Film Review: The Ledge (dir by Howard J. Ford)

Posted on June 28, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

One year ago, Kelly (Brittany Ashworth) and her boyfriend, Luca (Talha Senturk), were climbing a mountain in Italy. It was a great experience, until Luca put his foot on the wrong part of the mountain and promptly plunged to his death.

Now, on the anniversary of Luca’s fatal fall, Kelly and her friend Sophie (Anias Parello) are planning on climbing the mountain in his memory. However, the night before their scheduled climb, they meet four friends. Josh (Ben Lamb), Zach (Louis Boyer), Taylor (David Wayman), and Reynolds (Nathan Welsh) have known each other since they were kids. They grew up together. They went to high school and college together. Now, they still go on weekend trips together, hoping to hold onto some remnant of their disappearing youth. They’re a tightly-knit group, even though Zach, Taylor, and Reynolds seem to be a bit weary of Josh.

Josh invites Kelly and Sophie to hang out with the group. Kelly, who is still mourning Luca, quickly grows disgusted with Josh’s overbearing and toxic personality. Leaving Sophie behind, Kelly returns to her cabin to get some sleep. When Sophie doesn’t return to the cabin, Kelly steps outside to look for her and discovers and films the four men tossing Sophie over the edge of a cliff.

With the men now pursuing her, Kelly has no choice but to climb the mountain from which Luca previously fell. The men chase after her, reaching the top of the mountain before her and leaving Kelly trapped between the rocks below and Josh above. Josh says that he just wants the camera but Kelly knows that there’s no way Josh is going to let her escape the mountain alive.

There’s a slightly interesting idea at the heart of The Ledge. While Josh is, from the start, an obvious sociopath, the other three men are portrayed with a bit more ambiguity. All three of them know that Josh is dangerous and, when Josh initially kills Sophie, all three of them initially resist his demands that they help him cover up what has happened. In the end, though, all three of them set aside their qualms and literally get blood on their hands. Taking as individuals, Taylor, Zach, and Reynolds are all level-headed and even likable but none of them are willing to stand up to Josh and, when they get together as a group, only Reynolds is the only one to weakly protest their actions. Even though Zach, Taylor, and Reynolds are not as vicious as Josh, they all became complicit in his actions when they decided that their loyalty to the group was more important than doing the right thing. As such, it doesn’t matter that Zach has a family or that Taylor initially tried to calm Josh down. It doesn’t even matter that the guilt-stricken Reynolds, at one point, allows Kelly to run past him rather than attempt to capture her. For all of the guilt that they feel as a result of their actions, Taylor, Zach, and Reynolds are all complicit because none of them were willing to do the right thing from the start. The fact that they don’t do more to stop Josh make them just as guilty as he is.

As I said, it’s an interesting idea but the film doesn’t really do much with it. Indeed, once Kelly starts to climb that mountain, the narrative gets bogged down with flashbacks to her relationship with Luca and scenes of Josh shouting insults at her while she climbs. The film features some striking shots and Brittany Ashworth is a likable lead but the narrative momentum stalls out early. It turns out that there’s only so much time you can spend watching one person climb and one person yell until your attention starts to wander elsewhere. Much like Luka, The Ledge gets off to a promising enough start but then loses its grip and falls back to Earth.

Scenes I Love: High Anxiety (Happy Birthday, Mel Brooks!)

Posted on June 28, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Mel Brooks is 96 years old today! In honor of this special occasion, here he is in 1978’s High Anxiety, getting framed for murder! Fortunately, a truly great visual gag proves that he’s innocent.

The TSL’s Grindhouse: World Gone Wild (dir by Lee H. Katzin)

Posted on June 27, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“World Gone Wild!? What’s that about?”

Don’t ask me. I just watched the movie and I’m not particularly sure what the point of it all was. Released in 1987, World Gone Wild is one of those films that was made to capitalize on the post-apocalypse boom of the 70s and 80s. Basically, imagine a Mad Max film that sucks and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what World Gone Wild is like.

There’s been a nuclear war. Civilization has collapsed and now, there are just tiny outposts of humanity who are trying to survive. It hasn’t rained in decades. Old-timer Ethan (Bruce Dern) is in charge of a town called Lost Wells. He remembers what rain was like and he also remembers what rock music used to sound like, too. As for Lost Wells, it’s one of those dreary little desert communities that always tend to pop up in movies like this. Angie (Catherine Mary Stewart) teaches the community’s children in an abandoned school bus. They have a bunch of books on etiquette. One little girl can recite every word ever written by Emily Post. That gets annoying fast. Emily Post didn’t live on a school bus in the desert.

That etiquette doesn’t do much good when it comes to protecting Lost Wells from Derek Abernathy (Adam Ant), a cult leader who dresses in all-white and who wants to take control of Lost Wells away from Ethan. (In a somewhat clever twist, it turns out that Ethan learned how to become a cult leader by reading a book about Charles Manson.) Knowing that the majority of the people in his town are too obsessed with Emily Post to fight off Derek and his army, Ethan recruits a group of mercenaries led by George Landon ( who is played by Michael Pare, who looks like he was absolutely miserable while shooting this movie). George and his men agree to protect Lost Wells from Derek and, in the process, they regain some of their lost humanity and they start to believe in the possibility of rain. Or something like that. Fortunately, one of George’s mercenaries is played by the supercool character actor Anthony James. He doesn’t get to do much but hey, it’s still Anthony James and Bruce Dern in the same movie! Yay!

For a film called World Gone Wild, this is a strangely low-key affair. Even the most unimpressive of Mad Max rip-offs will usually have an exciting car chase or two. At the very least, there’s usually a big battle where people sacrifice their lives for the future of humanity. In World Gone Wild, the mercenaries pretty much just go to Lost Wells and then wait for Derek to come back. And when Derek returns, there’s a few explosions and some gunfire but that’s pretty much it. Neither side really puts up much of a fight, which leads me to wonder if Derek really even cared about Lost Wells.

On the plus side, the film has got Bruce Dern, doing his wild-eyed old-timer bit. That’s always fun to watch and, if nothing else, Dern appears to be having fun in this movie. At the very least, he’s having more fun that Michael Pare and Catherine Mary Stewart, both of whom seem to spend the majority of the movie looking for a way to make a quick escape. And I suppose the film does win some novelty points for casting Adam Ant as the main villain, even though Derek ultimately turns out to be not much of a threat.

In the end, World Gone Wild‘s greatest strength is Bruce Dern. He’ll make you believe in the rain again.

Guilty Pleasure No. 57: The Voyeurs (dir by Michael Mohan)

Posted on June 27, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Voyeurs premiered on Amazon in 2021 and I have to say that I’m a little bit angry that I didn’t bother to watch the movie until last week. Seriously, someone should have alerted me about this film because this is exactly the type of shamelessly sordid, narratively nonsensical film that I always end up enjoying. Seriously, I expect better from my friends.

The film opens with Pippa (Sydney Sweeney) trying on lingerie in a chic shop, just to suddenly realize that anyone looking through the shop’s front window would be able to see her. Pippa glares reproachfully at both the window and, presumably, the people watching this movie. That’s right, the film opens with the lead character judging you for watching. However, as we soon discover, Pippa is a bit of a hypocrite.

Pippa was buying the lingerie as a way to celebrate moving into a new studio apartment with her boyfriend, Thomas (Justice Smith). Unfortunately, Thomas is kind of a lame-o and he ends up falling asleep as soon as they move in and before Pippa can show him what she’s bought. When Thomas does eventually wake up, he and Pippa discover that they can stare straight into the the apartment across the street from them. That apartment is inhabited by a handsome and sexy photographer (Ben Hardy) and his beautiful wife (Natasha Liu Bordizzo). Pippa and Thomas find themselves obsessively watching as Thomas and Pippa make love in the kitchen and basically everywhere else in their apartment. (Meanwhile, Thomas is still complaining about how much he hates his job.) Eventually, Pippa and Thomas even figure out a way to capture the vibrations of the other apartment’s windows so that they can “hear” what the photographer and his wife are saying to each other. While Thomas worries that Pippa is becoming too obsessed with the neighbors, Pippa is busy fantasizing about the photographer and befriending his wife. When Pippa discovers that the photographer is cheating on his wife and cruelly gaslighting away her concerns, Pippa makes a decision that leads to….

Well, it leads to a lot and I certainly won’t spoil it. I will say that it’s all wonderfully melodramatic and silly. The Voyeurs has multiple twists, none of which make much sense. Indeed, it’s best not to think too much about any of the twists or the film’s rather macabre conclusion. Instead, watch it for the sex, the glamour, the spacious apartments, and the beautiful people. Don’t worry about logic. Instead, just accept The Voyeurs as a dream. Sydney Sweeney brings some much-needed sincerity to her role while Hardy and Bordizzo both appear to understand exactly the type of film in which they’ve found themselves and, wisely, they fully embrace the sordidness of it all. At times, Justice Smith seems to almost be taking the movie too seriously but even that adds to The Voyeurs off-center charm. Someone always takes things too seriously in a film like this.

The Voyeurs is the type of sordid daydream-turned-nightmare that we can all love.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Lisa Marie’s Week In Review: 6/20/22 — 6/26/22

Posted on June 26, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

There is much that I could and probably will eventually say about the Supreme Court ruling this week but I’m not going to say it tonight and I’m not going to say it in this post and I’ll simply ask people to respect my decision as far as that’s concerned.

The Emmy nominations are right around the corner so I spent most of this week watching the various contenders for Outstanding Limited Series and TV Movie. This upcoming week, I’ll be getting caught up on all of the sitcoms and the dramas that I missed the first time that they aired. There’s going to be a lot of binging going on.

Here’s what I watched, read, and listened to this week:

Films I Watched:

Beavis and Butt-Head Do The Universe (2022)
Book of Love (2022)
Chip N’ Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022)
Crush (2022)
Dangerously Close (1986)
Demons (1985)
Fresh (2022)
The House (2022)
Jolt (2021)
I Want You Back (2022)
Lisa (1990)
List of a Lifetime (2021)
The Manor (2021)
Olivia Rodrigo: driving home 2 u (2022)
Parts: The Clonus Horror (1979)
Psych 3: This is Gus (2021)
Strategic Command (1997)
Three Weeks (2022)
Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off (2022)
The Valet (2022)
The Voyeurs (2021)

Television Shows I Watched:

Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer
The Deep End
The Essex Serpent
The Flight Attendant
Gordon Ramsay’s Uncharted
History’s Greatest Mysteries
Impractical Jokers
Inspector Lewis
The Last Days of Ptolemy Gray
Love is Blind
Moon Knight
The Offer
Painting With John
Sketchbook
Slasher: Flesh and Blood
Two Sentence Horror Stories
You
The Woman In The House Across The Street From The Girl In the Window

Books I Read:

The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made (2008) by David Hughes

Music To Which I Listened:

Arctic Monkeys
Black Eyed Peas
Britney Spears
The Chemical Brothers
David Bowie
David Guetta
Dillon Francis
Fatboy Slim
Katy Perry
Lena Katina
Lorde
The Marias
Olivia Rodrigo
Portishead
Procul Harum
Saint Motel
Shakira
Taylor Swift
T. Rex
Tove Lo

News From Last Week:

Box Office: ‘Elvis’ and ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Battle for No. 1 With $30.5 Million Each

Links From Last Week:

Links From The Site:

Erin shared Fantastic, Summer, If, Inside Detective, Black Mask, 69 Babylon Park, and The Nylon Pirates!
With my help, Doc shared music videos from Portishead, Lena Katina, David Guetta, Arctic Monkeys, Lorde, T. Rex, and Procul Harum!
Ryan shared Do Comic Publishers Need Readers Anymore, Part One and Part Two!
Ryan reviewed The Devil’s Grin and Time Zone J!
I reviewed The Offer, Moon Knight, and I Want You Back!
I shared my June Oscar Predictions and my Week in Television!

More From Us:

Ryan has a patreon and you should subscribe!
At her photography site, Erin shared cross, A Day Out, Arrival, City, trees, summer sidewalk, and Blue!
At my music site, I shared songs from Procul Harum, T. Rex, Tove Lo, Olivia Rodrigo, Britney Spears, Lena Katina, and The Marias!

You can check out last week by clicking here!

Lisa Marie’s Week In Television: 6/19/22 — 6/25/22

Posted on June 25, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I watched a lot this week. I’m getting prepared for the Emmys!

Allo Allo (Sunday Night, PBS)

Because Edith was named The Spirit of Nouvion, it was decided that she should marry Bertorelli for propaganda purposes. Meanwhile, the British airmen ended up trapped in some wine barrels that were floating in the sewers underneath the city. Wait, what? Actually, by Allo Allo standards, it’s all pretty normal.

Angelyne (Peacock)

I reviewed Angelyne here!

Collector’s Call (Sunday Night, MeTV)

On this show, fans of classic television get their collectibles appraised and discuss their collections. It’s a simple show that owes an obvious debt to Antiques Roadshow (though Collector’s Call usually only focuses on one collector as opposed to several) but, at the same time, it’s also a rather sweet-natured celebration of nostalgia and the joy the can come from collecting.

Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer (Netflix)

This Netflix true crime docu-series dealt with a series of murders that occurred in New York and New Jersey in the 70s. The majority of the victims were sex workers who were especially vulnerable because they couldn’t go to the police without running the risk of ending up in jail themselves. The series also took a look at the sleazier days of Times Square. It ended with modern day footage of the killer, now imprisoned in New York and looking a bit like Santa Claus. That was a bit jarring.

The Deep End (Hulu)

The Deep End originally aired on FreeForm. I watched it on Hulu on Saturday afternoon. The Deep End is a four-episode documentary about Teal Swan, a creepy “spiritual guru.” Swan, apparently, cooperated with the making of The Deep End and then got pretty upset when the final product portrayed her as being a manipulative bully who takes advantage of the emotionally vulnerable. Cults are so weird to me. I guess people need something to believe in but I will never understand how people can fall for obvious charlatans like Teal Swan or the NXIVM people. For her part, Swan appears to be very good at taking advantage of our current culture of victimization.

The Essex Serpent (Apple TV+)

In 19th Century Britain, both Claire Danes and Tom Hiddleston investigate a legend of a sea serpent. Danes is a scientist while Hiddleston is a clergyman. Of course, they fall in love but Hiddleston is already married and the recently widowed Danes is determined to establish a life and identity of her own. The Essex Serpent is a mix of history, gothic romance, and horror. Danes’s closest friend is a social reformer who reads Marx. Another potential suitor is an arrogant doctor who has the potential to be a pioneer in the field of heart surgery. The show might seem like it’s about a serpent but it’s actually about the eternal conflict between superstition and science and, in the end, it turns out that neither has all the answers. It’s a bit uneven but, in the end, rewarding. It’s always nice to see Hiddleston get a chance to play someone other than Loki.

Full House (Sunday Evening, MeTV)

This week, both episodes of Full House were pretty stupid. The first episode recycled the old Saved By The Bell plot of having a love note circulating around that everyone thought was sent to them by a secret admirer. The second episode found Danny having to spend the weekend with his daughters without the help of Jesse and Joey. At one point, Danny was so tired that he passed out in bed and his daughters couldn’t wake him up. That was …. not easy to watch.

Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted (Disney Plus)

Gordon Ramsay explores the world! I watched two episodes on Tuesday. Ramsay went to the wilds of Michigan and Finland. Ramsay may be best known for shouting at hapless chefs on Hell’s Kitchen but I always enjoy shows where he gets to show his nicer side.

History’s Greatest Mysteries (History Channel)

I watched two episodes on Wednesday. One episode explored the death of Bruce Lee while the other was about the recently discovered journal of Harry Houdini. I love history. I like a good mystery. I enjoyed what I watched.

Impractical Jokers (HBOMax)

In this show, four friends go out of their way to humiliate each other and the people around them. I watched a few episodes on Thursday, largely because the show has been submitted for the Outstanding Structured Reality Show Emmy. The four jokers sometimes tend to come across as being a little bit too amused with themselves a little bit but, at the same time, I do have to admit that I laughed quite a bit.

Inspector Lewis (YouTube)

I watched an old episode of this British detective show on Tuesday. Lewis and Hathaway were investigating a Halloween murder that may or may not have involved vampires. It was very foggy, very amusing, and very British.

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey (Apple TV+)

Samuel L. Jackson plays a 90 year-old man who tries to solve a mystery before losing his memories to dementia. I watched a bit of this Friday. It never quite captured my attention the way that I expected it to, given the show’s intriguing premise. The show’s greatest strength, not surprisingly, is Samuel L. Jackson’s powerful performance in the title role.

Love is Blind (Netflix)

In this reality dating show, couples can talk to each other but, sealed away in their own individual pods, they can’t see each other. In fact, they only get to see each other if one of them proposes marriage and the other accepts. Is love truly blind? Is this show absolutely silly? Yes, it is! However, I watched a few episodes this week and it was all pleasantly silly.

Moon Knight (Disney Plus)

I reviewed Moon Knight here!

The Offer (Paramount Plus)

I reviewed The Offer here!

Painting With John (HBOMax)

Musician, actor, and artistic gadfly John Lurie paints pictures while talking about whatever he feels like talking about. I watched three episodes on Monday. At one point, Lurie told everyone watching to imagine their hand turning into a light bulb. That’s my type of artist.

Sketchbook (Disney Plus)

Disney animators teach viewers how to draw their favorite characters. I watched two episodes, one of Friday and one on Saturday. I learned how to draw Simba. It’s a cute show.

Slasher: Flesh and Blood (Shudder)

I watched this horror-themed miniseries on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday! A killer brutally killed off the members of a particularly greedy family. David Cronenberg played the family patriarch and gave a nicely eccentric performance. I appreciated this show for its atmospheric locations, its ruthless killers, and its willingness to kill off just about anyone. It was a bit of a spiritual sequel to Harper’s Island. It was horror for people who appreciate horror.

Slippin’ Jimmy (Prime)

It’s the early days of Jimmy McGill! This is an animated prequel to Better Call Saul. The episode that I watched, on Sunday, was an Exorcist parody. It should have been funny but it just never worked for me. The humor was a bit too obvious and predictable for me. Maybe I’ve just seen too many Exorcist parodies for the idea to really capture my imagination.

Two-Sentence Horror Stories (Netflix)

This horror anthology actually airs on The CW but I watched the third season on Netflix, on Sunday and Monday. The season was made up of ten episodes and, as is somewhat typical of anthology series, the end results were uneven. I did, however, like The Crush episode, which was kind of an extra macabre take on What Ever Happened To Baby Jane.

The Woman In The House Across The Street From The Girl In The Window (Netflix)

This miniseries, directed by Michael Lehmann, does for the Netflix what A Deadly Adoption did for Lifetime. It’s a pitch perfect satire of the type of movies that tend to show up on Netflix, one that pokes fun but does so in such a dry way that some viewers will undoubtedly miss the point. Since films like The Girl On The Train and The Woman In The Window are already kind of self-parodies, this is the best approach to take. Kristen Bell is great in the role of the wine-drinking neighbor who is haunted by the strange things that she sees across the street. Can she conquer her fear of the rain and solve the mystery!? Watch to find out!

You (Netflix)

I watched You‘s third season over the course of the week. Joe and Love are now parents living in the suburbs but Joe is still up to his old tricks. Unfortunately, for Joe, so is Love. The first episode was great but the rest of the season couldn’t live up to it. Penn Badgley always does a good job as Joe but the rest of the season felt like a knock-off of some of Dexter‘s later seasons.

Lisa Marie’s Early Oscar Predictions for June

Posted on June 24, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s the time of the month again! It’s time for me to share my brave attempts to randomly guess at what will be nominated for the Oscars next year! I do this on a monthly basis. For the first six or seven months of the year, it’s a bit of a fool’s errand. Usually, it’s not until late September and October that the Oscar race really starts to become a bit clearer and, even then, there’s always a few surprises and late additions. So, in other words, take the predictions below with a grain of salt. Actually, take them with several grains of salt. A few of these films and performers will definitely be nominated. Several probably won’t but these are the best guesses that I can currently make based on the rumors and speculation that I’ve seen online.

Probably the biggest Oscar news this month was that Top Gun: Maverick is still dominating the box office. That’s good new for Maverick, both because it reminds the Academy of how much people love the film and it will also help to keep the movie fresh on everyone’s mind as the rest of the year unfolds. To those who say that Top Gun: Maverick isn’t a traditional Oscar movie, I would say that 1) they have a point and 2) the same could have been and was said about Mad Max: Fury Road, Get Out, Joker, Black Panther, Dune, and several other recent nominees that both did well at the box office and scored several Oscar nominations. It’s probably time for us to stop thinking about whether or not a movie is a “traditional” nominee because it’s been a while since that’s really been a deciding factor. The times are changing.

Anyway, below you’ll find my nominees for the month of June! If you want to see how my thinking has progressed, be sure to check out my predictions for February, March, April, and May! They’re good for a laugh if nothing else.

Finally, if I had to predict a winner for Best Picture, I would probably go with The Fabelmans. I think Steven Spielberg making a film about his childhood will be hard to resist and I think there are some people who feel that Spielberg didn’t quite get the amount of Oscar love that he deserved for West Side Story.

Best Picture

Babylon

Empire of Light

Everything Everywhere All At Once

The Fabelmans

Killers of the Flower Moon

My Policeman

Rustin

She Said

Top Gun: Maverick

Women Talking

Best Director

Damien Chazelle for Babylon

Joseph Kosinski for Top Gun: Maverick

Maria Schafer for She Said

Martin Scorsese for Killers of the Flower Moon

Steven Spielberg for The Fabelmans

Best Actor

Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick

Colman Domingo in Rustin

Brendan Fraser in The Whale

Tom Hanks in A Man Called Otto

Brad Pitt in Babylon

Best Actress

Naomi Ackie in I Wanna Dance with Somebody

Cate Blanchett in Tar

Ana de Armas in Blonde

Margot Robbie in Babylon

Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All At Once

Best Supporting Actor

Paul Dano in The Fabelmans

Tom Hanks in Elvis

Anthony Hopkins in Armageddon Time

Tobey Maguire in Babylon

Ke Huy Quan in Everything Everywhere All At Once

Best Supporting Actress

Jessie Buckley in Women Talking

Jamie Lee Curtis in Everything Everywhere All At Once

Sally Field in Spoiler Alert

Li Jun Li in Babylon

Michelle Williams in The Fabelmans

Film Review: I Want You Back (dir by Jason Orley)

Posted on June 23, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Poor Peter and Emma!

Peter (Charlie Day) and Emma (Jenny Slate) both work in the same building in downtown Atlanta. That’s one thing that they have in common. Peter works for a soulless nursing home company. At a typical meeting, Peter listens as the other executives debate whether or not it’s actually necessary to spend so much money feeding the residents. Peter dreams of starting his own nursing home, one where the elderly will be treated with the respect that they deserve. Emma is an administrative assistant in an orthodontist’s office. She lives in an apartment with two college students, even though she hasn’t been enrolled in college for years. Though they’re both in their early thirties, neither Peter nor Emma have really be able to get their lives going yet. That’s another thing that they have in common.

And there’s a third thing that they have in common. They’ve both recently been dumped. Anne (Gina Rodriguez) left Peter because she felt that Peter was stuck in a rut and she’s now dating a pretentious but dashing middle school theater teacher named Logan (Manny Jacinto). Emma’s ex, personal trainer Noah (Scott Eastwood), is now deeply in love with a pastry chef named Ginny (Clark Backo). Anne and Noah may have moved on but both Peter and Emma want their exes back.

When Emma and Peter meet each other while looking for a place to cry in the office stairwell, they strike up a quick friendship. They also hatch a brilliant scheme. Emma will volunteer to work on Logan’s production of Little Shop of Horrors and, while doing so, she’ll seduce him and cause Anne to break up with him. Meanwhile, Peter will befriend Noah and convince him that Ginny really isn’t right for him.

Of course, things don’t go as smoothly as expected. We’ve all seen Strangers on a Train enough times to know that these “You’ll help me and I’ll help you” schemes never seem to work out. Peter does manage to befriend Noah but it turns out that Noah is deeply in love with Ginny. Meanwhile, Logan is more than open to the idea of being seduced but it turns out that Anne is also interested in exploring new things. While Peter and Noah are hitting the clubs and getting taunted, for being “old,” by Pete Davidson, Emma is being forced to sing Suddenly Seymour with the 13 year-old star of Little Shop of Horrors. Peter and Emma are also growing closer, even as they try to get back with their exes.

Currently streaming on Prime, I Want You Back is an amusing romantic comedy, one that works due to a surprisingly clever script and a charming cast. For all the indignities that Peter and Emma go through in their quest to win back the exes, the film always treats their emotions with respect. The scene in which 30-something Emma wipes away tears while a bespectacled 13 year-old sings Suddenly Seymour to her is a wonderfully comedic moment but, because Emma feels like a fully realized character instead of just a comedic caricature, the film works on an emotional level as well. “I’m not ready for this,” Emma mutters as the kid starts to sing and it’s a funny line that works because it’s also a line to which everyone can relate. Everyone knows the feeling. Jenny Slate and Charlie Day are charming as the two leads and both Scott Eastwood and Gina Rodriguez bring some welcome depth to the role of the exes. No one in this film turns out to be as simple or as one-dimensional as the viewer might initially expect. Instead, we find ourselves caring about not only Emma and Peter but also about Noah and Anne, as well.

I Want You Back is a sweet-natured and genuinely funny romantic comedy. The final scene is perfect. Check it out on Prime.

Miniseries Review: Moon Knight (dir by Mohamed Diab and Aaron Moorhead & Justin Benson)

Posted on June 21, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

No sooner had Ryan posted his essay about whether or not comic book companies like Marvel or DC actually need readers anymore then I came over here to type up my review of Moon Knight.

Why is that relevant? Well, Moon Knight is a 6-episode miniseries based on a character who made his debut in the pages of Marvel comics. The character has a loyal following of readers but the Disney miniseries has introduced him to a whole new group of people, many of whom have never even held a comic book, let alone read one. I’m one of those people. If not for the miniseries, I wouldn’t have the slightest idea who Moon Knight is because, for the most part, I’ve never been a comic book reader. I would have to imagine that if I was a comic book reader, it would bug the Hell out of me that people who have never read a comic book are now suddenly acting as if they’re experts on all of the various costumed characters who have been published by Marvel and DC over the past few decades. I can remember how upset I was when everyone suddenly decided that they were an expert on Dario Argento and Italian horror just because they had read some lame article on the remake of Suspiria. No, I wanted to say, you haven’t done the work!

Unfortunately, that’s the way of the world now. With the current pop cultural dominance of the MCU and the DCEU, everyone’s a super hero fan regardless of whether or not they’ve ever read a comic book. And, with the explosion of social media over the past decade, everyone is now in a position to present themselves as being an expert regardless of whether they’re tweeting their own thoughts or just plagiarizing what they’ve read on Wikipedia. It doesn’t matter whether the topic is politics, television, history, science, religion, or comic books. Everyone now claims to be an expert and, as the old saying goes, when everyone’s an expert, no one’s an expert. Again, if that annoys the Hell out of you, I sympathize.

Perhaps you can take some consolation in the fact that, even though I watched all six episode of Moon Knight today, I hardly feel like an expert as far as the character is concerned. For the most part, I enjoyed Moon Knight but I would be lying if I said that I was always able to follow what was going on. Oscar Isaac plays Marc Spector, a mercenary who is mortally wounded in Egypt but who is revived by Khonshu (voiced by F. Murray Abraham), the Egyptian God of the Moon, who tasks Spector with protecting humanity from evil or something like that. Sometimes, however, Spector becomes Steven Grant, a mild-mannered and neurotic Brit who works in a museum gift shop and who is haunted by strange dreams. When Grant discovers that he’s actually Spector, this leads to him meeting Spector’s wife, Layla (May Calamawy) and also having to battle Arthur Harrow (Ethan Hawke), a fanatical cult leader who is trying to get his hands on ancient scarab that will …. let him do stuff, I guess. Harrow’s evil, Moon Knight’s good, and I guess that’s all we really need to know. Moon Knight is basically a typical MCU “let’s all fight over the artifact” story, with the main twist being that all of the Gods are Egyptian instead of Norse and the hero has dissociative identity disorder and might actually very well be a patient at psychiatric hospital.

With all that in mind, Moon Knight is actually pretty entertaining. It’s biggest strength, not surprisingly, is Oscar Isaac, who appears to be having a ball playing several different versions of the same character. When he’s Marc Spector, he gets to play at being a grim and serious action hero. When he’s Steve Grant, he gets to play a comedic bumbler who gets the chance to prove that he’s stronger and more capable than anyone gave him credit for. Isaac does a good job with both roles and the show is at its best when it’s just Isaac arguing with himself. Playing a villain in an MCU production is often a thankless task but Hawke’s brings the right edge of fanaticism to Arthur Harrow and F. Murray Abraham voices Khonshu with the just the right combination of righteous indignation and weary frustration. The show makes good use of its Egyptian setting and the fourth and fifth episodes are enjoyably surreal as they delve into the corners of Spector’s mind.

Unfortunately, the show’s conclusion leaves a bit to be desired. After all that build-up, it all pretty much leads to a standard MCU street battle and the possibility of more Moon Knight action in the future. That said, I enjoyed the show for what it was. Turn off your mind, relax, and float across the Duat, as the old saying goes.

Miniseries Review: The Offer (dir by Dexter Fletcher, Adam Arkin, Colin Bucksey, and Gwyneth Horder-Payton)

Posted on June 20, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Almost despite myself, I enjoyed The Offer.

That may come as a surprise to some. The Offer is a 10-hour miniseries about the making of The Godfather and how Hollywood politics aren’t really that much different from Mafia politics. As anyone who has regularly read this site over the past few years should know, I absolutely love The Godfather. It’s my favorite movie. It’s a movie about which I’ve done a lot of personal research. There’s very little about the making of The Godfather that I don’t know. If we’re going to be honest, I’m probably a little bit of a snob about it.

So, like many people, I was a bit skeptical when I first heard about The Offer. It didn’t seem like something that was particularly necessary and it was hard for me to imagine how the miniseries would ever be able to convincingly cast anyone as Marlon Brando or Al Pacino or, for that matter, Francis Ford Coppola. My skepticism only increased when I learned that the story was going to be told from the perspective of the film’s producer, Al Ruddy. Everyone agrees that Ruddy was an important part of The Godfather team but he’s never been quite as compelling a figure as the brilliant but often self-destructive Brando or the neurotic but playful Pacino. When people talk about what makes The Godfather such a brilliant film, they talk about the quotable dialogue. They talk about the masterful performances. They talk about Coppola’s skill as a storyteller. They talk about the way that Gordon Willis lit the scenes so that the characters often seemed to be on the verge of being swallowed by their shadows. They even talk about how Robert Evans insisted that the film could only be directed by an Italian and how Evans defied Paramount when the studio originally demanded that Coppola cut the film down to two hours. When Al Ruddy is praised, it’s usually for staying out of the way.

I knew that I would have to watch The Offer eventually but I avoided it while it was actually airing and I made sure not to read anyone else’s opinion to it. Despite my own obvious biases, I did want to try to maintain as open a mind as I possibly could. That said, I wasn’t expecting much when I finally watched The Offer this weekend.

But, as I said at the start of this review, I enjoyed it.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s a bit of a silly show. If The Offer was a sitcom, it would be called Everybody Loves Ruddy because the main theme of the show seems to be that Al Ruddy (played by a miscast Miles Teller) was literally the most important man in the entire history of Hollywood. There’s not a problem that Ruddy can’t solve, whether it’s convincing CBS to air a tasteless sitcom called Hogan’s Heroes or convincing Paramount to take a huge risk on a mercurial director named Coppola and an unknown actor named Pacino. When gangster Joe Colombo (Giovanni Ribisi) tries to interfere with production, Ruddy befriends him and is soon a popular guy with the crew. When Al Pacino (Anthony Ippolito) signs a contract with MGM, Ruddy puts the pressure on Paramount to find a way to get Pacino out of it. When Coppola (Dan Fogler) has a fight with Gordon Willis (T.J. Thyne), Ruddy convinces them to make up. When Robert Evans (Matthew Goode) goes on a coke binge, Ruddy snaps him out of it. When …. well, you get the idea. There’s nothing Al Ruddy can’t do! When Evans mentioned that Henry Kissinger was coming to the Godfather premiere, I half expected Al Ruddy to negotiate a ceasefire in Vietnam.

From the start, The Offer is full of visual cues and dialogue that pay homage to not only The Godfather but the other films of the period. The first line of the miniseries is Joe Colombo telling someone to, “Leave the cannoli.” At first, I groaned but, slowly but surely, the show won me over. By the end of the first episode, it was obvious that The Offer was not necessarily meant to be taken literally. The Offer doesn’t tell the story of what Hollywood was really like in the late 60s and early 70s. Instead, it tells the story of how people like me, who were born a few decades too late, imagine it was. It’s less about the decade itself and more about how that decade continues to fascinate us and spark our imagination. In our imagination, Robert Evans is snorting coke in his office, Ali MacGraw is lounging by the pool, Frank Sinatra is making angry phone calls to Joe Colombo, Al Pacino is so nervous that he can’t look anyone in the eye, and Marlon Brando is wandering around his mansion in a kimono and talking about how he can’t get anyone to see his latest, politically-charged film. In our fantasies, it only makes sense that Evans and his assistant Peter Bart (Josh Zuckerman) would spend all of their time dropping titles of well-regarded, still-remembered films because why would anyone fantasize about them discussing a film that was forgotten? And, of course, no one is going to fantasize about people discussing some actor who was briefly big in 1972 and then spent the rest of their career on television. Instead, in the fantasy, it’s all about Robert Redford, Jack Nicholson, Liz Taylor, and Marlon Brando. It also makes sense that only classic 70s music would be heard in the background of every scene because, seriously, who ever fantasizes about a bad song playing at a party?

Once it is accepted that it is all meant to be a fantasy, it becomes much easier to appreciate The Offer for what it is, a gossipy, Hollywood story with a Mafia subplot and an overabundance period detail. Once the viewer accepts The Offer is a fantasy, the viewer is freed up to appreciate the 70s-chic wardrobe. Once the viewer gets past the fact that the cast is playing characters based on actual people, it becomes much easier to appreciate the performances of character actors like Colin Hanks (who plays an uptight executive) and Burn Gorman (who plays the notoriously eccentric businessman, Charles Bluhdorn). Patrick Gallo is slyly funny as Mario Puzo while Dan Fogler does a credible enough job as Coppola, even if he never quite captures Coppola’s larger-than-life persona. Even Lou Ferrigno gets a nice bit, playing a mob enforcer turned unwilling actor. At the center of it all is the absolutely brilliant Matthew Goode, giving a charismatic performance as the brilliant but sometimes unstable Robert Evans.

As a history, The Offer won’t win any points for accuracy. But, as a fantasy, it’s undeniably entertaining. It’s not so much the story of how The Godfather was made but the story of how we wish it was made.