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Author: Matt Vetrano
Cinema Dispatch: Little
Little and all the images you see in this review are owned by Universal Pictures
Directed by Tina Gordon
I don’t know about this one. I got this trailer a few times and while it did have a few funny gags here and there, it seemed like only a step or two above Night School which I would conclusively say is damning with faint praise considering how I’m guessing only half of you even remember what that was. Still! It’s always a good idea to give a comedy NOT from a straight male perspective a chance because if nothing else it’s unlikely to be as toxic and mean spirited as say Daddy’s Home 2 or Fist Fight, and the LAST time we got a female centered update on a well-known comedy (this being a clear inversion of Tom Hank’s Big) was the eminently enjoyable What Men Want, so perhaps there’s something here that’s not shining through in the trailers! Could this be a comedy classic in the making, or am I expecting too much from yet another cash grab to soak up a few bucks between Shazam and Avengers? Let’s find out!!
Jordan Sanders (Regina Hall) is a hard as nails (i.e. abusive) owner of a tech company that believes time not spent crunching is time wasted, and no one at the office likes her; least of all her assistant April (Issa Rae) who puts up with it because… well that’s what we ALL have to do when we have crappy jobs. Jordan however messes with the wrong person one day as a young girl at the office calls her out for her attitude and uses her magic wand to put a curse on her. Now I’d have preferred if she went up to her face and whispered the word “littler” to her, but in any case the magic seems to have taken effect as she wakes up the next day as her thirteen year old self (Marsai Martin). Now fortunately for Jordan, April takes this whole situation rather well and agrees to help cover for her at work until they can get this fixed, but through a rather convoluted set of circumstances, Jordan has to be enrolled in school THAT VERY DAY OR ELSE APRIL WILL GET ARRESTED… for reasons. Oh, and on top of that there’s a big pitch scheduled at the office in two days to try and keep the company’s most valuable client and April is SO not ready for that which means she has to learn to be a leader as Jordan learns to be… less of a jerk I guess? Anyway, will Jordan find a way to return to her normal self before and even learn a valuable less at the same time? Will April become the active go getter who can get things done in an economy that will otherwise chew her up and spit her out? Wait, why does she need glasses when she’s little but not when she’s an adult? Does she have contacts that no longer fit, or did the laser eye surgery somehow reverse itself? DID HER BABY TEETH GROW BACK!?
The Man with the Golden Stream: Tomorrow Never Dies (Part 2)
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Super Recaps: The Twilight Zone (The Pool Guy)
The Twilight Zone and all the images you see in this recap are owned by Warner Bros Television and based on the series created by Rod Serling
Episode directed by Paul Shapiro and Brad Turner
We’re back with another episode of The Twilight Zone, and not the one you were searching for on Google! While the last episode seemed to have been ripping off or was heavily inspired by a recently released movie, this one has a bit of an older influence to it at first glance; bringing to mind the cyber punk oddities of the early to mid-nineties more than anything else. Sure, it doesn’t have the budget of Johnny Mnemonic or The Lawnmower Man (the latter almost certainly being an influence down to the title of the episode), but can they still capture the essence of that weird and stretch of sci-fi film making into a solid twenty minute fable? Let’s find out!!
Ritchie (Lou Diamond Phillips; no seriously) is some dude who cleans pools for a living which is kind of sad considering said living has been going on for two decades now, but then again in a just economic system he’d be making a living wage instead of merely scraping by so I guess the sad part is once again a product of Capitalism. Sadly that’s not the focus of the episode, but things do get off to a strange start as Some GuyTM straight out of a Hitchcock movie starts chatting him up about how awesome it is being a pool guy. Getting out in the sun, visiting awesome houses, banging the lonely housewives! Seems like an odd thing to start with when “hi” and “my name is so and so, what’s yours?” is right there on the table, but maybe he’s going somewhere with this!
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Cinema Dispatch: Shazam!
Shazam! and all the images you see in this review are owned by Warner Bros Pictures
Directed by David F Sandberg
The slow course correction of the DCCU is perhaps not the most surprising thing in the world (you fail at something long enough, you might start to learn from those mistakes), but with Aquaman being a critical hit along with the… let’s say INTERESTING reactions to the Joker trailer, DCCU might just be on the upswing with this movie being the big test to see if this whole experiment can work now that we’re more or less in Phase Two. Not only is this a fresh start in terms of being the first one more or less completely separate from the Snyder version of the universe, it’s also the first one to FEEL different from all the other ones; same way that Guardians of the Galaxy was a shot in the arm for Marvel after a somewhat serious phase for them. Does this left turn into sunshine and happiness work turn out to fix many of the problems with the DCCU, or is Warner Bros beating a dead horse at this point? Let’s find out!!
Billy Batson (Asher Angel) is your typical teenager who loves to roam the streets of Philly looking for his mother who disappeared many years ago and is willing to any length to find her! Okay, maybe that’s not the typical teenage experience, but it’s Billy’s whole deal and the state is getting real tired of him running away from foster homes to search for a person that clearly doesn’t want to be found. Now they don’t want to just toss his butt into juvy just yet, so they’ve found ONE more family willing to take him in which includes Rosa and Victor as the parents (Marta Milans and Cooper Andrews), a bunch of other kids (Faithe Herman, Grace Fulton, Ian Chen, and Pedro Peña), and his new roommate Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer) who’s sassy, handicapable, and REALLY into superheroes. That last one wouldn’t be TOO bad if it weren’t for the fact that he likes Henry Cavell’s superman, but I guess those are the only toys he can get on clearance, so what are you gonna do? ANYWAY, while all this is going on (and for several decades prior) a wizard by the name of Shazam (Dijmon Hounsou) has been scouring the Earth for decades to find SOMEONE worthy of taking his power and being the new protector of the planet which depressingly is a much harder task than you’d imagine. Even with that caveat, I can’t say I’m too fond of his methods as he just pulls kids out of nowhere to give them a test and then send them back to reality when they fail to disappoint; especially when of these candidates is a young Thaddeus Sivanna (Ethan Pugitotto) who will one day grow up to be the ADULT (and doctor) Thaddeus Sivanna (Mark Strong) and is still obsessed with finding that weird dude who told him he wasn’t good enough to be a super hero. Thaddeus does get his… revenge I guess (perhaps more of a make-up test?) when he finds the secret to accessing this magic realm and steals the EVIL version of Shazam’s power for himself. Well darn it! Now that Shazam has plum run out of options, it’s time to just pick one before it’s too late, so Billy? It’s your lucky day! The wizard scoops him up, gives him his powers, and then kicks him back to reality as well only now he’s in the rockin’ bod of the superhero Shazam (Zachary Levi). Can Billy learn how to use his powers and be the best superhero on Instagram, or was the wizard’s desperate Hail Mary ultimately a bad move? Will he be ready by the time Dr. Sivanna realizes the wizard’s champion has been chosen and goes after him to take his power as well? Be honest! If you got super powers, you’d be an obnoxious attention seeker as well!
The Man with the Golden Stream: Tomorrow Never Dies (Part 1)
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Cinema Dispatch: Pet Sematary
Pet Sematary and all the images you see in this review are owned by Paramount Pictures
Directed by Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer
I don’t know about this one. I mean I liked the original Pet Sematary and Stephen King adaptations in general, but the trailers are just not doing it for me. For the most part I think I’m turned off by JUST how big of a tonal shift it is from a bright and colorful yet creepy tale of magic and grief into something that looks to be aping Hereditary which is doubly worrying considering the ONE BIG similarity between the two. I have a certain limit when it comes to horror (mainly when you replace creepiness and suspense with misery and suffering), and I am not prepared to see a beloved classic from the eighties go down that same route just to chase a trend. Still, even if the LOOK of the thing may be drastically different there’s still the original story which is quite well thought of for a reason, and I could just be looking at the original through rose tinted glasses. I remember the movie in the broad strokes, but a lot of the nuance for me has been lost to time (it’s had to of been a decade at least since I saw it) and perhaps this one will do a great job of recreating all that I’ve forgotten about the original! Wishful thinking perhaps, but there’s only one way to find out!!
The Creed family has just moved to a little out of the way country town in the middle of Maine (because nothing spooky ever happens THERE!) so that the father Louis (Jason Clarke) could take a less demanding job at a University hospital which will allow him to spend more time with his kids Ellie and Gage (Jeté Laurence and Hugo Lavoie/Lucas Lavoie) as well as his wife Rachel (Amy Seimetz) who’s already getting some bad vibes from this place right off the bat. Eh, maybe it’s just nerves from her TRAGIC BACKSTORY that I’m sure will come into play later in the movie! Anyway, Ellie learns about a place in the woods behind their house called the Pet Sematary where children (who don’t know how to spell) bury their dead pets in some sort of local ritual. This is all well-known and expanded upon by the Creed family’s neighbor Jud (John Lithgow) who’s lived here all his life and may know even more about this place than he’s letting on. Now as the family seems to finally be settling in, tragedy strikes as Ellie’s cat Churchill is hit by a truck on the road RIGHT outside the house (SEEMS A LITTLE BIT DANGEROUS IF YOU ASK ME!) and now Louis has to break the bad news to her which is not going to be pleasant, but Jud has an idea on maybe fixing this problem which may be more than just him being neighborly. What kind secrets does this little town have that Jud can show Louis, and what will it end up costing the both of them in the process? Will Louis be able to live with the knowledge that Jed is about to reveal, and what will happen in his own life to temp him to abuse this mysterious power? Seriously, is that cat gonna get its own spinoff!? The filmmakers are just in LOVE with that thing!
The Man with the Golden Stream: Goldeneye 007 (Part 7) FINALE
The Man with the Golden Stream! James Bond video games every Sunday at 2:30pm EST!
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Super Recaps: The Twilight Zone (Harsh Mistress)
The Twilight Zone and all the images you see in this recap are owned by Warner Bros Television and based on the series created by Rod Serling
Episode directed by Brad Turner
We’re back with another episode of That Twilight Zone series no one remembers! I PROBABLY should have finished a lot more of these before the NEW Twilight Zone show came out, but better late than never! It also would help if TV shows stuck around for more than a week now that everything is put on streaming services in all at once, but that’s beside the point as we’ve got MORE than enough episodes to go through right here and frankly at my pace we’ll probably loop back around to season two before I even get halfway through this series. ANYWAY! Today’s episode is one of jealousy, obsession, and Rock and Roll, so let’s get ready for some heavy handed commentary on the music industry and the wild lifestyles of musicians!
The episode begins with Corey (Lukas Haas; yes THAT Lukas Haas) who informs us through very awkward narration that he’s a wannabe rocker with no talent but a whole lot of heart; something we could have grasped by looking at the guy fail to bust out even the most basic of riffs on a store guitar, but why SHOW something when you can pedantically TELL it? Seriously, this is not a situation so subtle and nuanced that you need someone to hold the audience’s hand; especially when his playing is so bad that his friend Ricky (Sticky Fingaz; no, seriously) calls him out on it right then and there in the guitar shop! Corey however is undeterred in his quest to somehow be a rock star without having any talent which frankly wasn’t THAT unbelievable since this was came out in the year of Nickelback (ZING!), and he ends up buying the guitar with whatever cash he was able to scrape up. Maybe this is the turning point though where he’ll FINALLY learn how to play and apply his craft! Heck, the guitar looks just like the one of his idol Bobby McCain who was a MASTERFUL musician before dying tragically of a suicide, so maybe it’ll bring him good luck! In fact, now that he REALLY looks at it… it’s almost exactly like the one he had! It even changed color, and… I don’t remember the guitar being covered in blood when he bought it, do you? Wait a minute… HOLY CRAP!!
Continue reading “Super Recaps: The Twilight Zone (Harsh Mistress)”
The Man with the Golden Stream: Goldeneye 007 (Part 6)
The Man with the Golden Stream! James Bond video games every Sunday at 2:30pm EST!
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The Reviewers Unite 