When you need a man with a very particular set of skills, you’d better call nobody. when you think about the career trajectory for Bob Odenkirk, he has truly had one of the most unique career paths. David Cross certainly hasn’t had the same level of against type performances. Now, after surprising with being an action star in the first film, he’s back because people like money. The first Nobody did OK at the box office, and proved to be a bit more of a charmer on streaming, eventually widening its fan base. I think given some time, this sequel … Continue reading Nobody 2

A documentary that a review really can’t do justice. it’s hard to sit here and type, as a non-veteran, and convey the same emotion effectively as the veterans do in Netflix’s new documentary In Waves And War. The purpose of the film is to show how radical new drug therapies are helping soldiers with their PTSD, and in order to do that, we have to get to know the soldiers. they bravely served, and now courageously sit for this documentary feature and share their horror stories about what they went through. Most of these guys signed up just before 9/11, … Continue reading In Waves And War

How nice for Hollywood to arrange a play date between two actors. One of them is on the rise, and benefits from being able to pull off comedy, and the other is on the decline, and needed to prove relevancy by pairing with an actor with a pulse. Kevin james (60) and Alan ritchson is 42. Much like how Hollywood loves to put older men with hot younger ladies, james is paired with a hot younger guy for a buddy action comedy where he’s not apparently “too old for this shit”. Also, can we reflect on James being 60? My … Continue reading Play Date

On a side note, a documentary about the two dogs that played Eddie on Frasier would be a fun watch. I hear they had some beef, and we could really dig into it. This, however, is fan service starring Eddie Murphy where he talks about himself. this follows in the grand tradition of a hundred other documentaries and docuseries we’ve had this year where a camera was plunked down in front of someone famous, or a filmmaker honed in on a famous person. Off the top of my head, Charlie Sheen, Paul Reuben’s, Billy Joel, Diane warren, Janis Ian, Susan … Continue reading Being Eddie

The second Richard Linklater film this year had me worried. If you stumbled here from the perspective of a sighted person, good for you. I certainly miss not worrying about walking into a theater and thinking about accessibility, and I certainly miss the world view we get from international cinema. Nouvelle Vague is probably 95% in French. As DuoLingo reminds me, I’m not fluent in French. the gods of random audio description assignment came through this year, and blessed me with a lovely track for this. Sadly, the bar was so low,a slug could have cleared it. Not only are … Continue reading Nouvelle Vague

Following up my review of Andrea Gibson in Come See Me In The Good Light, I now have the Susan Powter documentary. I swear i didn’t grow up in an underground cave. I do know people and things, and I pretty consistently kill pop culture references. Yet, I had to privilege to learn who Andrea Gibson was, and now I have the same to learn who Susan Powter is. Based on the clips, I should know who she is. Even though I was a kid for the 80’s and 90’s, and wasn’t into infomercials, I still recognized certain people whose … Continue reading Going In Blind: Stop The Insanity: Finding Susan Powter

I’ve heard excellent things about this film all year, and finally got the chance to check it out. I ignored the opportunity to do n advance screening since Apple doesn’t include audio description, just so I could get the whole experience. It was totally worth it. for fans of Andrea Gibson, I think this bittersweet approach to her final moments will be more poignant, but I had no idea who she was, and I still adored this. Andrea could have been anything, and still the way this film is shot, the story told, is beautiful. It takes one of the … Continue reading Come See Me In the Good Light

Available today for rental or purchas is Bunny, a dark comedy set in a tenement in New York, where the ragtag misfit residents pool together to help one of their own. the most immediately recognizable cast member is Henry Czerny, most known for being “that guy” in a hundred different things. Often typecast as a villain, the nominal screentime he’s given here is at least against type. But Henry can’t really save Bunny from itself. It isn’t that Bunny is some travesty to cinema, but as a product of some friends who wanted to make a film, it suffered from … Continue reading Going In Blind: Bunny

Actors have long been willing to put themselves in harms way for their craft. weight gain and loss has been right at the top of this, with actors bouncing all around the scale in hopes of earning critical praise. For an actor like Orlando Bloom, whose career is teetering on relevancy, and has never been nominated for an Oscar, I’m sure he saw the Cut as a quick fix to that. He lost 52 pounds for the role. It isn’t quite the 62 pounds Christian Bale lost for the Machinist, but perhaps still more dangerous. Bale didn’t have to play … Continue reading The Cut

Heading into this, I had no idea who Ai Weiwei is. Listen, I’m into film, television, and pop culture. I’m telling you, I kill it from my living room at Pop Culture Jeopardy. the problem is I can’t enter as a solo act. However, I am loosely familiar with Tura dot. In my free time, which actually is a misnomer because my free time goes to this stuff, and the other thing is how I get money, but I work with musicians. Classically trained musicians, music theatre performers, choirs, musicals, etc. I work in the performing arts. So as a … Continue reading Going In Blind: Ai weiwei’s Turandot

Here is a little film with some big talent behind it. Peter Hujar’s Day is Ira Sachs’s follow up to Passages, which also starred Ben Whishaw. The two are back together to provide not so much a biopic of photographer Peter Hujar, but more like a docudrama dramatization of a conversation he might have had with a friend (Rebecca Hall). He recounts parts of his life that are the most memorable to him, in a near stream of consciousness experience. If Hujar was given more emotionally taxing and bombastic moments, it would be a tour de force for Whishaw, since … Continue reading Going In Blind: Peter Hujar’s Day