Yeah, that sucked. 1984’s Ghostbusters is the only film I ever paid to see twice in a first run theater. The acting was good, the special effects were pretty damned amazing, and the story was compelling. It had it’s funny moments, but Ghostbusters was played straight. Our heroes were real scientists trying to understand something that couldn’t be understood. My favorite scene was the one where the ghosts break containment and flood the city as some wonderfully funky and scary music plays in the background. These were some scary ghosts that go on a murder spree. 2016’s Ghostbuster cost a…
Author: Jon Herrera
Writer, Photographer, Blogger.
Crisis in Six Scenes
A classic Woody Allen story. If, like me, your all time favor Woody Allen film is Anne Hall, then your in luck. Crsis in Six Scenes is basically an 80 year old Alvin Singer shuffling around, bitiching and moaning about everything, and baffled as to why no one cares what he has to say. Of course, if your coming to Crisis in Six Scenes with the expectation this is going to be groundbreaking new work from the man who hasn’t changed his looks, jokes, or formulas since the late 1950s, well, what the hell are you thinking? This is Woody…
HBO’s Westworld
The original Westworld was a pretty simple bit of business. We follow a couple of men as they go on vacation at the best theme park in the world and something goes wrong. There was very little depth, the last half of the film was one long chase scene. And a slow chase at that. HBO and J.J. Abrams have taken Michael Crichton’s basic idea of an interactive Disneyland and expanded it to include subtle motivations for the characters, both human and machine. In a nice twist, we find a few characters in reverse roles. Instead of an evil robot,…
Captain America: Civil War
Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Superheroes. Most superheroes started out as slightly above average people who spent their spare time tracking down muggers and bank robbers. Captain America started out fighting the Axis Powers during World War Two. Somewhere along the line, fighting crime became a little too boring. Superman could catch every criminal in the world if he really wanted to, so we have to throw something bigger and badder at him. Captain America: Civil War takes the easy way out. Who are the only people who can challenge superheroes? Other superheroes, of course. It’s the same path of least…
Dead Poets Society
The Good Old Days Weren’t Always Good. I remember loving Dead Poets Society when I first saw it about a million years ago in 1989. It’s a movie I see once in a while, but not so often that I have the whole thing committed to memory. I just re-watched it and I have to say that it’s just as brilliant as it was when I first saw it. We start off in this fantasy world of 1959 where the sons of rich men are sent off to boarding school to ensure a prosperous future. Such silly ideas as happiness or pursuing…
Buddymoon
David is a struggling actor who is about to be married. Then his fiancee tells him that she has changed her mind. He’s bummed out about it, but his slightly insane friend Flula tries to cheer him up. Seems David had already paid for this cool hiking trip. So, the two of them go for a hike. The actor and his nutty German buddy. David is also up for a big part, as the lead in the story of explorers Lewis and Clark. There is a running gag where our hero narrates a bit of the story of Lewis and…
The Girl With The Lower Back Tattoo
I’m not a fan of Amy Schumer. I’ve never seen her show and I missed the season of Last Comic Standing that was her breakout moment. But I do like memoirs, even pretty bad memoirs can have one or two good moments. I love the title of The Girl With Lower Back Tattoo. That is pure fucking genius. By the way, Amy loves the word fuck. And the word fucking. And the words clit, cunt, pussy, vagina, asshole, cock, dick, penis, shit, bastard, and pretty much any other word you have ever heard that might in any way make you uncomfortable.…
Zoom
We find ourselves in the middle of three different stories which are intimately connected to each other. All three feature creatives telling a story. The first story we see is set in a sex doll factory. Over sexualized torsos hang from hooks like the bodies in a horror movie or meat in a slaughterhouse. For some reason I was expecting more from these dolls, I thought they were going to turn out to be like the robots in A.I. Or Surrogates. But no, they are just life sized dolls. Two of our heroes are turned on by working around these sex…
Florence Foster Jenkins
Near the start of the film, we find Florence and her husband St Clair taking in a performance at Carnegie Hall in 1944. They watch a young woman singing opera. Florence weeps at the beauty of the singing. It’s clear at this moment that she can tell good singing from bad singing, and yet, throughout the rest of the film, she carries on as if her own singing merely needs just a bit of polishing to be perfect. Her singing is remarkably bad. But what she lacks in talent she more than makes up for in wealth. Her husband tells…
The Night Of
The story of a man who may or may not have killed a woman after he had sex with her. We see a good deal of the story from the young man’s point of view. The Night Of is a great looking show. It has really good production values and a great cast. We follow around several characters. Mainly the young Pakistani man who is the prime suspect and an older man with bad feet who is his lawyer. We also look through the eyes of the DA and the lead Detective once in a while. It’s a classic locked…