I saw this on the 19th and have really been dragging my ass to post something about it. What is there to say? Can anything be said? Is it worth it to say it? Disney is beyond criticism at this juncture. Because really, why is it necessary to remake these movies with little more then updated window dressing, a modern celebrity roster, and minor tweaks that will date the movie twenty years from now even more then the twenty-year-plus old original? Other then to sucker a new generation of young parents to buy their obnoxious children more useless merch? No I did not like The Lion King remake. It was ghastly watching the opening sequence remade with CGI and its edgy, realistic tone. No more pomp during the musical numbers: that wouldn’t happen (kitties are colorblind, remember!). No visions from the heavens: just cloud formations that are up to interpretation. And no metaphysical displacement from Rafiki: he gets his news from, literally, shit. It wasn’t fun. It felt like the Jon Favreau who I’ve known since Swingers had finally given his virgin asshole to the train of lizard people waiting for him in the Disney boardroom.
Continue readingJay’s Take: Men in Black 4
Ah, the drive-in experience! Something I never got to do as a kid, something I never choose to do as an adult. We drive a 2016 Mazda CX-5 that has to be the biggest piece of shit on four wheels and completely unsuited to sitting idle for more then 20-minutes without whining that it hasn’t got enough attention (that and the brakes, and the transmission, and the suspension, and the mileage, and the warranty, etcetera etcetera). But when we do go, we only have one within 100 km or so of our house, since you know it’s old-fashioned enough to drive an hour to get there but not enough to not trend like crazy when something like Avengers comes out. Oh my god have you been to the drive-in lately? There’s still a drive-in? What’s a drive-in? Tonight there was no Avengers. There was, however, Men in Black 4 and Annabelle 3. Oh joy! All I could think about when sitting in the lot was how long it had left before the property became condos.
Continue readingJay’s Take: Always Be My Maybe
That non-licensed free-use Netflix logo (that I made myself, thank you) will have to do until I watch more Netflix. Netflix Netflix Netflix you can’t get away from it. More than fifty-percent of the film and television production in my area is for Netflix. Now they are advertising on bus shelters. That’s how my partner and I agreed to watch it: because we were bombarded by this ONE choice on a service that I can spend minutes scrolling looking for content that appeals to me and find NOTHING. My partner loves the service though, especially those dime-a-dozen “teen vampire academy being attacked by werewolves from another dimension” shows. So it isn’t my first choice to pick something there. But like I said, there was NO OTHER OPTION. Even with the bus shelter poster being vandalized it proudly proclaimed that even you, yes YOU, can watch this NOW on Netflix. Fuck why not try it for free? You have NO EXCUSE. Okay okay okay I’ll watch your Ali Wong romcom if you’ll just stop annoying me. But they don’t stop. Now they know. My carefully-curated list of Shark Tank and Star Trek TNG is RUINED.
Continue readingJay’s Take: Midsommar
Out goes Shaft and with it the possibility of another franchise (but maybe another remake in twenty years) and in comes the latest horror/exercise in dread from Ari Aster, the director of Hereditary. I thought Hereditary was too long; not scary enough; and that its ending was derivative (see The Skeleton Key, Tale of the Mummy). But I did like its atmosphere and its chutzpah: killing Collette’s youngest so early and so unapologetically was a nice touch. Midsommar raises the same complaints for me that the previous did: it’s too long; it wasn’t scary; and the ending was derivative. But damned if it didn’t drip atmosphere and tension for a good chunk of the running time, and have the chutzpah to dispose of its roster of deserving idiot victims in such a contemptuous way.
Continue readingSelected Scenes: The Mustang
Roman and his horse Marquis are like twins: both are stubborn and prone to anger; both have to hit themselves over the head a hundred times until they make any progress; and both are incorrigible, wild beasts, out of place in their respective worlds. Roman has been in prison twelve years for a crippling assault on his wife; in and out of solitary confinement and unwilling to rehabilitate consciously, the horse training program is maybe his last opportunity as a normal life. But what is normal? To Roman, normal is living with the pain of what he has done, and a debilitating hostility that could explode into violence at any moment. Marquis (pronounced Marcus) is a brutish mustang, part of a cull to help control the wild population and to rear the captured for auction. Marquis is resistant from the very beginning, even leading a frustrated Roman to physically beat the horse in resentment, but a bond forms between the two on a mutual understanding and of course the unconditional love of this horse to his human (like Roman’s unconditional love to his estranged daughter). The ten week program is over and it’s the day of the auction. Roman and Marquis are last on the block, and Marquis is restless, unable to stay in formation for the national anthem and now uncontrollable on the reins. He throws Roman from the saddle and drags him, before head butting him, giving him an injury much like the one he gave his wife all those years ago. Are we able to reform if we are already congruent to our faults? Is the choice between physical and emotional freedom as cut and dry?
Continue reading



