Been a long time since I watched this and an even longer time since I read the book. It’s considered a horror classic for good reason and it shows how good horror films can be. It’s a shame more of the intelligentsia don’t take the genre seriously.

At its core it’s about a girl coming of age and man’s inhumanity to man. In the #metoo era we’re considering the importance of women and their role in cinema, society, and everything else. Here we have a film that shows a host of very rich female characters. The teacher who is well-intentioned and helpful and the kind motherly presence Carrie needs. The birth mother who is a horrid religious bitch. The alpha female who uses her weak boyfriend to rig the blood that spills on Carrie and her connections to rig the vote that gets Carrie on the stage in the first place. Then there’s the alpha’s former friend who pushes back against her cruelty and tries to help Carrie by having her boyfriend take Carrie to the prom. All the men are pawns – it’s a woman’s world.

DePalma and King capture perfectly the ways in which we are so cruel to each other and it’s a profoundly depressing movie. Don’t be an asshole.

This has been on and off my top 25 throughout my life and I think it might be there right now, but it had been a while since I saw it last. This time I watched it with the girls and loved it as much as I ever have. Zoe asked a million questions and I had to give them a history lesson on the Nazis (a supplement to the same lesson that was given while watching Sound Of Music), but we got through it. Great film in so many ways.

Love the ensemble, the music, love the few Americans who are in there and their contribution to the escape. I actually didn’t think about the dark ending when recommending the film to the girls, but I think it worked out okay. I also love the ending despite it not being the most cheery of outcomes. It does a good job of showing the difference between an average German and a true believer/true Nazi type who just wants the world to burn. Them getting out and then getting gunned down shows you the nature of the Nazis and is a good introduction to evil, especially considering the rest of the ending isn’t as depressing. Good mix.

Great fun, great feels, just a great epic of a film. Can’t wait to revisit more classics with the kids.

Didn’t remember a lot about the film and it ends more depressingly than I recalled. I remembered that she was nuts and that was definitely the case upon second viewing as well.

Love the brother/sister relationship. This movie is fucked up. Revolutionary Road is about as bad as marriage can get and then this one comes along. Fuck. Movies are cautionary tales. There are a lot of ways your life can unfold. Choose a movie, but don’t choose this one.

Much hyped, but disappointing. It’s a very LA film, but even more than that, it’s a very Hollywood insider film. A lot of it reminds me of GTA the video game with a lot of driving around and a lot of time spent on the radio stations to establish the time period. This is probably the film’s greatest strength and I think this is one reason it did fairly well during the awards
season – the timing and location of the film coincide with the experiences of a lot of the voters. If you’re 50-60 and living/working in LA/Hollywood then there’s a good chance you’ll like this one. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s a pretty narrow film to me.
I really didn’t see the performances as all that amazing. I love Margot Robbie, though. The cast was big and diverse. Had the Tarantino touch in that it was a film lovers movie. Overrated.

Really great film that I rewatched because of the coronavirus. Good music, great cast and acting, love Soderbergh’s pacing and direction. Just really solid all around. His commercial films are really fun to watch. The indie stuff is a little hit or miss, however.

Documentary that follows a self-described feminist who looks into the Men’s Rights Movement and the backlash to feminism. A couple of these guys are bit fringey, but overall I take the movement seriously at this point. They raise valid points about both feminism as well as the place of men in our society. Major points include the fact that women are sex objects, but men are success objects.
Men comprise 93% of workplace deaths, don’t live as long, comprise 99% of war deaths, get much worse sentences for the same crimes relative to women, circumcision is brought up, etc.
I think the take away from this should be that we’re all humans. We’re all individuals. Life is suffering and we all suffer to some extent. We need to learn to get along. All advantages have another side of the coin. The shitty ways women have been treated isn’t because of an all powerful patriarchy that all men benefit from – in fact many men suffer as a result of this “patriarchy” because it creates gender
roles for them as well.
Perhaps the best point was by a woman who is an MRA who pointed out that feminists are often keen to point out how much words matter, they will also often claim to not be anti-man, and yet the worst force in society (the patriarchy) is named after men.
Perhaps the worst thing I can say about this is that it may have been disingenuous simply because one of the producers is Mike Cernovich – who is a right wing nut of sorts. While the director seems earnest and like she’s really a feminist who is grappling with these new ideas…the fact that Cernovich is involved makes me wonder. Nevertheless the ideas presented are still valid and I think need to be
addressed in our society one way or another. Currently we are ignoring the fact that men have it bad in any way at all. A perfect example of this was a teacher I once had (who was on Jeopardy and was very bright) who once pointed out that men were the ones who died in all the wars, but would always follow that up with “but then again they start all the wars too!” with an implied “checkmate” after
this declaration. I’m sure all the lower class guys dying on the battlefields are happy to march to their death knowing that their penises started the wars so it’s no big deal. JFC.

Oldie but goodie which I wanted to revisit with the coronavirus stuff that’s going around. Pretty simple overall, but good stuff. Definitely dated at this point, but a solid little film from the director of Das Boot.

30 for 30 did a podcast series on this asshole and this documentary is just as good or better. The people who took his shit and put him on a pedestal are wacky, but he’s a truly bad person.

Documentary about the flat earth movement. If you haven’t heard about this where have you been? Also, it’s a real thing where real people believe that the earth is flat and that science generally isn’t doing a good job. I can understand some of the latter since there are things that science gets wrong and there’s a general lack of trust in institutions these days, but these are truly the
most wacky of conspiracy theorists. Interesting.

cheesy production, writing and acting. Pretty bad all around. Two talented actors at pretty much their worst here. Not sure why I finished it.

Didn’t love it the first time I saw it because I think it’s a bit of a rangy movie that needs some editing. Now I’m watching it again and I’m 40 and the lack of editing doesn’t bother me as much as the reality of the comedy. Ah, getting old.

From the creator of Last Chance U…another Netflix documentary series that follows a successful JuCo sports team, but this time it’s a cheerleading squad instead of football. I’m not cheerleading fan, but this was a great series. Loved the coach who really stands by her athletes. The athletes are coming of age and finding their way in the world and I always like that kind of stuff. Great
stuff. Tears were shed.

30 for 30 documentary about Felipe Lopez the basketball player who was heralded as the next MJ. How many times have they said that, by the way? Tracy McGrady, Lopez, Kobe, Vince Carter, Lebron…probably a bunch of others I’m forgetting or not aware of. Not particularly great

Finally got around to seeing this one. Features several vignettes (8, I think) of people getting a million bucks from an eccentric benefactor who doesn’t want the money going to his shitty family so he gives it to random people instead. One guy is a serial forger so he’s unable to cash the check (karma). One guy is on death row so sucks for him. One guy gets a dozen cars and runs
people off the road if they are driving poorly. One is a woman who just wants to be left alone to sleep in her own bed without her stockings on (pre-code so they show her getting pretty skimpy). Pretty good idea and apparently it became a TV show later on. 1932.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer was based on his guy. Not sure if they didn’t get the memo about him being a fraud or if they just liked the story and ran with it anyway. Henry Lee Lucas basically lied to a Texas sheriff about his involvement in hundreds of murders and the sheriff bought it. Perhaps because he wanted to be the guy who took down the most prolific murderer of all-time,
perhaps because he wanted to help other cops “solve” murders to give the cases closure, or perhaps because he was just gullible. Anyway, it was all exposed when people started realizing that he was admitting to murders committed just a day or two after other murders he admitted to across the country. Even better, he admits to these murders when they can show work and probation records that
have him in entirely different locations. So, this guy with an 87 IQ fooled all these cops into thinking he was a monster because that’s what they wanted. Can’t make this shit up.

Finally checked this off the list. Little kid gets offed in the opening sequence so that was pretty ballsy. It’s also a unique idea (the monsters are attracted to even the slightest noise). I really loved the atmosphere and idea, but the execution really had me scratching my head. Why are these people living in a wide open house where these monsters can hear them taking a dump or
whatever? They had a basement area that was more quiet, but shouldn’t their entire living situation be inside a highly padded and insulated area? Instead they’re making dinner with the doors open and shit. Collect some mattresses and line the walls with them for fuck’s sake. Ugh. I love end of the world type stuff, but they need to write this stuff a lot smarter. Part 2 comes out this year.

Brad Anderson flick. My dad was big into him after Session 9. I never saw the huge appeal. Spoilers. This one is a pretty straightforward psychological thriller where the protagonist thinks there’s a conspiracy to hide his family from him, but it turns out that he just murdered them and suffered a psychological break. Oops.

If you’ve seen one of these films then you’ve seen them all. Wrongly accused guy goes to jail and young lawyer gets him out through intelligence and grit. It’s a good story, it’s a true story, it’s got a couple good performances (Jaime Foxx mostly). Longer than it should have been. We need criminal justice reform and the death penalty shouldn’t exist.

Great documentary about Ron Artest. He was a favorite of mine and his story is an interesting one since it’s not just the usual athlete story. It touches on the Detroit incident, his upbringing, his mental illness, his time with the Fakers, etc. It’s a feel good story to see this guy come out the other side in a much better place than he was for a long time. He was one of my
favorites for good reason.

Good style but it’s not my style. Appreciate the acting and suspense and the language/writing. But it’s a film that is just about weird witchcraft stories from a time when people spent too much time in the dark because candle wax was like a week’s salary so they were bound to think up weird shit.

Unique film that is shot entirely in a car with a guy (Locke) driving at night to see the birth of his baby in another city. Only it’s not his wife’s kid and he’s running the largest non-military concrete pour in European history tomorrow and he won’t be able to make it. His life is basically falling apart as he loses his job, his wife breaks up with him after he tells her where he’s going, etc. It’s about
obligation and the ghosts of our father and doing what’s right despite the consequences. Good film – one of the best of 2013.

I’ve been sick so I watched a few movies today. This one has been on the list for a while. Pretty much what I expected. Style-wise it’s a very dated film. The look and feel was very mid-90s. Lots of close-ups. Damon was pretty good.

edit: probably had COVID while watching this.

Netflix series that takes on different kinds of evidence used in criminal trials – sniffing dogs, blood splatter, touch DNA, etc. and basically shows the frailty of each. Hopefully courtrooms get the memo and don’t rely on any of this.

Spike Lee Joint that got some Oscar buzz, but shouldn’t have. It’s like Lee’s 8th best movie, and it’s not in the top ten for the year by any stretch.
As serious commentary it was more balanced than you might expect considering the source. There’s a good deal of nuance when depicting some of the less savory aspects. At the same time he basically shows that most of the KKK members are just stupid hicks. I expected it to take the tack that KKK sentiments are actually a more widespread problem – this is the tack of many on the woke left today.
“White supremacism is widespread and pervasive.” Instead the bumbling idiots populate the KKK and there’s room for reasonable whites outside of it.
Plot-wise there really wasn’t all that much to write home about. Not exceptionally interesting or compelling. The “climax” wasn’t all that exciting or compelling. Acting was good.
The end was more along the lines of what I was expecting – capitalizing on the mood of the moment with Trump in office and racial tensions inflamed. It was really jarring to bring in Charlottesville after the rest of the movie. It was sad to see the footage, but it wasn’t because of anything that Lee did. It was actually a cheap move to insert it to achieve an emotional reaction at the end of his lackluster film.
It would be like remaking The Siege and then ending it with the twin towers falling down. It’s an okay movie followed up by an intense real life event in order to give more import to the former. Cheap and uninteresting.

Short TV series with Russell Crowe about Roger Ailes of Fox Network fame. Pretty well done and acted. Enjoyable overall. Sticks it to him here and there as the filmmakers clearly don’t love the guy. Depicting him (accurately) as an impotent fatass. I didn’t shed any tears. I also don’t shed many tears for the likes of Gretchen and Megyn who went along with the lies of the propaganda
media outlet while it suited their interests. They shouldn’t face harassment, of course, but they also aren’t the angels that are depicted here and in Bombshell – they were complicit in the worst parts of the Ailes legacy (Fox News).

gets interesting with the multiple dimensions stuff, but ultimately didn’t really go anywhere. i think i’m just not cut out for these types of sci-fi flicks. i want answers and resolution and they can never deliver. Pi is about as good as it gets when it comes to a protagonist searching for answers about the reality of life and how the world works.

some of the best war movies, probably forgetting some good ones…paths of glory, full metal jacket, great escape, all quiet on the western front, platoon, saving private ryan, dunkirk, das boot, stalag 17…1917 joins the list.
Really great film from beginning to end. Grabs you right away and you realize pretty early on that you’re watching a single shot. There are a few tricks to make it work, but it’s mostly the real thing. It’s not Russian Ark or even Rope, but this is a more difficult film to shoot than Rope and it’s definitely better than Russian Ark. The cinematography is amazing and should win the oscar. Roger Deakins is one of
the best of all-time and he kills it here. The look is great, but the camera movement and where it goes is even more impressive. I don’t know how they did it.
So, as a technical achievement, this is an amazing film and that’s all fine enough. As a piece of artwork it’s just as good, or better. The way it grabs you, the way it shows you the horrors of war, the quick bonds that are formed, the kid singing in the middle of the forest (reminiscent of Paths of Glory), the artistry of the tracking shots in the trenches (Paths of Glory again), the tracking shot during the battle
(perpendicular to Paths of Glory), the range of human emotion, the cleansing of the river with the falling cherry tree blossoms that leads to a river of dead….just so many great scenes and emotions and artistic decisions. The sniper scene reminded me of Full Metal Jacket. I guess you could say it was derivative if you were really cynical, but I’d say it’s more like Reservoir Dogs or Tarantino in general – all
these moments that are pulled from other great war films are homages – hip-hop samples done to create a new film. This is its own thing and it’s wonderfully done. Best film of the year.

started watching the Loudest Voice on HBO so this was well-timed. Pretty good overall and very watchable. A bit of an odd choice to have the voiceover and have the characters speaking to the camera. However, I thought it was a really good choice to have Theron, as Megyn Kelly, talking off camera during the credits as our first intro to her. She really nails the voice so it allows you to think
of her as Kelly even more. Then we see her and it’s a little bit of “oh, that’s Charlize Theron,” but the makeup is really good and her voice has already sold you so the illusion is as complete as it can be. At several points I found myself forgetting that it was Theron – and that’s a rarity in film.
Overall, it was the performances that made the film. Theron was oscar-worthy, as were Robbie and Lithgow. Nicole Kidman was okay, but not great. Pretty decent movie overall.

pierre morel directed film about a woman who loses her husband and child and then seeks revenge. i love revenge films so this is right up my alley. it’s the same thing as death wish and a million other revenge films. it’s well done enough to stand on its own.

still a classic adam sandler/sports movie. possibly the best of the sandler movies and in the running for best sports movies, even though i don’t usually think of it (probably because it’s golf).

as far as family movies go this one wasn’t too bad. nothing objectionable for the kids and then seemed to like the silly humor. for the parents, there’s enough to keep the mind busy so i think i managed to stay awake for this one.

one of the best ever. this is the first time the girls have seen it and it took three nights for them to finish it. an hour to get them hooked, another 30 minutes while we had the time and then finished it off on new year’s eve. zoe bawled her eyes out at the end and merritt followed suit (though i think it was more in solidarity than anything else).

when i was younger i think i glossed over most of the movie and really hung onto the life affirming aspects of the ending…everyone coming together and george loving his family and all that. as i get older i really appreciate the degree to which george’s life is suffering, sacrifice, and needless pain. he’s surrounded by idiots like his uncle. he’s constantly sacrificing his own life goals for those of others…or, more accurately – for the duty he feels to others to help.

of course all this is paid off in the end. his amazing wife rallies the troops and they lift him up when he’s down. he’s down in part because of them, sure, but that’s also just how life is. living the solo life is kind of empty, right?

i fell in love with an on screen character once (lauren bacall in to have and have not), but donna reed might be #2 here. she’s amazingly beautiful, but, more importantly, she so supportive and loving of george here. clarence is his angel, sure, but mary is his rock and the hero of the ending. she’s amazing.

really gotta appreciate the mother in this movie. the way she handles the fight that ralphie gets into really earns her an award. this is mothering at its best. then there’s the soap sequence which is old school mothering. i hope they keep showing this movie as the years go on, but there are some outdated and less than woke moments that i could see people getting their panties in a bunch over if the woke-inati keep going like they have been. fantastic film.

a good enough ending to an epic story that has taken 42 years to complete. the rise of rey skywalker was fun to watch. the emperor coming back to life was a bit odd, but i rolled with it.

good enough ending to a pretty good series. some great moments in the series and a lot of chuckles along the way. skewering the tech industry is also fun. all around enjoyable series that lost a bit of its mojo after ehrlich left the show, but was obviously entertaining enough to stick with it.

i hope this sci-fi is going somewhere. it’s somewhat interesting in that it’s novel and i keep wondering what’s going to happen. i hope they have a plan and it all makes some degree of sense in the end. not sure how long i’ll stick around….

had high hopes for this one. saw the preview a while back and thought it looked really good. finally got around to seeing it in the theater after the hype built up a bit and was disappointed.
i get some of the social commentary and symbolism, but i must be missing a lot. the ending wasn’t particularly shocking or cathartic or scary. overall it was an interesting journey that took me to a place the left me wanting more. i just wasn’t that into it. i don’t know where it wanted me to go or what i was supposed to get out of it, but i didn’t get there. Disappointing.

this dude got a raw deal. i had heard about him on a podcast and probably picked up a bit from the contemporaneous reporting, but didn’t remember all that much until the podcast several months back. eastwood gets a great performance from a relative nobody. the bad guys are the government agents who are overzealous and the media that totally get the story wrong and run with it nonetheless. these kinds of stories are why the media is even worse than Trump. how many times do they need to pull this shit on innocent people or kill howard dean’s campaign by playing a stupid scream over and over again or kill gore by playing his sighing at the debates over and over again? the media are ravenous and all consuming. the medium is the message and the medium of 24 hour news networks and (worse) twitter is about as shitty as one can imagine. we’re fucked.

fred rogers is one of the few people in public life who appears to be the genuine article. wysiwyg. he’s corny and all that, but he’s authentic and that goes a long way. the angle of it being about the author who writes about mr. rogers is novel and allows for you to approach him through that jaded lens. as a result it never becomes a hagiography. they are foils for each other and rogers is a foil for the author’s dad as well. he’s a foil for all of us in a way because he’s practically perfect in every way (to borrow a phrase). zoe cried.

still good and worth the watch. good finale. next season should be just as good. i don’t quite understand what keeps these kids coming back to their shit head father.

erin brockovich type film where a guy goes up against dupont and teflon. this is what happens when power concentrates. we can’t allow this as a society. the left is concerned about corporations and the right is concerned about governments. they’re both correct. solid flick.

3rd installment same as the rest but with different characters. just as good.

agatha christie-esque murder mystery. ana de armas was really good and it had me guessing the entire time. i thought it was going to be more twisted than it turned out to be. fun enough.

short documentary about the camp fire. my uncle lost his home and possessions in this fire so it was a bit more personal knowing people who were affected by it. anytime it’s closer to home you view it differently. these people went through hell and it was intense seeing their perspectives.

great series that i almost stopped watching about five minutes in. the opening sequences, wherein you are introduced to key characters, was pretty trite and didn’t give me much hope for the rest of the series. aside from that, though, the series is really solid and interesting. i’m not a huge tech guy, but there seems to be a real love of tech and the tech talk made sense to me (though maybe it’s bullshit to people who really know this stuff). brought back a lot of memories of the early gaming, internet, and computer community. just a hell of a ride and i really liked the series overall.

spoilers ahead…i didn’t realize it was only a four season run so when i got to the final season i was pretty surprised by a lot of what happened and how it ended. i didn’t foresee the death of gordon at all, and the way they did it was really great and impactful. definitely made me tear up thinking about dying relatively young with kids still growing up. really changes your perspective on all the bullshit that he battled and the relationships he had. great series.

great series that i almost stopped watching about five minutes in. the opening sequences, wherein you are introduced to key characters, was pretty trite and didn’t give me much hope for the rest of the series. aside from that, though, the series is really solid and interesting. i’m not a huge tech guy, but there seems to be a real love of tech and the tech talk made sense to me (though maybe it’s bullshit to people who really know this stuff). brought back a lot of memories of the early gaming, internet, and computer community. just a hell of a ride and i really liked the series overall.

spoilers ahead…i didn’t realize it was only a four season run so when i got to the final season i was pretty surprised by a lot of what happened and how it ended. i didn’t foresee the death of gordon at all, and the way they did it was really great and impactful. definitely made me tear up thinking about dying relatively young with kids still growing up. really changes your perspective on all the bullshit that he battled and the relationships he had. great series.

great series that i almost stopped watching about five minutes in. the opening sequences, wherein you are introduced to key characters, was pretty trite and didn’t give me much hope for the rest of the series. aside from that, though, the series is really solid and interesting. i’m not a huge tech guy, but there seems to be a real love of tech and the tech talk made sense to me (though maybe it’s bullshit to people who really know this stuff). brought back a lot of memories of the early gaming, internet, and computer community. just a hell of a ride and i really liked the series overall.

spoilers ahead…i didn’t realize it was only a four season run so when i got to the final season i was pretty surprised by a lot of what happened and how it ended. i didn’t foresee the death of gordon at all, and the way they did it was really great and impactful. definitely made me tear up thinking about dying relatively young with kids still growing up. really changes your perspective on all the bullshit that he battled and the relationships he had. great series.

somehow this is #6 in the series. i think i missed #4 and 5. sarah connor is one of the more interesting characters in cinema history. her arc from innocent 20-something to bad ass grandma is something else. the shit she’s gone through (mental hospital, time in mexico, globe trotting killing terminators, etc.) is pretty intense. good film. watched it on imax and i think that helped. cameron from halt and catch fire is the terminator and she did a fine job. she’s a cyborg/hybrid type and that works.

pretty good follow up that would stand well on its own, but doesn’t compare to the first. impossible to live up the first.

fine enough. small nap time.

classic comedy. doesn’t get old.

great series that i almost stopped watching about five minutes in. the opening sequences, wherein you are introduced to key characters, was pretty trite and didn’t give me much hope for the rest of the series. aside from that, though, the series is really solid and interesting. i’m not a huge tech guy, but there seems to be a real love of tech and the tech talk made sense to me (though maybe it’s bullshit to people who really know this stuff). brought back a lot of memories of the early gaming, internet, and computer community. just a hell of a ride and i really liked the series overall.

spoilers ahead…i didn’t realize it was only a four season run so when i got to the final season i was pretty surprised by a lot of what happened and how it ended. i didn’t foresee the death of gordon at all, and the way they did it was really great and impactful. definitely made me tear up thinking about dying relatively young with kids still growing up. really changes your perspective on all the bullshit that he battled and the relationships he had. great series.

binged this one after coming late to the party. good series. this father is the definition of toxic. the family dynamic is an extreme version of what probably a lot of people feel their family is like. this is hilarious and awful.

netflix, adam sandler, jennifer aniston. kind of a murder on the orient express type flick. pretty funny in fits and spurts. pretty much what you expect from sandler at this point. totally watchable.

same director as American Movie so it’s already pretty good in my book. pretty epic failure of an event. i shed zero tears watching these rich entitled millennials not get the dream vacation they were hoping for after falling for a slick instagram video. despite the victims not being sympathetic, it was still pretty fucked up what went down. at one point there’s a guy who is in charge of keeping the catering together and he went to a vendor’s place fully intending to suck his dick to make sure that the catering would actually get done. it’s really remarkable the lengths people went to to try to keep this fucking thing from totally failing. unfortunately it was really poorly planned and oversold from the very beginning. great example of what bad leadership leads to. good stuff.

slow and deliberate pace. great visuals. nice to see these characters again. not at the same frenetic level that the series was at, but was great to be back in the breaking bad universe for a while.

documentary about a guy whose dad owned a baseball card shop. it starts out as a look at the baseball card industry (which brought back a lot of memories) and then evolves to be about the relationship he had (or didn’t) with his dad.

interesting part of the story. well done enough and rounds out the star wars universe which is cool for those of us who don’t follow the video games, comics, etc.

still pretty good.

adam devine comedy about a guy obsessed with his cell phone. passes the time and is basically on point about the central role the phone has taken in our lives and the consequences thereof.

really great film and phenomenal performance. i thought there was no way that phoenix (talented as he is) would approach the genius performance of heath ledger in dark knight. and yet he did just that. i can’t honestly say which is better. they are both all-time great performances and totally unique. amazing to think that jack nicholson (who is better than either of them) took this same role and didn’t really do much with it. there’s some revisionism in the telling of the early batman story (it wasn’t actually the joker who killed him in this telling), but i’m not a purist or someone who cares about comic canon or anything like that. soundtrack was really good also. really, though, it’s about phoenix’s performance. great job.

still good. make more please.

early aaron sorkin flick that reads a bit like an early west wing draft. it’s a quaint film nowadays. has its moments, but isn’t a rewatchable.

fine enough. never really loved the addams family, but the idea is fine enough. we all feel like the addams family sometimes…outcasts that aren’t understood by everyone else.

coming of age girls movie. pretty much the opposite of what i want to watch and not really appropriate for 4 and 6 year olds. oops. the sisterhood of the traveling tampon aspect is affirmational, though.

definitely into the absurd at this point and as good as ever. early on the series felt like it was excusing the behavior of these crazy characters. maybe it was more that it wasn’t judging them like i felt it should have. now it’s sufficiently crazy and i pretty much just laugh at these idiots making the same mistakes over and over. i guess we all have our faults or whatever.

pinocchio in space. apocalypse now in space. rife with symbolism. slow overall, but worth it. we all live in the shadows of our fathers to some extent and this film takes it to the extreme – everything depends upon this one man chasing his father, going through a rebirth to find him, etc. it’s all there. good film, but not for everyone.

comedy/drama series that keeps you guessing and interested. good performances and good writing that doesn’t settle into a familiar groove. second season should be a good test.

great true crime type series following the rise of the FBI behavioral unit that identified serial killers and their behavior profiles. acting is really good. has the david fincher style. good stuff.

asian zombie movie that was praised by edgar wright, but didn’t do much for me.

good performances from the kids and it made for a good trailer, but it wasn’t packed with laughs like i was hoping. overall pretty ho hum.

nap time was pretty solid on this one.

hbo gets into the serial podcast story and basically does a rehash (with updates). not a lot of new stuff here. overall i lean towards innocence, but i could see it going either way. another in a long line of cases that we’ll probably never know about.

coach is good a recruiting and i think understands these kids pretty well, but doesn’t provide the kind of model for success that i would like. couple that with the fact that he’s not winning anymore and you get the inevitable conclusion of him being fired. i continue to like this series. next year is coming to laney in oakland.

raunchy and oversexed comedy about coming of age. nails puberty about as well as anything else i’ve seen and so it’s worth a watch just for that reason. reminiscent of american dad – specifically the alien character (roger) who is similar to the personification of hormones in this series.

not as good as the book, but it’s a decent shot at the source material. devito directs. this is kind of a kid’s wet dream.

liked it when i saw it. basically a mid-life crisis type movie with a quirky lead. some good comic relief.

it’s fine.

good short series that wasn’t 100% accurate and overplayed the fears of nuclear, imo. i think if you really fear global warming then you have to have nuclear be a larger part of the mix. unfortunately we have a lot of people who want it all and so they get nothing. good luck with that i guess.

film shows the immense complexity of such a system, the multiple failures of the soviet system – and humans in general. no human system will ever be perfect, but it appears as though this was a confluence of really unfortunate things coming together compounded by the soviet system not wanting to show weakness and making the aftermath worse than it should have been.

30 for 30 about dennis rodman. one of a kind guy, that’s for sure. worth watching for basketball fans.

  don’t really remember what happened this season. meryl streep was a bitch – that’s about all i recall. should have ended where they originally had planned – at the end of season one.

better than season two and not as good as season one. mahershala does a good job. goes beyond just the mystery by adding the dementia element, the marriage, the family, etc.

more confessions from innocent people. i’ll never understand why people do this, but i’ll also never take for granted that a confession is real. if you can’t believe people who are saying that they are guilty of committing a crime then what can you trust? logic dictates that that’s the last thing a person would lie about and yet here’s two seasons worth of people lying about their own guilt. we live in a post modern age.

90s sports movie. so so.

curb your enthusiasm, but with a mother. she’s funny and the writing is good. as an actor she has the same problem as seinfeld and larry david – she smiles all the time. i actually like it, but i think some people might not. looking forward to more raunchy honesty about everyday minutiae.

decent one.

30 for 30 about joey chestnut and takeru kobayashi – eating champions.

has lost its luster over the course of its run, but there are some laughs and the familiar feel and characters keeps you coming back.

superbad (vv). better trailer than movie. don’t remember many laughs from this one. not unfunny, but nothing to write home about.

nap time.

really good flick. didn’t expect much here, but has a surprising depth. they got to the affirmative action spider-man, but did it in a thoughtful, instead of perfunctory/obligatory, way.

money grab.

another alex gibney documentary that i enjoyed. he’s pretty reliable. elizabeth holmes is a psychopath.

can’t remember one from the other at this point. overall the series was fairly watchable and worked in a joseph campbell hero kind of way.

they really phoned it in for the final season. the show, overall, was pretty good with some funny characters and moments here and there, but it probably should have been 4 seasons.

compilation series featuring a different actor each time. they were all new to me, but the best one was tim robinson. he’s really wacky and hilarious. a bit reminiscent of tom green, but more controlled.

can’t remember one from the other at this point. overall the series was fairly watchable and worked in a joseph campbell hero kind of way.

decent intro to the character. we’ll see what they do with the franchise.

documentary about a dodger fan who is accused of murder…don’t want to say too much, but sometimes it’s amazing how truth is stranger than fiction. check it out.

this guy is hilarious. see the characters review above for more.

i’ve only seen a couple of the avengers movies, but this one was a must see event so we tried it out. fine enough overall. girls seemed to like it. no naps.

inauspicious end to a pretty good series overall. definitely some issues with this season. the production level was still there, but some of the episodes lacked the intrigue that really made the series fun for me. i didn’t get into the series because of battle sequences. overall, battle and fight scenes don’t do that much for me…especially when it’s these really long battles with nothing happening.

got some goosebumps on this one. i pretty much love anything with the perseverance theme. she keeps getting back up to fight the good fight. that’s what matters in life because life sucks and people will knock you down all day every day.

shot in first person POV the entire time. somewhat novel, though delmer daves did it with bogey in dark passage in 1947 for the first portion of the film. fun film overall, even outside of the novelty of the shooting style.

documentary about a price is right contestant who was a savant a fan boy so he ended up on the show a few times and it got him in a bit of a sticky situation. worth checking out if you like the show at all. good watch.

barely remember this teotwawki/zombie show. i remember liking it a bit here and there. not as good as the early seasons of walking dead, but worth finishing off the first season. we’ll see what the next season brings….

everything you eat or do sucks. you suck for living. everything that seems good sucks. you suck. die or kill yourself. but kill all the evil people in the world first because it’s all around you.

these guys are funny, but this one didn’t do much for me.

good documentary series about 5 hollywood directors who participated in WW2 on some level and what happened before, during, and after the war. definitely worth the watch if you’re fan of any of these guys or the golden age of film in general.

nothing much here. so-so nap time.

i think this is the last season and it’s probably for the best. some of these tv shows start out with a good idea and good writing and then they seem to (understandably) want to extend their life beyond what the idea can hold. some shows should be one or two seasons and done…others can sustain 6-8 seasons. this one probably should have been a well-thought out 2-3 seasons and then done. the first season was strong – fresh, funny, good chemistry, etc. following seasons began to disappoint.

WW2 documentary. great look at WW2 over the course of 6 (?) hours. goes over a lot of the critical battles, the homefront, the life of a soldier, etc. could have been 3 times as long, but i’m glad it wasn’t. finally answered for me why we dropped another nuke on japan. according to the documentary we asked for surrender after the first one and they refused so we dropped the second one 3 days later. my perception was always that we did it just because we were assholes. WW2 was probably america at its best internationally. saving the world again by ramping up production the way we did…everyone pulling together. must have been a great time to be a patriot.

not as good as i was hoping, but some good atmosphere and an interesting original story. probably need to see this again. it’s been about 12 years since i saw C.H.U.D., but that plays a prominent referential role.

the kids love it and i actually enjoy the music a good deal. the story is decent enough and there are some fun characters and funny interactions. one of the better kids movies.

remake with danny devito. the animated version is the only version. was nice to see it with the girls and my dad, though. merritt loves elephants so much.

prequel of the purge films. the films have a lot of potential, but none of them really fulfill it for me. i keep watching them, though, so maybe i’m just an apocalypse junkie. C.

nice message and good enough to pass the time. nap time was decent on this one.

more conversations and profiles with former porn stars and producers. it really runs the gamut from happy they were in the industry and they think it fit their personality well to regret that they were a part of it. having seen all three of these documentaries, it seems like a) porn is not for everyone b) you need to be sure of yourself and your boundaries before doing it. interesting look into something that most people don’t get to see.

i didn’t really know the story of bundy until watching this. i knew he was prolific and i knew some of his tricks, but i didn’t know that he escaped jail twice and i didn’t know a lot of his background and how “normal” he was relative to guys like dahmer. i guess you just can never tell. as a true crime fan, something this in depth was enjoyable.

i love this kind of stuff. meryl was freaked out.

can’t remember one from the other at this point. overall the series was fairly watchable and worked in a joseph campbell hero kind of way.

series about two guys falsely accused of murder. grisham wrote the non-fiction book and appears in the documentary. these false accusation movies are so crazy because there are always so many layers to the story and so much conjecture and mystery. the truth is so elusive. it’s maddening.

liked it. novel idea, post-apocalyptic setting, spare and atmospheric. good stuff all around. i should probably watch it again now that i know what happens to see if it stands up to repeated viewings.

don’t remember much, but pelosi’s daughter is pretty fair overall. getting outside the bubble is good. here’s a start.

watched it while working, so not a great situation. it’s a good enough action flick, but definitely not worth the online hype. keanu is fine.

not a huge sci-fi fan and, though i grew up partly in the 80s, i don’t necessarily love the throwback stuff for its own sake. i followed this series for two years hoping it would go somewhere, but it never does. much sci-fi never goes anywhere. it’s just weird shit happening with partial explanation buried under more obsfucation. and that’s what happens here…we find out the answer to one mysterious thing and then another comes up. one problem gets solved and another is invented. and since it’s sci-fi, there’s not any real rhyme or reason to any of it. i finally tapped out after one episode of season 3. the ride to that point was okay enough, but i don’t see a payoff so i’m out.

not at the same level as the original and overall a disappointment even with lowered expectations. the original was just such a perfect little indie film with a great marketing plan (they released the first full sequence for free online) and everything about it worked for me when i didn’t have a care in the world. this one gave me some laughs, but just wasn’t up to snuff.

has a few funny moments, but overall i’d say it’s more notable for its good cast/crew (hannah, hanks, candy, ron howard, levy). there is talent here and there are some moments that show potential in the writing and acting, but none of it really comes together for me that much. oddly it was nominated for a best screenplay academy.

remake. this is one of those remakes that they did for the vagina having population. i’m not a big fan of the ghostbusters (vagina version) or ocean’s 11 (vagina version) or lord of the flies (vagina version) or whatever. it really is a combination of two pathetic things: a lack of creativity from hollywood and an awful form of pandering that shouldn’t be tolerated in the box office. this wasn’t a very good movie and certainly wasn’t up to the standard of the original. it has its fair share of digs at men and i guess that’s payback for all that men have done to women, or something.

thankfully, most of the metoo movies are actually honest efforts at bringing more women into movies, but this isn’t one of them.

can’t remember one from the other at this point. overall the series was fairly watchable and worked in a joseph campbell hero kind of way.

not much to write home about here.

really fun choose your own adventure type interactive movie. this is awesome stuff. i used to love the choose your own adventure books so having it in movie format is even better. it’s not as interactive as a video game, but you do get to make real choices and see where things go. i could see more of this kind of thing coming out on streaming services.

animal movies aren’t my favorite, but the girls love animals so we gave it a shot. not bad for what it is. i probably took a nap so that’s always nice.

not a huge sci-fi fan and, though i grew up partly in the 80s, i don’t necessarily love the throwback stuff for its own sake. i followed this series for two years hoping it would go somewhere, but it never does. much sci-fi never goes anywhere. it’s just weird shit happening with partial explanation buried under more obsfucation. and that’s what happens here…we find out the answer to one mysterious thing and then another comes up. one problem gets solved and another is invented. and since it’s sci-fi, there’s not any real rhyme or reason to any of it. i finally tapped out after one episode of season 3. the ride to that point was okay enough, but i don’t see a payoff so i’m out.

this guy should have fled to france where they don’t mind pedophiles so much, but he stupidly decided to stay in chicago. besides being a reprehensible person, he’s also a low functioning moron who somehow has a lot of fans who give him money still.

the series does a really good job of showing how fucked up everything that touched this story is. the girls’ parents/family are often complicit or willfully blind. the entourage he employs is reprehensible for covering up his shenanigans. the fanbase that supported him through multiple allegations is pathetic. the media and celebrities that continued to support and advocate for him… in the series pretty much everyone gets a hard look and everyone is shown for the part they played in him being able to continue to do this and continue to have success in the industry. this is the kind of stuff that really turns me off of the hollywood/entertainment industry. you have people like lady gaga who claim to be supporters of survivors, yet they collaborate with a known sexual predator because…? because she likes his music? because she sees the commercial appeal of the crossover? according to her it’s because she was in a dark place in her life. take that for what you will. i don’t know what it means. i think you basically have to assume all entertainers are attention whores and liars unless proven otherwise.

the series does a great job of exposing all that the sexual abuse was and all that went into allowing it to happen. sad stuff.

not a fan of the live action movies. always liked the cartoons. the girls love all of it so we watch these movies sometimes. doesn’t do much for me (other than the hot girls [SMG and linda cardellini] in short dresses).

subpar direction and acting from the lead brought this down a bit. could have used a punch up. first “adult” movie we’ve watched with the kids in the theater. RBG and her husband start making out and she gets into her negligee…that was the most sketchy part for kids. other than that, it was perfectly acceptable for kids. they missed a lot, of course, but we talked to them about stuff afterwards and they just love being in the theater so it was okay overall. merritt dropper her hamburger before she had a bite and zoe cried because her burger was too spicy…so there’s that. kids are the best.

shit gets real here. merritt was freaking out a little bit when we got to see voldemort, but she hung in there.

mini series based on the podcast, based on the real events surrounding a con man who got a hold of a naive woman. i listened to the podcast when it first came out and again after watching the show. the show really brings it to life, as the podcast is a bit flat at times. good series, well-acted. best thing Bravo has probably ever done.

sci-fi thriller that i don’t remember much at this point. was happy enough to watch it at the time, but didn’t stick. most films fit into this category for me.

i’m writing these reviews a year later so there’s much to be desired…what i remember from this season is that renowned defense lawyer kathleen zellner takes a central role in the case. i’ve seen her before in at least one other similar documentary (or maybe podcast) and she’s apparently a pretty big deal in the exoneration community. not much seems to come of it in this case, however. dassey was released, but avery is still sitting in jail. this shit happens too much and it really should be a point of common ground for the left and right, yet it somehow isn’t. big bad government ruining innocent lives seems like a no brainer area for reform.

they all sort of bleed together for me, to be honest. this one was a bit confusing with who was good and who was bad and what the relationship was with sirius black and harry potter. entertaining enough.

adam mckay hates dick cheney and ist shows here. it’s an obvious hit piece and it doesn’t pull any punches. of course, cheney deserves most of it, but don’t watch this expecting anything resembling fairness. it’s a film about cheney as a flawed, aimless person early in his life who straightens out and finds a cause (power) worth fighting for. i think a more fair look at the cheney legacy would focus on his stated motivations at least a little bit. instead it juxtaposes everything bad that has happened in the last 40 years with the legacy of cheney. it’s ridiculous on its face and it lacks context in many instances. but, hey, cheney is a true piece of shit so i’m not too upset by it. the film also is a good reminder how bad the bush presidency was when people today think trump is literally hitler and bringing armageddon. bush is still a way worse president when you look at actual things that actually happened (i.e., facts, not speculation).

documentary about the guy who wrote the anarchist cookbook. comes off as a pretty normal guy who mostly regrets his involvement with the now infamous book. basically seems like he went through a time in his life when he was really rebellious and it happened to be when things were politically very tumultuous. i remember reading the book in the library and thinking it was really cool. to see his side of the story and how it’s affected him was pretty interesting.

documentary about the vidal vs. buckley debates, and the people/politics behind them. interesting look back at an event that i knew nothing about. i knew of the two separately and i may have even heard of them butting heads, but i didn’t understand the true nature of this debate until watching the film. if you’re a political junkie then it’s worth the watch, otherwise i’d skip it. interesting to see how things have/haven’t changed. they were very much at each other’s throats and were pretty nasty, but it was also a pretty substantive debate overall.

pretty good bill burr animated comedy about a 70s family with a father who is constantly pissed and stressed. a 70s version of me in a parallel universe can definitely relate.

another good installment.

never should have been made. really didn’t like much of anything about this formulaic money grab. miranda over-acts and nothing about the rest of it redeems it. just stop doing this, please.

30 for 30 about bob knight losing his mind over the course of his career. lots of talent and work ethic, but totally clueless when it comes to social mores.

formulaic already and unnecessary. it produces some good laughs during the physical comedy sequences at the end, but not much more. culkin is good, but i think pesci and stern actually make these movies.

hughes wrote this one apparently. no culkin, no love, though. ebert liked this one more than the other two, but he was all over the place. it’s not bad, but it just doesn’t live up to the first installment.

peter farrelly directs this biopic about an odd couple who end up becoming friends. it’s what life should be like. judge the individual and all that. great comic relief and life-affirming themes that i love. good stuff, great acting.

great series that makes you think every single episode. twilight zone-esque. highly recommended.

great series that makes you think every single episode. twilight zone-esque. highly recommended.

great series that makes you think every single episode. twilight zone-esque. highly recommended.

not bad for parents while the kids watch.

saw this once at midnight the day it came out. was working at the theater and we always had to screen the movies to make sure there weren’t any problems with the print. i’ve never read the books so i don’t know anything about that aspect. this was better than i remembered. actually found myself kind of into it while watching it with the girls. the scenes with him at home are very reminiscent of early peter jackson stuff. quick moving camera, unusual lens, grainy look.

a bit slow at times, but definitely worth the pay off in the end. thick with atmosphere and small town dysfunction.

great series that makes you think every single episode. twilight zone-esque. highly recommended.

more than meets the eye here. thought it was going to be a comedy about getting in over your head (it’s about a couple who adopt and end up with 3 kids)….a more than you bargained for, feel good light comedy with some depth. turned out to be darker and deeper than expected. shit gets real and it’s all the better for it. wahlberg and byrne have good chemistry. surprisingly good.

classic. girls liked it, but were worried about the bad guys a little. ending is the best part.

melodrama about rich families feuding. this is a classic metoo show…(spoiler alert) right down to the ending where all the women get together and accidentally-ish kill the abusive husband and then cover it up. decent overall.

re-watched this cult classic. acting is low budget as is the rest of the film. really it’s about the concept. not that great overall, but better than you’d expect considering the budget. it’s one of those cases where it’s not as good as the hype, but was semi-worth of hype considering there wasn’t any marketing or stars or budget to begin with.

total hughes classic. girls liked it, but not as much as uncle buck.

errol morris-esque documentary about a hotel owner who watched his renters and claims to have seen a murder. gay talese writes a book about it and then retracts it because he feels he can’t stand by the facts. anti-climactic.

very 70s feeling movie with robert redford and sissy spacek. slow moving and not really sure what the point was. in that way it felt even more like a 70s drama. it’s a character piece and a vehicle for good acting. they both do a good job and it’s a nice enough story. it won’t be for everyone, but i liked it enough. first movie i’ve seen at the parkway theater.

not as great as the first season, but still a gripping drama following a family with its back against the wall. the imminent domain stuff was too deus ex machina for me.

surprising film and tough to watch. great performances. these abduction cases are just so sad. wish i could do something to combat this kind of shit.

just love the style and the characters so much that they can’t really do wrong with this series.

another derren brown documentary with a test of human pliability. this one seeks to see if the seemingly racist subject will put his life on the line for a hispanic guy. interesting concept.

if i watched this 10 years ago i’d probably have a much different opinion of it. as a father, though, this one hit hard. the direction is slow, but i was never bored. the acting is great. but the real gut punch is in the father-daughter relationship that plays such a central role. i have no idea how real any of this is, but as a story this is pretty damn great. interstellar did the same for me.

timeless classic about the black sheep being the only one you can count on in a pinch. he steps up in the end and everyone is better as a result. great film and another classic in the hughes library.

great series about the vietnam war told chronologically and in an unbiased way. shows how both liberals and conservatives failed the country by engaging in the war and sticking with it far beyond the point of reason. LBJ is seen by many as a great president because of civil rights achievements, but i really don’t think much of him and the vietnam war is a big part of that. literally millions of people died because of this war…even after everyone knew that we couldn’t help the south vietnam the way we had intended. LBJ has a lot of blood on his hands.

another thing is that i always grew up thinking that america basically went looking for a war because of the domino principle and it was evil american imperialism. in fact, there was a very reasonable moral argument to be made regarding the protection of the south vietnamese people. i completely understand us going there early on. one of the many ways we failed, though, is in not getting international support. we should have done that in order to make the defense of the south a moral issue supported by the west, instead of us and a small contingent of allies.
absolute tragedy.

much more than i expected. tiffany haddish delivers again, but ike barinholtz was a surprise. the themes were deeper than usual and the comedy delivered real belly laughs. definitely worth a viewing.

classic coming of age film whose main character always resonated with me…kid searching for his place in the new neighborhood. definitely dated now, but the themes hold up.

good documentary about high school kids who enter an international science fair. gives you some hope for the future of the world. some of the kids are entitled or whatever, but most of them care about the future and are smart so they’re half way there already.

every year there are 2-8 of these prosaic comedies that deliver on laughs, but aren’t all that memorable. this is one of those. tiffany haddish and kevin hart are pretty reliable.

didn’t follow this one super closely, but i can see why people like it. pixar doesn’t really do it for me overall. inside out is probably my favorite.

paul feig directs. was interested and engaged throughout. good balance of comedy and suspense. reminded me a bit of hitchcock.

good music and style. wasn’t super into the movie, but the soundtrack and musical sequences kept me interested enough. overall pretty good, but something was missing in the plot or characters to put it over the top for me.

people who like this show might think this is the worst season so far, but, as someone who never really liked the series, i think this may be the best season to date. instead of being gritty and real, this one is funny because it goes over the top. i always was uncertain whether the writers wanted us to root for the gallaghers or what. here it seems they’ve finally stopped taking themselves seriously. this merry band of rejects is finally the joke that they always should have been.

was hoping for more. these films have more potential than is realized.

the loss of tj miller hurts, but it’s still a pretty reliable comedy.

new coach, new location. same good stuff.

i think this is the first movie i took the girls to in the theater by myself. they’ve been to a few movies in the theater, but i’m almost certain this is the first one with just the three of us. hopefully many many more to come. the movie itself wasn’t anything special and didn’t do anything for me. they seemed into it less than the popcorn and candy.

documentary about herbalife and bill ackman who is shorting their stock. he goes out on a limb and tries to take them down, but ultimately fails. going big on a short is such a ballsy move. herbalife seems like a waste of money, but i also wasn’t sold on them being a ponzi scheme. it’s just a shitty MLM company with a business model that focuses on suckering people into being dreamers.

robert reich stars in this documentary about the economy and what’s wrong with american capitalism. don’t remember much about it at this point. basically the biggest problem is cronyism and everyone knows that already. capitalism itself is great when it’s allowed to go without onerous regulation, while also keeping in check the largest players. unfortunately that’s not how it’s working now.

another oakland-based movie. this one is about a telemarketer and it goes into cronenberg territory after a while. wanted to like it because it’s in oakland, but this one is basically dumb marxist trash.

oakland-based movie about a couple buddies, gentrification, the working class, etc. good acting, good comic relief, good substance.

documentary about young men in and out of rehab. it’s the typical story and the film doesn’t show anything you haven’t seen before, but it’s always depressing to see lives wasted thanks to drug addiction.

pretty good outlaw and law chase type movie. it’s like the wild bunch meets heat or something. not on that level, but there’s some good acting.

hyped a lot online. it’s about a disturbed kid who grows into a disturbed teenager. spoiler alert. he pulls a columbine with a crossbow. pretty good overall and disturbing. as a parent, you wonder what you would do if your kid was acting like this. i’d probably start by smacking him in the head instead of coddling him. glad i don’t have boys sometimes.

they added some new content to this classic true crime series. i still come down on the “not guilty” side, though it’s always tough with these cases. the lawyer also defended rae carruth, fyi. the extra episodes add an aftermath and show him in prison, getting out of prison while on some final appeal, and then him taking an alford plea (which is just the most orwellian legalistic bullshit you’ve ever heard of). we need criminal justice reform.

heard good things about this for some reason, but it’s really nothing special. i like this kind of thriller with a lot of conspiracy, etc., but this one fell flat.

gearing up for a good finale season. don’t remember the specifics 5 months later, but i enjoyed it.

not as good as episode 7, but still pretty quality. seeing luke go the way of yoda was sad, but it leaves the finale open for rey to be the star

not as cutting edge and novel as the early seasons, but remains watchable.

wish i was reviewing this 6 months ago when i watched this. fascinating documentary about rachel dolezal, who claims to be black in spite of the fact that she’s white. it’s a movie about a trans-racial woman in a time when trans-sexual is all the rage. some claim that her doing this is different in some way, but i don’t buy it. you really have to accept one if you accept the other.

silly comedy about a group of guys who play tag all the time. based on a true story, it’s a weird concept for a movie, but it’s essentially a buddy comedy. the slow down sequences with renner are stupid. most of the movie is kinda dumb, actually.

documentary about overworked kids and the pressure to use drugs to succeed. it’s pretty crazy how far people take competition and performance. drugs are such an integral part of society and i have no first hand knowledge of them. am i different because of that or do i not do drugs because i’m different? .

continuing to mine the star wars franchise…this one is about han solo in his early days. i don’t really understand the chronology of it, however, because of the darth maul appearance. kids liked it well enough. i can’t remember it well enough.

never was that into the first one and the second one didn’t do all that much for me either. it’s also a metoo movie with the wife taking the super hero lead while the dad takes care of the kids. expect more of these.

documentary about the oregon cult that became a national controversy. touches on freedom of religion, libertarianism, cults, race and gender and class…fascinating stuff here.

the metoo movement is in full swing with movies like this. this one grossed $100 million less than the lowest grossing male cast ocean’s move (ocean’s 13). i guess the gender wage gap is a real thing after all. even the movie going public is sexist…i thought it was just corporate bosses.

actually it’s more likely that this movie didn’t make as much because it’s not as good. it’s the worst of the recent franchise (i’ve never seen the original). still watchable.

retelling of an art heist clumsily pulled off by a few college friends. somewhat of a comedy of errors.

adam devine/netflix comedy that relies too heavily on him and not enough on a supporting cast or writing. very average.

documentary about a bizarre heist gone wrong. felt like errol morris. interesting cast of characters.

not as funny as before, but watchable enough to be in the bedtime rotation.

looks at the founding of the FBIs behavioral unit. as a fan of true crime and serial killers, this is a good job. dark, well acted and written. good stuff all around. if you’re into that stuff at all then you’ll like this.

sandler/rock comedy that delivered exactly what sandler comedies usually deliver – watchable posaicness.

sometimes funny and interesting look at a couple of guys who get into arms dealing overseas. seems like a lucrative business; i should look into it.

not as good this season, but it’s still a solid show with an unusual premise and good cast/writing.

over-rated and over done. there’s a bit here to chew on as far as the story as allegory, but i was mostly under-whelmed and left wondering what people saw. i’d file it under andrew sarris’ “less than meets the eye.” .

having worked at tower this was a bit closer to my hear than the average documentary. does a good job of showing the importance of the chain when record stores mattered. showed a bit of what it was like working there in the early days and what the culture was. unfortunately, i didn’t see as much of that as i came in at the tail end of their reign. technically right at their peak, but it was really on their down slide when i was first hired. the industry was starting to turn, the company was fully corporatized, and it wasn’t the same as it was in those early days.

inside look at flint PD as they do their job. with all the black lives matter and blue lives matter talk that is going on these days, it’s good to see a side of the every day officer who is doing their best in a tough situation. they put a lot on the line and we should recognize that. we should also hold them to a high standard. everyone should be held to a high standard.

one of my favorite shows of all-time. this is the last great season because michael scott leaves. not sure if they could make this show these days.

decent overall. been a while since i’ve seen this. i don’t know that it’s a classic for me, but i decided to buy it because zoe has been asking about scary movies a lot lately and figured this would be better than last house on the left (which she picked off the shelf and asked about).

okay die hard-esque comedy from the workaholics guys.

barely watched this as it was on in the background.

zoe was asking about scary movies so we watched the original godzilla. a lot going on here with the threat of nuclear fallout, the worry of super weapons, etc. more than meets the eye, which is why it’s a classic. as a horror film it’s not particularly scary, but zoe actually pretty much watched it (her first japanese film) and it has a monster so i figured it qualified enough.

weird show which is marginally entertaining.

documentary series that takes place in the UK following various strippers around while they work and talk about their job. interesting to see the immigrants talk about doing work there for money and wanting to return home, etc. strippers are the female equivalent of migrant labor like the african laborers who come to Rio to work on the olympic stadium. people using their body to better their lot in life. amazing how many ways there are to live your life.

nick broomfield direct this documentary about “America’s first female serial killer.” i don’t think this label is factual, but whatever. he does his usual shtick and we learn some things along the way, but mostly are left with more questions and uncertainty than anything. he obfuscates a subject like no one else.

i doubt the veracity of this, and yet the reactions look genuine. let’s assume it’s real. in that case this is a somewhat interesting look at the pliability of humans. interesting film/documentary.

docuseries that follows a few different people in the adult entertainment industry. worth watching if you’re interested in the subject. there’s a black guy who talks about race in the industry as well as performance anxiety. there’s holly randall (who has a podcast, is a photographer, and is daughter of the famous suze randall). and there are a few others who show other sides of the industry. produced by rashida jones.

makes her seem downright human. flawed and trashy, but possibly not in on the kerrigan beat down. good performance. the effects weren’t good enough to mask the obvious fact that it wasn’t margot robbie skating. distracting. the mom (janey) was a stand out.

hopefully they make more of these. each episode is an expose of a different company, person, industry. like frontline or similar, but less dry and more insider-y in some cases.

good movie with a main character i feel like i know. the opening scene is really the best of the movie. solid little indie flick that got some good recognition, but it’s not a world beater.

great series at or near its peak here.

short series about the feud between the eponymous families. it’s just a sad testament to the nature of the whole thing. i didn’t realize how intertwined they were in some ways (two of the kids were engaged (married?…i can’t remember) at one point. you’d think they’d want to put it all behind them, but cooler heads never prevailed.

porn star rocco siffredi talks about retiring. basically just a documentary following him around a bit. nothing special or insightful here. they also don’t mention that the retirement didn’t stick as he’s back to making movies. the one notable thing is that he seems to dislike being a porn star and talks about it as a burden. i think he has mental problems.

netflix is dipping its toes into the blockbuster waters. going with big talent and big budgets. this one is a regular feature film in every way other than it wasn’t released in theaters. it’s not a particularly great movie, but it’s interesting enough. reminded me of alien nation. i’d watch a sequel.

Season Seven – barely remember it.

continues the greatness.

another liam neeson flick that doesn’t live up to taken.

great series and this is one of the better seasons. 4-7 i think were all really great.

nothing special despite the good cast.

feel good historical drama with some lighter moments (which were appreciated). there are a lot of these films that make you feel both good and bad about being an american. this one is better than most.

good documentary about a football coach who does it the right way. teach character alongside football and competition, etc. cynical me was waiting for the child sex scandal or something. god our society is fucked up sometimes.

good movie about the child sex abuse that took place within the catholic church. well acted and presented. reminds us of the good long term work that newspapers seem uniquely capable of investigating.

tremendous film. i’m writing this review months later so i don’t have as much to say about it, but there’s a scene right before he gets married that sums up what it means to be a man. he wants to leave town, but feels compelled to stay because of a big opportunity. he gets kinda violent with mary as he explains that he wants to live life for himself, but he simultaneously breaks down and it leads immediately to the scene of them getting married. i think guys have this strong desire to be independent and do their own thing and yet they also feel the obligation of family and the tug of marriage. the whole film can be viewed as man’s burden to be everything to everyone and always put himself on the back burner. sometimes it seems everyone around him is incompetent, selfish, needy, etc. in the end, though, they all come through when he’s at his lowest point. he can’t do it all himself. in the end we all need help sometimes, even someone like george bailey.

documentary about sports doping that starts somewhat innocently and stumbles into an international incident. good content.

these people are fucking nuts. if you watch this show do you like any of these people? do you justify their actions? are you watching it as you would a train wreck? i guess i watch it to judge them and avoid making poor decisions in the future. this show is basically a road map for what not to do in life.

nothing special. watched it on the plane and barely remember it.

documentary series about amanda knox, the murders, and the aftermath/media coverage. she definitely comes off strangely here, but there’s also mixed evidence and some questionable police work. i love this kind of true crime stuff so i liked it.

one of the best, still.

documentary about the history of the ford mustang. came off like an advertisement at times.

good show. good season.

academy nominated documentary about cory booker running for mayor. he loses here, but wins later and now he’s pretty popular (sometimes mentioned as a DNC presidential nominee). he seems like the real deal. i don’t agree with all his policies and approaches, but he’s a good guy and it shows in this film.

pretty good follow up to a classic.

another 30 for 30.

documentary about the hasidic community and one woman’s struggle to see her kids and get out of the community. they’re jewish and a minority so we’re not allowed to say anything bad about them, but this is fucked up.

production gets better. these people are fucked.

one of the more surprising shows of the year. netflix original about a suburban couple who have to deal with the wife becoming undead. pretty funny stuff. good writing, casting, and acting all around.

30 for 30. another rise and fall sports documentary. sex and drugs aren’t as harmless as some would have you believe, but if you didn’t know that by now i don’t think this one will make the point any more clear.

not quite sure what the point of this is. do the writers like these people? are we just watching a semi-realistic, semi-dramatic take on urban poverty and addiction? bad decisions don’t just affect the individual – they affect everyone in the vicinity.

documentary on the rise and fall of atari. if you grew up in the 80s it’s probably a must-see.

so so documentary on the rise of seinfeld. probably only for seinfeld fans.

good show.

solid animated film. kids like it and i like it so i think that’s a win.

still funny.

continues to entertain on some level. continues to confuse on others. definitely need to pay attention. i gather that if you read the books it helps you gain depth and understanding.

this season was a total mess with the exodus of the main guy. cameos tried to keep it afloat, but mostly this season was a mess. not sure why i watch this anymore. actually, i am. it’s because i believe in finishing what you started. it’s a blessing and a curse.

sersei gains depth this season.

pretty good heist flick.

girls seemed okay with it. didn’t do much for me.

surprise tv show of the year. really solid all the way through. i like smart characters not acting like idiots in difficult situations. quality programming here.

not really into it anymore. was hoping for more.

another good season. buddy tries to keep it together more this time and learn from his mistakes, but he backslides pretty quickly. running back ends up going to jail after this season is released. disappointing.

good soundtrack and there’s one sequence in the film that really makes the whole film worth it. this long fight sequence with the kind of hits that you can feel through the screen. if you can watch that one sequence then you don’t need to watch anything else.

grabs you pretty quickly. good stuff.

don’t really remember much about it. rebel wilson is funny. alison brie is hot.

b level production horror flick that is kinda in the torture porn category. nothing worthwhile here.

intriguing, hopefully it goes somewhere.

possibly the best movie i’ve seen this year. the time shift stuff was pointless, but i guess it’s a signature at this point. not nolan’s best film, but he always delivers.

not as good as it used to be, but still entertaining.

not much to write home about and i fell asleep at the very end. the first one doesn’t do a lot for me anymore, but at least it had some moments where you feel good about your country for a minute or you feel triumphant when randy quaid sacrifices himself. this one didn’t have much of that.

originally saw this the day it came out. phil took me to it for my birthday. life was simpler then.

pretty funny stuff here. can’t go wrong with these leads. it won’t stick in my head like some comedies, but it enjoyably passed the time and sometimes that’s the best thing a person can ask for.

another funny season. too short, though. wish these were twice as long. mike judge never disappoints.

really good documentary show about a football program that has won a bunch of state and national championships at the JC level. good cast of characters and the tv format lets you get into it much better than a movie would. highly recommended.

good documentary on the pitch. looks into the greatest fastball pitchers in history and what they probably threw based upon measurements at the time and modern math. the radar gun, for example, takes speed measurements 50′ from the plate. but in nolan ryan’s day it took the measurements at the plate. the end of the film summarizes the top 5 pitchers of all-time (in terms of speed). pretty cool stuff all around. if you like baseball at all then it’s worth checking out.

i like bill burr and his voice actually adds a lot to the character of the show. i can relate to this guy.

first was was really great top notch action. this one was b rate crap.

being a parent makes you soft. definitely cried a bit in a few critical spots. when riley’s imaginary friend sacrifices himself, when riley returns home and cries with her mom and dad… zoe has a really hard time controlling her emotions right now so hopefully watching this will teach her a bit about where feelings come from and give her a reference point for understanding them.

still good and funny.

still good and funny.

continues to be funny and vulgar.

didn’t quite watch this through in one sitting because i watched it with the kids, but it’s a good addition to the series and it picks up where episode 3 left off in terms of quality. in other words, definitely a step up from episode 1 and 2. got teary eyed a couple times when zoe asked me about rey being a jedi and all that. basically i want her to understand that girls can be badass jedis too.

still good and funny.

30 for 30 3 part series. great stuff here. wish that it had ended on a different note. one of unity or love of the game or something. instead it ends with magic saying he’ll always hate the celtics. jeez, man. lots of great games and some great teams during this run. i liked the way they put the series together with the narration from ice cube and donnie wahlberg. i wonder if a white guy will ever be the best basketball player in the world again. probably not.

some bad production and acting aside, this was pretty decent. the writing was good and attention to detail appears to be very good. i looked at some of the original video online and read some of the fact check stuff on it and it seems like they did a really accurate job. basically i think the verdict came down to jury nullification. they don’t talk about this in the series, but the idea is that a juror can do whatever his conscience guides him to do…whether it’s because they think the law is unjust or the whole system sucks or whatever. in this case i think race played a big part of it. rodney king, the threat of a riot, the corrupt LAPD…all led to a predominantly black jury deciding it was time for their team to win for once. can’t really blame them. on an individual level, for this particular case it’s clear to me that OJ was as guilty as hell, but a not-guilty verdict may have been the best thing possible for society at the time. sucks for the goldman and brown families. sucks for clark and darden. but maybe it was best for everyone else.

i remember when this verdict was release. i had just gotten off recess and went into a nearby classroom as the verdict was about to be read. we were packed into one of the classrooms that had a tv and even though the bell had rung, we all waited there to hear the news. my dad was a big OJ fan (probably because of USC) so i kind of had that influence in me. the way they show the reactions at the end of the series is exactly how i remember the reactions being in that classroom. all the whites had a look of shock on their faces and all the blacks were cheering. i was smiling because i thought it was all so funny. as always, i found myself right in the middle. not without shock like the whites, but also kinda happy that he got off like the blacks. crazy stuff.

still good and funny.

disappointing end to a series that was pretty good for a while. honestly, it’s been two weeks since i watched it and i don’t even remember how it ended. i have a bad memory, but that’s a bad sign. 3 seasons of content and investment in these characters and i don’t even remember how it all concluded? lame.

still good and funny.

movie about a boy with special powers who is abducted by his father from a cult that thinks he’s the second coming, or something. thought it had potential, but it didn’t go anywhere. disappointing.

kinda marginal netflix show. it’s decent and there are some thoughtful and funny moments, but nothing here is great.

the sully story is one of the few true stories to get a lot of media coverage that actually struck a nerve with me. he’s a humble guy doing his job and he was the perfect guy in a bad situation. he’s a hero. the movie does a good job telling the story and it kept me interested despite the lack of much plot. good flick.

merritt loves this movie and it’s her first real movie crush. i’m not a huge fan of the story or anything, but the animation is really great. the fact that they’re able to do what they do with stop-motion animation is tremendous. selick directs and he learned a lot from jules engel who worked on fantasia, among other things. anyway, the animation is great and it’s worth watching just for that. i think michel gondry would have fun diagramming all the sequences.

definitely the best of the prequels. i put off watching this for a long time since i never liked episode 1 or 2, but this one redeems the series. palpatine is truly evil and played very well. he’s over the top and it fits perfectly. christensen leaves something to be desired, but isn’t awful. portman and mcgregor finally act like we know they’re capable of acting. and the script finally has something to bite into. zoe really digs this one. it’s pg-13 so i might be a bad dad.

bernie madoff is a piece of shit. decent movie about the downfall of this asshole. wish there had been more scenes of him getting raped in prison. there were zero.

pretty horrible sequel to the original film. i think this is actually the 3rd film in the series. mila kunis is in it when she’s probably 14. it’s not worth watching, but zoe was into it for a bit so….

barely following this show at this point; it just never caught my attention like the first one did. hopefully season three gets on track otherwise i’ll dump it.

cartoons can be hot.

Probably the worst season so far. the first episode sees two major characters getting killed (i predicted the first one, but didn’t see that glenn would be next). pretty sad after that episode. the rest of the season was a bit flat, though. they just seem to be in a rut of doing kind of the same thing over and over. there needs to be some growth or something because it’s not going anywhere right now. still like the characters.

jeff garlin netflix movie about a detective looking into a case. not a ton here to get excited about. it kept my interest and had a couple laughs. nothing special.

pretty good show about a 007 type spy who works for his mom’s hapless agency.

netflix movie about a guy who gets out of jail and all hell sorta breaks loose. kept my interest, but didn’t wow me in any way. the ending was unexpected and the acting was on point.

talked with a berkeley student about this and she said without irony that white people are crazy and fucked up after watching this movie. so, there’s that point of view. to be fair to the movie, i don’t think that’s all the movie is about, but it did reinforce that prejudice in this instance.

the movie is actually in the mold of a lot of 70s horror films about race and revenge. there were a bunch in that decade that tackled race and gender. fight for your life, for example, was about a black guy whose family was brutalized by whites and then he gets revenge. this one takes a while before it gets to the revenge portion of the film, but it finally does and that’s when it excels. when it finally embraces the genre and gets into the catharsis it’s really fun. when it’s portraying every white character as deeply racist in a passive aggressive and micro agression type way, then it doesn’t do as much for me.

john calipari 30 for 30. as these documentaries tend to do, this one humanized the guy a bit. i still suspect he’s shady, but i have a certain level of respect for a guy who basically found this niche in college basketball as a guy who cares more about the players getting their due in the nba, than some b.s. idea of doing what’s best for the game by sticking around longer. it’s real rich to hear an old white guy like jim calhoun talk about staying 4 years for the good of the game when he doesn’t have to worry about providing for everyone in his empoverished family. calipari realizes that for those lottery pick level guys that he’s going for, it makes little to no sense to stick around just to help ncaa basketball or their school.

not as good as it used to be, but still solid enough to keep in the rotation.

interesting idea that gets sorta co-opted in Get Out above. lacks in execution, but an interesting watch nevertheless. singh doesn’t do anything remarkable visually, which is too bad because the fall was really special.

pretty good look at the modern white suburban mom who feels a lot of pressure in this facebook, instagram, pinterest world. society is stupid. funny movie.

great series that was a bit like staircase or making of a murderer or those sorts of true crime documentaries. highly recommended with a pretty stunning ending. unfortunately the ending was ruined for me by the press coverage. that said, if it wasn’t for the press coverage, i probably wouldn’t have watched it.

i don’t watch amazon prime much so it’s been a while, but i’m back. these guys are hilarious. stoner comedy.

worst season so far. not sure if i’ll continue.

there are some nice moments, but it’s an hour long show and each season is like 22 episodes…just too much plot and not enough actually happening. doesn’t hold up well against today’s attention spans.

grrrl power version of the first one. has a few moments. i like rose byrne.

wish there were more.

still good.

took a few episodes to get into it, but turns out to be a great show that really flies by. needs to have longer seasons. oh well.

nowhere near the film the first one is. zoe likes it for some reason. has some adult jokes that go flying over her head. think i’ll have to take this out of the rotation though.

another forgettable comedy. missable.

efx were cool at the time, but are totally obvious now. good wholesome fun, though. zoe liked it but was a bit afraid of the ant and scorpion at first. stuck with it though and watched it pretty regularly for a while.

forgettable comedy that passed the time.

a classic family film that ages pretty well all things considered. zoe was into it and watched it a few times.

not as good as season one. they’re doing less episodic stuff which is usually nice, but in this case it’s not doing it for me.

starts out interesting. the witty banter is nice and the characters are new and all that. kinda wears on though and i’m hoping things get better.

good look at the man behind the legend. seems like a good guy. interesting.

good animated film that’s fun for the whole family. i was cracking up at times and zoe seemed to be entertained. that said, she hasn’t returned to it. maybe i’ll try it on her again.

okay, but not great “lost”-ish tv series that was interesting enough for a season, but got weird in the second season and so we decided to call it quits. ultimately had the same feeling as lost – that it didn’t really know where it was going and was going to be a groan-worthy ending. for me, so much of a tv series’ appeal is in the ending, so i didn’t feel bad about cutting this one short.

watched this by myself while working on some wood. funny, sad, true. got the tv in the workshop hooked up so i watched this while building a table for the office. it’s actually a good movie that was more tasteful and thoughtful than i expected. i basically expected a “skin-e-max” style soft core porn, but it had more depth to it. never read the book, so i can’t comment on that.

had high hopes for this one considering all the hype and the fact that i like the original group. unfortunately it was a sprawling hagiography that was clearly influenced by the fact that ice cube and dr. dre were producers. gets into too much stuff after the breakup of the group and doesn’t tell the whole story. acting was mostly not very good and overall it wasn’t worth writing home about. makes the oscar hub bub about a lack of color in that year’s ceremony seem all the more hollow.

probably my favorite of the five i’ve seen, but a new hope is right up there with this one. honestly, i’ve never been the biggest fan of the series and never bothered to watch episode 3 or 7, or 8 now that it’s out now. but the first two in the series are classics and watching them with zoe has been real fun.

watched this with zoe and it was magnificent. she’s into it big time.

pretty fun premise and spader does well, as always.

actually getting better. good sign.

watched this with zoe (and merritt, sort of) on christmas day. it was glorious. zoe asked probably 110 questions, but i answered them all because this is the best christmas movie ever (i’m not counting die hard). it’s pretty funny how politically incorrect it is looking back at it in today’s climate. the kid wants a gun, the mom and dad are so provincial and old-fashioned…it’s just not the kind of film that would be made today. totally flawless.

solid comedy from beginning to end. franco is really good and endearing.

billed as an action film in space, it’s really just a romance film with more ethical questions than heart-pounding action. overall it passed the time, but i wasn’t really drawn in and kept wanting something to happen to move things forward. instead it’s just an unconventional story of love.

really good film that reminded me of interstellar, though it has one logic flaw that seemed glaring and detracted from it slightly. the idea of time not being linear isn’t particularly new, but they play with it here in a fun way and one that ends up really tugging on your heart strings (especially as a parent). it also manages to make linguistics an interesting aspect of the plot. good stuff.

not quite sure about a couple key aspects of the film (did she get an abortion, does edward kill himself in the end or is he just sticking it to her?), but found it quite enjoyable nonetheless. good acting all around, some tense moments, good direction. just what the doctor ordered for a long break from movie watching.

the nd v miami rivalry was before my time, but this was apparently a big one. documentary does a good job of telling the story from an unusual point of view. another solid flick from the 30 for 30 series.

gibney does his usual good job here. a lot has been written and filmed about scientology the last 10 years or so. if you watch/read one of them it may as well be this one. they’re nuts. it’s a cult.

zoe wanted to watch it. it’s not great and certainly not as good as his big adventure. i’ve never been a huge fan of his, but at least that one was fun. this one is probably for fans only.

not the best season, but it was a pretty good show overall and the two leads really did a great job the whole time. the finale was tastefully done and pleasing.

possibly the best season so far. winston and nick have really found their niche and have fully bloomed as outrageous characters.

30 for 30 about houston basketball during their heyday. never saw that final game and final shot from their perspective so that was interesting as well. the added dimension here was a couple of the teammates trying to track down one of the stars who fell off the map after he left school.

30 for 30 about two mets teammates who should have been so much better. another in a long line of depressing stories about unfulfilled potential. it’s a sad story when a guy can’t quite get his life together, but it’s a tragedy when he has money, and people willing to help, and out of this world talent. these guys win the lottery with their talent and then fritter it away. sad stuff.

probably the worst season of the series. B-.

pretty good pixar flick. zoe likes it and calls it “the brave girl movie.” .

creator of scandal does this. watchable, but we’re not going to continue with the rest of the series. yes, viola davis cries and yes, you do get to see her snot dripping down her lip.

peter berg does a good job here. it’s a good film with some nice moments. really shows how dangerous hubris and greed can be.

continues to be good, but a bit of a let down after the first season.

documentary about a couple who build a high school class revolving around shop class type skills. good stuff and i wish there was more of this out there. actually takes kind of a herculean effort on their part to get the program started and ongoing. (they get a grant, but funding dries up and the school doesn’t want to pay for the program so they work for free.) we need a lot more stuff like this if the poor and working class are going to make anything with their lives. a soul deadening march to the cubicle and college just isn’t going to get it done.

not as good as billed. opening credits may have been the best part.

very short “season.” good stuff here, but just not enough of it.

still good.

never watched the show, but i understood the tits and ass and frat boy lifestyle stuff.

great start to a good show. probably can stop after the first season.

very up and down, very outrageous, very dramatic. not sure if we’ll be watching another season.

pretty funny, but not necessarily worth the hype.

nearly unwatchable. no idea why this made scorsese’s top foreign films list or why people like herzog’s fiction films.

bill burr is perfectly cast for the father in this animated netflix series. it’s kind of a married with children type series, but the father is more angry than he is resigned to his horrible life.

still good.

good second half of the season with aubrey plaza making a nice cameo in a good episode. also we see morgan (shemar moore) going through some rough stuff and ultimately leaving the series, which was surprising. the end of the season leaves us with a cliffhanger and thomas gibson going through rough stuff as well. the cast gets shifted around a lot on this show…mandy patinkin, paget brewster, jennifer love hewitt, aisha tyler, lola glaudini, rachel nichols…all were main chaaracters at one point and are now gone. now shemar moore is gone in this season and reports are that thomas gibson will be gone next season. should be interesting to see if they can keep it going after that.

pretty good stuff. in line with the first, but not as novel.

good series overall that ended with a bit of a thud. the season was its shortest so there was probably a decline in popularity or something and they pulled the plug prematurely. it was a good show that probed some interesting topics in an engaging and entertaining way. i like finch and reese and the whole gang, really. amy acker is super hot. taraji p. henson wasn’t on the last couple seasons, but she was actually a standout as well. sarah shahi got better with time and i ended up liking her character a lot. good series, not great ending. some really nice musical moments.

not very good, but i sorta watched it while trying to do other stuff so i didn’t give it my all either.

first episode didn’t grab me, but i revisited it later and it grew on me. pretty good series that reminds me of a younger version of louie. not as awesome as i expected, but thoughtful and funny.

not quite as good as last season, but still a good show. finale ends with another great song (welcome to the machine) that left me begging for more. final season coming up.

the plot thickens and the reins tighten as the rayburns try to get out from under what they did to their brother. pretty good and dark and layered show about family drama. recommended.

not a horrible film from nancy meyers, who usually does very borderline movies. i thought it was another sell out piece from deniro, but his character wasn’t half bad and he sold it for me. hathaway is so-so. comic relief cast was good, but the writing was subpar. meryl’s mom thought it was ageist. if anything it was ageist against the stupid young’uns who thought all old people are incontinent or stupid and are proven completely wrong.

not much here that was worthwhile, but when you’re stuck on a boat with not much to do….you either eat more or watch a marginal movie. heart in the right place, but not nearly as good as the original.

wanted to like it, but it just wasn’t there. in the end it’s a lot like the main product that Joy is selling (her fancy mop that can be wrung out without using your hands), that is to say it’s a nice idea, but not all that good. i’ve used the mop before…it’s crap. if you’re serious about mopping your best bet is a commercial setup with a wringer in the bucket and a woven rayon/cotton head. oh well.

diminishing returns this season so it was the right time to end. in the end, alicia becomes peter in a way and i actually didn’t like her very much at that point. she bent her morals so much, became such a lush, and became so self-serving that it was impossible to like her or forgive her. the victim becomes the victimizer. womyn power.

continues to intrigue and entertain. love the finale with the radiohead song playing while samaritan takes power.

probably the first time i’ve seen it on the big screen and it looks really nice. the dvd version leaves a lot to be desired, but this one was nice and clean. it seemed as though i was the only one laughing half the time. this is the second movie zoe has seen on the big screen.

netflix adam sandler flick about a couple guys who fake their deaths because their current lives suck so much. there’s nothing new here (not surprising), but there were a couple decent laughs so i keep watching it while doing work. basically that’s what adam sandler is good for these days. everyone knows his best work is behind him.

good show that hasn’t lost any of its mojo yet. there was a good episode in this one that reminded me of lifeboat. a bunch of people were stuck on an island because of a storm and there was a killer amongst them, but they didn’t know who it was. good stuff. the themes of surveillance are still there, but they could do more to flesh them out.

great movie that i watched over the course of two days and ended up staying up pretty late to finish the second night. what the nolan brothers do with time is pretty cool and novel in my opinion. the whole angle of losing time with your daughter because these interstellar missions take place in high gravity locations is kinda mind bending and i found it to be very depressing as well. the thought that a 15 minute mission means you miss your daughter growing up was pretty heart-breaking to me.

30 for 30 about the cleveland curse. good overall, but the prominence of one of the producers actually detracted from the film a bit because it was kinda obvious that he inserted himself into the film. his insight wasn’t especially grand or anything, he was just there because he loves cleveland sports and had the money to help produce the film. not long after i watched this, they got their championship so i guess everything’s all better now.

hardly counts, yet here it is. documentary series about hardscrabble guys who earn a living doing odd things like mushroom hunting or catching and smoking eels. interesting characters who live off the land.

good show about a machine that watches over everything we do and can catch major terrorism crimes before they happen. the creator of the machine gets a SS# every once in a while and these represent non-terrorists who the machine wouldn’t normally care about. his squad uses this information to try to save lives. that’s a bad overview, but there you go. it’s a good show.

good series that will never come out of the shadow of breaking bad. it stands on its own, however, in large part because saul’s character is interesting and the acting is so good. i look forward to more.

good series that i could have watched more of. definitely had some dark moments and definitely one of the better british tv offerings i’ve seen.

gets better this season.

Season Four – not as good this season, but still a strong series with good characters, writing, and a compelling story. i just wish these shows kept going and going.

follows the rise of the orlando magic which means they mostly talk about penny and shaq. shaq is a big ego and managing that turned out to be problematic, but the magic had a good little run there and made things in the nba interesting. B-.

i’m writing this review in june so i don’t really remember much about it other than i like rose byrne and mellisa mccarthy.

leaves you with a cliffhanger that will be driving me nuts for months. i love this crew and following them along their crazy journey has been fun….but somebody’s gotta die. i’m guessing it’s darryl just because reedus seems to be branching out into other things in real life. i’ll miss whoever gets the axe.

not as good as the original, but pretty funny. i guess everything is a remake these days.

30 for 30 about the duke lacrosse rape case. pretty astonishing. pretty much everyone had them as guilty before the facts were really out. the case that the DA made out of it was pretty awful, but the media and public were every bit as bad. definitely worth watching if you care about truth. if not, then stay away – you wouldn’t want your preconceived notions to be shattered.

good series with a wickedly good villain who turns into an ally. dark and interesting. elba is solid as always.

vince vaughn does his thing. nothing special.

omg, i’ve watched 200+ episodes of this series.

spurlock reminds me of me, but he’s more outgoing and he gets to do the things i wish i could do. good series.

funny conceit done pretty well by the well-cast stars. i got some laughs out of it.

good series overall that always managed to keep me interested. reminded me of encyclopedia brown or something like that. this season ended a bit early and the ending wasn’t anything fantastic, but i didn’t expect anything great from it. likable characters.

documentary about the late great roger ebert. done by steve james who did hoop dreams. it’s a good look at his life and work. interesting for those into film commentary or ebert

documentary about the death of kurt cobain. pretty much makes the argument that he was killed by courtney love and i pretty much don’t have a problem with that. she’s nuts and very well could have had something to do with it. that, or she’s just amazingly shady and stoned in the days after his death.

the concept for the film was interesting, but it didn’t really cash in on the idea like i had hoped. oh well.

Season One – great series. been done before elsewhere like thin blue line or the staircase, but this one is well-executed and got good attention so that’s nice.

follows different people in the sex trade. not much new here. we should bring it out of the shadows and regulate it. if we cared about freedom or women then we’d make this a priority, but we don’t seem to truly care about either.

good series continues a good run here. nothing from this season stuck out from my memory.

spurlock is always good entertainment. not his best or most important work, but still entertaining and interesting.

not as good as i had hoped.

somewhat diminishing returns on this one, but it’s always fun to laugh at hipsters.

getting into crazy territory with some of these plotlines and twists, but i guess that’s what this show is about.

may have been the first time i watched this on the big screen, but it was definitely the first time that zoe watched anything on the big screen and that’s why i’ll remember this one forever. great experience passing the torch onto another generation of movie goers. i hope she loves them as much as my family does.

surprisingly entertaining chick flick about a woman who finds out her husband is cheating on her and befriends the mistresses. of course they get revenge and fun is had by all, except him.

still good.

fairly dull flick about a pitcher and cather. the catcher is deniro and he’s terminally ill. never got off the ground for me. the summary is better than the film.

pretty good reboot of sorts. ending was kinda dumb. t. rex seemed just as big as the mega dinosaur so i didn’t get that. science playing with nature fails again.

HBO documentary about heroin use in cape cod. it’s the number one drug there apparently and it’s mostly because middle class white kids get addicted to it after being on pain killers. pretty fucked up way to ruin your life…you injure yourself in a car wreck or making a sliding tackle in a soccer game and it’s all downhill from there.

shows the nature of addiction and codependence. i’ll say this – don’t get attached to anyone in the film because they drop like flies. fucking depressing.

danish animated kids movie that’s kinda weird and borderline for a 2 year old, for sure, but zoe likes it so…animation is a cool style, themes of bullying and dreaming about being good at stuff are good enough. watchable.

excellent film that has stayed excellent. music is great and everyone does a great job with the acting. love the bit in the song about women’s suffrage that goes… “while we love them (men) individually we agree that as a whole they are rather stupid.” funny stuff.

not as good as the first one and i think this is actually the third film because there was a direct to video film between 1 and 2. they’re both rambunctious characters so zoe likes this and it’s watchable enough, especially with the elvis songs.

good overall, but not my favorite.

dated animation, but the themes, characters and music are great and timeless.

mediocre.

really not up to the same level as the first one. kinda surprising that spielberg directed this one as it doesn’t have the same magic that the first one had.

good classic adventure film that dazzles the imagination. the science-y stuff is fun and the efx are still pretty good many years later. the effects of the later films actually aren’t as good…at least through #3…haven’t seen #4 yet.

30 for 30 about holyfield’s quest for respect as a boxer. basically it comes down to two things: since the ali, foreman, frazier era there just hasn’t been a great interest in heavyweight boxing and the only person who rose to the level of those guys (at least hype-wise) was tyson. holyfield finally fought him, but after he had passed his prime so it wasn’t a legit win (so the thinking goes). regardless of where you place these fighters it’s about eras in sports. clemens will never face babe ruth and koufax will never throw to bonds. you can’t fault a guy for living in the wrong era. that said, it’s not like either of these guys were untarnished in their prime. they had “off” fights in their prime and lost to guys that great fighters wouldn’t have lost to.

great flick about the financial meltdown of 07. adam mckay has comic sensibilities, but is also into the social commentary stuff and the two collide here. tonally it’s the serious answer to “the other guys” which was mostly comedy with some drama and had a social component to it. great ensemble and great format with the cutaways to famous people filling the audience in on the nitty gritty of CDOs and other financial terms that we got way too acquainted with during that time. i don’t watch many movies in the theater these days so i’m happy the ones i’ve been getting to watch have been worthwhile.

the 30 for 30 about this was better than the hollywood version. over-hyped, unfortunately. carrell did a good job, but not great.

still going. it’s an over the top political thriller that doesn’t pull punches considering it’s on network tv. kerry washington’s mouth is super annoying.

30 for 30 about the bills of the 90s…they were really good, but not good enough to win the super bowl. it’s a deserving story for a team that is underrated in a lot of ways. pretty, pretty, pretty good.

for some reason i just like the characters and find this show to be humorously entertaining.

original was better. nothing to write home about here.

i like the rocky films, so sue me. this one passes the torch onto michael b. jordan and he does a pretty good job with it. there are tips of the hat to the other rocky films which is nice for the fans of the series. the only one that didn’t really work for me is when creed is running through the neighborhood and he gathers the local kids to follow him during his run. this same scene appears in the first rocky film as the town rallies around the underdog during his training. in this one they do the same thing, but they’re popping wheelies and what not on their motorcycles and atvs (obviously the director grew up in oakland as you see this kind of thing all the time here. same director as fruitvale station, by the way). what falls flat is when the camera is running circles around creed as he pumps himself up and yells at the sky. it just came off as cheesy for some reason; mostly i don’t think jordan pulled it off.

the music is pretty good, but i was disappointed that the rocky theme wasn’t used. then, in the final fight the director pulls it out of his back pocket and final unleashes it. good move to save it like that. it’s one of the best themes in film history so i’m reluctant to say it could be overused, but saving it like that was smooth.

my ranking probably goes like this: rocky, rocky 2, rocky balboa (6), creed (7), rocky 3, rocky 4, rocky 5. more than anything, this film made me want to make a montage of all the great scenes from the previous films. the early morning training in rocky 1, adrian telling rocky to win from her hospital bed in rocky 2, the speech rocky gives to his son in rocky 6….some great stuff that really gets to the core of what it takes to be a great competitor and strong person overall.

some good effects, but disappointing that the story was just about the rock trying to save his daughter. would have nice to see more of the chaos and destruction, follow some other storylines, etc. instead of focusing so much on the rock. the paul giamatti angle was nice. overall not a very good blockbuster.

good enough to pass the time.

decent comedy from jason bateman.

don’t get to watch many movies in the theater so we have to pick wisely nowadays. this is a great film so we go lucky. the things that inspired me most were probably the collective nature of everyone pulling together to solve a common problem and the fact that they actually did it instead of dealing with the usual incompetence and hemming and hawing that seems to be so pervasive in society today. this wasn’t the unrolling of obamacare or the building of the bay bridge. this was more like the manhattan project where we needed to get shit done or the nazis would take over the world. it felt big and important like that and they got it done which is a wonder to see; sad as that may be.

of course, damon and others did a great job and scott’s direction was great. the balance between comedy and drama was great and moved the 2+ hour long film along pretty well.

nowadays movies are marketing to a chinese audience and so they feature more chinese characters and are less likely to have the chinese as enemies. in this one we have a critical engineer who is chinese and the chinese save the day by providing us with one of their rockets after ours fails. i think it’s more likely that the russians would have this technology than the chinese, but whatever. it felt like a pretty obvious play to the chinese audience, but i’m okay with it.

wow, it’s been 20 years since the first one came out. this one isn’t as good of course, but it has plenty of idiotic farrelly brothers style humor to keep you laughing. with the farrellys you know what you’re going to get and they don’t disappoint here. remarkable that it’s been that long. carrey has gone downhill since then and jeff daniels seems just about as popular as ever with newsroom and the martian getting him recent critical acclaim.

pretty good fantasy law-ish drama. kerry washington isn’t great, but she’s good enough and the writing is snappy and fantastical enough to keep you wondering and engaged. the music they use strikes me as oddly placed and some of the characters grate on me, but overall it’s a watchable show to wind down the day.

documentary about three white guys (of course) who live in guatemala for a while to see if they can make it on a buck a day, which is how about 1 billion people in the world live. of course they also have farms and skills, but these kids decide to try to jump into the life without any of that and suffer the consequences. it’s a spurlock-esque stunt film to make an obvious point, which is that living in poverty sucks big time. beyond the unsophisticated premise, the film does get at some human realities that are worth remembering or seeing for the first time if you’re 10 and you’ve never thought about it or seen it before. the reality is that there are a lot of good people in the world and many of them are poor and far less fortunate than you are. stop being a spoiled little white person and be thankful for what you have.

took a little time off from this, but got back into it and definitely still like it. one of the things this show does really well is keep you wanting more between episodes. they have an episodic storyline and then an overarching story that goes from episode to episode, season to season. the characters are fun and light and it’s a perfect show for watching late at night when i’m a little distracted.

30 for 30 documentary that looks at the rise and fall of pete’s trojans. it was a great run and i was happy to have seen it and then it all came crashing down. the rose bowl was a bad loss, and a game i think they would have won 8 times out of 10. the bush family thing is something that probably happens a lot, shouldn’t be totally against the rules, and was way blown out of proportion. overall, this is a good documentary that dredges up a lot of depression about the rose bowl and so it was tough to watch.

btw, what other college program recently has been able to tell its recruits that if they are the best player at their position they will be guaranteed an nfl draft position? usc can do it for qb and wr since 2003, as far as i can remember. maybe rb and some ol position as well.

san francisco is changing because the tech people are moving in. that’s basically it. not a great deal of depth here despite a lot of good interviewees. pelosi scratches the surface, but doesn’t leave a lasting impression.

should be called while you weren’t sleeping because that’s when i watched it, thanks to a little baby named merritt. or maybe it should be called while you were sleeping because it’s a boring movie. a few stars in this one, but it’s pretty bad across the board.

short season, but pretty good. this is sorta what i asked for after watching season one of the walking dead. that series skipped over most of the actual shit hitting the fan stuff and skipped to the immediate aftermath. this series explores that initial period a little more. wish it did it even more so we could see how far flung the chaos was and what happened during those initial 1-4 weeks. not as good as the other one, but i’ll still watch it.

funny show stays funny, but gets even grosser.

formulaic, but it’s liam neeson kicking ass so that’s usually enjoyable enough. definitely not at the same level as taken, but it’s watchable.

barely watched this and didn’t get through it. fellini is awful. didn’t hold my attention for more than a minute at a time.

the best of the last three romantic comedies thadrt i watched, maybe because john hughes wrote the story. j. lo does a good job here as well. she’s neurotic in the right places and a free spirit in others. she does well with the role. it’s also about the working class and maybe a bit about politics. more depth than the genre usually provides so it’s good for that reason. the ending left something to be desired.

julia roberts plays a lying bitch in this 90s rom com. haha. above average in that it at least doesn’t end with them together. roberts is good.

j. lo is a better actress than people may give her credit for being. mcconaughy is utterly forgettable. why he got so many roles like this is beyond me. this isn’t a great film by any stretch, but it’s not bad either. that’s basically how i feel about most romantic comedies, actually.

reliably funny buddy cop flick. chan and tucker are good together and the race relations stuff is funny and probably more edgy than people could handle today. we’ve moved backwards in this way since obama has become president. kinda sad.

30 for 30 about an attempt to break the world parachuting record. it didn’t go well. engaging flick directed by jeff tremaine of jackass fame.

okay movie that pokes at some of the racial issues we’re facing today. makes a better trailer than a feature length film. ends up venturing into the bizarre and silly with the black face party towards the end. then they reveal that there have been a few of these on college campuses in the past and the silly becomes just a bit depressing. nothing great here, but it has some value today.

thoroughly depressing film about penn state, joe pa, and sandusky. one thing that struck me is that the defense attorneys actually called the accusers liars and claimed that they were testifying against sandusky for monetary motivations. it’s one thing to defend people to keep the system intact. it’s another to accuse the victims of child rape of being liars about the worst possible thing that could have happened to them. there’s a job i could never do.

off the wall comedy with kristen wiig. you get to see her naked so there’s that. bizarre comedy overall that i don’t think was ever widely released in theaters probably because it was a little too strange to market. it has some moments.

great series about american history, essentially. looks at the history from a social perspective. this season focuses more on red vs. blue or north vs. south or that sort of social divide instead of the physical lines that divide the states. treads over some of the same territory as season one, but not enough to be annoying.

pretty engaging series. some production values are a bit lower than the high end tv shows, but the core characters are interesting and well cast. it’s got short and long term stories so it keeps you interested on both levels. overall i like it, but the repetitive nature of the episodic stories has me wishing it moved more quickly.

not as good as season one. better actors that time around and the dialogue was a bit better as well. this season also was more serpentine and the number of characters made it more difficult to follow. thankfully you can just google “true detective (character name)” and find out which character they’re talking about so that wasn’t too hard to overcome.
kitsch was a highlight. vaughn and farrell were good. mcadams left something to be desired. kitsch actually played the only main character who was worth a damn the first half of the season. as the season progressed we grew to know the others and could find some redeeming qualities in them, but it was hard to like many of them at first. farrell’s storyline with his son was a tear-tugger. there’s some good material in here so long as you don’t get to mired in the plot twists and trying to figure out the mystery of why caspere was killed and by whom. just let that stuff happen and focus on the characters. ending wasn’t uplifting, to say the least.
good series, i hope they have more of this quality.

not as good as the trailer led me to believe it was going to be. what else is new? some funny times and definitely captures the late 20s/early 30s period when you think you’re still hip, but clearly aren’t anymore and you’re starting to make a family and set down roots, etc. could have been better.

watched this in part or in whole a lot lately because of zoe. pretty good disney film with some mischevious characters that zoe always seems attracted to. that won’t be trouble in 14 years…also has a good lesson about family and a good soundtrack courtesy of elvis and alan menken.

pretty good fly on the wall look at this famous gorilla who could sign. some say it doesn’t mean much, others think it’s a big deal. humans are pretty much just apes anyway so whatever. the woman responsible for training koko is a bit nutty, but most of them are. it’s always some woman with an overly active sense of compassion who does these things. project nim is another example. there’s also a woman who did this with a dolphin and she would jack him off so he would stay focused on the lesson for the day. truly nutty stuff going on in the name of science. all that said, it was watchable and thought-provoking.

great series about how the state lines were formed. a lot of american history here presented in an interesting manner. love it.

pretty funny seth macfarlane flick. references other westerns for some fun, but mostly stays true to the macfarlane brand of humor – childish and gross. basically if you’re a 13-35 year old guy who doesn’t take life too seriously you’re going to get some laughs out of it. i thought it was funny enough.

nice visually, but didn’t do much for me other than that. the novelty of wes anderson has worn off. he’s m. night shyamalan .

documentary from nick broomfield about the grim sleeper who killed 12 people. for some reason, though, broomfield keeps mentioning the 180 women whose pictures he had. i don’t know the point of this. the implication is that some of these could be additional victims, but the movie never follows up on any real numbers here. broomfield is really good at finding crazy people on the street who are willing to tell him fantastical stories about whatever topic he’s looking into…tupac/biggie, kurt/courtney, heidi fleiss, etc. he’s not the most discerning filmmaker, but i think that keeps things interesting. once you go down the broomfield rabbit hole you never know where you’re going to end up.

beyond the murders, this is a documentary about poor black people being less than. not good enough to miss and so these 12 people being murdered didn’t really get investigated. a miscarriage of justice, but the reality is that people just don’t care about prostitutes and when they’re black and poor prostitutes then they mean even less. a fascinating portion of the film is when an ex-crack head prostitute drives around with broomfield showing him where she would hang out and asking other prostitutes if they knew the grim sleeper. she’s a colorful character who has certainly seen the dark side of humanity. because broomfield doesn’t get any investigators or experts to weigh in, as most documentaries would have done, we’re left with people like this and lots of speculation. in this case it’s actually more entertaining and potentially haunting that way.

documentary about the chinese dish “general tso’s chicken.” it looks at its origins as well as chinese food’s evolution in america in general, no pun intended. it also follows chinese immigration and migration in the country. one thing that’s obvious is that the chinese have done well for themselves here. they have adapted well and that’s reflected in the “inauthentic” cuisine. this inauthentic label is kind of annoying because it assumes there’s one authentic chinese cuisine. this is silly because china is huge and because i don’t know that you can ever have a consensus on cuisine in any country. what’s an authentic pizza or hamburger or sushi roll? the film points this out, to its credit.

the more interesting thing about this film is the way the chinese have adapted to the culture. they have always been discriminated against and yet they have thrived. this is admirable and it’s why asians generally are called “model minorities” and get left out of scholarships, etc. that seek out “underrepresented minorities.” anyway, it was an interesting way to look at chinese-american culture and migration. this sort of novel approach to a potentially dry topic is what i’d like to see more of.

documentary about how many chemicals are in our environment – food, water, containers, etc. most of us know about this problem, this puts some of the information in one preachy place with sean penn as the narrator. what it does do, though, is force you to think about it for 80 minutes and that’s just depressing. all these documentaries have the same style and structure. would be nice to see one that treads some new ground.

from an imdb.com user:

“This is the first of many documentaries with emerging UNDISPUTED DATA that the Gov/FDA and Monsanto company since 1901 OBVIOUSLY have an agenda to poison, kill, and leave the American public helpless, IGNORANT guinea pigs begging the pharmaceutical companies to finish us off with pain pills after multiple-level chemical exposures from birth.

If that wasn’t enough as you can see or research when you go to the Guinea pig feeding troff commercial “grocery” store Genentically altered (GMO) foods are unnatural seeds that additionally have been grown and covered in chemicals and in many cases rinsed in chemicals(Tap Water).

For thousands of years the world was free of America’s constant health problems. But since Amercia’s food was tainted with chemicals and then exported it’s now become the WORLD’S problem….HELLO!

If anything the world should be raging war against America NOT the other way around with 9/11 propaganda…this is one of the reasons the Middle East -now religious fanatics- won’t ever stop gorilla tactics! They believe God’s 100% and don’t break that covenant for ANY reason and that includes…yep, you guessed it…The land of the FREE and under GOD?”

office-style comedy that doesn’t go full funny. it’s kinda funny and kinda dramatic. it’s watchable because it does both things on a mediocre level. if it was mediocre and played it as a straight drama or as strictly a comedy then there wouldn’t be much here. instead it has some funny points and some poignant (though not fully-realized) moments and they work together well enough to be slightly better than average.

continues to be a pretty good show. kalinda is gone now and apparently there was some real life drama behind that decision. they kinda messed up her character after the first two seasons. unfortunate. alicia is less likable now that she’s more selfish and less principled.

good thing about having a newborn is that you watch a lot of tv at night while you try not to kill yourself. this is a good show with the usual very good writing from sorkin. it has it’s corny moments, as is the norm for him, but they are hopeful and surrounded by round and smart (if unrealistically good) characters so you pretty much forgive the schmaltz. this season was too short and ended in an unexpected way, but i have no problems with it.

very good show with a host of good characters and subjects tackled. wish it was still going.

watched a lot of this while staying up with zoe as a newborn. now it’s merritt’s turn. good show, probably has kept me sane more than any other show.

satirical romantic comedy with paul rudd and amy poehler. has some good laughs and is a funny take on the genre. recommendable enough.

not actually sure what the point of this movie is. oscar grant was a flawed guy and he was killed when he shouldn’t have been. the tragedy is that he was only 21. say what you will about his past and what got him into this situation, but the brain isn’t even done growing until 25 so it’s always a shame to me when someone’s life is done (whether they’re in prison for life or dead) at such a young age. after 25 i pretty much figure that people are getting what they deserve. before that and it’s more of a tragedy.

anyway, the film was pretty good on its own. i thought they did a balanced job of portraying what happened (though him saving the pit bull wasn’t real). it makes mehserle look incompetent more than anything else; which i happen to agree with. pirone is the one who looks like the real aggressor and problem here. he’s the cop who came in like a bull in a china shop and escalated everything. this is why we need more women cops, especially more women officers. if the woman on the scene was the one in charge i doubt any of this would have happened. regardless of sex, though, cops need more training on how to de-escalate this stuff.

documentary about jack abromoff. nothing surprising or revealing here. politicians have influence, and need money to win elections. what do you think is going to happen given those two immutable facts? .

great opening scene, certainly one of the best in tv history. breaking bad is another. it’s a really good show, i just wish there was more of it.

documentary about bottom level porn actresses who are looking for easy money and hoping to make it big. other than the fact that it’s sex (and that the girls make a lot more money) i don’t see too much difference between them and the guys in class a baseball. but the fact that it’s sex makes a pretty big deal so this is fairly depressing whereas a documentary about guys trying to make it into the big leagues would just be mildly depressing. we all have dreams i guess.

adam sandler film that isn’t his prototypical film, but is more in line with click. less silly and more thoughtful. i liked it enough.

loses its touch completely by the final season. ends with a cliffhanger, but was canceled. seemed to lack direction overall which is the downfall of these sci-fi tv shows, it seems. they need to have a better idea of where they’re going from the beginning otherwise they write themselves into knots and it can get silly.

tom cruise star vehicle meets groundhog day meets video games.

faded in and out of this one while in the hospital. americans are fat.

documentary about different hotline operators. suicide help line, gay hotline, phone sex lines, etc. kinda interesting look into an interesting job.

diminishing returns here. i don’t know how to describe this show. i feel like he thinks he’s doing something really great and profound and it brushes up against that from time to time but it’s so obviously trying to do that that it’s a real turn off. the whole thing about the fat girl who he doesn’t want to date got a lot of play in the media, but she’s so obviously a writer getting stuff out and so far from a real character that it really doesn’t work. add to this the fact that the show isn’t very funny anymore and you get a show which is less and less interesting and important to watch.

got a lot of positive buzz. reminded me of crank which was an over the top action flick with jason statham. it’s a good flick with some great visuals and stunts, but overall it didn’t live up to the buzz or to road warrior. it’s been a while since i’ve seen mad max, but this one may be better than it so that would make it the second best out of four. road warrior remains one of the best sequels of all time.

starts to take a step back during this season. still interesting to some extent and watchable, but didn’t capture my imagination as much after season two. gotta finish it though.

back in the swing of things with this season.

good show and a good season.

back into the swing of things here after a couple down years. a couple good episodes here and there. definitely getting darker here and there as well. more horror stuff (as opposed to detective stuff).

the torture porn genre gets a lot of flak, but this film shows that it can be high art as well as the “low art” of films like saw and hostel. i never saw mel gibson’s jesus movie, but that got some critical acclaim and it also fit into the torture porn genre. this is probably a better film.

unlike selma, 12 years a slave is worthy of its praise and worthy of a best picture win. from what i’ve seen it was the best of the films nominated that year. it’s not overwrought, pretentious and sanctimonious. it’s a film about a guy who endured an awful injustice and the conceit does as much to show what slavery is about as anything else (roots included).

it’s immensely depressing, but it’s a good film and you should probably watch it once. just like you should watch schindler’s list once. there are a million films about the holocaust and slavery but those two are the ones you need to watch before swearing off the topic.

i’ve seen this movie several times since zoe started watching movies.

possibly the most overrated tv series of all time. the promos leading up to the final season showed celebrities talking about how seminal a show mad men is. how it’s legendary, etc. first of all, only people who read the atlantic watch this show. it’s a niche show with half the ratings of criminal minds. second, other than the sets, it’s a shit show. some good acting here and there but mostly just intellectual masturbation and pathetic characters. it takes the flawed protagonist thing to such an absurd point that i actually understand the oklahoma guy who is shaking his head wishing for the days of yore when real heroes existed in film and television. in other words, it’s about as bad a blue state show as you can think of.

peggy is the most respectable character. joan isn’t too bad relatively speaking, but she needs to get her shit together and stop being a mean girl.

not worthy of an oscar for best picture, but they had to at least nominate it because of the subject matter and cast. unremarkable film about a remarkable time and event.

pretty good series so far about 4400 people who had disappeared in the past and were suddenly brought back seemingly by aliens. turns out they were sent by humans from the future to avoid some sort of catastrophe. interesting idea and is actually more compelling than lost. production values aren’t super high, but the concept is there and they don’t dick around as much as lost did.

not one of the better seasons. season six was actually pretty bad because of all the emily prentiss stuff that was going on; didn’t like that storyline. here they get back to their bread and butter, but it’s too formulaic at this point.

movie about some rich guys who share a loft on the side so they can have a place to cheat on their wives. a woman shows up dead and they have to figure out what happened. kinda interesting concept and was watchable overall, but it’s not a great thriller or anything.

not as good as let’s be cops, but kevin hart is a funny guy and is good enough to carry the film to watchable territory.

this kind of movie used to be a staple in my movie going diet. light and good stuff here, don’t get much of that anymore.

taken with kevin costner. shouldn’t have been made. if you’re a 50+ year old woman with a thing for kevin costner then you may like it.

tv series about backwoods entrepreneurs who have unusual types of jobs (harvesting ginseng, mushrooms, bait worms, etc.). it’s like duck dynasty (never seen it) meets dirty jobs (great show). there are some cheesy moments and bits of contrived drama, but overall it’s a nice little look at how some choose to make a living.

miami had a good team around 2001. that’s about as much as i’ll ever say for the university of miami. they’re not worthy of two 30 for 30 movies.

one of my favorite disney films. i’ve seen it in part or whole about a dozen times now because zoe watches it so often. it’s a great film that stands up to repeated viewings. really love the music which is unlike the stuff they do today. they not only have musical numbers that are earworms and sing-a-longs for kids, but they also have all these musical cues throughout that mimick or accent the actions of the characters.