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…
Author: Jon Herrera
Writer, Photographer, Blogger.
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…
Fleabag
Fleabag reminded me a bit of GIRLS, in that it calls itself a comedy, but it isn’t exactly funny. Fleabag is the story of a woman on the downswing. She has her own business, but that business has seen better days. She loves her father, but he has moved on to a new woman after the death of her mother. She has a troubled relationship with her sister, there are hints that things used to be better. She has a boyfriend that she keeps kicking out and taking back. And she is still a bit broken up about her best…
Genius
In 1929 we find Max Perkins sitting behind his desk at Scribners and Sons. He casually crosses out lines and makes notes in the margins of a manuscript with a red pencil. Someone comes in and tells him he needs to read a recent submission. The book is a mountain of pages a foot tall. Max asks if it’s any good. It’s different, the slush pile reader says. We have a montage scene of Max reading the massive manuscript on the train ride home, at the dinning room table, in the living room, and on the train returning to the…
The Whole Truth
The story of a lawyer who is murdered in his bedroom. Like most murder victims in mysteries, he was not a nice guy and the list of suspects includes everyone who ever met him. The redneck Louisiana lawyer is played by Jim Belushi, a face I haven’t seen in awhile. He’s older and fatter, but looks much as he always has. His wife is played by a virtually unrecognizable Renée Zellweger. I didn’t know it was her until I looked at the movie’s IMDB page. The big name star is Keanu Reeves. In fact, the biggest mystery for me was:Why…