April Movies - Week 3 & 4

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

It was a busy few weeks with business trips & Izzy starting her amazing adventures with The Local Artisan Collective... so we only watched a movie about every other day...

Apr 16 – Spiderman: No Way Home (2021)
 
The 3rd or 4th biggest money making movie of all time… and yes, I waited to see it at home… thanks Omicron! That being said, it was a truly ambitious live-action Spiderverse setup where basically Peter Parker gets exposed as Spiderman… so he & his two friends can’t get into MIT (oh no? avoiding student debt… and weren’t you like Tony Stark’s heir in the last movie? Or an Avenger?) so he goes to his sarcastic wizard friend, interrupts him while wizarding & now the dimensions are merging… or nitpicking people who already knew Peter Parker was Spiderman… or something. I enjoyed the movie as a whole… but definitely not even the best Spiderman movie. There were some parts when (spoilers but not really) all three Spidermans were having a conversation with one another… and I was having flashback to Ghostbusters (2016) when I was BEGGING for somebody to make it stop… it wasn’t funny. LOVE what they did with the bad guys though giving them more context & not making Jamie Foxx into an absolute stooge.
 
Rating – 8/10 – There were a lot of things that I was just kinda “meh” about… but still lots of fun
 
Apr 18 – Deadly Friend (1986)
 
Speaking of engineering kids not getting exactly what they want, here’s a forgotten Wes Craven directed nugget about a teenage boy who designs a robot named BB (very Short Circuit’s Johnny 5 looking) and he moves into a new house with a superhot teenage neighbor (16-yr old Kristy Swanson) and hijinx ensue when her abusive father accidentally kills her… and the engineer decides to put his microchip into her corpse’s brain! I thoroughly enjoyed this cooky twisted tale… but it has weird tonal issues too… in reading the history of it though, basically it was just going to be a teenage romance movie & they had to throw in some gore because… you know, Wes Craven directed it so his fans won’t want to see a teenage drama. They had already learned when John Carpenter made “Starman” that people don’t like change. Check it out!
 
Rating – 9/10 – Possibly the greatest kill in horror history… I loved it
 
Apr 20 – The King of the Con (2021)
 
This was a three-episode documentary series about noted con man Barry Minkow (think teenager behind “ZZZZ Best Carpet Cleaning” from the 80’s) and his life of conning everybody around him with minimal repercussions. Half of the series is interviewing him… but everybody else is basically saying “You can’t believe anything he says, so here are the facts”. I watched this with my wife Izzy, who basically had a con man for a father (again, minimal consequences) and I basically speak fluent bullsh*t so we were watching like “How could anybody fall for this?” My guess is he’s sending those text messages with links now for his “legit” gig… but it’s an interesting look into a weird but not very complicated character. “But Steve, why did he live his life like this? Like they keep asking in the show?” Money, dumbass! He wanted money… so he lied to people to get it! Mystery solved!
 
Rating – 8/10 – Still worth a glance if this is your thing.
 
Apr 22 – Cyrano (2022)
 
Okay, I am a huge fan of the story of Cyrano de Bergourac (sp) & Steve Martin’s rendition in “Roxanne” is incredible. I am also a HUGE fan of master thespian Peter Dinklage… so my expectation were HIGH for this movie. Yes, even knowing it was directed by Joe Wright of 2015’s “Pan” infamy… at least it wasn’t a musical. So… this was a musical & had two things going against it. One: I am not a big fan of most musicals, especially period piece ones. Two: Peter Dinklage is not a singer by trade… and he’s your lead. That being said, in spite of that hindsight, his rendition of Cyrano is quite amazing from an acting standpoint, the fight scenes were surprisingly good & it’s a beautifully shot movie. I’d absolutely recommend checking it out, especially if musicals are your thing.
 
Rating – 8/10 – Great movie… but I just didn’t really feel for the Roxanne character & most of the musical
 
Apr 24 – The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022)
 
It has FINALLY come to be seen by the public… and story of Nicolas Cage as Nick Cage (a slightly exaggerated version of himself) going to a man’s birthday party in Mallorca in exchange for a million dollars… and then shenanigans ensue when the CIA inform him that he’s actually an arms dealer… so then they recruit him to take him down, sounds like something out of my notebook for dream project movies… and the execution was flawless. Pedro Pascal is great, Nic Cage is great, even the others like Ike Barinholtz are decent… and the more you know about Mr. Cage’s filmography the more you’ll get the inside jokes… granted, the 3rd act kind of takes some weird twists to double down on the humor aspect… but God damn it, I love this movie!
 
Rating – 10+/10 – Watch it in theatres, watch it streaming, do what you need to do, it’s better than you even think it would be!
 
Apr 26 – The Northman (2022)
 
It was my birthday… so I watched the new Nic Cage movie… and then followed it up with VIKING VENGEANCE!!! From the director of two apparently great movies that I haven’t seen (“The Witch” & “The Lighthouse”) comes the tale-as-old-as-time story of prince Hamlet… sorry, prince Amleth whose father is killed by his uncle, who then usurps the kingdom, so he narrowly escapes to grow up in a life of vengeance… and then infiltrates as a slave to avenge his family! The director’s style apparently involves a lot of staring down the barrel of the camera… and it’s shot a lot like a stage play in that aspect… but it was intense, violent (though not that gushy) & exactly what you want in a weird psychedelic movie of vengeance. Also, most of the movie is shot in Iceland… and there were a LOT of times they were shooting at places I had visited… and it made me want to move there again. Coming soon?
 
Rating – 10/10 – Watch it in theatres, watch it streaming, do what you need to do, it’s better than you even think it would be!
 
Apr 28 – Congo (1995)
 
Again, it was my birthday… and we had a movie screening at Brewvies… so I took people to the Virunga region of the Congo in search of the Lost City of Zinj on the big screen for the first time in 27 years!!! Ernie Hudson, Laura Linney, Adewale & Tim Curry lead this exposition along with cameos from Joey Pants, Bruce Campbell, Delroy Lindo, Joe Don Baker, Jimmy Buffett & more!!! Lost city of gold, killer apes, other apes that know sign language, diamond-powered lasers, probably the worst “romance” in cinema history, but Ernie Hudson’s greatest performance!!!
 
Rating – 10+/10 – I love this ridiculous movie!

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​Steve