No Huddle Reviews

I have often found foreign comedy films a bit dry. Comedy can be so specific to culture that it rarely translates the way it might be understood or perceived in its native language and culture. The same is often true of poetry. Something gets lost in either the translation or the lack of a common experience. There are exceptions to these films. I’ve found that the most successful way to make sure your comedy jumps language and cultural boundaries is to avoid the jokes. Let the comedy come through in the situations, actions, and body language of the performers. Because the one thing that crosses all human experiences is the human experience itself. Don’t try so much to be funny. It doesn’t even have to be foreign. Don’t you hate it when you watch a movie that the cast and crew obviously thought was rolling on the floor funny and you just didn’t get it?
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“Welcome to the unlimited possibilities of the Quantum.”

It’s a somewhat near future, and airport baggage handler Ray (Imperial) is in need of more money. He doesn’t have the new Quantum computer, and he discovers that he isn’t able to access accurate data on the net because everyone is now using the new format. He also has a brother Jamie (Howard) who is suffering from Omnia, which is a disease that makes you tired all of the time. It’s considered by many to be fake, and “clinics” have popped up to treat the disease with odd … and very expensive treatments. It’s a scam, and Ray has bought into it. So he’s going to need money.
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“Months from now, if you’re ever asked where you were, what you were doing, on October 9, you’ll have the muscle memory of what you did. You won’t have to construct the lie, because you lived it.”

We all live that day in somewhat excruciating detail. I’m talking about the opening 20 minutes of Showtime’s limited series Your Honor, starring everyone’s favorite high school chemistry teacher, Bryan Cranston. The ten-episode crime thriller/drama was developed by British television wunderkind Peter Moffat and took a rather long route to this American release. It’s based on an Israeli series called Kvodo and was originally remade in India before finally taking a shot in America via a British writer. I have not had the opportunity to see either of the earlier incarnations, so I can’t really comment on how faithful this version might have been. Beyond a strictly academic purpose, what’s important is how this series stands on its own. And that analysis is just as complicated as the path the material has taken around the world to your television … or, God help us, your phone.
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“You see this bulls*%t right here? This is exactly like him … just like Ghost.”

The first sequel series in the Power universe, starring quite possibly one of the most hated characters in the original series, and that’s a long list. Fans of the original series are likely still bearing a grudge against Michael Rainey Jr.’s Tariq St. Patrick for his murder of his father, James St. Patrick, aka Ghost, at the end of the original series. However, I heard tell when it comes to his actions in this sequel series, those are the least of Tariq’s transgressions. Picking up just a few days after the conclusion of the original series, Tariq adjusts to his new life at Stansfield University, where he immediately finds his way back into the drug game in hopes of financing his mother’s trial for the murder of his father, a rap she took for him. This Starz series shows Tariq’s descent from the world of privilege into the gritty street world
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Nothing like being framed for murder to revitalize a dying relationship. Or least that is the premise that fueled this Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani-led romantic comedy. Now in recent years, both Rae’s and Nanjiani’s star powers have been on the rise, interestingly enough as a result of stellar performances in television series (Rai on Insecure, which she also produces, and Nanjiani on Silicon Valley). This has led to more theatrical roles, which have also been moderately successful. I anticipate that their stock will continue to rise, especially given Nanijiani’s induction into the MCU with his casting in the upcoming Eternals movie, and Rae is not slouching, either, with a whopping 17 projects that her name has been attached to produce. As glad as I am that these two are doing great professionally, I don’t see this Netflix-turned-home-media release doing much for either one of them.
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It is a tall order to create a compelling television series with virtually no dialog. However, Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal fills that order. Then again, what would you expect from the creator of such entertaining animated series as Dexter’s Laboratory, Samurai Jack, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars. This time around Tartakovsky tackles the prehistoric period with this series that follows a caveman and a Tyrannosaurus that were bonded by grief. As unrealistic as the pairing sounds, the themes of the series make it quality television. Normally, I’m not one for shows with minimal dialog; in this series, its absence makes the artwork and storylines resonate deeper as extra time and care was taken to convey the plot’s significance. Of particular intrigue is that fact that though the series is a work of fantasy, all the animals depicted are based on real prehistoric animals.
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Are you feeling a little déjà vu when you turn on a television or live stream these days? While Tom Selleck is playing a family patriarch on Blue Bloods, Jay Hernandez is in Hawaii driving a bright red Ferrari in a new version of Magnum P.I. Hawaii 5-O was one of the most popular shows on CBS, and Charmed is bewitching an entire new generation of streamers on the internet. You might consider this a time of little ingenuity on the tube, but CBS has gone back in time to resurrect the very definition of ingenuity in MacGyver. The show just completed its fifth and final season, while the fourth season is now out on DVD thanks to some cooperation between Lionsgate and CBS.
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“If this is all a dream, what’s gonna happen when we wake up?”

If you look at the stats, it would be so easy to conclude that Joe Dante’s 1985 film Explorers was a complete dud. The film cost a little over 25 million dollars and raked in less than 10 million dollars. It didn’t last very long in the theaters, and one might conclude that’s the end of that story. But one would be quite wrong. Since the day I first saw it at the theaters during its short run, it has remained one of my favorite films of all time. Looking at the stats might keep you from giving this old gem a try, but you would be missing one of the most heartfelt films of the last 35 years. It’s one of those films that the studios still don’t have much faith in, so it hasn’t been released with any kind of frequency or care.
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I grew up on the Peanuts creations of Charles M. Schulz. Most of us have, in some way or another. His newspaper comic strip is one of the longest running and most successful strips of all time. The work has been translated into every language currently spoken on the planet. The images of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, and the rest of the Peanuts gang have appeared on just about any kind of product imaginable. Our pop culture contains too many references to the strip to mention briefly. For me, it was the television specials starting in the mid 1960’s that brought the gang into my life. The classics are running annually, still after nearly 50 years. A Charlie Brown Christmas and It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown are the most mentioned and certainly beloved by generations of children and adults. I thought I never missed an airing.
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“Space… the funniest frontier?”

Star Trek: The Animated Series first aired in September of 1973, four years after the three seasons of what is now referred to Star Trek: The Original Series. It was a straight sequel that continued the five-year mission of the starship Enterprise. All of the original cast lent their voices to the characters they played in the live-action series with the notable exception of Walter Koenig. Chekov was replaced with an alien that had three arms and legs named Arex, who was voiced by James Doohan, as were many of the other guest characters throughout the two years the series ran. There were episodes that served as direct sequels, and so we were treated to the likes of Harry Mudd, tribbles, and the Guardian of Forever once again.  Now Paramount and CBS have brought us a second animated series, and the first season of 10 episodes arrives on DVD straight from its running on the network’s streaming service.
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It’s been a while since a CSI episode has crossed our paths. For nearly 20 years the franchise would be one of the top-rated dramas on television. It all started with the original CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. This Las Vegas show became an instant hit, and three years later we found ourselves in Miami for a spin-off. Two years after basking in the Florida sunshine, Jerry Bruckheimer caught lightning a third time; this time out New York would serve as the setting. While there are ties that bind the three shows to the CSI franchise, each show has a unique style. The cases also serve to distinguish the shows from one another. The leads for the three shows likely give the most character to the series. Gary Sinise as Detective Mac Taylor brings a strength that establishes this show’s credibility from episode one.
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Ah, good old 1990’s, such important years in our history. The Soviet Union was in a state of social and political upheaval, David Robinson had just taken the professional basketball world by storm, and I was hatching plans for my first double-digits birthday. Oh yeah, and Beverly Hills, 90210 hit the airwaves for its inaugural season. Obviously, at the time I was a bit young to have been interested in this teen soap opera, so watching the DVD set has not be full of reminiscence for me. Instead, it’s been like discovering for the first time what 1990 could have been like, had I been a beautiful, spoiled-rich teen living in Beverly Hills. My three biggest regrets about missing out on 90210? I could have looked back now and laughed about the bad hair, bad clothes and bad music that I thought were so cool back in the day. Actually, I did laugh at that stuff, but surely not as heartily as I would have, had I been an old-school 90210 fan.
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“Well, you think about it, Ethan, it was inevitable. No more cold war. No more secrets you keep from yourself. Answer to no one but yourself. Then, you wake up one morning and find out the President is running the country without your permission. The son of a bitch, how dare he. Then you realize, it’s over. You are an obsolete piece of hardware, not worth upgrading, you got a lousy marriage, and 62 grand a year.”

The more things change, the more they tend to remain the same. In 1996 Paramount was nearing the end of a run of feature films that started with a 1960’s Desilu Studios television series called Star Trek. That same year the studio was beginning a run of feature films based on a 1960’s Desilu Studios television series that at one time shared an actor with Star Trek, Leonard Nimoy. That series was Mission Impossible. The show starred Peter Graves as the leader of a cold war covert government group called the IMF or Impossible Mission Force.
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“In the 19th century, persons suffering from mental illness were thought to be alienated from their own true natures. Experts who studied them were therefore known as alienists.”

The Alienist was drama airing on TNT for two seasons and is the latest in the recent trend of period-piece dramas to populate the television series market. Like many of these kinds of shows, The Alienist relies as much on atmosphere as it does on the actual story being told. The series is intended to attack the senses and obviously elicit some kind of a reaction. Filmed in Budapest, the show takes us back to New York City in the 1890’s and truly builds a rather deep and dark environment that you will likely remember far longer than any other element of the show. The series also utilizes a tremendous amount of computer-generated images for set extensions and sometimes complete environments. It’s an ambitious undertaking and might well have been the crowning achievement of the series.
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The Italian film industry has been setting trends since Edison first released his wonderful moving picture cameras. Names like Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, and Lamberto Bava delivered what would be known as Spaghetti Nightmares. These are the films that gave birth to the American splatter craze that began in the 1970’s. Then there was Sergio Leone and his Spaghetti Westerns that propelled Clint Eastwood to instant stardom with his Man With No Name films. Most film fans know these filmmakers and the history that spawned. What is less known is that decades before these trends Italian filmmakers were created, a genre often called sword and sandal films that featured a lot of ancient buff guys with swords saving cities, and of course beautiful damsels in distress. While many were low-budget affairs, they soon evolved into epic spectacles while still on somewhat limited funds. Among these films the Greek semi-god Hercules would become one of the more famous and successful. Hey, Greek mythology is in public domain, so you can develop a franchise that has high name recognition without having to pay royalties. Writers were a dime a dozen and could be paid with a six-pack and a TV dinner. In Europe at the time there were no unions to make sure everyone shared in the wealth.
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“There is a doorway in the universe. Beyond it is the promise of truth. It demands we question everything we have ever been taught. The evidence is all around us. We are not alone. We have never been alone.”

Ever since Eric von Daniken released his speculative book and its subsequent 1970 film Chariots of the Gods, there has been an entire field of study created around something commonly called Ancient Astronaut Theory, the idea is that extraterrestrials have visited many of our ancient civilizations. The theory continues that these visitors had a hand in shaping our development, whether it be through technology or even manipulation of our very DNA.
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“We bring you the circus, pied piper whose magic tunes greet children of all ages, from six to 60, into a tinsel and spun-candy world of reckless beauty and mounting laughter and whirling thrills; of rhythm, excitement and grace; of blaring and daring and dance; of high-stepping horses and high-flying stars. But behind all this, the circus is a massive machine whose very life depends on discipline and motion and speed. A mechanized army on wheels that rolls over any obstacle in its path, that meets calamity again and again, but always comes up smiling. A place where disaster and tragedy stalk the big top, haunt the back yard, and ride the circus train. Where death is constantly watching for one frayed rope, one weak link, or one trace of fear. A fierce, primitive fighting force that smashes relentlessly forward against impossible odds. That is the circus. And this is the story of the biggest of the big tops, and of the men and women who fight to make it The Greatest Show on Earth.” 

It was 1952 and four years before Cecil B. DeMille would deliver his Biblical epic release of The Ten Commandments.
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“This bird you’ll never change.”

That seems to be the case with the Southern Rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd. Few bands have experienced the level of tragedy this one has. It’s somewhat of a miracle that any version of the band would still be standing. But they are thriving and doing their best to keep their particular sound alive. And what better place to demonstrate that nearly 50 years after they were formed than back home in Jacksonville, Florida where the band’s original members were formed. (No, they didn’t come from Alabama.) I was never a huge fan of the band, but like most music lovers, I was drawn to hits like Free Bird. In my high school band we played Free Bird, Gimme Three Steps, and … of course, Sweet Home Alabama.
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Cute show, at least as far as I was concerned. My daughter is a bit of a different animal; then, of course, if it doesn’t show on Netflix or YouTube, she tends not to be all that interested. Unfortunately for my daughter, Victor & Valentino is a Cartoon Network show, so her interest in the series was nonexistent in the beginning. On the plus side, she was coming off a long punishment that included the loss of her TV privileges, so given an opportunity to watch any form of entertainment, she jumped at the chance. As I said, she wasn’t really about the show at first, but over the course of the 18 episodes, I think she started to enjoy it. Don’t let that number scare you. Each episode tends to run between 11 and 12 minutes, so you can watch the entire thing in the same span that it would take to watch a movie and a half. More on the subject: the series follows two half-brothers who are polar opposites; Victor “Vic” Calavera (who is voiced by show creator Diego Molano), an easily bored, hyperactive kid with a penchant for mischief and disregarding rules.
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“I believe that every fascist should be swindled.” 

The Last Vermeer truly was a worthwhile film experience for me, worthy of the silver screen. Granted, I doubt it would have been big at the box office domestically, but I don’t question that critics would have enjoyed just as I did. The film is based on the 2008 book The Man Who Made Vermeers by Jonathan Lopez, and tells the story of Dutch folk hero Han van Meegeren (played by Guy Pearce), an art forger who swindles millions of dollars from the Nazis. Following World War II, van Meegeren become widely known as one of the most ingenious art forgers of the 20th century, when it was revealed that he had sold a forged painting to Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. These events were revealed after a sensational trial in which he was being charged as officials believed that he had sold Dutch cultural property to the Nazis, a capital offense. Facing potential death by firing squad, Van Meegeren confessed to the less serious charge of forgery. It is estimated that Van Meegeren swindled buyers out of the equivalent of more than US $30 million, including the government of the Netherlands. But that is enough with the history lesson; let’s talk about the film.
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For a while now it has been accepted that cartoons are no longer for kids, and it can be argued that most of the popular animated shows now are more geared towards adults rather than kids these days.  I’ve grown up with The Simpsons, and I’ve enjoyed the run that Family Guy has had, but really these have been the only animated shows I’d consider myself loyal to.  Upon seeing some ads promoting Rick and Morty as well as hearing my friends talk about the show, I couldn’t help but think perhaps this could possibly be a new animated series I could get excited about. At first glance Rick and Morty seems like the perfected animated blend of Family Guy and The Simpsons, and for the other-worldly locations even Futurama.  The comparisons are hard to look past; after all, the family dynamic is just about the same, and the shows both are filled with their pop-culture references throughout, so what is that makes Rick and Morty stand out from the other shows?
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The argument about violence in entertainment has been going on for decades.  Groups have always wanted to point the finger at music, television, books, and movies for being the cause of violence or inciting crime, and typically the creators of this art are the ones being blamed.  In the 90’s I remember the uproar about how Natural Born Killers  was going to create a generation of serial killers but had people been paying attention to the film and how the violence of real life was being exploited, but by the media.  Then even Metallica and Marilyn Manson were thrown under the bus for “creating” murderers in regards to the infamous West Memphis 3, who were accused of murder simply because of the music they listened to. Then there were the Columbine shooters, who were guilty because of the music they listened to and the movies they watched.  Only recently does it seem that the finger-pointing has gone the direction where it’s deserved — towards mental illness.  That’s not to say that life doesn’t ever imitate art.
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Ammonite was a very hard movie to stay interested in. In its defense, I don’t believe that I was the target audience for the film; I’m not really interested in period dramas, and the only things I know about paleontology I learned from Ross on Friends. There is also the fact that as a film it is very slow and dry, and the most interesting angle was the relationship that developed between characters Mary Anning and Charlotte Murchison. Granted this was an intriguing development, but before we are treated to this, we have to survive an hour of poignant silences broken up with very little dialog. There is also the fact that my research has shown that their historical accuracy of the characters’ relationship in the film has been called into question. So now as a audience member I am forced to question the only truly interesting thing about the film. Kate Winslet and Saiorse Ronan are top-level talents, but I fear that even they weren’t enough to make the film worthwhile for me. Essentially, Ammonite is only for those who enjoy slow-building period dramas.
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Come Play is the most recent film to be expanded to feature length following a successful short project. With the moderate success of Lights Out, it’s no big surprise that a studio would want to take a chance on Come Play, whose short film, “Larry”, worked as a prototype for the feature it would become.  This kind of thing happens quite often with genre projects, but sometimes you have to wonder is there really enough story to expand a 5-minute short into a 90-minute feature.  Using the addiction to technology and its ever-expanding AI features, there is plenty of story to be mined from this.  Recently there was the update to Child’s Play that had AI technology seeking a new best friend it would kill to have, and in that film, Chucky was able to manipulate the technology around him.  Come Play somewhat takes the same approach but instead creates a boogeyman for the age of modern tech. Then factor in that it’s a film under the Amblin umbrella, a company that is responsible for Poltergeist, ET, and numerous 80’s and 90’s genre classics … well, it’s hard to not have some raised expectations.
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“You will survive Christmas in the mountains. I promise”

Someone should have told that character about making promises that you can’t keep. In this horror film, which felt more like a dark comedy if you ask me, a newly formed blended family and their au pair find themselves doing battle with a group of evil toys. That’s right, you read correctly, I said toys, and on Christmas no less. Now, the premise of evil toys is nothing new. I for one still can’t look at a Chucky doll without internal feelings of dread; however, where those films were able to instill fear, Toys of Terror just doesn’t do it, largely due to the film’s overall pacing. It just takes too long to get off the ground. Plenty of sizzle, but by the time we get to the steak, much of the runtime has been depleted and all the intrigue has bubbled out. While it is not the horror film that I expected, there were still some elements of the film that were worthwhile despite a bit of a lackluster conclusion.
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