Brett Garten, Movie Extraordinare
Cinematic Sommelier
6.9
Two words – unnecessarily horny.
Turns out Bob Ross needed a stash of brushes to keep the babes at bay.
An absolutely ridiculous what I’m going to consider a mockumentary for the ages. Owen Wilson kills it, and somehow keeps a straight face the entire runtime. If (insert vehicle here) is a rocking, don’t come a knocking. And probably don’t take your new vegan girlfriend to the fondue place for veal. Pro tip from a single gentleman about town.
8.5
“You’re remembered for the rules you break.”
The measure of a good “based on a true story” film is how well it can keep the attention of the audience. Did we all know the ship was going to meet its untimely demise at the hands of an iceberg? Yes. Did we all still put butts in seats and make it one of the highest grossing films of all time? You bet your ass we did.
This film keep you engaged from the opening note of “Money for Nothin’” until the credits roll.
Every single member of this cast brings their A game and keep the narrative firing on all cylinders at all times. The ability to make the mundane magnificent is something magical about this film. Whether it’s our taste for nostalgia, love for characters overcoming adversity, or love for this cast and this story, it all works.
Side note – the soundtrack is AMAZING!
6.1
So, while Congress and everyone else under the Sun is pounding a table somewhere about Tik Tok stealing our data, take a ride down memory lane and be reminded of the other foreign website that drilled into our data and trafficked more than video content. A shocking amount of them are foreign companies. Pornhub in particular? Canadian. It’s structure is strikingly similar to a Chinese conglomerate the likes of Tencent and Alibaba. Or Baidu, which delivers many visitors here to my site. (It’s a search engine, get your heads out of the gutter. My reviews aren’t THAT stimulating.)
It’s an okay documentary. They try to dress up a boring story with the shock value of porn… which wears off well before the 4 hour mark when we have to start becoming concerned.
7.9
Did you know that pinball was illegal in large parts of the U.S. for decades? Yeah, neither did I.
Get ready for the strangest dramatic-documentary in years as we join Roger Sharpe, pinball aficionado and columnist for GQ on his quest to document the history of the game and save its future. And actually be invested in it the whole way. I’m as surprised as you are, but here we are… time to get nostalgic and be left google mapping nearby arcades after this one. What better reason to fight city hall? Just when you thought the government banning alcohol in the United States was dumb…
https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/did-you-know-pinball-was-illegal-in-nyc-for-over-30-years
6.5
Good, not great. Reading the book ruined the movie.
I recommend “And Party Every Day” instead. The full story of this meteoric rise and spectacular fall from grace, and everything in between is something far better than Hollywood could ever put to film. Outside of the copious amounts of cocaine, they got that right. Casablanca Records was a one of a kind story with characters so complex that this film had massive shoes to fill. Unfortunately, it came out very vanilla.
As a huge KISS fan, they did the band dirty in this film. So much history misrepresented. For shame, movie!
https://www.loudersound.com/features/the-casablanca-records-story
Brett Garten, Movie Extraordinare 