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These are words uttered by a member of Mike (Hugh Jackman)’s AA group early in the film. They’re right, right? The young foos are just ignorant of the random aches and pains and world weary experience that comes with age. Jerks!

Of course, being, errrrr... 15 years old myself (in spirit), like, that stuff I just said certainly doesn’t apply to me.

Wait, let’s rewind. “Song Sung Blue” is a movie about a Neil Diamond tribute band. Mike and Claire (Kate Hudson) are the band. They get success, drug and/or alcohol addiction derails them, they recover, and have big a comeback. See: Just about every biopic about every singer or band ever made. The stuff that happens is pretty typical...

Except for that line. “Young people just don’t know how good they have it.” There’s a flipside line, not said by anybody in the movie but that you might have heard: “It gets better.” This is what you tell young people who are having a rough go of it. Young people don’t know how good they have it. It gets better.

They’re both kind of lies.

In a sense they aren’t. It is pretty cool to wake up without back pain and be able to @#$! like a rabbit. Also... From a macro, sociological standpoint, it kind of does get better. I mean, it depends on your definition of ‘better’, of course. If you think the goal of humanity is to form the pan universal empire ruled by you, I don’t know if that’s in the cards. But, if you are a fan of just empathy and understanding other people, we’re better. Doesn’t always seems like it, because of course prejudice, sexism, reverse sexism, all that stuff is still out there, and it can seem pretty bleak. But, get in that time machine and go back 100 years, and then tell me we’re not more open to different cultures and sexualities and all of it (if you do find a time machine, remember the first rule: Regardless of what time period you go to in the past or future, DO NOT go to Russia. It’s horrible there and you will be mushed into a fine paste). So, yes, it kind of does get better.

But that’s an big, cultural scale. On a personal scale, it gets the same. That is to say, as a “young person”, you’re going to go through some hard times where you’re feeling down. You’re also going to experience profound joy and have triumphs as well. Guess what, that is ALSO the case when you’re an adult. The thing is, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and let the hard times and negative emotions completely shroud the positive ones. When that happens, it’s very easy to construct a past or future where things were better. If shit is bad, yeah, it’s all too easy to look at the past and say “it was better then” or to look at the future and say “it’ll be better”, but the fact is, shit got pretty bad back then, too, and will do so in the future as well. You can’t let the sadness take over, because the triumphs are there too, you just need to remember and embrace them.

So, what is my evidence for this amazing insight into human emotion? The answer is “Song Sung Blue.”

There is a third protagonist in the film, Claire’s daughter Rachel (Ella Anderson), who becomes Mike’s daughter as well when Mike and Claire get married. Things aren’t always great for Rachel. She gets pregnant at a young age, her mom becomes addicted to drugs, and money is tight and things in general aren’t easy. Things aren’t always great for Mike either. His daughter gets pregnant at a young age, his wife becomes addicted to drugs, and money is tight and things in general aren’t easy. “Young people just don’t know how good they have it.” Looking at Mike and Rachel side by side, it sure seems like the old people and young people have it the same.

But... There are moments of joy as well for Rachel and Mike, and the two of them shape a lot of those memories together. Mike teaching Rachel how to fix cars, Rachel hanging out with her parents after a great show... That joy I talked about earlier, the stuff you need to prevent the shroud of sadness from taking over, Mike and Rachel find that joy in each other.

Now, don’t get it twisted. Romantic writers and pinko communist punks will tell you that’s where the secret sauce is: Face to face connection with other people. That’s a load of bung sauce. The secret sauce is WHEREVER YOU CAN FIND IT. Your cat. Your tree. Your AI chatbot. Your monogamous relationship. Your earth. Maybe not that second to last thing. Wherever your triumph comes from, you just have to REMEMBER it.

That’s actually pretty hard to do if your joy comes from, say, opioids. “Song Sung Blue” takes place in the 90s, and Claire was prescribed opioids after an accident. Of course, back then, opioids were advertised as “non-addictive” (even though, in the future, we would learn that the pharmaceutical companies knew damn well they were addictive and never shared the evidence). If people like Claire got addicted to opioids, that wasn’t an opioid problem, that was a Claire problem. It’s HER body, it’s HER responsibility. The thing is... That’s true. But it is ALSO true that opioids were overprescribed and alternatives to them weren’t even explored.

Individual responsibility versus systemic pressure. Both are responsible for addiction... But you can’t fix individuals. I mean, you can say “just say no to drugs!” or whatever, but other people’s decisions are ultimately out of your hands. You *can* fix systems. We did! We fixed the whole opioid thing with a class action lawsuit! Make those evil bastards PAY. It’s like “The Exorcist” model of problem solving. The catholic church created the problem of demonic possession (because if you’re a non-catholic possessed by a demon, you’re actually just a crazy person), and ONLY the catholic church can solve it. Same goes with money. If money, in the form of financial incentives to prescribe opioids, kickbacks, and other financial shenanigans built the opioid crisis, then money can SOLVE the problem by making the pharmaceutical companies pay billions. Do you even understand how many billions are in billions?!? PROBLEM SOLVED. That fact that for profit healthcare, and all those incentives ARE STILL IN PLACE doesn’t mean anything, because they PAID THAT MONEY.

Watching Claire gets addicted to drugs that were sold as “non addictive” pissed me off. Even today, pharmaceutical companies and conservative dipshits will blame addiction on individual responsibility (which is partially true), and place NONE of the blame on institutional pressure that you can actually try to fix (which is also true, but is ignored).

But ultimately (I have a blanket spoiler warning, but here I will issue a specific spoiler warning that I am about to talk about the end of movie) “Song Sung Blue” comes down to that “blue” feeling, and whether it’s more powerful than the joy of Neil Diamond. Turns out, it’s not. It’s not a coincidence that, after his greatest show, Mike passes away. What is more impactful: The joy created by his incredible performance, or the tragedy of his death? Those two things are simply... Potent examples of the cycle that everybody goes through. For his family, our last images are them remembering Mike with love. Remembered and holding on to the happiness he brought, even in the face of tragedy. Of course, having the music of the jewish elvis, Neil Diamond, front and center will help a lot with that whole “take your joy where you can get it” idea. Even if the song is sung blue, it’s coming up (cracklin) rosie.

By the way, since I randomly waited until the end of the review to talk about the music of Neil Diamond when discussing a movie that’s about a Neil Diamond tribute band, I do have to mention “the scene”. Just about every movie about musicians has that scene where the band or singer performs, and everything clicks into place, and the die is cast, we see and hear the magic bloom right in front of us. In “Song Sung Blue”, that scene is when Mike and Claire first get together to rehearse their new act, and they perform “Cherry Cherry” together. I ain’t gonna lie, I got chills. Turns out Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson sound absolutely phenomenal together. I don’t buy soundtracks anymore, and I already have an extensive Neil Diamond collection #humblebrag, but if I were to purchase a soundtrack I might actually get “Song Sung Blue” just to get the Jackman/Hudson versions of these Neil Diamond hits. They’re that good.

By the way, I’m sure I don’t need to insult my audience by explicitly saying that, if you’re not a fan of Neil Diamond, you might not enjoy a movie about a tribute band to him that’s full of his music. So consider that unsaid.

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7/10

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I guess it would be “Casanoira”. Point is, I could rattle off every classic movie, and we don’t have a remake of it with an all-black cast. Except one. “The Wizard of Oz”. I’m not saying it *shouldn’t* happen. If you wanted to pitch an all-black “Star Wars” I’d be down. It’d certainly be better than the sequel trilogy. But, the black remake that we *did* get was “The Wiz”, a “Wizard of Oz” remake from 1978, written and directed by a couple of white guys. Granted, one of those white guys is Sidney Lumet, who is actually pretty awesome #dogdayafternoon. The other is Joel Schumacher, who is... Aight? I guess?

So, I’m going through “The Wiz” chronologically, because really, the nutso starts from the beginning. We have 24 year old Dorothy, played by 83092182009 year old Diana Ross, who lives with her Auntie Em, singing about how everybody at this party is in a stable monogamous relationship except for her. I didn’t see an altar to the nuclear family in the background, but it must be around somewhere based on how much Dorothy apparently wants to be “normal”. Why isn’t she normal? You’re telling me Diana Ross wants a piece and can’t get none? I mean, she’s 24 and lives with her aunt, is she a millennial femcel? The fact is WE HAVE NO IDEA, because we don’t know a damn thing about Dorothy other than her circumstances. It’s hard to empathize with her desire for normalcy when I have no clue what’s preventing her from attaining it, other than “that’s just how it is”. Plus, I tend not to empathize with desires for normalcy anyway. Normal is way, way overrated.

After the party wraps up, Dorothy is talking with Em, and her aunt is encouraging her to take that new high school teaching job she’s been offered, and Dorothy says she’s fine teaching kindergarten. WHAT?!? I know some teachers, and it is a rare breed of completely insane person that would rather teach kindergarten than high school (bless those people, we need them, but they’re crazy). High schoolers might not have read “The Great Gatsby” the night before, but at least they’re sitting down. Kindergarteners are screaming, falling on their face, and peeing their pants. Even if Billy Madison is correct, and peeing your pants is the coolest, it’s still messy. We’re to believe Dorothy isn’t fleeing kindergarten at 100mph because... She’s stuck? Stuck being not normal? Again, WHY??

So, obviously, it’s time to go to Oz. Dorothy crushes the wicked witch of the east and takes her shoes (which are silver, instead of the iconic ruby slippers of the original 1939 “Wizard of Oz”. They kept the bricks on the road yellow, so why change the slippers from ruby to silver? *shrug*). The good witch tells her that, to go home, she needs to find the wizard of oz, and Dorothy is off to meet the scarecrow, who is none other than the king of pop himself, Michael Jackson.

I am assuming the resurgence of interest in MJ is why this movie was floating around my ‘recommended’ queue. Make no mistake, Michael Jackson was an icon while I was growing up, and I still think he’s one of the best on stage performers ever. Killer voice, insane dance moves, and wrote a bunch of his own songs. MJ is to pop music what Jackie Chan is to martial arts movies: He changed the game, and has arguably never been surpassed at his craft. I have to say, his performance as the scarecrow is terrific fun. He has this bowlegged gait that seems really goofy yet still has this great rhythm to it, and his singing voice... Well, I mean, we’re talking about MJ and Diana Ross, probably the two most iconic motown singers. Obviously the voice is there (and frequently, so are the songs). There is a big problem with the scarecrow, however.

He looks like trash.

Literally. The scarecrow in “The Wiz” was designed to look like a trash pile. The makeup, especially that weird, droopy face makeup, is just off-putting and, to be honest, kind of disgusting. I almost couldn’t look at him. Then, during the closing credits, I found out the makeup was done by legendary makeup and effects man Stan Winston? Are you kidding me? Why would you hide Michael Jackson behind retch-inducing garbage makeup? As far as I can tell, Stan Winston must have come from the future, and he was warning children: “This man is gross. Stay away from him”. I get it, but for those of us currently IN the future who are aware of MJ’s proclivities and just want to watch him perform, it’s a complete disaster.

Next we go pick up the tin man, Nipsey Russell. In the 80s, I only knew Nipsey Russell as the game show poetry guy. I watched a LOT of game shows in the 80s. Too many. I can’t tell you how much of my current worldview was shaped by “Card Sharks”, but it’s probably a lot. “We surveyed 100 housewives and asked, is your husband fucking his secretary? How many housewives answered yes, my husband is fucking his secretary?” It was always fascinating to watch the divide between the answer if the housewives told the truth, which would be 100, or if they are lying to either themselves or the survey team, in which case the answer will be 0. It’s an anthropological goldmine! But, Nipsey would appear on game shows, say a funny little 3-5 line poem, and then proceed to get his ass handed to him by Betty White, Richard Kline, or any of the celebrities who were *really good* at game shows (not handing Nipsey a burn notice, those people would school you and me as well at $25000 Pyramid). Well, of course Nipsey Russell isn’t just a ‘poetry guy’, he’s a song and dance man in the classic vaudeville tradition, and here he gets to show off those chops. He’s my favorite thing in the movie. Slick dancing, and unlike the scarecrow, the tin man looks dope. He just... Has it, you know? Charisma. Nipsey’s got The Riz while doin’ “The Wiz”. Although, his song about how he needs oil made me wonder if Exxon was funding the movie.

So, they “Ease on Down the Road”, pick up the cowardly lion, fight off some living garbage can that make 1970s daleks look state of the art, and end up in the red light district with the hos.

Of course, the hos are evil and work for the wicked witch of the west. They’re also scantily clad (as you might imagine hos would be). This movie is rated G, and while I don’t have a problem exposing my fake daughter, Cap’n Karen, to hos, I might think twice about letting her watch these evil hos. Hollywood, can we please portray sex workers as normal folks who have normal problems? Do they always have to be underhanded hustlers, hookers with hearts of gold, or wretched drug addicts? Oh, I guess they do, because sex work is illegal. That needs to end. These women (and a few men, but mostly women) provide a non violent service that is in demand, and they deserve dignity, civil rights, and recourse when violence is committed against them, and they have NONE of those because we still have puritan laws put down thousands of years ago. It’s a fucking travesty.

Time to fast forward to the final two scenes of the movie, starting with the “sweat shop scene”. Here, Evillene, the wicked witch of the west (played by legendary actress Mabel King, oversees a bunch of factory workers manufacturing sweat (as far as I can tell, they do this just to validate the pun, because we have no other exposure to the sweat market in Oz). These workers are also in some pretty... Problematic makeup. They kind of look of terrible racial caricatures straight out of minstrel shows you might find at the turn of the 20th century. However, after Evillene is vanquished (by pulling the lever to the sprinkler system... Which was sitting there. Out in the open. And could have presumably been pulled by anybody in the last number of decades), the workers pull off these costumes, and reveal the true black people underneath. It is a stunningly beautiful moment. Both in terms of the spiritual beauty of shedding the grotesque mantle of caricature and stereotype, but also beautiful in the Donald Sterling sense of these are a bunch of professional dancers, who are keeping it tight, and dancing in their underwear (again, this film is rated G, why are they in they underwear? *shrug*).

I loved the moment, but for it to make any sense, Evillene had to be white.

Now, I get it. You want an all-black cast. But... Those costumes the sweat shop workers were forced to wear that represented the distorted view of black people? Those stereotypes were created by “the man”. The white man. Whitey. If evil is manifested in Oz as witches, then that sweat shop should have been run by the Wicked Witch of the White. If you’re going to have your characters literally shed a racist view of them, then they should also be able to defeat the source of that racism. 70s blaxspoitation films had a long history of “the man” being the ultimate villain, and just ignoring it here seems... More cowardly than the lion.

After the factory workers start dancing, the crows, the hos, and the flying monkeys that formerly worked for the wicked witch join in and start dancing. Wait, what? These weren’t sweat shop workers that were forced into labor, these were folks that went out into Oz and did the wicked witch’s bidding, and seemed to enjoy it. We’re supposed to forgive them? Why? Because they were just following orders? You know who else was following orders? Adolf Eichmann. We didn’t let eichmann off the hook, so I’m not sure we should let the flying monkeys off either.

So, the witch is dead, the wizard of oz (Richard Pryor, in an oddly non comedic role) is revealed as fake, the good witch of the south shows up, tells Dorothy she’s had the power to go home the whole time, and Dorothy can’t wait to go back to harlem.

My question is: WHY? Why does she want to go back? In that opening scene she was singing about how she how she isn’t in a stable monogamous relationship, she teaches kindergarten, she lives with her aunt. Why exactly is she so eager to return? In Oz, she has adventure, she has friends, and if she wants that relationship, there are candidates. The idea that she wants to go back “because it’s the real world” is short sighted, lazy writing. She should at least be THINKING about it, but nope, she needs to return to “normal” earth and resume her quest for a normal nuclear family without a second thought. It makes ZERO sense.

Until... The final song of the film, where Dorothy reveals that she made everything, and instead of black “Wizard of Oz”, we’ve been watching black “The Usual Suspects”. She doesn’t go into her bedroom, where we see a Michael Jackson album and have $25000 Pyramid with Nipsey Russell playing in the background, but we might as well have. What, exactly, is supposed to be the takeaway here? She made up the movie, to what end? To make friends and then leave? I guess we’re to believe that her journey to a made up universe, which she engineered in a microsecond, gave her the ability to “get out of her rut” and be normal? I’m not sure what skills she acquired in Oz that would help her with that. Revealing that Dorothy just made up the movie didn’t really add anything other than dissatisfaction.

I guess Dorothy’s reluctance to examine whether or not ‘normalcy’ is worth pursuing mirrors the movie’s reluctance to be truly “dark and edgy”. Even if the cast is all black, the actual story is a whiter shade of puce.

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9/10

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There’s a technical term for a movie that starts with this kind of existential question, and it’s a long term: Arthoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooouse.

While I’m not usually here to issue warnings (I’m here to pump you up), I’ll warn that the movie doesn’t let up after that first scene, as far as not being fully comprehensible goes. The dialogue is full of allusions and metaphor, and *not* strictly what I would call “conversational”, and things aren’t helped by the ‘schizo’ bride who frequently has tourette’s-like tics where she yells out a bunch of gibberish. We get references to “The Thin Man”, “Bartleby”, “Bonnie and Clyde”, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers... Heck, even Harley Quinn. I’m sure there are tons of allusions that went over *my* big head, which means I would classify “The Bride!” as not especially accessible (especially to younger viewers). However, sometimes being movieshyte is less easy than pimpin’, because the more inaccessible the film, the more I want to access it! So, dear reader, we go into the breach of “The Bride!”

The first order of business would be to find a lens to start viewing the movie through. Hopefully, even arthouse movies will provide at least a clue, and we get an obvious clue here. We started the movie with Mary Shelley; this is clearly related to her masterpiece “Frankenstein”, so we’ll start there.

“Frankenstein” is the ultimate poster child for the “nurture” side of the “nature versus nurture” argument of how people develop their perspectives. This is accomplished by eliminating the “nature” out of the equation entirely. Frankenstein’s monster (who characters in “The Bride!” refer to as ‘Frank’, even though he’s NOT doctor Frankenstein, he’s the monster. I feel like he should be ‘Mons’, or ‘Big Ugly’, but since everybody else calls him ‘Frank’ I will as well) is completely unnatural, he’s a bunch of corpses stitched together and reanimated via nature’s antithesis: Technology. Having no ‘nature’ means that Frank is a completely blank slate. All his behaviors are learned. Sure enough, in the original “Frankenstein”, the hubris and obsessive nature of Dr. Frankenstein rub off on Frank, and he starts killing chumps. Nurture triumphs over nature. So, we’ll take this “nature vs. nurture” dichotomy, and apply it to “The Bride!”

After our opening scene frame up with Mary Shelley, we are introduced to the monster, Frank himself (played by academy award winner Christian Bale). It’s been over 100 years since his creation, and we’re in the roaring twenties in the united states. Frank is no longer a ‘blank slate’, as he’s had over a century to figure out what he wants, and he’s decided that he wants to be the star of a Judd Apatow movie (I talk about this in my Veronica Mars review, check it out!). He wants a monogamous romantic relationship and a steady source of income. Which is to say... He wants to be ‘normal’. Blech. I shouldn’t judge, being a monster is probably more easy than pimpin’, but still not easy. Frank finds a new mad scientist (the funnest character in the film, played by Annette Bening). They dig up a dead woman (the possessed woman from the first scene), use SCIENCE! to reanimate her, and we’re off.

Since Frank isn’t our ‘blank slate’, his new Bride! must be, right? She is indeed. She doesn’t remember her mortal self. She knows nothing. What will our ‘nuture triumphs over nature’ test subject tell us about the culture she is absorbing? How will this cultural indoctrination reflect back on us? This is it! This is the lens we’ll use to decode our dense arthouse movie.

Turns out, she absorbs... Nothing? Turns out... The Bride! is incapable of creating long term memories. Basically every day, she wakes up and whatever she’s learned is gone. Her status as a blank slate remains perpetual. She doesn’t absorb any culture, and so she’s not reflecting the darkest impulses of humanity back at us. What the heck? What’s going on? Does this mean that we should be paying attention to Frank? It doesn’t seem like it. Frank seems narrowly focused on his Apatow goal, and is more interested in getting The Bride! to like him by telling her what he thinks she wants to hear rather than telling her the truth. In that sense, Frank is like an AI chatbot for The Bride!

As it turns out... “The Bride!” does something pretty cool. It shifts the focus from “how is The Bride! absorbing society?” to “how is society absorbing The Bride!?” It’s not about what parts of the culture will be etched onto the blank slate, it’s about what happens when your society already has a rigid set of rules in place, and now you introduce a character that ignores the rules entirely because they have no idea what the rules even are. The Bride! doesn’t care about the rules (because she doesn’t know them and is incapable of learning them). She plays by her own rules! Does that make The Bride! a sigma grinder? Can women be sigma grinders? I am going to say the answer to both those questions is YES, because I completely understand the youth of today and their lingo. I ain’t no square, daddy-o, and you’d best get hip to the fact that the kiddos think I’m totes fab. Back to our main thesis: How will people react to our non-conformist Bride!?

Turns out... By treating her like a monster. Because, according to their rules, she IS a monster. We’ll start with her appearance. Her clothes are ragged, her hair is a mess, and worse, the gunk used to reanimate stains permanently, so she’s got permanent stains on her face, hair, and clothes. Women were expected to maintain a standard of appearance in the twenties (and now). The difference is, *now* we have perspective. Women might be expected to keep it tight, but we are aware that is a rule, a pressure that they can push back against or ignore. In the twenties, people weren’t using terms like “patriarchy” or “objectification”. Eating salad and spending hours on your hair and makeup wasn’t ‘a rule’, it was just how things were. If you wanted to pound a box of cookies and not bother with your makeup at all, you would keep it to yourself. Women didn’t do those things. It’s pretty hard to fight against systemic oppression when nobody is even acknowledging that it’s oppressive.

But... That *changes* when you actually see somebody who completely ignores the system. The Bride! isn’t actively fighting the system, even if she had an inkling to do that she would forget about it the next day... But it turns out that *passively* fighting the system by opting out is a pretty damn powerful idea. The men and women around The Bride! start to take notice. Women smudge their faces to mirror The Bride!’s blemishes. Men start to believe that women can be more than secretaries, they can be, say, police detectives. Exposure to the blank slate starts to change the culture it’s failing to absorb, while the slate remains gleefully blank. Opt out. The catchphrase of the aforementioned Bartleby, “I would prefer not to”, is spoken many times during the film. Don’t fight the system, ignore it. Trust me, world systems don’t want to be ignored, so the fight WILL be coming, but opting out at least gives you a way to deal with a crushing status quo that you might not even realize is crushing.

That’s pretty damn cool. While I think it’s great that we have the option of, say, going on substack and calling out the patriarchy (this never happens. I’m just kidding, it’s every other post, including this one?!?), I think there is something... Elegant about sigma grinding it (I am DEFINITELY using that term correctly) and just... Preferring not to.

Turns out, the destination at the end of an arthouse road might be worth finding after all.

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2/10

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Why? Why do women love true crime? Morbid insight into their own vulnerability? Fascination with the cruel fates of others? Or maybe women like to be reminded that they aren’t delicate flowers and can be just as ruthless and backstabby (or frontstabby!) as men, because the true criminal from “Maternal Instinct”, like “The Crash”, is a murderess.

Here’s my advice to the ladies: Stop freaking out. Allow me to redirect your interest to the holy trinity of stuff you should actually care about: Chicks, cars, and sports. Y’all need to step up to the plate and start listening to the “Cars!, chicks!!, and sports!!!” podcast, hosted by Bro McGLP2, with special guest every straight man on earth. By the way, “step up to the plate” was a sports reference, which you would get if you started listening to the podcast!

But, instead of taking my own advice, I watched “Maternal Instinct”, and in the opening scene was greeted by our villain, Taylor Parker, who has been pulled over to the side of the road by a police officer in New Boston, Texas. I am curious if New Boston runs a New Marathon, or if they still do it like in Old Boston.

The police take Taylor, who has a baby with her she claims she’s given birth to, to the hospital, where we promptly are treated to doctors, nurses, and police officers debating the veracity of her story.

Here’s the thing... This is a documentary, right? How are we getting this footage of Taylor on the roadside and in the hospital? Then it hit: We’re looking at footage from police body cams.

WHAT?!?

Isn’t the point of body cams to prevent abuse of police power (@#$! the police!)? To hold cops accountable for questionable actions? If so... Why has body cam footage become a clown, for our amusement? And how on earth did a netflix documentary crew get ahold of it? During the closing credits, they thank the New Boston PD for “providing” the footage. Providing? I might not know much, but I know this: Ain’t nothing free. I am guessing that the documentarians “provided” some of that sweet, sweet Netflix cash to the correct department, and then in return were “provided” with the body cam footage in the Taylor Parker case.

So now body cams, tools that are supposed to help underprivileged people not get railroaded by the state, are just providing entertainment. It’s like that old TV show “Cops”, except we don’t need a full fledged camera crew following the cops around anymore, we’ll just furnish the cops with THEIR OWN cameras, paid for by the government. This is exactly what economists are talking about when they mention “Socialist input, capitalist output”. The body cams are being paid for by US, the taxpayers (you’d best believe movieshyte pays their taxes... *wink*) and yet the profits reaped from the footage are being collected by Netflix, a private entity worth billions. Instead of the masses getting justice, they’re getting placated with spectacle. Why hold a cop responsible for beating somebody down when we can be entertained by WATCHING them beat somebody down? Goodbye humanity, hello epicaricacy. By the way, you might notice my insane vocabularly flex this review. You’re welcome.

Then we have the actual crime itself. Taylor is a con woman, but she is apparently the worst con woman in New Boston because none of her schemes actually work. She tries for a real estate thing that fails... And the central incident of the film, is she tries to convince people that she’s pregnant. Because... ??? I guess it doesn’t matter why, what matters is that the only person in the entire town that fell for the ruse was her boyfriend Wade.

We get interviews from Wade’s family, Wade’s friends, Taylor’s friends, lawyers, and even doctors (no engineers, so we don’t complete the trifecta of careers acceptable to asian parents), and ALL of these people say essentially the same thing: “It was obvious she was lying. I never believed she was pregnant. I tried to tell Wade, but he didn’t believe me”. Followed up by: “I was really curious what she was going to do when her ‘due date’ came up”.

There are two options here. First, these people are lying, and they actually were fooled by Taylor and don’t want to look stupid in hindsight. The second option, is that they are telling the truth, and kind of seem complicit in a murder.

Now, let me be clear. I don’t think Wade’s friends or the people of New Boston are vindictive or evil in any way. They seem like good people. If they had any inkling that Taylor would eventually murder a pregnant woman and steal her baby, they would have stopped her. BUT... They did have an inkling that *something* was about to happen. We know this, because they tell us in their interviews! What was going to happen when Taylor was ‘due’? A doctor in the town PUT THE HOSPITAL ON ALERT FOR A POTENTIAL BABY KIDNAPPING when Taylor’s due date arrived, because he was concerned she might take action that drastic. Umm... Doc? If you thought Taylor represented a threat large enough to put your hospital on alert... Why didn’t you just call the one person Taylor was fooling, her boyfriend Wade, and say “I’m a doctor. Your girlfriend is NOT pregnant.” He could have shut the ruse down right there. Wade’s friends, that tried to tell Wade he was being fooled, just kind of shrugged and walked away when Wade wasn’t buying their story. Why didn’t they pull up Taylor’s shirt, rip off her false belly, and throw it in Wade’s face?

I don’t want to speak for these people out of turn or claim to know exactly why they didn’t stage a full on intervention to uncover Taylor’s ruse. But I’ll tell you at least PART of it: Spectacle. They knew the Taylor car was going to crash (much like MacKenzie’s car in The Crash), and they wanted to know what the result looked like. I’ll repeat myself, I don’t think for a second that any of these people thought *murder* was going to be the outcome... But by being so fascinated by the spectacle of Taylor and Wade saga, they unintentionally left that murder door open, when they could have provided irrefutable evidence to Wade that his girlfriend was lying to him, and ended the whole ruse right then.

I feel bad for Wade. Apparently, after Taylor’s arrest and conviction, he was kind of treated like a pariah by the town. That seems unfair, being as Wade was only person actually fooled by Taylor’s fake pregnancy. That makes Wade guilty of what... Being a dumbass? Hardly. Relationships are hard, and it’s just unreasonable to expect people in relationships (romantic or otherwise) to be objective about them. That’s why the whole “throw the false belly in his face” thing was necessary to get him to see the truth. I think Wade is more innocent than all the townspeople that DID see through Taylor’s ruse, and just watched, waiting to see how the story would end. Then it ended in murder.

Can I sit here on my soapbox and say I would have done any differently? Of course I can’t. I wasn’t there. Maybe I would have seen through Taylor’s ruse and looked on with everybody else. Or maybe I would have been fooled by Taylor but lied about it to a documentary crew to save face. I don’t know. Hopefully, I would have learned from the experience. Maybe it’s better to stop cops from beating people down rather than enjoy watching them do it. Maybe it’s better to step in and try to help your friend by revealing his girlfriend’s duplicity before it can spiral into a tragedy that you never imagined was possible.

Or maybe you can just grab the @#$!ing popcorn and watch.

6/10

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This would be in the same vein that Russia loves its dirty ruminations on the depravity of existence, or Bollywood loves its romantic comedies, or England loves its kind of middling blarf (sorry England, in music you are unsurpassed. In movies... Not so much). Netflix picks up a lot of these Spanish cop thrillers, so I watch many of them. I find that they are the Chinese food of cinema... They’re pretty enjoyable, but then a week later I’ve forgotten about them.

“The Marked Woman” is slightly more memorable, because it’s not only about the mundane, averagely interesting cops (@#$! the police!), it’s about “The marked woman” herself, Alicia. At the start of the movie, she’s a woman found in a shipping container who has been brutally tortured and has no memory of who she is or why she’s there. At the end of the movie, she’s a full-on superhero. It turns out... “The Marked Woman” is a superhero origin story. That’s pretty cool.

Or, at least, it *should* have been pretty cool. Instead, it was just kind of ‘aight. For one thing... In the first act, Alicia is attacked by an assassin in her hospital room. It turns out, she has some pretty wicked parkour and combat skills, and the result is an actual thrilling chase and fight scene. As it turns out... It would be the only action scene in the entire film. If you’re making a movie about a superhero, and she has elite combat skills, I would think you might want to show them off more. I’m not asking for “The Raid”, but another action sequence or two with Alicia kickin’ some pendejo ass would have been welcome.

But the far more egregious problem with Alicia is that I don’t know anything about her. I know she was tortured, and over the course of the movie she slowly learns more about her past. She was a cybersecurity expert. Her sister is missing, and Alicia is looking for her. These are all external circumstances. We never learn a thing about *why*, emotionally, Alicia needed to become a superhero. What void within her is filled by the journey? The answer to THAT question is the difference between a tortured woman in dire circumstances I can empathize with, and a fully-fledged character that can carry a movie. Why did she work in cybersecurity? Was she, or her sister, scammed? Did she just want lots of money working in the tech sector? Does she love numbers and puzzles and that was the best outlet for her to flex those skills? We don’t know!!

For a movie with a runtime of almost two hours and a half, you would think we could invest *some* of that time learning about our hero and what motivates her. Instead, all that time is filled with... Stuff. Plot. Finding evidence that takes you to location A where you find additional evidence that leads you to location B where you find a bad guy who eventually reveals that you need to go to location C. Just going from setpiece to setpiece like a police procedural Indiana Jones, except without the action or humor. A film like “The Usual Suspects” might be driven by pure plot and dialogue while knowing little to nothing about the characters... But the plot of “The Usual Suspects” is an ensnaring web of deceit and fun, and dialogue is crisp and @#$!ing hilarious. It’s a really, really high bar. Usually pure plot-driven movies end up like “The Marked Woman”... Somewhat engaging but ultimately pretty soulless.

Of course, we have the standard tropes of the genre here. Corruption and payoffs abound in the police department. It’s almost like the movie is blurring the line between cop and criminal (See: Every cop movie ever made #Adaptation). Our forensic psychologist, Ripoll, has some nonsense from her past that she needs to deal with, but again, we don’t really delve into it or learn much about *her* either. She was on leave for psych evaluation, now she’s back. Like Alicia and the cargo container... Those are just circumstances. It doesn’t tell us much about what drives Ripoll. I also hope you like that name, because I feel like people yelled “Ripoll!” about 7894728798 times. It’s a decent name. Maybe not as good as Rip Van Winkle. Or Rip Torn. Ripoll doesn’t have a penis, so unlike Rip Torn, she can’t be in a scene where a woman is randomly batting his penis around for no apparent reason #Themanwhofelltoearth, which I guess is our loss.

What movie was I talking about again?

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10/10

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“Fast Charlie” provides exactly this kind of stimulus. This puts it in the same area code as “porn for girls” (”Twilight”), “porn for women” (”Fifty Shades of Grey”), and “porn for men aged 13-60” (actual porn). As your trusted advisor, I do have a piece of advice.

All y’all need to get better porn.

Now, before you think I’m handing out random burn notices to my loyal readership, I will say this: I get it. I get the thrill of smoking punks that don’t have respect or understand “the code”. I get wanting every hot guy in your school to fall in love with you. I get wanting to surrender control to a dark, tall, handsome stranger (although, arguably, Jamie Dornan is none of those things, but I still get it). I get the appeal of a pearl necklace. I’m down for all of it. However... Doesn’t it all strike you as... A little mundane? It’s time to level up to some real porn.

I am talking about *intellectual* porn.

For the intellectual porn pinnacle, one need look no further than the films of Shane Carruth. I am talking about the realization in “Upstream Color” that the worms are god (Ooooooooooooooooooooo!!!) and that reality itself has no meaning, to the erasure of your own past in “Primer”, thus proving that time itself is a construct of consciousness (Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggg!!!) and that reality itself has no meaning, to the FURTHER realization that god is actually the worms (Don’t stop! Don’t stoppppppppppp!!!) and that reality actually has a meaning, which is that it has no meaning.

That’s right. Instead of blowing your wad, Shane Carruth blows your mind. Then your wad.

Unlike “Veronica Mars”, I don’t advocate addiction, but by all means you don’t need to stop there. You can gyrate on over to the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, Kenji Mizoguchi, or any movie starring the god of intellect himself, Kelsey Grammer. I need Darius Emmanuel Grouch III, aka “the rumple” on my jock right now.

The point is dopamine release. Excitement. Curiosity. When your mind can get you there as well as your junk, and you realize that the intellectual and sexual are as interwoven as, say, Hans and Franz, then your porn possibilities become endless. It’s not about replacing vampires or stepsisters with something completely different, it’s about expanding your mental and physical ecosphere. Where the vampires and the god worms can live together in a disjointed mansion built for spooge fracking.

Take this advice, and hear me now and believe me later: You’ll thank me now. Or later.

Which segues not at all back to “Fast Charlie”, where our hero is played by Pierce Brosnan (which means you know Liam Neeson passed on the role, and Aaron Eckhart probably did as well). He does indeed smoke punks 1/3 his age, and despite the fact that he’s approximately 893108209380 years old, he ends up in Italy with Morena Baccarin as his lover (although, in hollywood years, Morena is about 78, which still makes her way younger than him). Even Liam had to say “Fook mate. That’s impressive”.

But you know something? The journey wasn’t bad. Yes... We’ve seen the old guy action hero before, but the film has a solid foundation. The dialogue is pretty funny, the action scenes are somewhat adrenaline pumping (as much as you can get from an 893108209380 year old pump), and Charlie’s plight is sympathetic enough that his nonsensical revenge by murdering a bunch of people actually carries some emotional weight. The best thing in the movie is probably the Fil Eisler score. It’s full of grindy, twangy cajun pieces that really set the mood and exemplify the southern setting. We even get some banjo. What happened to the banjo anyways?! There isn’t nearly enough of it, dueling or otherwise. Props to my man Fil for bringing it back!

The problem is... The filmmakers assume their audience is idiots. A thug has a shirt with the logo “Crispy Cream”, and he proudly proclaims, “I had it custom made!” Charlie rolls his eyes, and at this point, you have two options: Charlie says nothing, and the people who know about “Krispy Kreme” get the joke, and the people who don’t know about it don’t get it. OR, Charlie explains the joke, and the people who already got it now get double joke dipped, which is a fail, and the people who didn’t get it the first time are exposed as being as ignorant as our thug. OF COURSE Charlie says, “You spelled it wrong”. NO!!! Don’t explain the joke! How much of my nonsense do I take the time to explain?!? Not a lot! Because exposition and comedy work at cross purposes. Kind of like Hans and Gloria Steinem.

So, if you’re an old guy and want your porn fix, you can do worse than “Fast Charlie”, and if you’re not quite that old and want to spend 90 minutes with some zippy lines, decent action, and Morena Baccarin, you also could do worse. But you can also do better.

Or, better yet, you can do both.

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2/10

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I’m not an industry insider (although I play one on TV), but my best educated guess is “K-Pop Demon Hunters” and “Sing 2”. “K-Pop Demon Hunters” was in the netflix top ten for almost a year, and “Sing 2” was consistently in the top ten for OVER TWO YEARS. What do these movies have in common? Hypnotic power. Parents can plop their kids in front of these movies, leave, and get a sorely needed 2 hours of peace while their kids are enraptured by the bright colors, songs, and constant motion on the screen. Then... They can repeat the action. These movies emanate this field of child attention magnetism that makes them invaluable as parental tools. A successful film on netflix will get 10s of millions of views, possibly 100+ million if it’s a huge hit. “Sing 2” and “K-Pop Demon Hunters” measure their views in the BILLIONS because kids will watch them over and over again.

So, the big question is: Does “Goat” qualify? Will it entrance your kids and give you those two peaceful hours?

As much as I am childlike in my curiosity, imagination, and heedless optimism, I am an old man in body and wisdom. Therefore, I’m not really qualified to answer that question based on my own experience with the movie. I also don’t have any kids, so I can’t plonk them down in front of the TV to get their reactions.

Never let it be said that I will not go to great lengths for my loyal Movieshyte audience. Since I don’t have any kids, I invented one: My daughter, Cap’n Karen.

I asked Cap’n Karen to watch “Goat” top to bottom (t2b), in order to find out if it enchanted her into two hours of blissful silence. Cap’n Karen is 19 years old, and she said “No thanks, boomer. Fuck off.” Boomer?!? I’m not *that* old. I’m... let’s put it at “Old X”.

Again, loyalty to YOU forced my hand, and I promised Cap’n Karen a new phone if she would just sit down and watch the damn movie. She reluctantly agreed.

Did I get those two joyful hours? Well, it wasn’t entirely silent. Cap’n Karen ended up live-streaming herself watching “Goat”, as a “reaction video”. By doing this, she performed a kind of cinematic molecular gastronomy, turning a form of mindless content into a different form of mindless content that tastes the same. I suppose, if I wanted her genuine reaction, I should have watched her live-stream. The thing is, I don’t know how, and even if I did the last thing I would get from watching my daughter pimp herself out to her 53 followers is “peace”. So, I had to get her reaction the old fashioned way, by asking her.

Movieshyte: “Hey honey, how was the movie? Did it keep your attention?”

Cap’n Karen: “Where’s my phone?”

Movieshyte: “Surely you can’t be serious. Obviously I was lying. Who am I, daddy warbucks? If anything, I’m Papi Movieshyte. Yeah, you’re not getting a new phone.”

Cap’n Karen: “I HATE YOU!!!” (runs upstairs and slams the door to her room shut).

Movieshyte: “What, no ‘and don’t call me shirley?!?’ How the heck do you even set up these zoomers? Friggin’ kids. Whaddayagonnado?”

I feel like, if I had limited Cap’n Karen’s phone time when she was younger, maybe she wouldn’t be addicted to social media, and if she wasn’t completely oblivious to social cues and the people around her, maybe she would be nicer. But what could I do? I was busy getting the low down on movies, I didn’t have the time to police my daughter’s phone use 24/7. Even if I tried to take her phone away, she would just accuse me of ruining her stuff and then she would run up to her room and slam the door. Maybe her mother could have gotten through to her, if her mother hadn’t pulled off that impossible heist and relocated to a beach, where she’s now earning 20%. I’m still waiting for that child support check! I still wouldn’t buy Cap’n Karen a new phone.

So, where does that leave us, in terms of *Goat*’s utility as a digital babysitter? I honestly don’t know. The colors are bright, there is nonstop dialogue and action, and while it isn’t a musical per se, they manage to sneak a few tracks in there. I apologize, loyal audience, but you’re probably going to have to run the experiment with your own kids in order to find out whether or not “Goat” can be a substitute parent.

There is some stuff in the movie. I thought it was cool that the “roarball” teams featured men and women (Friggin’ liberal hollywood! Trying to shove female basketball players in our face! How. DARE. They?!?!?!?! Mennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!) There’s a message in there about teamwork being more important than winning, but then the team goes ahead and wins anyway, thus making the message pointless (See: Every movie about team sports ever made).

But, at the end of the day, the movie was mundane enough that it would actually cause me to use a garbage expression like “at the end of the day”. It was actually in the morning. That expression is trash.

Hopefully “Goat” can entrance your kids for two hours, and heck, you could even run the experiment on yourself, and possibly get two hours of peace from your own fucked up self. Good luck, and godspeed. Unlike the road runner in the movie, who never actually runs. Why is she there?!?

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9/10

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War is peace.

Freedom is slavery.

Ignorance is strength.

These are the precepts of ‘the party’ and Big Brother in George Orwell’s ‘1984’. Of course, 1984 came and went over 40 years ago, and Big Brother never materialized, so humanity clearly dodged this particular bullet. Phew! I was worried for a second there.

When I logged onto hulu on sunday, “Orwell 2 + 2 = 5” was the number one item in my ‘recommended’ queue. I was a big fan of “exterminate all the brutes”, so I was happy to see a new Peck documentary there. When I went to actually watch it on tuesday... It was no longer number one in the queue. In fact... I scrolled 15 movies down, and it wasn’t there. It was GONE. Was this just typical algorithmic nonsense... Or is it possible that somebody behind the scenes didn’t care for a movie that advocates engaging in critical thinking and bucking the algorithm, and wanted it ‘disappeared’ from the recommended section? Hulu is owned by disney, disney is a media megacorporation, media megacorporations are puppets of the state, and Orwell was nothing if not critical of the state. Could it be... The state don’t want me (or you) watching a documentary that exposes its lies?

Omg. Orwell was right. The state has too much power. OMG. The libertarians are actually correct?!

By the power of Mises! I have the powwwwwwwwwwweeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!

I actually don’t. You see, it isn’t just ‘the state’ that lies in order to sustain itself. It’s all forms of power. This applies to corporations, which are supposed to be beholden to ‘market forces’, but in practice it’s the other way around. It applies to religion. It historically applies to men in the household, and it’s even becoming more common to apply to women in the household. The fact is, once you give something authority, it’s inevitable that, from that point, maintaining its authority becomes its primary objective, regardless of what its initial objective was. This is why I don’t like representative democracy, because as pure as the intentions might be of those representatives, once they get a taste of that power, it becomes more important to keep said power than to keep any promises they might have made to the electorate.

This isn’t universally true. Orwell himself was hardcore. He was a cop in Burma (at the time a british colony), and he realized he was just a puppet of the state and he quit. He became a broadcaster for the BBC, then he realized he was just a puppet of the state and he quit. He ended up at the only non-state job he could find, which is working alongside zoomers at Chipotle making burritos that look like oversized baseballs that came out of the washing machine. Seriously, zoomers, PLEASE LEARN HOW TO FOLD A @#$!ING BURRITO.

The point is, Orwell had power as a cop, and power as a journalist, and a critical eye towards his own actions actually steered him away from the reins of that power, rather than towards it. Not only did he not want to dictate the fates of those under him, he wanted to help them AVOID dictators by teaching them an important idea: Finding objective truth will help you see through the lies of the state.

If the state says 2 + 2 = 5, then you must rely on the objective truth... Which is that 2 + 2 = 4.

The problem is... 2 + 2 DOESN’T always equal 4.

Let me explain. Let’s say, you’re adding 2 squares to 2 squares. What is the result? 1 open right square prism? 4 squares? 16 sides? In this case, 2 + 2 can equal a number of things. “But,” says the straw man, “that example doesn’t count. Those aren’t pure numbers. That is adding something to something.”

There is always something.

You can talk about theoretical numbers in a void, but the fact is, nothing exists in a void. Everything exists filtered through the lens of *you*. You apply yourself to everything you do or think about. While there can ‘theoretically’ be objective truth, like 2 + 2 = 4, that is solely theory, because in reality your own experience is going to make any sort of objectivity impossible. Don’t take my word for it, take George Orwell’s, who said this:

“The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.”

That’s a fancy way of saying it’s not possible to be objective, because your own beliefs shroud your own art. But, this doesn’t just apply to art, or journalism, or social media bullshit, or political memos, or instructions on how to fold a burrito... It applies to all of it. The whole shebang. Looking for ‘objective truth’ isn’t going to help you see through the lies of the state, because objective truth doesn’t exist.

Except for one thing:

Movieshyte.

That’s right. In a world saturated by lies of the powerful, movieshyte is a bastion of actual, objective, truth. Evidence: I don’t take any ad money from corporate sponsors (yet! If you happen to be in control of a large corporate slush fund, and would like to influence the opinions of the only objective voice on the internet, leave a comment below or e-mail me at gimmesomemonaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyy@movieshyte.shyte). I am not trying to hold on to power, because I don’t have any. I’m the pure dope, straight up, and rest assured I will deliver you the truth.

Starting with this: Instead of trying to see through the lies of the state, try to see through your own. Well, do both. Just because objective truth doesn’t exist outside of Movieshyte doesn’t mean you should stop looking for it. As soon as you have settled on a belief, and are sure that you’re *right*, that is when you are most wrong. Use art, use words, use anything but violence to fight for the things you believe in, but never take those things for granted or assume they’re “the right way to do things”. This doesn’t mean you have to become a being of quantum superposition, unable to form an opinion until acted on, it just means that your critical eye should at least be giving yourself the side-eye emoji while you’re full on glaring at... The state? Your bosses? The gentle comedy of Jim Gaffigan? Whatever you’re critical of.

Always remember these three things:

Big Movieshyte is your friend.

2 + 2 = Movieshyte.

Don’t trust anything, except for and up to and including Movieshyte.

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5/10

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Since hundreds of years before the dawn of history, this has been the mantra of movie snoots the world over, possibly including yours truly. In regards to 2026’s “Wuthering Heights” film, I will definitely say the movie’s not as good as the book. In fact, it’s actually NOT the book at all. But... Does that make it ‘bad’? Well, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are relative terms. My answer to that question is different than that of, say, Rick Mybars. But I’ll go ahead and say the movie has merit, which is a pretty low bar, since every movie has merit.

I know this is movieshyte, and not bookshyte (patent pending), but I’ll give you the basics of Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights” novel: Despite how hollywood tries to sell it, it’s not a love story, it’s a hate story. Our ‘heroes’, Heathcliff and Cathy, do have an intimate connection, but it’s rooted in spite. The equation is actually pretty simple. Spite = passion = living. Love = comfort = death. Cathy loves Edgar, and that love saps her will to live and she dies. Heathcliff hates her for dying, and the hate keeps him alive. He finally forgives her and he dies. The end. Oh, spoiler alert for a novel written in 1847.

The equation of the movie is entirely different. The movie equation is violence + humiliation = sex. Now... This isn’t exactly a groundbreaking equation, and it makes the “Wuthering Heights” film a spiritual progeny of something like “Fifty Shades of Grey” moreso than the original novel. Not that you need “Fifty Shades of Grey” to prove the equation. Raise your hand if you’ve ever had a really nasty fight, and the makeup sex was some of the best sex you’ve ever had. Yeah, my extradigitalsensoryawesomeness sees those hands. We know the equation is legitimate.

It starts from the first scene in the movie, where Cathy is a little girl watching somebody get hanged and getting... Bothered by it. As wrong as that sounds, it will not be her most insane moment.

Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) and Cathy (Margot Robbie) have a fun relationship. She humiliates him publicly, he takes it in public, and in turn humiliates her privately, and they both get turned on by it, but since it’s the 1800s they don’t actually start fucking until the second half of the film, at which point Cathy is married to Edgar, but she and Heathcliff start going at it like rabbits while still alternately declaring undying love while also humiliating and handing burn notices to each other. To be honest... It gets a little exhausting.

This is why Jacob Elordi was cast as Heathcliff. His acting chops are fine, he’s aware enough that he lets his co-stars (like Oscar Isaac in “Frankenstein” or Cailee Spaeny in “Priscilla”) blow him off the screen. But he’s tall. He’s handsome. If they were to re-cast “Fifty Shades of Grey” he’d make a fine christian grey. I actually don’t know why they put Jamie Dornan in that role in the first place. I’m a fan but... He’s kind of a ponce. Dakota Johnson is fine, but I would upgrade her to “Norwegian Dakota Johnson”, Renate Reinsve.

Again... This isn’t the book. The whole paradigm of “attractive people should be together” isn’t just a staple of hollywood, but Hallmark movies in particular. Instead of a hate story, we have a Hallmark romantic... Thriller?

There’s the word... “Romantic”. The word that sells the whole thing. Margot Robbie. Jacob Elordi. Fucking. Romance! But what do you call romance between two monsters? Because Heathcliff and Cathy might be two of the most horrific people in England.

The pivotal scene of the movie comes at the beginning of Act III, where Heathcliff learns that Cathy is pregnant. (thanks to Cathy’s treacherous friend Nelly, a baffling character who only seems there to be a random plot advancer). The following scene unfolds. I’m paraphrasing here, but this is the gist of what they’re saying:

Heathcliff: “You’re pregnant?! Is the baby mine?”

Cathy: “It can’t be yours, I was pregnant before you came back.”

Heathcliff: “Wait, what? You’ve been pregnant this whole time we’ve been fucking like 5 times a day?”

Cathy: “Well, I was kind of hoping you would take me with such ferocity that I would lose the child. It’s Edgar’s and I don’t want it.”

Heathcliff: “Oh, well then. Allow me to oblige.”

[They start fucking]

He succeeds. Cathy has a miscarriage and dies from the complications. Like... This is *romance*? She asks him to fuck her baby out of her AND HE DOES? These two people make Hans Landa and Pennywise look like Mary Poppins. Is that the moral of story? The violence, the humiliation, the calculated disregard for anyone and anything other than themselves... It’s worth it for the hot sex? I’m not here to tell you the answer to that question, but I *am* here to tell you the sex isn’t even that hot. It’s aight. Elordi kind of manhandles her (again, closer to “Fifty Shades” than “Wuthering Heights”) and I have absolutely zero shade to throw at gals and guys who want to see that on the screen. But... To sell it as this tragic “romance”... They are the architects of their own tragedy. They’re not good people.

The other characters aren’t much better. Cathy’s father is a drunken wretch. I don’t even know what Nelly, her friend/servant/??? is doing in the movie. Cathy’s husband Edgar is the definition of a beta cuck. He genuinely loves her (I mean... It’s Margot Robbie. In the 1800s. If she walked down London Avenue [I don’t know any street names in London] men and women would turn into orgasmic mist just looking at her) but he’s the definition of a wuss. When he learns that his wife has been fucking Heathcliff on the reg, he says “Darling, you shan’t see that gentleman any more.” Edgar’s sister, Isabella, seems to be more thirsty for Cathy than Heathcliff is. Isabella makes Cathy a Georgia O’Keefe pop-up book for her birthday. Hats off, those are some serious arts and crafts skills, girl, but it’s the 1800s so yain’t gettin’ none from Cathy. Isabella and Heathcliff eventually get married, and they both do it to piss off Cathy. The entire movie is populated by horrible people that are impossible to root for. I guess it all leads back to the question... Is the hot sex worth it? I can’t answer that question for you. But if you think we’re talking about a “romantic” relationship, hopefully I can get you to examine *that* notion a little more closely.

The movie ends with Cathy’s death. I would have liked to see Heathcliff go mechagodzilla on the rest of England once he figured out that he basically fucked her to death. I would posit that he becomes jack the ripper, but, compared to Heathcliff, jack the ripper is too tame and empathetic for that to be true.

At what cost romance? $.69.

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6.9/10

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The answer lies in “evolutionary biology”, which is the study of what behaviors we exhibited back “in the day” (hundreds of thousands of years ago) and how it informs our behavior today.

Back in the day, things were rougher in a lot of ways (but easier in others, believe it or not, but that’s for another article) and child mortality rate was rough. Men could ‘Wilt Chamberlain’ it and have like 100 kids in a day... But a woman had to wait 9 months for a single child. If she was “lucky” she might get two. To give that child the best chance of survival, not only did she need to take extra special care of it, but she needed the biggest, strongest dude around to help protect it. Now... That dude might help her out a bit, but for *him*, the best way to conquer child mortality was to have as many kids as possible with as many women as possible, so he had to go out and knock up all the women while preventing *other* men from getting to them first.

Ipso facto, women are nuturing caregivers and men are violent and aggressive. This isn’t ‘because that’s how it is’, it’s because that original model of child rearing, which was central to homo sapiens surviving at all, has stayed with our DNA through thousands of years, even if our circumstances have changed. So, ladies, if you happen to be very attracted to that ripped macho jerk who treats you like dirt, it isn’t necessarily because you’re ‘self-destructive’ or whatever negativity you want to foist on yourself, it could very well be that your DNA remembers WAY BACK to when you NEEDED that jerk to protect your kids.

Let me clear about something... Using the past to describe behavioral origins is fine. Using the past to PRESCRIBE behavior is terrible. If you want to tell me women are, in general, empathetic and kind, and men are, in general, aggressive and violent, and you tell me evolutionary biology explains why... I’m listening. If you tell me women SHOULD BE empathetic and kind, and men SHOULD BE aggressive and violent because nature dictated that was the way of things in the past and nature always gets it right... I’m going to tell you to fuck right off into the night. Time. Moves. Forward. We can learn from the past, but DO NOT try and return to it. Regardless of whether it’s ‘better’ or ‘worse’ (which is subjective), it’s the PAST. It’s DONE. Things are different! It’s why I hate legal precedent. You want to rule on a case based on a ruling in a similar case in 1879? Are you KIDDING me? We are light years away from 1879! We need to look at circumstances NOW and for the FUTURE. So go ahead and ignore people that tell you to behave a certain way because “that’s how it’s always been done”.

So this brings me to “Ladies First”, where our main man Damien Sachs (Damien? Like from “The Omen”? Turns out yup) is transported to an alternate universe where women and men have swapped gender roles. Women are crass, aggressive, and have the wealth. Men are sensitive, empathetic, and trying desperately to assert themselves and move up the corporate ladder while the “girls’ club” lays down a glass ceiling they just can’t break through.

The thing is... Other than the roles, everything else about men and women is the same as Damien’s original universe (”our” universe). Men are bigger, stronger, and capable of having bunches of kids with different women, and women are smaller, and they still get pregnant and need to take time off whatever they’re doing to have a kids.

So how, exactly, did they become so aggressive? Women being in charge in this universe goes way back. In the ‘new world’, god is a ‘her’, kings of the past are now queens, the gender roles are perfectly swapped. But... We’ve already established WHY men assumed the aggressive role and women assumed the caregiver role. THOSE circumstances are the same! How on earth did we have the same biological imperatives and a completely different outcome?

By far the likeliest answer seems to be... We simply decided to. At some point in the distant past of this new world, humans unilaterally just decided that women should be aggressive and men should be beta cucks. No shade thrown, I might or might not be a card carrying member of the beta cuck club.

Is that even possible? I mean... It is theoretically possible that we could all just ‘decide’ something and start acting that way... But could it really happen?

In “Ladies First”, it clearly did. While I am skeptical... I like to think there’s a chance that we actually COULD make a species-wide change in perception. The internet actually makes this logistically possible now. 100 years ago, in order to have this major perception shift, we would need some Jungian collective thought or mind waves or SOMETHING to get everybody on the same page. Now... We have the internet connecting everybody on earth. All we need is the idea. I like to think that if there is truly a great idea, that it could ‘take hold’ and make everybody perceive things in a new way, very quickly.

However, “Women and men should swap power dynamics” isn’t a great idea, and “Ladies First” doesn’t present it as such. If you don’t like men being alpha assholes, putting women in those positions and watching them behave the same way doesn’t reduce the asshole content of the world (we’re currently sitting at 79% and rising... Thanks to the aforementioned internet).

There is some amusement to be had in the swap. Damien is forced to start working out and ‘get fit’. I do think it’s notable that, in the ‘real world’ a man who puts a lot of effort into his physical appearance is a “looks-maxxer”, while a woman who puts a lot of effort into her physical appearance is a “woman”. It’s fun to watch women eat steak while Damien eats salad (is that still a thing? I thought the whole “women be eating salads” nonsense vanished at the end of 90s? Am I wrong? Are you still eating salads, women? Let me know in the comments! Or don’t, because there aren’t any). While there is fun to be had, there’s annoyance as well. Watching our heroine, Alex, be completely ignored in a meeting led by Damien, only to have Damien completely ignored in the alternate universe meeting led by Alex, followed up by him saying “Well, I see now how that’s really annoying” isn’t particularly novel and just insults our intelligence.

Ultimately, the movie focuses on the wrong problem. While misogyny is a problem, it isn’t *the* problem. *The* problem is having idiots hold the power. Damien is, literally, useless. When he gets transported to the new world, he is told that to return to his home dimension, he needs to become CEO of his company. He says “I’m really good at this” several times over the course of the movie, and what he’s good at is schmoozing, telling people what they want to hear, and sucking up to his boss. He. Doesn’t. Produce. ANYTHING. Yet... In BOTH universes, he ends up as Alex’s boss! She is a genius who actually produces stuff, but she ends up working for HIS dumb ass that can’t do a damn thing! And we’re to understand that it’s *cool* as long as he values her and respects her? It’s not cool! Get his ass OUT of there altogether! I don’t care how! Implement socialism and get rid of all bosses! Implement libertarian meritocracy! Anything to stop a schmoozing dork from reaping the benefits of underlings who are producing what he can’t.

Alex is even worse than Damien. She’s a genius... At producing ads. They both work for an ad agency. There are few things I hate as much as ads. Every time I see a commercial, I want to violently punch myself in the face and then explode the world. Ads are THE WORST, and Alex is a master at creating them. She’s the best at creating the absolute worst thing... So you know what? Fuck ‘em all. Damien, Alex, women, men, cats... Just STOP TRYING TO FUCKING SELL ME THINGS. To do this, it just takes the simple act of overthrowing capitalism.

Now *that* might be an idea worth unilaterally pursuing.

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9/10

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A witch isn’t a woman who worships the forces of darkness (although she might), nor is it a woman who worships gaea and the forces of nature (although she might). It’s certainly not a woman who has mystical command over magical bullshit (although... I guess it’s possible? Jury’s still out on whether magic is real). All of these things describe what a witch might possibly DO, but not who she IS.

Historically, a witch is a woman who isn’t married and therefore can choose for herself the way she lives, and doesn’t have to (and usually does not) have children. If your goal is to have power over people (and, let’s face it, that’s the goal a lot of time), independent women aren’t going to seem very cool, so you’ll make up the forces of darkness thing to criminalize her. If you’ve achieved your goal of accumulating power, and want more people to rule, women without kids are at odds with your entire business model; so obviously *they* have to go as well, so you accuse them of magical bullshit. After all, how else can a woman exist without a man, unless she’s using magical bullshit? That’s why the vast majority of convicted witches were spinsters or prostitutes. No men, no kids, no way they’re staying alive to serve as an example to other women. While I’m not a witch, I’m a big fan (of all 3! Even if they’re not necessarily fans of each other). Being a witch is almost as hard as pimpin’.

Such is the lot of Hypatia, our heroine from “Agora”, based on the real woman. She lived in Alexandria, Egypt, right around 400 AD. Her dad was rich, and, despite pressure from his fellow oligarchs to marry her off, he actually cared about her studies so he didn’t. Because Hypatia doesn’t spend all her time making tiktoks where she’s lookin’ tight to try and land a husband, she’s able to be a teacher, a philosopher, and “natural scientist” (which means she studies physics and astronomy). She figured out gravity, relative motion, and elliptical orbits over a millennium before more famous men would do the same (her work was eventually destroyed along with the library at alexandria, so you can’t prove that she *didn’t* do these things... And even if she didn’t, the movie isn’t claiming to be a factual recreation of history, so I’m fine with it).

The city is constantly at war. The ‘pagan cultists’ (peeps who worship osiris and horus and the like), the jews, and the christians are always battling it out for control of the city, and the world! Hypatia doesn’t care about any of that nonsense, because she is too focused on her science. In fact, she doesn’t care about anything other than her studies. Her student, Orestes, publicly proposes to her, and she answers him by publicly giving him a handkerchief covered in her menstrual blood. There’s got to be some symbolism here about her utilizing her bodily functions in order to retain agency over her own body... But really it’s just a heck of a burn notice to hand somebody just for proposing. Possibly costly, as well, because she could have sold that handkerchief to a japanese businessman for 3.5 million yen. Of course, rejecting the proposal was the correct call, because marriage is a scam. Believe you me, getting married helps the shareholders of zales a lot more than any of the involved parties.

So, that’s the movie. Religious zealots fights, and Hypatia does her best to ignore them so that she can study science. Yup, I just told you the whole damn two and a half hour movie. Hypatia is both the only atheist AND the only woman in the film, and she’s the only character not engaged in mindless violence. Is it saying that science is superior to religion? Is it saying that women are superior to men? Fool, I’m not here to tell you how to interpret the movie, I’m only here to point out what’s interesting about it!

What’s interesting... Is this line. Hypatia can’t stay neutral forever. Eventually, the christians win control over the city, and the prefect, who is a former student of hers, gives her a choice: Be baptised or be branded as a witch and killed(note: if the church got something right here, it was the correct definition of witch! Nobody accuses Hypatia of casting spells, just of being different). She says this: “You do not question your beliefs. You cannot. I must.”

Are those... Science words? I don’t think so. Those are *kung-fu* words. The idea that scientists always question their beliefs is laughable. I mean, obviously, a lot of scientists do question some of their beliefs, but then again so do a lot of religious folks. Does a scientist question that the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter is 3.whateverthefuck? Most of the time, they don’t. Do you know who does? A kung-fu master. You see, the point of kung-fu isn’t to kick unholy ass (although that’s a side effect), the point of kung-fu is to discover. Not just discover martial arts moves... But discover what your road means to you. To do that, you are always questioning... Because the kung-fu road stretches on. The point, as they say, is not the destination, but the journey. You strive for understanding, knowing that you’ll never fully achieve it, which in turn makes you strive for it even more.

“You do not question your beliefs. You cannot. I must.”

Sure sounds kung-fu to me. I wanted her to follow up with this statement with a scorpion kick to the face, but she doesn’t. She dies.

Now... That’s hardcore. Movieshyte ain’t religious, but if somebody puts a gun to their head and says get baptised or die, they’re going into the drink. I wanted Hypatia to do the same! While it’s a powerful moral statement to chose death over religion... “I must”. She must always question her beliefs. Well, she can’t do that if she’s dead. Hypatia’s decision to die is closing the door on knowledge the same way that... Deciding that Osiris is the shit or whatever closes that same door. Don’t be telling you “must” question your beliefs then immediately stop doing it! I guess if there’s a more universal constant than pi, it’s hypocrisy.

“Agora” won 7 goya awards. Those are the Spanish academy awards. First of all, the movie’s in english (although made by a spanish director), so way to just give props to the good ol’ american filmmaking industry. Second... Spanish folks are pretty religious. “Agora” is a spanish-made movie that essentially takes a dump on the country’s religious beliefs. I think, that by giving the film so many awards, the spanish film intelligentsia were trying to say “We’re not mindless zealots. We think about stuff!”

I hope they do! Less osiris, more kung-fu. More *real* witches as well.

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2/10

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It was a movie in the 90s about this dude who was, unbeknownst to him, being filmed 24/7. His life was essentially a TV show, and tens of millions of people around the world were captivated. The film presented this scenario as a dystopian nightmare: A surveillance state where the ‘star’ of the show had no power or agency in his own life, because the script was decided for him and the cameras took away any sense of self, even though he was unaware of them.

It’s hard to imagine a movie that got things more wrong.

Fast forward to 2026. An entire of generation of zoomers has no idea “The Truman Show” exists, but if they did, far from being a nightmare, it would be their ultimate dream. These folks stream themselves 24/7 and can only hope to get 50 followers, let alone millions. Privacy is meaningless. Even agency is meaningless if everything you’re doing is just geared towards giving your viewers what they want so they keep watching. The only meaningful things are clicks, likes, and followers. Truman isn’t a warning to the zoomers, he’s their god-king.

Case in point: Mackenzie Shirilla. A seventeen year old girl who crashed her car into a wall killing two passengers. The question is: Did she intend to kill those people?

I’m not here to tell you that. I don’t know. But, by the end of film, you will probably have an opinion, because Mackenzie put herself onto social media every day, multiple times. You know her, because she’s putting herself on full display. What you will then do, is take this information and use it decide whether or not she’s guilty.

Unfortunately, for Mackenzie, the persona she chose to wear for her social media videos was “Supermodel Bitch”. I didn’t know ungodly skinny women were *still* considered the height of fashion in 2026 like they were in the 90s... But if Mackenzie is any indication, they are. So she’s a supermodel. She’s also a bitch. She hands out burn notices to everybody. She gets the clicks because people love to hate her.

Turns out, when you’re accused of murder, being hated isn’t so hot. When she was arrested, most of her “fanbase” immediately jumped onto the comments to talk about how she was getting what she deserved. The question is no longer “Is she guilty of murder”, the question is “Does she deserve to punished”, and what do people want to see more than a supermodel bitch get her comeuppance? Cats? I don’t know.

Even as Mackenzie claims her online presence is just an act, a ‘persona’ that isn’t really her... I have to wonder. Where does supermodel end and Mackenzie begin? What if it was me? If I manslaughtered up a couple of my friends, and I’m in court, and they’re like “Hey Movieshyte... Didn’t you interview a member of the azov battalion?” I’d be like “Umm... Fuck”. It’d be over! Where is the line where I am movieshyte and no longer me? The answer, I have no clue, and by the movieshyte transitive property that says my lived experience applies to every person on earth, none of you have a clue either. And I’m a heck of lot older than 17. By the way, the reverse transitive property is NOT true, and none of all y’all’s personal nonsense applies to me.

This ‘persona’ doesn’t just apply to Mackenzie, it applies to literally every single person in the documentary. They know they’re being filmed... So I’m no longer watching people, I’m watching archetypes. The ambitious district attorney. The grieving family member. The shocked best friend. The father who wants JUSTICE for their child and is demanding a maximum sentence. These people are both real and performance at the same time. It’s hard to parse them. The Truman worshipping zoomers want to create this world where everything is surface level scrolling through lives, and there’s no nuance, there’s no delving into the particulars. When she’s first interviewed, Mackenzie’s best friend says “When I met Mackenzie, I had 250K followers and she only had 2K.” THAT’S the first thing you say about your best friend? Why have you created this world of no connection???

If you’re going to do that, own it. Mackenzie is in prison now. Since she’s been found guilty of murder, I suggest she bring back “murder inc.” as a gang.

In case you don’t know, “murder inc.” is a gang from the prohibition era of the 1920s and 30s. I’ve often floated the idea to myself of bringing back prohibition, not because I don’t want people to drink, but because that era gave rise to real gangsters like Al Capone and real gangs like “murder inc.”. These days we have gangs with names like “The 829”. What the @#$! are we even doing? What do you think happens when “murder inc.” goes up against “The 829”? I won’t spoil it for you, but one of those gangs ends up 829 feet in the dirt. Can’t we at least get “The 8675309”?

So, yeah, Mackenzie, bring murder inc. back!

Let’s be clear, I am NOT suggesting that Mackenzie murder people. Or, more people, anyway. No, I just want her to OWN the persona! What is better, supermodel bitch, that crazy chick who crashed her car and killed her boyfriend, or the head murderista of the new murder inc.??? If you’re just going to invent yourself, and let’s be honest, we all do, invent something kick ass.

Or you could, like, not want everybody to watch you all the time. But that would be crazy.

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829/10

The fact is, boomers think millenials are lazy know-it-alls who live in their parents’ basements and have no appreciation for how hard things were back in ‘the day’. Millenials think boomers are arrogant, out-of-touch curmudgeons who have no idea how the world works anymore.

As a chill gen x, I’m pretty happy to let them destroy each other, because they both suck.

Boomers made two decisions that vastly changed the landscape of America. They decided that 1) Legally, companies are obligated to make a profit, and that is the only factor they should take into account when making decisions (this is known as “increasing shareholder value”), and 2) Once you have money, it should magically make more money for you. It turns out, that “magical money” has a price, and without going into too much detail about economic history, these two decisions meant that, while all the boomers (well, the white men, anyway) could afford houses, nowadays millenials can’t afford a house because the boomers are basically hoarding all the assets and using them to make the magical free money (which isn’t actually free to anybody but them).

Since millenials don’t have money or assets, they have no power to influence this economic model. So... They took their revenge by ruining the one thing they *do* have influence on: The internet.

Remember the internet before millenials got ahold of it? You could do stuff. You could read stuff. Then... Since they had nothing else to do, millenials decided that what the internet really needed was “more content”. Stuff. It doesn’t matter if it’s functional or usable, it just matters that AS MUCH JUNK AS POSSIBLE IS STUFFED ONTO EVERY PAGE ON THE INTERNET. Images. Comments. Likes. Dislikes. Infinite links to MORE JUNK. Since boomers are old and don’t understand technology, they were as powerless to prevent this as the millenials were powerless to prevent the vacuuming of money to the old and wealthy.

So, yup, they both suck. Have at each other, hosses.

So it is with this expectation that I watched millenial Cameron (Lewis Pullman) and boomer Tova (Sally Field) (Tova is not her birth name. Tova is a name that a woman takes when she gets old. Like “Meredith”). I wanted these two people to tear each other to pieces.

They are perfect representations of their respective generations. Tova lives in a near mansion, and while it’s clear that she has a lot of money (she’s constantly getting calls from a retirement home begging her to move in... This is because they know she has a ton of money and they want it) SHE IS CHEAP AS @$$! AND NEVER SPENDS IT. Welcome to boomertown! You can’t spend money and actually stimulate your local economy. Why? Because you need that money to make more money, which in turn you won’t spend. For his part, Cameron has no equity and lives in a van he inherited from his now deceased mother. Just like a millenial! No ambition! No respect for the hard work the boomers had to do in order to make their magic money! I couldn’t wait for these foos to blast each other.

At first, they did! They didn’t physically fight, but they certainly handed each other numerous burn notices. As we know, words can be as violent and hurtful as physical punches to the face, so I was down for it.

Then an octopus intervened.

Marcellus the octopus escaped his tank. Tova cleans the aquarium at night, and she got him back into the tank before he died. Marcellus decided that, since she saved him, he would in turn save *her* by getting her to be friends with Cameron. Umm... I wasn’t aware that octopi lived by the same social code as wookiees? Once somebody saves them, they are owed a “life debt” which must be paid by saving them in turn? Marcellus, my cephalopod, are you kidding me? Tova’s generation STOLE ALL THE MONEY! She’s PART of the problem! She might have saved you, but look at the bigger picture!

But he doesn’t. Through various machinations, Cameron and Tova start to get along. Cameron even introduces her to radiohead.

By the way, millenials, fuck you for radiohead and christopher nolan. I don’t know how you dingbats decided, as a group, that this was the best band and best film director of all time, but THEY AREN’T. Thanks to *your* internet, “OK Computer” is the #1 ranked album of all time, and “The Prestige” is a top 50 movie of all time, while “Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake” by Small Faces and “Robocop” aren’t even ranked. What are you doing?? “The Prestige”?!!?!? REALLY?? That’s almost as ridiculous as saying that “Jeanne Dielman 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles” is the best movie ever made.

Getting back to generational warfare, thanks to an octopus, a millenial and boomer started getting along. I was all set to just turn the damn movie off, I was so offended.

But I didn’t. I actually started... Wanting them to be friends? What?

It’s Sally @#$!ing Field. No matter what... You root for Sally Field. Period. It’s ALWAYS been true, going back to “Norma Rae”. She has this... Jedi mind Field that makes everybody like her. Including me! So... I stopped wanting her to be destroyed. Just by him being in her jedi field, my well wishes even started extending to Cameron, DESPITE radiohead!

A millenial and a boomer getting along... And I’m down for it? What is the world coming to? Thanks, Marcellus the octopus. Thanks, Sally Field. You’ve effectively shattered my understanding of society... At least for a couple hours.

Lewis Pullman does spend an inordinate amount of time in the film trying to find out what happened to his dad. Well... I hate to be the person that breaks it to you... But your dad turned into Balthazar Getty. I know, nobody wants it, but it happens.

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7/10

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Does this movie feature an octopus? YUP.

Is it big? YUP.

DONE. With its title, the movie has made a promise, and it has delivered on that promise. Compare this to, say, “One Battle After Another”. Is there a battle? Not really? Is there another? Maybe? Worthless! The title is a lie. I want the truth!

“Big Octopus” doesn’t just deliver truth in titling. The corporation at the center of the film is called “Greed Biochemical”. You know what they are, you know what they do. No need for 5 minute exposition dumps (at a tight 83 minutes of runtime, we don’t have time for them!). You know they are villains (unless you are a hedge fund asshole who worships gordon gecko, in which case they’re heroes... But either way, you know where you stand). When we do get exposition, instead of taking five minutes, it takes a single awesome line.

Such as:

“Could my brothers’ deaths be related to the little octopus?”

“You have the potential to become a great female scientist.”

Speaking of great female scientists, our trio of researchers at Greed Biochemical happen to be women. They also happen to be in their twenties (in their prime! Look it up), and have outstanding hair in addition to lipstick and rouge. At work! They can both be superb researchers AND keep it lookin’ tight FOR THEMSELVES. Girl power! Well, they also happen to be keeping it tight for the fourth member of their team, who happens to be a complete idiot. You can have additional fun by placing bets on the over/under runtime mark when he bites it. I’ll even break my own rules and NOT spoil it for you.

Even Renny Harlin would marvel at the pacing here. Since we only have 83 minutes, STUFF HAPPENS. Catch the little octopus. Give future great female scientist girlfriend an ultimatum: Sleep with me or DON’T get the octopus. Girlfriend refuses to pimp herself out for octopus (I disagree heartily for this decision. Personally, I can think of few better reasons to pimp myself out). Big octopus attacks. Sell little octopus and teach girlfriend a lesson. This happens in the span of about 3 minutes. Pacing!

If there’s a teeny tiny flaw in the film, it’s that Greed Biochemical’s need to procure the octopus in order to assuage their investors is completely unnecessary, as they have already invented the Bag O’ Infinite Henchmen. The octopus grabs and throws about 20 henchmen into the drink... Yet their number never dwindles. I’m sure the female scientists invented this wondrous device, but fortunately the film left the explanation on the cutting room floor BECAUSE WE DON’T HAVE TIME FOR EXPOSITION!!

I don’t know that I have ever been so disappointed in an audience. “Big Octopus” currently stands at a cool 3.8 on the imdb. How?? You either hit ‘play’ on the movie because you wanted a Big Octopus, in which case YOU GOT ONE, or you ‘play’ on the movie and you didn’t want a Big Octopus, in which case *you ended up getting an unexpected big octopus, so you completely won*. Were there any octopi in “One Battle After Another”? I’ll get back to you when I watch it.

The point is, there are exactly TWO acceptable ratings for “Big Octopus”. You either give it 1 or give it a 10. If you want to take a stand against lame movie titles that tell you nothing, and you appreciate the carnage laid down by enlarged cephalopods, you know what rating it deserves.

Get it together, people.

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3.8/10

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It’s not an easy name to live up to. You might as well name your protagonist “Death, the Destroyer of Worlds”. There’s a certain expectation that goes with a name like that, an expectation I wasn’t sure could be met by a small town girl from Neptune, CA who goes sleuthing on the side.

Besides Veronica’s name, I had zero expectations. I assume the primary target audience for this movie was fans of the show. The secondary target audience was people that had never seen the show, and that includes me. So I didn’t know Veronica’s deal or anything about her world. Would she actually... Go to war?

Turns out, she does. She goes to war against the entire Neptune police department (defund the police! Wait... That’s not a thing anymore? Then let’s go back to FUCK tha police!). As cool as that is, it’s not even her main battle. Veronica’s real war is against... Judd Apatow.

Not literally. He’s not in the movie, and none of the characters ever mention him. But his idea of what makes a human adult pervades Veronica’s idea of what makes a human adult. You see, as hilarious as they can sometimes be, Judd Apatow’s films present a very unified story of what an ‘adult’ is: A person with a stable source of income and a monogamous romantic relationship. Around these parts, we have a word for that:

Normal.

Judd Apatow thinks that, to be an adult, you have to be normal.

At the start of the movie, Veronica thinks this as well. She’s in monogamous relationship. She is about to secure a stable source of income by being hired on as an attorney at a prestigious New York Law firm. It’s all there... All that normal is right within her grasp.

Then she gets a call from her ex. He’s been accused of murder, and he wants her to come back to Neptune and help him out. And the war fucking begins.

The income starts slipping away. She’s supposed to start her new job in two days! Every day she spends wearing her old “private detective” mask is a day she risks upsetting her new bosses and possibly being fired. She can’t play hide the salami with her ex-boyfriend... But she wants to. The threads to her New York boyfriend become stretched and frazzled as the chemistry with her ex sparks anew (even if the chemistry is pretty one sided. Her ex boyfriend... Isn’t the greatest actor. He’s pretty wooden. But, you know what? Veronica is awesome enough to do the chemical heavy lifting for the both of them). All that normal starts to slide away.

She sees it, too. She talks about it in the worst way possible: Voiceover. Voiceover is, in general, lazy and terrible, and “Veronica Mars” isn’t an exception to this rule... Except for one little tidbit in Veronica’s stream of consciousness that I did appreciate. As the idea normal falls away, she starts likening her need to be a private eye to an addiction. She’s *addicted* to mystery. Do you know how she knows it’s an addiction? It’s destructive. Not only is she risking her monogamous relationship and stable source of income, she’s literally putting herself and her friends in danger.

And she decides it’s worth it.

Ho. Lee. Shit.

Don’t get me wrong... I am NOT advocating this position. I do not think somebody should get themselves addicted to anything (heroin, alcohol, gambling, etc, etc) just to avoid being normal. Addictive behavior *is* destructive. But, you know what? Being normal is pretty lame. Sorry, normies, it is. I will grant you that Veronica’s assertion that addiction is preferable to normalcy is *dangerous*... But that’s why I like it. It’s why *SHE* likes it. It’s subversive (designed to undermine and overthrow established institutions... In this case it’s undermining the foundation of JuddApatowLand). I wouldn’t have thought that a movie about a private eye wannabe could be so reckless... And intoxicating. A lot like addiction itself.

There are flaws with the movie. Too much voiceover. The acting ranges all over the spectrum from awesome (Kristen Bell as Veronica) to pretty weak (Jason Dohring as her ex). There are too many exposition dumps. You know what? That stuff doesn’t matter.

What matters is, when ragnarknock comes knocking, which banner are you going to fight for? I’ll fight for Veronica Mars, the goddess of War.

2/10

This is why people, myself included, hate critics.

——

“Uncle Boonmee” is a fine watch, especially if you’re feeling contemplative. “Ong-Bak” is, objectively, one of the best action movies of all time. Contrary to what those dingalings over at Sight and Sound would have you believe, action movies ARE actually movies. Does Uncle Boonmee throw a foo out a window, jump out after him, and knee him in the dome while he’s still in the air? He does not. He recalls his past lives. Rumination contemplation versus defeneskneetration. YOU tell ME which is better. Yup, that’s what I thought.

Turns out, you and I aren’t the only ones who think “Uncle Boonmee” being ranked higher than “Ong-Bak” is an offense to all of the cinema. The god of explosions was so pissed, they straight up plucked Thailand from its home in the Caribbean, and gave the Thai people a choice: Be dropped down in southeast Asia, or Detroit. After a brief deliberation, the people of Thailand made their sophie’s choice, and thus Thailand was moved to southeast Asia where it resides to this day. You might think it’s unfair for the god of explosions to punish the people that made the movie, rather than the critics who ranked it... But who are we to question the decisions of the gods? Besides... I suspect those Sight and Sound critics might want to get their Lions and Red Wings caps ready.

The result of this sudden change was that Thailand has spent the last 15 years making really brutal action movies, clearly in an attempt to appease the god of explosions and get back to their Caribbean home. Which brings us around to “The Last Shot”.

Is there enough action in “The Last Shot” to appease the god of explosions? I don’t actually know. I fell asleep at around the 35 minute mark and didn’t wake up until there were 5 minutes left in the movie. I will say, there was definitely some gun violence during the scenes where I was awake, and not in the john woo/wick “ballistic ballet” style, but more in the “shoot some guy in the chest and he dies in a shower of blood” style. It’s not especially adrenaline pumping… but it *is* brutal.

What stood out the most from the first act, however, is the hero’s girlfriend. She works as a hostess at a hostess club. For those western folks who might not be in the know, a “hostess club” is where a gentleman can go, sit down, and a pretty girl will join him at his table, and they start playing little game. The gentleman is doing his best to convince himself that a pretty young stranger is actually into him, while the girl is trying to get him to buy the most expensive drinks possible.

You know what? I’m cool with it. Get your joy where you can. Get your hustle on where you can. For a lot of middle aged guys, it makes sense to spend your evening with a pretty girl in a hostess club rather than with your wife. Neither the girl nor your wife will actually have sex with you, but at least the girl is pretending to be interested in whatever nonsense you want to talk about, whereas your wife stopped being interested years ago. And if you’re a hostess, hey, go and make that money, and don’t let nobody be giving you no flak for it neither. The ‘hero’ of the movie straight up asks his girlfriend “Why are you selling yourself at this club?!” and she responds by saying “Why are you a gangster thug?!”. Normally, I find appeal to hypocrisy to be the weakest of debate sauces, but in this case, I was like “Girrrrrrrrrrrrrrlllllllllllllllll!!!!!!!”. Because she’s right, he has no moral authority to judge her! NOBODY does, because ‘morality’ is an artificial construct anyway. Do you know what’s not an artificial construct? Rent. And she has to pay it somehow. That’s a lie, rent actually is a construct, but that doesn’t change what I’m saying.

This amazing hostess ALSO eats her tom yum with her chopsticks in one hand and her spoon in the other hand. What??? Are you supposed to dual wield utensils when eating tom yum? Let me know in the comments below. Actually, don’t, because there currently IS no comment section!

All in all, I would say that 40 minutes of “The Last Shot” is a fine entry in a long list of god of explosions appeasement films from Thailand. Keep it going, guys, I’m sure all will eventually be forgiven. By the way, tom yum is delicious, you should order some.

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3/10

——

The movie really begins during a scene where Sasha (Charlize) encounters Ben (Taron) in the woods. She doesn’t know him. He seems friendly and wants to help her out. While watching this scene unfold, I realized why Charlize couldn’t be the hunter. If you came into this movie having no idea what it was about (it’s too late for *you* to do this, so we’re talking a theoretical person), and you watched Sasha talk to this friendly bloke... You would start to be afraid for her. As the scene went on, even as Ben remained helpful and friendly, that fear would start to amplify. Because Sasha is a woman and Ben is a man. Sasha is a tall, fit, imposing woman, and Ben is a pretty small dude. This is FURIOSA squaring off against Elton John. But it doesn’t matter, you’re afraid for Furiosa.

It’s because of the shroud that covers all interactions between men and women: Men are scary. Women are not.

Now, if Charlize was dressed like Furiosa and had a metal arm... Then maybe that feeling of dread would lessen. But that’s how far you have to go. That’s how culturally ingrained this archetype of the terrifying man is. If you wanted to make an action thriller, then at the end of scene Sasha could pull out a crossbow, tell Ben he’s got a five minute head start, and you’re off to the races. But, if you want what ‘Apex’ is, a horror movie, you can’t. You’re spending the entire scene between Sasha and Ben being afraid on her behalf. If she pulls out the crossbow, the movie is asking you to suddenly switch allegiances. To be afraid for ‘him’. It’s a huge ask, and it’s not going to happen for a lot of the audience. But if *he* pulls out the crossbow, it’s the gong striking at the end of a crescendo of fear that’s been building up. Having Ben be the hunter is the only way the movie remains scary.

And that sucks.

I hate it. I hate that, if a woman and man meet each other for the first time, her default state might very possibly be fear, and his won’t. I’m not saying every woman is afraid of every strange man... Of course that’s not true. What I am saying... Is we have *thousands of years* of men physically brutalizing and subjugating women. Evolutionary biology TELLS HER to be afraid of strange men. Rightly so. For the women that don’t have that fear or can easily put it to the side, that’s awesome. For those that can’t... I genuinely empathize with them, even if I can’t fully understand what they’re going through because I haven’t been through it myself.

What’s worse, I don’t know what to do about it either. I could say ‘respect women’, but tons of men do respect women and would never dream of assaulting them, but that doesn’t really reduce the fear. In fact... If Thanos were to use the infinity gauntlet to make all men treat all women with kindness and respect, it’s not going to fix the fear. There’s too much history there. It runs too deep. Therefore, while I did experience some ‘horror’ while watching Apex, a lot of time I actually just felt sadness at the reality that made it possible.

While we might not be able to solve women’s fears... We can give them kayaks. Honestly, I can’t think of a better way to mitigate that male centric dread than to get in a kayak and hit those rapids. It’s a killer workout that hits all the major muscle groups. In fact, take a look at Sasha if you don’t believe me. Plus, if there’s something even scarier than men, it’s mother nature. After going down that river at 924292 mph facing a strange man might not be casual, but it’ll sure be easier! Kayaks are also inexpensive, and easy to transport!

While I might have felt scared on Sasha’s behalf when she was with Ben, when she was on the river what I felt was awe. Sasha ends up in the drink *a lot* in this movie, sometimes with a kayak and sometimes without, and the action is almost always incredible. Some of the best river rapids work I’ve seen in a film. She flips the kayak upside down, is in the upside down kayak underwater for a time, and then just flips it back over and keeps going down the rapids? Is this something kayakers actually do for fun? If so, mad props because it looks amazing. The river action scenes are the best thing about the movie, and I would probably say they’re worth the price of admission by themselves.

What doesn’t work so well... Is the Ben/Sasha dynamic. I am a huge fan of both Charlize and Taron... But their chemistry is zilch. There’s an extended sequence where the film has them conversing and tries to build this kind of clarice/hannibal vibe, and it just doesn’t work with Ben and Sasha. The dialogue isn’t there, and neither is the chemistry. I would just as soon skipped those scenes and gone back to river or the woods. There’s very few things a critic can say about a movie that are as boring or uninformative as “The cinematography is really beautiful”... But in “Apex”... The Austrailian outback cinematography is actually really beautiful.

Whether you’re on the river or on dry land, I would urge men (and women) to be nice to strangers. You might not solve a paradigm of fear, but you might make somebody’s day a little better. That’s my advice: Be nice. Knowing is half the battle!

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7/10

——

35 or so years ago, one of my friends paid his roommate (who was also my friend... They both still are, actually) $5 to ghostwrite an essay he needed about Langston Hughes for his music history class. Money exchanged hands, an essay was written, and you just read the opening line. In what was to be one of the great travesties of the 20th century, the essay received a failing grade.

In the film “Roommates”, the titular mates are Devon and Celeste. Celeste gets Devon to write her essay for fashion design class. The *closing* line of that essay is

“In every moment of history, jeans were there.”

Other than being awesome, what do these two lines have in common? Are they true? Well, I’m not sure about trumpet = dick, I would have to get a math person up in here, but I wouldn’t be surprised. “In every moment of history, jeans were there” is objectively true. If you really consider them, what jeans *actually are* are little explosions caused by gluons interacting via the strong force. That’s also what *you* are, what the planet jupiter is, and what ‘matter’ has been since hundreds of years before the dawn the history. So, jeans have definitely been there in every moment of history. So have you. But especially jeans.

That’s burying the lead. What those lines actually have in common, is that they’re direct, and they’re easy to understand. If you wanted to write an essay about Langston Hughes, you *could* start it by writing something like “In the racial landscape of the early 20th century, the poetry of Langston Hughes served to subvert the overarching paradigm” and yadda yadda yadda. Guess what. That shit is DUNZO. Nobody wants to read long winded bullshit anymore. Actually, nobody wants to read ANYTHING anymore. Except... Academics do. Academic discourse and analysis, especially in the arts and humanities, has always been masturbatory. Little tidbits of didactic trash they read amongst themselves to feel smart (by the way, I am guilty of this as well). The model was sustainable only because academia itself was deemed necessary. Higher education was a necessary step to secure “elite” status in society. Well, that ain’t true no mo. As AI ascends and all the capital in the world funnels upward to fewer and fewer people, college is becoming more meaningless by the second. This cycle of “academic intelligentsia” that has *also* been around since hundreds of years before the dawn of the history will slowly, but surely, fade into nothingness. Along with human agency in the face of a vastly superior being in the form of AI, but that’s off topic. “Trumpet equals dick” is punchy. It’s terse. It... Kind of makes sense. If you wrote that as your opening line of a music history paper “now”, I would certainly think that the guarantee your paper wasn’t written by an AI chatbot would at least be worth a B-.

Academia isn’t the only relic that will soon fade into dust... The hollywood studio system will be hot on its heels. People are sick of it, and why would anybody consume lower-common-denominator sludge that is carefully engineered to be as non offensive to as many different folks as possible, while being “actually enjoyed” by none of them.

Case in point: “Roommates”. It’s not actually a bad movie. Top to bottom t2b comedies are hard to come by, and if there are some laughs, I’ll take ‘em. However, “Roommates” certainly isn’t an *exceptional* movie, and it’s because of this centrist studio nonsense I was just talking about. “Roommates” is actually two movies (which might not be a surprise, considering it has two writers). The first movie is a dark comedy about two roommates who each think the other has the perfect life. Despite mounting evidence that neither of them have such great lives, the perception remains, and over the course of the movie that jealousy on both sides slowly morphs into hatred, and they eventually go to war. The second movie, is a feel-good underdog story about an innocent girl victimized by her psycho bitch roommate, and her triumphant victory when she finally fights back and overcomes her evil roommate’s machinations. These are not the same story, yet “Roommates” keeps trying to do both. As a result, regardless of which of these stories appeals to you, you’re only *kind of* getting it.

WHY???

Except for the mega-blockbuster, which is becoming more rare every year, movies aren’t making any money anyway (they’re actually being used to launder it). So why are the studios *still* churning out mediocre movies that are designed to *kind of* be liked by everybody, but are *loved* by nobody? Even before we get the point where people can dictate their own movie to an AI and just have it created (that might not be as far off as we think) this *for the masses* studio mentality needs to ride off into the paste. Appeal to your niche! Make the dark comedy. Make the the underdog story. Just don’t hedge your bets and do both. The money is going to get laundered either way, so pick a freakin’ lane and try to make your movie good.

That being said... I will even take an average comedy these days. Starring an average actress. I don’t want to hand Sadie Sandler a burn notice (even though I just did), because she’s actually getting better. *Average* is a step up from *unwatchable*, which is what she was in “You’re so not invited to my bat mitzvah”. Her comic timing is improving, and she has the good sense to tone it down and let actual comic heavyweights like Nick Kroll, Natasha Lyonne, and the immortal Carol Kane do the heavy lifting. I appreciate her for that. Also... The fact that a character yells the line “SHE’S A NEPO BABY?!?” during the film might just be a wink at the audience that being Adam Sandler’s daughter *might* have helped Sadie land the lead role.

So, I strongly encourage all y’all to leave both antiquated studio mandates and indulgent academic nonsense behind, and be direct and honest. If trumpet doesn’t equal dick, I hope you can find what does.

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9/10

——

Plot synopsis from professor Kov: “Guillermo del Toro makes ‘Leon’”. It’s pretty apt, which is why I stole it from him. The check’s in the mail, professor Kov!

But what’s interesting isn’t the plot, it’s the *style*. Actually, the plot is pretty interesting, but the style is even more so. I recall many years back listening to Byran Fuller being interviewed on the “History of Horror” podcast, and he mentioned that when he watches the movie “Alien”, and the alien shows up on screen, all he sees is a vulva.

How does that make any sense? Well, here are two possible explanations.

1) Bryan Fuller is cray cray.

2) Bryan Fuller sees things through the eyes of a child.

You might note that the two things aren’t mutually exclusive, and you might think that the second thing is handing Bryan Fuller a burn notice. But it’s not. It’s actually a compliment!

Here’s the thing about children: They think slow. I don’t mean that they’re idiots (although they are), but I am referring specifically to the “fast thinking” versus “slow thinking” presented by folks like Daniel Kahneman. The check’s in the mail, Daniel!

What is boils down to is this: “Fast thinking” is stuff your brain automatically processes. You don’t have to think about them. For instance, looking at a chair. You don’t need to actively think “that’s a chair”, your wealth of experience and so forth lets you automatically classify it as ‘chair’ without any active thought. Then there’s slow thinking. That’s actually actively thinking about stuff. It’s looking at, say, Ryan Reynolds, and being like “that six pack of abs probably takes hours per week in the gym”. Or when somebody tells you “5 + 5”. You know what “5” is, that’s fast, but you need to take however long it takes to sum them up and get to “10”. That’s slow.

Children don’t know anything. Their fast thinking database is mostly empty, so they have to do a lot more slow thinking. So, we might see an alien and simply know it’s a “xenomorph” without thinking about it, but if a child sees an alien, they have to actively classify it, as a vulva, or a pony, or whatever the @#$! children see when they look at stuff.

“Dust Bunny” presents a world seen through the eyes of an 8 year old. Coming from the vulva xenomorph guy, that isn’t a surprise. What *is* surprising, is just how cool that world actually is. Instead of grainy textures we get vivid colors. Our 8 year old heroine, aurora (sleeping beauty? She does spend a lot of time in her bed, hiding from the monster that lives under it) is kind of obsessed with darkness, shadows, and light, so we get shadows everywhere, and when she finds lights to light up our world brightens as hers does.

This all leads to a... Surreal viewing experience. Everything is just... Off. What this does, is help turn off that “fast thinking” mode of your brain. Because you’re never really sure what you’re looking at, much like a child, you kind of have to classify it. Is that a monster under the bed, or are we manifesting a metaphor for childhood trauma? Is it really this dark, or do we just *feel* like it is? Is that mega hot supermodel assassin real, or is she kind of fear of the feminine mystique made manifest in some way (why are female assassins in movies so hot? Are real female assassins that hot? Somebody with ties to the assassin’s guild needs to let me know!)? What matters isn’t where you eventually land on these issues, what matters is that you have to *think about them* either way.

That process, of actively having to kind of decode the movie because it doesn’t quite conform to reality, is frequently known as “arthouse”, and it’s pretty easy to just be confused and dismiss the movie altogether, and go look for a something a little more explodey. Well... You can’t really dismiss “Dust Bunny”, because, despite being arthouse, it’s ALSO explodey! There are monsters, hot assassins, gunfights, martial arts fights, and Mads Mikkelson, one of the coolest damn actors on earth (much the same way Jean Reno was one of the coolest actors on earth back when he was ‘Leon’). You get all that explodey goodness while being forced to kind of decode an arthouse movie at the same time. It’s like sneaking broccoli into a twinkie. Well, except broccoli is delicious, so that wasn’t the best metaphor... But you know what I mean! Also, do they still even have twinkies? I haven’t seen a twinkie in over 30 years. They were friggin’ tasty.

Would I want all my action movies shrouded in arthouse shadows? Nope. But I certainly want it from my Bryan Fuller movies, and I am looking forward to whatever he does next. Although we could probably use a bit more vulva.

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5/10

——

Yup, THAT Sheila E. If you’re unawares, Sheila E. was a drummer/singer that actually started in the early 70s. By the 80s she was renowned enough to be working with artists like Prince. While I think it’s awesome that bands like The Warning and Band Maid are selling out stadiums, ‘back in the day’ women who rocked got a less credit, and there were some drummers like Sheila E., Denise DuFort, and Karen Carpenter that were AMAZING and never received the recognition they deserved. By the way, #flex, I knew those women WITHOUT googling “female drummers from back in the day”, and now you know them too. I would actually encourage you to google “female drummers from back in the day” and go down that rabbit hole, because it’s pretty freaking rad, and I love seeing them now get the credit that they didn’t get back then. So, I was pretty stoked to see that Sheila E. was in “Nobody Dumps My Daughter”, and while she might not have the acting chops of a Judi Dench or the what have you, it was quite enjoyable watching her fortune teller trying to navigate a convoluted web of blackmail and deceit!

The strands of that web include our three protagonists: Theresa, the hot girl at school saving herself for marriage, Jimmy, her ex-boyfriend that I will call the “Lil’ Dumper” since “Big Dumper” is already taken, and Mary, her complete psychopath of a mother.

Since Jimmy is the real hero of the movie, let’s do some fun facts about him.

1) The character’s name is Jimmy Simpson. There also happens to be an actor named Jimmi Simpson. Umm... Not to hand Jimmi Simpson a burn notice, but if you were going this route, you can do a lot better... You do realize that “Rudolph Valentino” was on the table? Or “R. Lee Ermey?” I mean, who didn’t want this dialogue:

“Hey, R., what’s the haps?”

“Six seven!”

I am *in tune* with the youth and their lingo!

2) Jimmy is white. I have my ear to the digital ground, and I know that the woid on the street is that liberal hollywood has been systematically taking down the white male for the last 15 years, and depriving an entire generation of young men role models that they can look up to. Well, fear not, rudderless gen Z males, because now you have JIMMY! Jimmy is, genuinely, the nicest person in the movie. His GPA is 3.9, so he’s driven and smart! He sleeps with all the hottest girls in school, and it’s not presented as “toxic” at all, it’s presented as “High School Kids Finding Themselves”. Jimmy is the great white hollywood hope.

3) Jimmy doesn’t actually dump Teresa, she dumps him. Jimmy gets drunk and hops in the sack with the other hottest girl in school (again, not toxic, just kids having fun), and before he can get up in there Teresa’s psychopathic mother, Mary, who has been stalking Jimmy, bursts in on him. Now... Instead of saying “Why was your crazy mom stalking me?!?!” Jimmy BEGS TERESA FOR FORGIVENESS. He says he made a mistake, he still loves her, and asks if she will forgive him. He doesn’t even bring up her insane mom! She SLAPS HIM IN THE FACE and dumps him. Who is the ‘toxic’ individual in this scenario? Spoiler alert: It ain’t Jimmy!

This is where Mary reveals her psychopathic nature. After Teresa and Jimmy break up, and Teresa admits to her mom that he has plundered her female treasure, Mary decides that if Jimmy dies... Teresa gets her virginity back. This leads to some questions. Such as... WHAT THE @#$!ING @#$!?

Why exactly does Mary believe this nonsense? What is the root of her psychosis? The movie doesn’t actually tell us. The only thing we know about Mary is that her son died in a car accident when he was 25ish, and that her son and Teresa were born 18 years apart (which is its own form of insanity... 18 years between children?? What?? Why??). This doesn’t really explain anything. Therefore it is up to us, the audience, to figure out why Teresa is crazy, and we can jump to the following reasons:

1) She’s female.

2) She’s latino.

Booooooooooooooooooooring. These reasons might or might not be valid... But what they are not is *interesting*. If you only take one thing away from this review, it should be that Sheila E. is awesome, and she is still touring and you won’t be disappointed if you catch her show. But if there’s a second thing, it’s that you shouldn’t use movies to reinforce your weak sauce stereotypes and prejudices about gender, race, or anything. That’s what the internet is for! To find the root of Mary’s psychotic behavior, we need to take a critical lens and look deeper. Which I did... And this line really struck me:

This is not a direct quote, because I don’t actually remember the line, but the gist of it is this: “Honey, there can only be one.” Now, ostensibly, Mary is talking about boys that Teresa will marry, since Mary is a strict monogamist. However, when Mary says “Honey, there can only be one” I think she is actually referring to the number of people allowed on earth from her home planet: Zeist. Mary is from Zeist. Now... What she is *supposed* to be doing on earth, is killing her fellow Zeistians until only one remains, and that person earns the prize, which is right to travel back to the motherworld. However... Mary went off mission. And can we blame her? We can’t. If you’re looking at it from an alien perspective, Earth is NUTS. People be killin’ each other for no reason... Once you leave high school, sex becomes this insane thing that destroys relationships rather than builds them... It’s all nonsense. Of *course* Mary didn’t survive that exposure with her mind intact. She processes all those nonsensical earthling hangups, and since violence is normalized of course she thinks about murder, and since sex is stigmatized of course she uses her daughter’s deflowering as an excuse to commit said murder.

When you look at it like that, it seems borderline impossible that anybody from Zeist would retain their sanity after coming to earth. You know what? Maybe they haven’t. Maybe coming to earth does them all in. You know what they say, if you roll with the bitches, sooner or later you’re going to come up smelling like a bitch. Spend too much time on earth, and sooner or later you’ll starting thinking like an earthling. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. If Jimmy is our unequivocal hero, then *Earth Itself* is the villain.

Unless you listen to Karen Carpenter, Denise DuFort, and Sheila E. Then Earth is pretty cool.

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3/10