t going to be the one-hit wonder that many people expected.

Director Steve Hanft has also done videos for Pride & Glory, Milk Dee, Hootie & The Blowfish, Eels, and … Carrot Top?  Everyone has to make a living.

Enjoy!

Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 5.24 “Ice Cream Man”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983.  The entire show is currently streaming on Prime!

This week, a cop-turned-criminal tries to prove that he’s gone straight.  Will he able to convince Ponch?

Episode 5.24 “Ice Cream Man”

(Dir by Leslie H. Martinson, originally aired on April 18th, 1982)

Tom Corey (Robert Walker, Jr.) used to be a top member of the Highway Patrol until he was caught breaking the law himself.  Tom Corey was a car thief, not because he needed the money but just because he needed the thrill.  Tom was sent to prison.  His wife (Karen Jennings) divorced him.  His son (Noah Hathaway) was told that Tom had died shortly after he was born.  Now, nearly six years later, Tom is out of prison and he’s working as an ice cream man.  He insists that he’s gone straight and all he cares about now is keeping a distant eye on the son who doesn’t know who he is.

Baker is willing to give Tom the benefit of the doubt but not Ponch.  When a rash of vehicle thefts break out, Ponch suspects that Tom is involved.  To an extent, Ponch is right.  The ringleader of the thieves is a businessman named Reno Hale (James Wainwright).  Hale wants Tom to work for him.  Tom sees an opportunity to redeem himself by taking Reno down.

This was an interesting episode, in that the focus was not on Ponch or Baker but instead on Tom and his efforts to prove that he had gone straight.  In fact, this episode almost felt like a backdoor pilot for a series that would have focused on Tom’s life outside of prison.  It’s easy to imagine Tom spending each week foiling criminals while trying not to violate the terms of his parole.  Robert Walker, Jr. gave a strong performance as Tom and the scenes between him and the cops were filled with an energy that reminded me of the first two seasons of CHiPs, before the whole thing became the Ponch Show.

This was a good episode.  Tom was an interesting character and there was one spectacular accident that actually made me jump a little.  (It looked like Randi Oakes barely avoid getting seriously injured.)  This was a nice throwback to what the show used to be.

Retro Music Review: Nine Lives (by Aerosmith)

Posted on by Arleigh

Alright, let’s talk about Nine Lives. If you were an Aerosmith fan in the spring of 1997, you were probably in one of two camps. Camp One: you were still riding the high of the Get a Grip era, cranking “Livin’ on the Edge” in your hand-me-down Camry, and you couldn’t wait to see what the Toxic Twins would do next. Camp Two: you were a grizzled, old-school devotee who thought they’d sold their soul to MTV back in ’89, and you viewed any new album with the skeptical squint of a man watching his favorite dive bar turn into a Hard Rock Cafe. I landed somewhere in the middle, which might be the perfect vantage point for Nine Lives, because this record is a glorious, baffling, overstuffed, and surprisingly scrappy cat of an album. It’s not the sleek panther of Pump or the cuddly but commercially declawed kitten of Get a Grip. No, this is a half-feral tomcat with a crooked tail, a chipped tooth, and nine lives’ worth of attitude to burn.

First, let’s get the elephant—or rather, the cat—out of the room: the cover. That bizarre, Kabuki-meets-Dali cat face with the third eye and the psychedelic swirls is your first warning that this isn’t going to be a straightforward rock record. And that’s because the making of Nine Lives was famously a disaster. They fired their long-time producer, Bruce Fairbairn, after cutting a whole album’s worth of material, brought in Kevin Shirley, who was known for his harder, rawer sound with bands like Diamond Head and Slayer’s Divine Intervention, and then proceeded to spend a fortune in studio time and label anxiety. You can hear that tension in the grooves. It’s not a polished, radio-manufactured product; it’s a band fighting with each other, fighting with their label, and fighting with their own legacy, and somehow, that ugly, beautiful struggle is what makes Nine Lives so endlessly listenable.

The album kicks off with “Nine Lives,” the title track, and it’s a mission statement disguised as a glam-stomp barnburner. That opening riff is pure, swaggering Joe Perry, all bluesy grease and garage-rock crunch, but then Steven Tyler comes in with that almost rapped, spoken-word verse that sounds like he’s reciting a beat poem about reincarnation inside a biker bar. It’s weird. It’s catchy. And by the time that “meow” hits in the chorus, you’re either cringing or grinning ear to ear. I’m firmly in the grinning camp. It’s a bold, goofy, and utterly confident opener that sets the table for an album that refuses to take the safe route.

Then comes “Falling in Love (Is Hard on the Knees),” which was the lead single, and man, did that song divide the fanbase. On one hand, it’s classic Aerosmith—sleazy, double-entendre lyrics, a hip-shaking groove, and that trademark Tyler yelp. On the other hand, it’s so deliberately, almost parodically sexy that it borders on self-satire. But here’s the thing: it rocks. That riff is a chainsaw, and the bridge where the tempo lurches and Tyler starts wailing about his “love gun” is pure, unfiltered nonsense genius. It’s not Dream On, but it’s not supposed to be. It’s a party track for a band that knows exactly how ridiculous they can be and leans into it with a wink.

But the real heart of Nine Lives isn’t in the singles; it’s in the deep cuts that show Aerosmith still had teeth. “Taste of India” is the first gut-punch. Clocking in at over five minutes, it’s a mid-tempo, Eastern-tinged blues-rock odyssey that features some of Tyler’s most evocative, cryptic lyrics about a woman who tastes like “chai and cardamom.” The sitar-like guitar work from Perry is hypnotic, and the rhythm section—Tom Hamilton’s chunky bass and Joey Kramer’s tribal, pounding drums—locks into a trance-like groove that feels more Led Zeppelin III than Permanent Vacation. It’s the sound of a band stretching their legs, and it’s magnificent. Similarly, “Full Circle” is the unsung hero of the entire record. That acoustic intro is deceptively gentle, but when the full band crashes in, it transforms into a soaring, gospel-tinged rock anthem about karma and survival. The harmonies between Tyler and Perry are some of the best they’ve ever laid down, and that chorus—“I’ve been around and I’ve come full circle”—feels like a genuine moment of reflection from a band that had seen every high and low imaginable.

Of course, you can’t talk about Nine Lives without addressing the power-ballad elephant, “Hole in My Soul.” Oh boy. This is the song that makes the purists reach for the skip button. It’s slick, it’s adult-contemporary, it’s got that Diane Warren-ish sheen that screams “soundtrack to a romantic montage in a 90s movie.” And yet… I have a soft spot for it. Is it cheesy? Absolutely. Is Tyler oversinging the hell out of it? You bet. But that bridge, where he goes “I’m a fool with a hole in my soul,” is delivered with such desperate conviction that I can’t help but buy in. It’s not Cryin’ or Angel, but it’s a perfectly fine power ballad for a band that had earned the right to be a little sappy. Plus, the guitar solo is pure Perry fire, which saves it from being a total snooze.

But then, just when you think they’ve gone soft, they drop “The Farm.” This is the weirdest, most underrated track in their entire 90s catalog. It’s a sludgy, grungy, almost industrial-tinged stomper about a mental institution, with a lyric that goes “They’re coming to take me away / To the funny farm.” It’s dark, it’s paranoid, and it features Tyler doing this manic, whispered vocal that sounds like he’s lost his last marble. The guitar tone is filthy, and the breakdown in the middle is pure chaos. It’s the closest Aerosmith ever came to sounding like Nine Inch Nails, and it works shockingly well. It’s proof that even in their commercial peak, they were still willing to get their hands dirty.

Elsewhere, “Crash” is a straight-up, high-octane rocker that sounds like it could have been a B-side from Permanent Vacation, all revved-up riffs and Tyler’s car-crash metaphors. It’s fun, it’s dumb, and it’s over in three minutes flat. “Kiss Your Past Good-Bye” is another deep-cut gem, a shuffling, bluesy kiss-off that features some slick harmonica and a chorus that begs to be sung along to with a whiskey in hand. And then there’s “Pink,” the second big single, which is pure pop-rock confection—a bouncy, funk-lite ode to, well, you know what. It’s clever, it’s silly, and the video was a masterpiece of 90s MTV absurdity. It doesn’t have the weight of “Janie’s Got a Gun,” but it’s not supposed to; it’s a sugar rush, and it’s delicious.

The album closes with “Fall Together,” a moody, atmospheric number that builds from a quiet piano intro into a swirling, psychedelic crescendo, and “Ain’t That a Bitch,” which is a bittersweet, acoustic-driven closer that finds Tyler reflecting on love and loss with a weary, world-weary rasp. It’s a surprisingly tender way to end an album that’s been so over-the-top and manic. It’s like the cat finally curls up on the windowsill and goes to sleep.

So, is Nine Lives a masterpiece? No. It’s too long, too bloated, and too inconsistent for that. The production, while rawer than Fairbairn’s work, can feel muddy in places, and there’s a sense that they threw every idea at the wall—ballads, hard rock, psychedelia, funk, grunge—to see what stuck. But that’s also its charm. This is the sound of a band that had absolutely nothing to prove commercially—they’d already sold millions—so they decided to get weird, get loud, and get a little dangerous again. It’s the album where Aerosmith remembers they used to be a dirty bar band from Boston, even if that bar now has a cocktail menu and a velvet rope. If you come to it expecting Toys in the Attic, you’ll be disappointed. But if you come to it with an open mind and a tolerance for glorious messiness, you’ll find an album full of character, muscle, and heart. It’s not their best life, but it’s certainly one of their most interesting ones. And frankly, nine lives in, who wouldn’t want to get a little scratchy?

Film Review: Can’t Stop The Music (dir by Nancy Walker)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

1980’s Can’t Stop The Music opens with Jack Morrell (young Steve Guttenberg) working in a record store.  However, he’s got bigger plans that just standing behind a cash register.  He quits his job and then roller skates around New York with a big goofy grin on his face.  Everyone he passes is charmed.  And why not?  New Yorkers are famous for their good-humor and polite manners.

Jack is a songwriter but he doesn’t have the voice necessary to sell his songs.  His platonic roommate, former supermodel Sam Simpson (Valerie Perrine), decides that what Jack needs is a band to sing his lyrics.  Luckily, Sam knows a singer named Felipe Rose.  He spends all of his time dressed like an Indian brave.  There’s no specific reason given for his costume choice, it’s just something that he does.  Sam and Jack are also able to recruit a construction worker (David Hodo), a “leatherman” (Glenn Hughes), a cowboy (Randy Jones), a G.I. (Alex Briley), and a singing cop (Ray Simpson).  The name of the band?  The Village People!

Yes, Can’t Stop The Music is fictionalized story of how The Village People came together.  It was directed by TV actress Nancy Walker.  It was a major studio production, one that was expected to build on the popularity of disco and bring in a lot of money.  Unfortunately, it was released at the same moment that disco stopped being trendy.  Can’t Stop The Music has a reputation for being bad and campy.  Both of those things are true but I should point out that it’s also a remarkably boring film.  The movie is full of characters who are constantly coming and going.  Sam has a large collection of friends and former co-workers, all of whom just tend to randomly pop up.  Most of them don’t really add much to the overall plot and, indeed, it’s hard not to resent being expected to keep track of all of them when there’s really no reason for many of them to be in the film.  A pre-transition Caitlyn Jenner plays Ron White, a lawyer who is mugged while delivering a cake and who ends up as Sam’s boyfriend.  As much as I made fun of Jenner as a performer while reviewing CHiPs, Jenner is even worse in You Can’t Stop The Music.  In fact, Jenner’s performance is one of the worst that I have ever seen.  If Ron angry?  Is Ron sad?  Is Ron in love?  Is Ron an alien from outer space?  You never really can tell, largely because Caitlyn Jenner’s performance is so inept.  It’s not so much that Jenner can’t show emotion and one gets the feeling that Jenner isn’t even sure what emotion is.

As for the Village People themselves …. well, this film leaves little doubt that none of them were professional actors.  Felipe Rose probably comes the closest to giving a credible performance but, as individuals, the members of the Village People aren’t that interesting and it takes forever for them to actually become a group.  Even after they become a group, they still can’t generate enough on-screen charisma to really hold our attention.  Who knew the Village People were so boring?

The majority of the film plays coy as far as the subtext of the Village People’s song are concerned.  Steve Guttenberg’s character is definitely gay-coded without the film actually coming out and saying so..  The construction worker gets a fantasy in which he imagines being lusted after by several female groupies.  The first few performances of the Village People are rather bland and it’s almost as if the film is trying to avoid the fact that the Village People’s songs and the personas of the performers all paid tribute to gay culture in the 1970s.  But then the film hits the YMCA production number and suddenly, the Village People are frolicking with half-naked, muscular men while joyfully singing about everything that’s available at the YMCA.  For that brief moment, the film embraces the campiness of the Village People and this major studio production actually becomes a bit subversive.  It’s also one of the few moments in the film in which anyone seems to be genuinely happy.  The Village People seem to be having fun.  Unfortunately, the YMCA sequence is the exception instead of the rule.

Can’t Stop The Music‘s sin isn’t that it’s boring as much as it’s just bland.  It’s an incredibly blah film.  No film about New York in the 70s has any right to be so forgettable.

We Watched For The Love Of Nancy (1994, Dir. by Paul Schneider)

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Last night, Lisa and I were looking for something to watch.  She told me that if I let her pick the movie, then she would let me write the review.  I’m not really sure that I got the better end of the deal but I still agreed.  We ended up watching For The Love Of Nancy, a made for television movie about a girl with an eating disorder.

Nancy (Tracey Gold) is looking forward to going to college.  Everyone comments on how thin she is but no one ever seems to notice that she hardly ever eats.  That’s because she’s hiding her food underneath her bed and throwing it out whenever she gets a chance.  Nancy is anorexic but her mother (Jill Clayburgh) and her father (William Devane) are too caught up in their own lives to notice.  Even when a friend tells Nancy’s mother that Nancy is showing all the signs of being anorexic, her mother refuses to believe it.  Eventually, things get so bad that her parents have no choice but to accept that Nancy needs help.  Nancy is checked into a clinic and put on a feeding tube but even then, she still tries to get away without eating.  When Nancy is told that she’s gained 6 pounds, she freaks out.

I’m pretty sure that I saw this movie in a health class when I was younger.  I remember it freaked me out when Nancy tore a hole in a wall just so she could have a new place to hide food.  Tracey Gold also struggled with anorexia and was in recovery when she filmed this movie.  At the start of the film, there are a few scenes where she is so thin that it’s scary.  The movie really got to me when i saw it in class and it still got to me watching it today.  One thing I liked about the movie was that it was pretty realistic when it showed how other people reacted to Nancy’s eating disorder.  Her parents started off in denial, went to panic, and eventually got angry and frustrated that Nancy couldn’t just magically get better.  Nobody was portrayed as being perfect.  I felt so bad for Nancy, who didn’t want to hurt anyone but who also couldn’t defeat her eating disorder alone.

This was a good movie but it was depressing.  Tomorrow night, I’m picking the movie!