Change Your Image
blakekhodges
Reviews
John Mulaney Presents: Everybody's in LA: COYOTES (2024)
Woof
Rough start to a show. It felt like they conceived of the entire production about 5 minutes prior to filming. Funny it was not. The funniest part was how clearly Jerry Sienfeld knew the show wasn't funny. And Will Farrell. Who can put lipstick on any pig, as he did here. The rest just felt sad and desperate. The live studio portion: bad. The pre recorded segments: bad. The live performance at the end, while St Vincent herself is great, was bad. Terribly produced, horribly shot, sounded awful. Another sad waste of entertainment resources. Despite all the criticism, there was one aspect of this show that genuinely impressed me, and that was the interstitial broll clips of the city under titles. The tone and style of these are fresh and awesome. I could watch a whole show of just these. Rest of the show? Suuuuucks.
Breaking Bad: Fly (2010)
A weird, refreshing change of pace
Some people hate this episode because it's different. And it is. But I think that's what makes it a truly special, even necessary, entry in the Breaking Bad cannon. It comes at roughly halfway through the series. This season is especially serious (duh). To me, The Fly is both a refreshing break from the relenting pace of the plot and the serious, dark tone of the season. The episode flips between wacky comedy and touching introspection. Is it perfect? No. It's non-sensical. It's extremely impressionistic for an episode of BB. But you now what? I'll take it. It helps reinforce character motivations and history as major transformations take place. It's the best possible "filler" episode one can ask for. Oh also? One crucial point. The episode shockingly poses the question, for the first and only time in the entire series, did Walt perhaps "sample" the product?
For All Mankind: Don't Be Cruel (2021)
Dumb and dumber
Woh boy. This show has so much potential, yet the reality just gets sillier and sillier. Without spoiling anything, the story is getting more ridiculous on two fronts. One is the home front. The other is space. Yes I just described the show in a nutshell. Is it just me or is Apple TV trying hard, SOOOO so hard, to make an inspirational "f*#k yeah America!" Kind of show. Checking all the boxes to appeal to both middle America and progressives. The result? A watered down Mad Men in Space. Sorry, that comparison makes it sound way more interesting than it is. This is corporate filmmaking at its finest.
For All Mankind: Rules of Engagement (2021)
All is boring on the home front
I fail to understand why the showrunners continue to give Shantel VanSanten such prominent scenes, when, sadly, it doesn't feel like the acting chops are there. This episode contains at least one such scene. As well intentioned as it is, it's just not something I can get over. Every scene with her just feels like a big ol wet ham fist smacking you on the head. And for an episode that features no scenes in space, the ham fist hits even harder. The show's team need to cut their losses and double down on the elements that make the show really work. In the meantime... I'm bored. Looking forward to getting back to space!
Super 8 (2011)
Here's why Super 8 Fails where Stranger Things Succeeds
The ingredients are there. But something is missing. After re-watching this 2 hour slog, I think I've learned a few things. The biggest of which, at least compared to the Spielbergian references, and more recently a Stranger Things, is that it's missing a crucial component: a sense of humor. Super 8 takes itself wayyyyyy too seriously. Kyle Chandler, as much as I love the actor, is the perfect example. His character is so serious the entire movie, it brings one to the point of boredom. Compare this to David Harbour in the role of Jim Hopper in Stranger Things. Tongue in cheek humor the whole way. Captivating and charming. Stranger Things openly embraces its sense of humor, and for the better. So much so, that you realize the problem of Super 8 isn't Kyle Chandler, but rather the person in control of the tone of the whole movie: JJ Abrams. Sadly, it doesn't stop with humor. Take suspense as another example. Compare it to one obvious inspiration (and executive producer) Spielberg and his movie Jaws. JJ obviously took the tactic of showing as little of the "monster" as possible in order to build tension. Unfortunately, unlike Jaws, Super 8 does not establish the threat early on. In fact, you could argue it doesn't establish the threat until 45 minutes on. This makes for a meandering story and lack of stakes. In the end, this well intentioned movie becomes very little more than an occasionally charming homage to 80s Spielberg adventures. Which Would be so much more fun.... If it had a sense of fun.
The Bear: The Bear (2023)
Verging on soap
Don't get me wrong, I f#%^*ng love this show, and while this season 2 finale was very good, I have to knock a couple points off because... it's just getting a little too dramatic. Too many crazy coincidences, too many melodramatic breakdowns, every character is pushed to their extreme. Pump the brakes chef! Do less. You have an amazing story with amazing actors. Chill. It's plenty dramatic as is.
Write out all the Big Dramatic Moments on paper , which I won't do because spoilers, and it would sound like a standard issue episode of General Hospital.
The Bear is at its best when the moments are small yet oozing with intensity. More of that, chef.
La casa de papel (2017)
Cliches left and right. Usually still entertaining
What starts as a promising original take on a heist story quickly devolves into tiresome clichés. I won't go into all of them for the sake of spoilers, but let's just say, beyond the setup premise (which is clever), you've seen this all before. It wants so badly to be cool. In reality it feels like a script from a try-hard film student who's been watching a lot of Soderbergh, Michael Bay, Michael Mann, and Tarantino. Except unlike the latter, the mix of its references do not add up into something original, it adds up into boring and uninspired cosplay.
This is all to say, it's not an entirely an uninteresting watch. It is certainly exciting in moments. But on the whole, for the smart money, your time is spent elsewhere.
Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
Don't believe the haters. This is a cinematic landmark.
The haters are desperate to find ways to dig into this movie. Don't buy it. This is a landmark achievement, and pop entertainment not only at its finest, but pushing deep into new frontiers. The visual mastercraft of this film barely needs to even be mentioned. Haters will have you believe this film has "no plot." Or "a weak script." The fact is, James Cameron and team had my wife bawling her eyes out over a fictional, CG whale. I was rooting, crying, and cheering out loud for weird blue Smurf athletes over genuine human characters. I was left emotionally exhausted after the (admittedly long) 3.5 hour experience from all the highs and lows. Were these feelings driven by great visual effects? No. They were driven by a genuinely exciting, moving story, with characters I was invested in 100%. And that's more to say than 99% of the rest of the drivel Hollywood dishes out. James Cameron (and by extension, his creative team) are in an extremely rare position in the film industry. They have almost unlimited resources at their disposal, and unchecked creativity. And unlike most other studios and filmmakers in that position, they delivered. This is not fan service. It's not pandering to some larger brand strategy or IP. This is pure drive to make the best damn movie possible. And holy Avatar, they did it.
The Great Hack (2019)
Essential insight into the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but an uneven doc
Starts out a poignant and sharp documentary breaking down the Cambridge Analytica scandal and its larger implications, but then kind of devolves into a sloppy character study of Brittany Kaiser. Wish they had just kept it more capital D "Documentary" the whole way through. Flaws aside, still essential viewing to truly grasp how large of an issue this is in our time.
The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (2019)
Important story, but unnecessarily long, repetitive, and overstylized
Grateful to see this story told, but the documentary is unnecessarily long, repetitive, and overstylized to make up for it.
Maniac (2018)
As much as I wanted to like this, I just couldn't
I love cebral romances (*cough*, Eternal Sunshine), I love Cary Fukunaga (True Detective), I love Emma Stone (Birdman), I love Justin Theroux (Leftovers) . Jonah Hill? He's pretty OK too. Did I love this show? Hell no. Cheesy, disjointed, incoherent, trying to hard, and yes, even boring. It had all the ingredients of a masterpiece, and yet it cooked into a steaming pile of Taco Bell leftovers. This show had no shortage of ideas, but it failed in one minor aspect: making me care. The story and the characters were so disjointed that I was never able to settle in and fully get behind any of it. Some awesome visuals, some clever scenes, some sort-of unique production design (A Clockwork Orange meets any other 80s Sci fi movie) , but in the end, I didn't give a crap, and the only thing I was rooting for was for it all to be over.
Hereditary (2018)
A well-crafted knockoff
After the screening, a friend of mine, who hasn't seen the film yet, asked if I thought Hereditary was shocking and powerful, like he'd heard. I told him I definitely thought it was shocking and powerful, the first three times I'd seen the movie... back when it was called Rosemarys baby, The Conjuring, and The Babadook. The most generous interpretation you can give this film is that it's a clever remix of classic horror in its genre. The less generous is that it's a blatant rip off, which I find myself leaning more towards. The aforementioned films, among others (read: The Shining, even Donnie Darko) do everything that this film does, only 100 times better and scarier... often decades earlier. Despite the narrative thievery and the worn-leather tropes, I do have to give this film credit where credit is due: the craftsmanship is outstanding. The cinematography is nearly perfect, and the sound design is a master class. Also a big nod to the acting. These actors sure did a great job enduring scene after seeing of repeating the same state of insanity and horror through repeated scares. While it wasn't a total waste of time, I would caution anyone to look past the hype. Like Annie's models, it's a well-crafted knock off. But give it a slight amount of pressure and the balsa wood will break.
Cartel Land (2015)
Intimate, if tunnel-visioned, look at 2 characters on opposite sides of the war against cartels
Saw this at the screening with Kathryn Bigelow and director Matthew Heineman at the Arclight Hollywood. Generally impressive documentary that primarily follows two fascinating central characters: "Nailer," a man leading a vigilante group attempting to stop drug trafficking on the Arizona border, and 'El Doctor,' the charismatic leader of an anti-cartel militia in Michoacan, Mexico. The power of the film lies in how intimately it tracks these two characters. You get a first-hand look at what it's like being on the front line on the wars in "Cartel Land." The filmmaker bravely places himself next to our central characters even as bullets fly by. The weakness of the film, in my opinion, is that we never really get a sense of the larger situation of the Mexican drug cartels. The documentary assumes that you'll read about them elsewhere, and instead focuses on the immediate experience of the main characters. While this serves as an engaging and immediate narrative, it provides for a bit of a tunnel-visioned experience to the broader picture on the war on drugs. Heineman argued that his intention with the film was simply to tell these personal stories, but in my opinion it suffers with the lack of information about the cartels themselves to give these powerful personal stories their context.
Palo Alto (2013)
Beautiful, terrible, perfect adolescence
Don't come looking for plot - our teen years didn't have one either. Like Dazed and Confused before it, Palo Alto throws us into the joys, pains, and emotions of the life of American-suburban adolescence. Though unlike its defacto predecessor, Palo Alto takes a look at this world through a softer, more elegant, more personal lens. The film bounces us around from character to character, all high school students in the titled town. Reckless parties, desperate sexual encounters, jealousies, weed, breaking things, sexually aggressive teachers (James Franco) and, of course, homework. It's all part of the world of Palo Alto. There is no rhyme or reason. Or is there? James Franco (whose book of short stories the film is based on) plays Mr. B, the high school soccer coach, tells his favorite player April that everything has a reason. Maybe he's right. You be the judge. Director Gia Coppola, in her first feature-length effort, works wonders at keeping the characters and the world of Palo Alto authentic. "Glee" exists in a land far, far away from here. Instead, we get an unfiltered look at what it takes to navigate the turbulence of adolescence and find our path to adulthood. It's a painful but beautiful thing.