Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: DAVE CHAPPELLE – THE KENNEDY CENTER MARK TWAIN PRIZE FOR AMERICAN HUMOR (FEATURE LENGTH NETFLIX SPECIAL)

Holy fuck that title is a mouthful isn’t it? And holy fuck, when did I start doing reviews on specials? **someone whispers in my ear** Oh that’s right, COVID-FUCKIN-19. Anyway, how did this thing come on Netflix in January and I basically just randomly ran across it when cruising Netflix yesterday? Doesn’t matter, I’m just glad I did. DAVE CHAPPELLE: THE KENNEDY CENTER MARK TWAIN PRIZE FOR AMERICAN HUMOR was a little delightful hour and 25 minute special celebrating the life and accomplishments of Dave Chappelle, probably my favorite comedian of all time. I grew up with him as a teenager and caught ALL of Chappelle’s Show when it was broadcast for the first time on Comedy Central, I’ve seen him twice live in stand up specials, and I’ve watched all of his stand up specials wherever I could find them. Dave Chappelle is a genius. He’s genius in his art, in his craft, and his lifestyle choices. The man has somehow found a way to make fun of everyone and everything, no stone un-turned, and has had the least amount of triggered people after him that I have ever seen. How one does that, especially nowadays, is damn near impossible. But somehow he has done it. And I am forever grateful.

This special is basically a bunch of other comedians, actors, writers, commentators, and musicians, and then like a roast but no one bashes him harshly, himself, that talk about the entire life and career of Mr. Chappelle, from birth to where he is today. There are a couple of short musical performances, but mostly remembrances, with grand praises and gratitude for the comedic legend. There are also clips from his career, from his early stand up, to Chappelle’s Show, to his recent stand up (he was basically absent for 12 years after his epiphany when leaving the Show after only 2 seasons). Basically the whole thing is to tell Dave how much everyone and the world means to him, while getting some laughs, and maybe even a few tears out of him. And then he thanks everyone. It was a nice, easy little feature to watch, and it mainly makes you want to go back and watch all of his stand up from the beginning, Chappelle’s Show, and then his recent stand up, all over again. You could tell that this even was probably about really 3 hrs in length, and you know what? The only disappointing thing about this feature is that we weren’t shown the entire thing.

I would have gladly watched it, no matter how long it was. They could’ve at least kept the entire musical performances from the musicians he respected the most. They felt like really short little stanzas of their music and it was a little awkward when it just cuts off and ends. Basically, if you love Dave Chappelle like I do and have followed his career almost from the beginning, or hell if you are just now discovering Dave Chappelle, this special is a definite must watch. Can’t really rank it in my best films of 2020 because it isn’t really a movie per say, but needless to say, I would definitely watch this again. It’s a big tribute to a man who’s genius is unmatched. He is an incredible comedian, person, artist, what have you. The fact that he can tell it like it is, while only really butt hurting just a handful of people is nothing short of amazing. The fact that someone can yell at you, “I’m Rick James, bitch!” and pull up a bunch of fond memories of the man…well…he definitely deserved this award and then some. Congratulations Dave Chappelle, I’m very, very happy you won this award.

Zach’s Zany TV Binge Watchin’ Reviews: FUTURE MAN SEASON 3 (Hulu)

“Wow, how the mighty have fallen.” That’s what I usually say when either a sequel to a beloved movie sucks ass, or how subsequent seasons in a television show completely tarnish what came before. I said that phrase about halfway into FUTURE MAN SEASON 3. Let’s be clear here: the first season of FUTURE MAN is a pretty damn near perfect sci-fi comedy. The storyline and time travel was crystal clear, the laughs were huge and earned, the characters had fantastic chemistry…literally everything works in that season. And then you get to Season 2, which for me was a disappointment right from the get go. They abandon all three of the main characters in this really boring future fuck up waste land story line and then the writers had the gall to separate them for about half the season, when their chemistry was critical in the fantastic season before. But then toward the end, the series found its groove, with that last 4 or 5 episodes (out of a 13 episode season, the first season was also 13 episodes) being hilarious and brilliant. Then this first two episodes of the new season I thought the momentum picked up from the end of the previous season. But then episode 3 hits, and all the way through the last shortened final 8 episodes, it all comes crashing down, with a ho hum kind of ending that makes you feel as if you wasted your time.

Season one felt like it had all the money in the world in accordance to its budget. There were people everywhere and the effects were decent for a Hulu Original. But then season two hit, there are less people everywhere, and it seems their production became really cheap for whatever reason. The effects weren’t as good, they couldn’t hire as many extras, and for their dumb wasteland storyline it seemed like they got a cheap permit to film out in the middle of nowhere. Maybe the first season didn’t do as well as they had hoped viewer wise, but enough to warrant a second, and then the second season did worse, but Hulu wanted to writers to wrap up the story, hence a very short 3rd season. Season 3 is as cheap as it comes television production wise. They enact another story line where they are stuck out in the middle of a nowhere forest quarry for 2 to 3 episodes and then when they are out in public near the end, when the year 2000 is about to hit, AT A COLLEGE DORM MIND YOU, there is not a soul or extra in sight. It just felt so damn cheap, and the effects this time are extremely laughable. Perhaps most of the budget went toward its stars and then a beefed up role for Seth Rogen, who co-executive produced the series? I don’t know, but I feel as though the lessened budget that Hulu gave the show did them no favors with the writers department. I’m 100% sure this wasn’t their original vision in how the show progressed or ended.

If you don’t know what this series is about, IMDB’s log line makes it simple: “Josh Futturman, a janitor by day and a gamer by night, is recruited by mysterious visitors to travel through time to prevent the extinction of humanity.” It’s basically a rude and crude retelling, re-imagining, what have you, of The Last Starfighter, in which this loser is recruited because he beats this unbeatable video game that was really just a test for who could end up saving a very desolate and depressing future. And the third season has the gall to bring up a question on everyone’s minds since the first episode, and without getting into spoilers, cuts off the characters explanation as a joke (basically the writers had no idea, so they turned the whole thing into a cut off joke just to get a laugh out of the audience and try to make them forget that we were asking this question since the first season in the first place. You’ll know what this question is if you’ve been loyal to the series in the first place. They bring it up one scene before the show ends here. It’s stupid and lazy. Part of the reason why I think the writers unfortunately had to go in another direction was not only because of budget, but because in the first season one of the actors, Glenne Headley, who play’s Josh’s mom, died in real life. I think the writers had plans for future seasons really involving his parents, but had to scratch that and write around her death. Which I understand, but they should’ve thought of something better. The main problem other than the cheap production value is that the series again keeps this characters in one location for two to three episodes, and those locations become boring fast. They introduce a new place called Haven, and without getting into spoilers, the concept was a neat one, but the execution was very shoddy.

Would I recommend watching this series at all? Probably just the first season, and ignore the cliffhanger. The first season is fantastic. The second season is meh until the very end, and the third season is hugely disappointing after a decent first two episodes (really an only episode and a half). It’s not terrible, terrible, it just feels very, very, very cheap all around and I don’t think what came to be was necessarily what the writers had planned as an endgame. They keep the three leads together mostly throughout this season, which their chemistry is their only saving grace. Josh Hutcherson (Hunger Games), Eliza Coupe (Happy Endings), and Derek Wilson (Preacher), don’t lose sight of their characters and even learn to make their arcs grow this season. And while I was really disappointed with how it all ended, I have sort of come to terms that it was probably the best the writers could come up with the budget that was given to them. When these companies have the writers write themselves out of a corner with a really small budget, sometimes (most of the time) it might’ve been better if they just quit while they were ahead. Yes, I’m saying that I wish this show was cancelled after season one. And with these last 8 episodes just dumped on Hulu this past weekend without any fucking marketing promoting the show was coming back, I guarantee you we were probably this close of not receiving a final season at all, but someone gave everyone involved sympathy money to wrap it up. Just ultimately really disappointing, and other than the first season, this show will be forgotten in time soon, with no future rewatches.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: COFFEE & KAREEM (Netflix)

COFFEE & KAREEM, a new movie that debuted on Netflix today starring Ed Helms and Taraji P. Henson, is like a more vulgar, obnoxious dumb, stupid, fucking terrible remake of Cop And A Half…and if you don’t know what that movie is (Burt Reynolds is in it), all you need to know is that it is considered once of the worst films of the 90’s. So saying that Coffee & Kareem is worse than that…you know I’m saying something. Were the producers of Netflix smoking crack while watching this film and deciding to purchase it for their streaming service? That’s the only logical explanation for this tone deaf piece of shit that is a giant waste of time. And usually my whole deal is that I really, really like young kid cursing movies with dick, sex and fart jokes galore. BUT…that is only when they have heart, like the movie Good Boys. While that film was vulgar, the message of it, and the jokes, had heart in them, which is what made the movie hilarious and cute. Coffee & Kareem is just a bunch of people yelling at each other for an hour and 28 minutes. And the yelling become obnoxious very very fast. And the jokes are vulgar and gross just for the sake of being vulgar and gross…which I hate. This film has no hearts, no smarts, and not one decent joke that deals with farts. Another giant Netflix bomb to be precise.

And what really is odd is that it contains one of the worst performances I’ve seen all year from Betty Gilpin, who actually is a decent actress on Netflix’s girl wrestling series Glow and she made the most recent movie The Hunt entertaining and a little bad ass. Here she plays an obnoxious cop that just screams obscenities at people…and she can’t even pull that off realistically. It screams paycheck. Anyway, the movie is really about a white cop named Officer Coffee, played by Hangover’s Ed Helms, that is dating an African American woman, played by Taraji P. Henson, and them deciding to reveal who’s she dating to her young 12 year old son named Kareem, who before he’s informed of their tryst, catches them in the act of having sex. Kareem then decides to get revenge on this white cop by trying to hire a local gangster to scare Coffee, but it backfires, forcing Coffee and Kareem to team up in order to save themselves from Detroit’s most ruthless drug kingpin. If that sounds really dumb, it’s as dumb as it sounds. And all the racial jokes you can think of try to fly and then land here but end up stumbling all over the place combined with the worst obnoxious pedophile child rape jokes I have ever heard. If you can imagine, it’s all in very bad taste. The movie tries to have heart at the very end of the film (heart in one or two lines of dialogue), but everything before it is so nasty and rude that all of it feels forced to the point of ridiculousness.

Ed Helms plays a bumbling idiot, nothing new from him, it’s basically his character from The Office and The Hangover movies combined. How his character was even approved to be a police officer to begin with is baffling. Taraji P. Henson basically plays her character from Empire, Cookie, but just a little toned down. And the kid that plays Kareem, just spouts off vulgar joke after vulgar joke, making him completely unlikable, when the movie should be playing him with just enough sympathetic traits to make the audience relate to him more. But nope, it’s “the officer tried to rape me” this or “the officer tried to touch my penis” that every five minutes. The plot is contrived, it of course involves drugs, money, crooked cops, dumb fucking criminals, pointless shootouts, dumb twists and reveals, cheap production value, over the top bad acting…it’s just a giant piece of shit. When I saw the trailer to this, I laughed at the title, for how simple and dumb it was, and knew it was going to be a piece of shit, and I wasn’t wrong. People that like this movie probably liked the movie Sextuplets with Marlon Wayans, that’s how bad it is. And if you liked that movie, and if you liked this, YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM WHY WE STILL GET SHITTY MOVIES LIKE THIS…AND ESPECIALLY IN THIS WEIRD TIME OF THIS COVID-19 WORLD….all I have left to say…is FUCK YOU. Whoever wrote this film, his career should be over, along with the director, along with the producers at Netflix that picked this up. I’m willing to give the actors another shot as sometimes, you just gotta get that paycheck to keep on living. They are probably especially happy now that they did it, considering they probably won’t get enough work in awhile…fuck you COVID-19. I’m blaming you about 5% for this shitty film. Easily one of the worst films of 2020.

Zach’s Zany TV Binge Watchin’ Reviews: OZARK SEASON 3

Well, this time my Facebook was blocked because of some dumb error with my young son accidentally changing my birth date on the site. My fucking…birth date (I didn’t have another meltdown so no worries, just if you are close to me, text me). So I’ve had to send Facebook a picture of my government ID and they had a COVID-19 warning saying there are less people being able to confirm ID’s so mine might not be looked at for some time or not at all until this is over. Fan-fucking-tastic. Well, I’m not going to let something small like that prevent me from writing my reviews. But with this whole end of the world thing happening, new movies are going to be scarcer and scarcer to come by in the coming months. Who knows when theaters will reopen…so it’s down to new 2020 movies that I haven’t seen yet that came out earlier this year (and I didn’t see them because they looked like shit), straight to video on demand shit, and TV Bingeing shit. Fuck, I’ve even gotten to episode 3 of Tiger King, eventually reviewing that massive train wreck to my constant readers just to fill my review writin’ void. But for right now, let me review the exact opposite of a train wreck…well in terms of quality at least…OZARK SEASON 3 on Netflix. If you are in a small corner of television binge watching and have never heard of this television series before, it stars Jason Bateman and Laura Linney, and it’s basically a much more dark and depressing version of Breaking Bad, except not as masterful as that show (but I mean, it’s still pretty good, just nothing will probably ever beat Walter White or Jesse Pinkman for me). And while Breaking Bad is a nice and slow burn for how much shit all the characters have to go through, Ozark puts their characters fast and furious through a blender several times in just a one hour episode. It’s ten episodes of all the characters digging deeper holes for themselves a dozen times in the span of sixty minutes. And I fucking love every second of it.

The whole series itself is about a family that has to relocate their family to the Ozarks to launder money for a Mexican drug cartel. Yeah there are a bunch of different plot threads over the first two seasons, but I’m not going to get into those because it will take all day. For a quick little summary of what starts this season, Jason Bateman and Laura Linney successfully opened a casino on the lake, basically another front to launder more drug money for the cartel. The casino is mainly run by their curly haired sailor mouth named Ruth (one of the highlights of the entire series, the actress, Julia Garner, just won an Emmy last year), and when we start season 3, the casino is running smoothly…until the FBI starts doing an audit of their enterprise. That’s basically all you need to know and that a new character enters the game, Laura Linney’s character has a brother named Ben Davis, that causes some problems, even though he’s a good character at heart. But you’ve heard of the road to hell being paved with the best intentions right? Anyway, shitty thing after shitty thing begins happening to a lot of these characters, and they either die, or come up with some elaborate fucking way to narrowly escape their predicaments. It’s fantastic television to say the least. The direction is great (Jason Bateman always directs the first two episodes, I wish he did them all, he won an Emmy last year for one of his directorial efforts), the cinematography is dark, blue, and moody, the acting is top notch, and the story is fast paced and tense as hell. If you love shit like that, you’ll love this series, and you should start from the beginning if you haven’t already.

But if you are an Ozarkian like myself and was already caught up before Season 3 premiered all ten episodes last week, you are in for a treat. Now, the question that everyone asks is, is this the best season so far? I’d say that this and the first season are pretty on par for how great they are. Season Two lost a little bit of quality from the first, but not that much, all three are very tight pieces of solid entertainment. The most valuable player this season isn’t Ruth, but the new character, Ben Davis, played by Tom Phlphrey (Iron Fist season 1 and 2). He’s excellent as a bi polar family member that tries to do good, but just ends up making things worse. Episodes 8 and 9 will probably win him a best supporting actor Emmy this next award season. He’s really that good. In the end, I love this series, and hope it gets picked up for Season 4, as Season 3 ends in a literal bang, one that made me jump out of my seat it was so unexpected. Season one of Ozark took my about a week to get thru, Season two I finished over a weekend and regretted it (just because it felt like I did nothing of use that weekend), this one I finished in 5 days. That’s how good it is. If I’m going to revisit television shows in the future, it will always first be Breaking Bad, followed by Better Call Saul, 24, Lost…and depending on how it ultimately ends, probably somewhere in between, Ozark. It keeps pulling you in, and you let it, because the white knuckle ride is worth it.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: VIVARIUM (Video on Demand Rental)

You know what I hate most about movies? Is when they are weird just for the sake of being weird. When they have no (or at least it doesn’t hint at or show) allegory or even a little bit of an ambiguous message. They are just weird because the screenwriter and director decided to smoke a joint together and try to come up with something “original.” That is VIVARIUM in a nut shell. A helluva premise that is completely ruined because it is just weird for the sake of being weird, and there is nothing metaphorically sound around the entire thing to merit any of the weirdness that takes place. So it looks like this week I’m probably going to have three new reviews for you. This, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, and possibly Ozark Season 3 (if I can finish it before the week is up). I’m really hoping this is my last negative review, as I’ve been a total negative Nancy as of recently and want you all to be able to watch something that I think is worthwhile to you and not just a complete waste of fucking time. Now while this isn’t a complete waste of fucking time, I think the film really not having a point, and the fact that it is a pretty dark tale of forced isolation, in a time that we are having to isolate ourselves and not really caring for it to much, I do think that this is a film that most of you probably won’t want to, and probably don’t need to watch right now. And it’s definitely not worth a $6.99 rental (mine was free because I used Disney points to secure a free Fandango now rental).

Vivarium, without trying to go into any spoilers (are they spoilers though if the film doesn’t make any sense and is just weird as shit?) is about a couple (Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots) that goes house hunting in this really weird neighborhood, where all the houses are green and look exactly alike. Their strange realtor leaves them there, and when they try and leave this neighborhood, it just makes the circle back to the house they were looking at. Basically, they are trapped and there is no way out. They get a baby in a box that says “raise him and you will be released” and this child is no ordinary child, somehow the couple still ends up making love even though they are in a bad place, yada yada yada, the movie ends on a depressing and weird note that didn’t make any sense nor did I care for it to make sense. The problem isn’t just the weirdness that made no sense. I didn’t like either of the two characters, even though Poots’ character does have redeeming qualities about her. And I fucking hated the kid. Needless to say the baby ages faster than most, but the kid has a dubbed over adult voice that is trying to imitate a child. And it makes weird screams. And I wanted to stab my eardrums out with a screwdriver just to make sure I didn’t heard it anymore. The film is very annoying to say the least.

And the most annoying thing about it is that it goes absolutely nowhere. It has all these threads, all these different puzzle pieces to make it seem like it is going to have an intriguing and thought provoking, unpredictable ending. A completed puzzle where you had no idea what the image was going to be until you settled that very last piece into place. Nope. While it has an ending, there is nothing behind it other than a dumb twist you can see coming from a mile away. I guess I have to go into semi spoilers but it never reveals really a reason why the couple are isolated in this square block of a neighborhood. Who the baby/child is doesn’t end up revealing any sort of purpose for being. It’s all just weird…for the sake…of being weird. And I hate that shit. Probably why I don’t care for cult classics such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show. BECAUSE NONE OF IT MAKES ANY FUCKING SENSE. At least the TV series Lost had some kind of metaphorical ending behind it, even though they didn’t answer every little single weird thing behind the island. Vivarium makes no sense, and I don’t think it wanted to. They probably didn’t even think about the answers. The guy that came up with the story, and the director (not familiar with any of Lorcan Finnegan’s work) probably asked each other, “but why this?” and they both came up with the same answer, “who cares?” They probably had some answers but then that just led to more questions so they just said fuck it and kept on making the movie. Well, I don’t like this movie that much, and will definitely take a temporary spot on my worst films of 2020 list so far. The acting is good, and the premise is good, but all that potential is lost in a vast sea of dumb weirdness that only the filmmakers will ever truly understand. And that’s a paradoxical shame.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: SWALLOW (VOD) (NOT PORN!!!)

No, I haven’t degraded to reviewing porn yet. There are still some things coming out streaming service wise or rental if the movie is (still in theaters) that I will review. SWALLOW is one of these new movies that you can rent (only $6.99, not this $19.99 bullshit, and I had a $3 promotion code to make it $3.99), and one I’ve been hearing a lot about on Twitter. It stars NOT JENNIFER LAWRENCE, Haley Bennett, and it is a psychological horror thriller about a newly pregnant wife that, after getting greatly stressed recently because of the strains of social placement her husband and in laws have put on her recently, develops a strange and dangerous compulsion to consume inedible objects in. What kind of objects might you ask? Well the poster shows her about to eat a fucking thumb tack (it gets worse). So if you can stomach that, which I barely could in the first place, you might find this movie a little interesting. Would I recommend it? I could get past the ick factor even though I dry heaved a couple of times, what I could get past was that the movie was too convoluted for its own good. It need to keep things simple, which it does for about the first 45 minutes, and then it throws on unneeded layers and reasoning to the story when it didn’t need anything else, thus producing a bold yet unearned ending that felt very, very forced.

Haley Bennett’s character is suffering from Pica, a compulsive eating disorder in which people eat nonfood items. And the film establishes very early on that the reason why she is doing this is because she feels the pressure of being in control when her husband and her in-laws hold her in high standard to do the things that they want her to do both mentally and physically. Basically she is being slowly mentally abused in a non threatening kind of way. But it is threatening to her, and when she eats these…sometimes dangerous, inanimate objects, she feels like she has that little moment of steering her life in the direction that she wants to go. It wouldn’t be spoilers really to say that the family discovers what she is doing really early on, so the mental abuse gets worse, and the whole film becomes a very interesting character study. But then, something is thrown into the film, a twist, if you will, that tries to take her whole reasoning of having Pica in another direction. Well, not an entirely whole other direction, it layers it on top of what we’ve already seen and nudges it about 10 degrees to the left. And it didn’t work for me. It’s kind of hard to talk about without revealing spoilers, but I did think the ending was bold, but I knew in my heart and in my mind that it didn’t earn that ending. I can say that the thing that was added to her madness felt tacked on, and it comes out during one of her therapy sessions with her therapist. When that whole angle was just suddenly brought up, I literally said out loud…”wait…what…why?” And then my interest in the film started to lag, where I was quite bored until the couple of minutes right before the end credits start to roll.

The only thing that keeps this film from sinking is the beautiful performance by NOT JENNIFER LAWRENCE, Haley Bennett. You might’ve seen her in supporting stuff like Music & Lyrics, Hardcore Henry, and the film adaptation of The Girl On The Train, but she’s the star here, and her acting makes us feel all the emotions her character goes thru and make us, the audience, want to help her. I am also glad the film didn’t do one other thing. While there is certainly an ick factor of swallowing inanimate objects, the film didn’t go all Saw on everyone. There are a couple of moments where you see some blood but it doesn’t go all gratuitous with it. You’ll probably still dry heave choke with some of what she swallows but you won’t be going and puking in the bathroom from any torture porn film like proportions. The direction is nice and neat. The shots are beautiful and clean, and then you get some of the blood from her character eating those objects which puts a satisfying stain on the picture and the brightness of the environment, metaphorically of course. It’s the ultimate story telling that didn’t work for me. It has a very solid first 45 minutes, and then things sort of go wheels off until the final couple of minutes. Who knows, it may work for you. It’s not like I completely ditched the film, but this would be the only time I would ever swallow the film whole.

Zach's Zany Movie Reviews: THE PLATFORM (Netflix)

You didn’t think you’d see me this soon again now did ya? Yet, I am scraping the bottom of the barrel with streaming movies (as long as they are new for the U.S. as of 2020) and several of my movie sites I frequent pointed me to THE PLATFORM, a new international feature film that debuted on Netflix last Friday. There is always some kind of small treasure when you search the bottom of barrels, and needless to say, this was a very nice small treasure. Now, I say international feature film, and now you are probably smacking your head because you are in fear that means you’ll have to go above and beyond like you did recently to watch and read the subtitles to the 2019 Academy Award winner for Best Picture, Parasite. However, this is not subtitled, it’s a new hurtle that you’ll have to get over if you want to enjoy the film…it is dubbed. It is a Spanish science fiction horror film, with a high concept. If you’ve ever heard about or scene the movie Cube, it is kind of like that, but not really (I’ll get to the synopsis in a moment). But it is DEFINITELY original, and after about 5 minutes I got over the dubbing (the voices not matching the lip movements) and enjoyed this nice and tight 1 hr and 35 minute feature that has no filler, didn’t blink once, I was quite amazed at how solid it is. Definitely one of those rare Netflix treats that you don’t want to miss.

The concept (without going into spoilers, and borrowing from IMDB and Wikipedia because I’m just too lazy nowadays to put it in my own words: “The film is set in a large, tower-style prison where the inmates are fed by means of a platform that gradually descends the levels of the tower, ostensibly a fair system if each inmate takes only their fair share of food, but deeply inequitable in practice as inmates at the top levels have the ability to take much more food and leave less for those below them.” And now we get to a little of my own description: Two men wake up on level 48, not knowing each of each other’s back stories, but one of them has been in the prison already for a little while and knows the ups and downs. They are going to have to learn to get along so they can survive long enough to outlast their sentences. Aaaaaaand that’s where I am going to stop. Any more and I would spoil the many surprises that the film has in store for you. And when I say many surprises, I MEAN MANY. In bold. This movie completely subverted my expectations, with one hell of a roller coaster ride that leads to a near perfect ending that I didn’t see coming. The film is very layered with messages, such as politics, socialism, etc. but doesn’t beat you over the head with any of them. The Platform is finely crafted, and you can tell the filmmakers spent a lot of time fine tuning it so that all audiences could enjoy.

I am not familiar with the director or any of the actors, so I won’t get into too many particulars, but needless to say, the acting is top notch and the direction even better. The film is dark, gritty and shot masterfully. It’s a high concept that pays off. Now while this film is being described as horror. It isn’t a jump out at you cheap jump scare type of thing. Like Hereditary, Midsommer, or any other well written horror film that doesn’t contain any jump scares, this is a movie that preys and feasts on the mind, making you shudder if you try to put yourself into the situation of any of the inmates there. It will chill you to your bone. So I’m gonna make this review short because I feel like I’m about to blab about something that should be saved in your viewing. If you can get past the dubbing, which for me was less then 5 minutes, and you get to the core of the story, you are going to have a helluva time with The Platform. In fact, I want to re watch it soon just so I can pick out things planted within the movie that I might’ve missed on first viewing. Just like the prison, this film has many layers, and its story will stick with me for quite some time.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: THE BANKER (Apple TV+)

Two Avengers & an X-Men walk into a bank…I can already guess right now that more than 80% of you that read my reviews probably don’t have Apple TV+. I see their streaming service being closed after another year or two of content that doesn’t peak any one’s interest. Eh…make that 95% of you that read my reviews probably don’t have it. Even Apple is freaking out because many people that have bought a new Apple product aren’t taking them up on signing up for the service for a year for free. The only reason I have Apple TV+ is because I got a new iPhone back in December. I bet some of you didn’t even know that and have bought a new Apple product. It has (I guess, I don’t watch it) The Morning Show that stars Jennifer Aniston, it has Mythic Quest Raven’s Banquet series that was created by the It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia (which I did watch all of and its the best thing the streaming service has to offer) and now it has this new original movie THE BANKER, starring Samuel L. Jackson, Anthony Mackie, and Nicholas Hoult. It has other shit, like a Jason Mamoa TV series called…See…or something like that, but it all looks like drivel to me. Now while it took about 20 minutes to really get going (out of a two hour runtime), The Banker is really quite good. And where I was thinking I’d have nothing to review for awhile, thank the Movie God’s I was wrong.

THE BANKER has a very interesting true story premise, borrowing the simple tag line on IMDB: “In the 1960s two African-American entrepreneurs hire a working-class white man to pretend to be the head of their business empire while they pose as a janitor and chauffeur.” Anthony Mackie and Samuel L. Jackson are the two entrepreneurs and Nicholas Hoult plays the working-class white man. Their business empire consists of being two of the first African American bankers in the United States. They start off by buying and owning buildings that these banks are in, that won’t give them the time of day when they need it, and then eventually sliding directly into banking itself, all while having this white man, who is not racist and considers them friends, be the face of the company. Because no one would take them seriously in the first place…because look at what unfortunate time period they were stuck in. And they also do some of their main business in Texas at the time…yikes. Anyway, like I said earlier, the movie starts off a little slow with Anthony Mackie as a genius, but again, white people judge him by the color of his skin so won’t take him seriously, but about 20 minutes in, after Mackie has met Jackson’s character and they get Nicholas Hoult involved in their scheme and try to groom him so that he can walk the walk and talk the talk, the movie gets extremely entertaining and fun.

Do yourself a favor and don’t do any research on what happened to any of the characters. I didn’t and enjoyed the movie much more that I didn’t know what was going to happen in the end. The movie is funny, entertaining, smart, and moving at times. I liked that it didn’t treat the audience like they were morons and didn’t try to explain every single thing about the math in their business or what terms meant. You either know what they are talking about or you Google it if you want to understand. Tired of movies spoon feeding information to their audience, and it seems like writer/director George Nolfi (Ocean’s Twelve, Adjustment Bureau) knew that and decided we didn’t need hand holding. I’m glad he did, as I was looking up terms left and right, trying AND wanting to understand more of what these characters were doing math and money wise. The movie is of course superbly acted. Anthony Mackie and Samuel L. Jackson do a great job as they usually do, Nia Long has a good small part as Mackie’s wife, but the scene stealer here is Nicholas Hoult, especially the grooming and conning other white men (in a way) scenes. I think this is Apple TV+’s first original movie that they bought. If they were to keep bulking up the screening service with more films of the quality and many more interesting TV shows other than Mystic Quest, they might be able to survive. Hence the word might, you can take that to the bank.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: LOST GIRLS (Netflix)

It’s only fitting that my last review for the time being (nothing scheduled to hit original film streaming wise for the next two weeks) is trying to persuade you to not watch this film. Especially when you will watch it anyway, because its one of the only things you haven’t seen. But let it be known, in my opinion, LOST GIRLS, a new movie that just premiered on Netflix this past week, is a massive disappointment. Clocking in at a measly 1 hr and 35 minutes (including credits), this really only feels like half a movie, 40-45 minutes lost somewhere to…God only knows what. And it is very frustrating because you will see that there is a more meticulous story in there somewhere. I mean, it is a true story about one woman’s determination to find her missing daughter, feared that she was killed by The Long Island Serial Killer. Serial killer movies, especially the ones based off real life are fascinating because they usually go into the mind of the killer to try and figure out why the fuck he/she was doing what they were doing. This film, just to forewarn you, doesn’t show the serial killer, mainly because, he still hasn’t been caught to this day, so we don’t have any sense of his actions or of where he was exactly when. So it relies on this woman’s story fed up with the police investigation, which she says is lazy, and tries to find her daughter (whether it be body or alive) on her own. One of the other main problems with the movie is, it is only one sided.

There are constant scenes of Amy Ryan (who plays this real life mother named Mari Gilbert) talking about how the police are ineffectively doing their jobs and completely fucking up the investigation. However, we don’t ever see the other side really. I mean, we do see Gabriel Bryne’s almost retired detective doing some work (and it didn’t seem to me to be ineffective), but she just keeps spouting off what the police are doing wrong, but we never see it. We as an audience are just supposed to take her work for it, and that be that. That’s why I think it is only half a movie. If the filmmakers really agreed with how the police fucked up the investigation leading to an arrest, THEY NEED TO SHOW IT ON FILM. That is a perfect example of what could’ve been in those (not confirmed, only saying what it feels like to me) 40 minutes that could’ve added a lot of (no pun intended) meat to the bones of this story. The story also jumps in time erratically (we are told through dialogue it is one year later yet everything else that happens still feels like it was yesterday), which leads to the audience asking questions like, “what the fuck is happening?” Albeit, those questions are better answered than say the other newer film on Netflix (and worst film of the year for me so far) titled The Last Thing He Wanted, but still, if you are going to have leaps in time or actions, they all need to be transitioned better.

Her investigation leads to her daughter’s (this is early on, so not really a spoiler) life as a sex worker (the Long Island Serial Killer is known to be targeting women sex workers), and so there are a couple of sex workers that knew her daughter and they sit around and have like a therapy session type thing in some scenes, and all of that felt hugely out of place for me. I can see why those scenes were in there, as in they show that even though they are sex workers, they are human beings and a community in themselves worried about their own, but the scenes feel randomly inserted. This goes back to the editing and pacing problem I just talked about. Those scenes in the movie needed to feel more natural, and it feeling like only half a film, it takes a jarring toll on the rest of the story. The acting is one of the only saving graces of the film, as Amy Ryan and one of her daughters still alive, played by JoJo Rabbit’s Thomasen McKenzie, are excellent here. There are the only two that really got me through the film. Now let’s talk about the ending without getting into spoilers. I think I can do it. So the film ends where it should, but then there is a epilogue of text, and that epilogue of text is so shocking (I didn’t do any research about the real life stuff beforehand) that I think it shouldn’t have been text, but in the film. It would’ve made for a shocking yet depressing ending to be sure, as it really did happen, and again, that’s part of what feels like it is missing from the movie. Had the text only epilogue been a harrowing scene in the movie…I could’ve maybe seen me giving it a mild recommendation.

So yeah, I’m basically giving this movie a negative review because it felt like half a movie. That’s it. The cinematography is good, it feels gritty and dark the entire way through. Already said the acting was top notch. And the fact that there is a great, great story in there just adds on to the massive disappointment of what could’ve been. I don’t know, if any of this sounds interesting to you, maybe you should have a watch because you will probably like it more than me. Especially in these dark COVID-19 times where you are going to be relying on watching a bunch of shit to keep you sane through quarantine. And not just watching any bunch of shit, but new shit you haven’t seen before. I was even debating on doing this review but I figure, since it’s my last one for a couple of weeks, might as well, even if its negative. Because while I might review something, it’s still your choice whether or not to watch it, which is fine (even though I might give some of you shit for watching other, worse, films). And you might not even know this film even exists without this review here. Which, if you watch it, could help get it exposure to help out that community, what with all their productions being shut down and all due to this cock sucking virus. So while I say nay on Lost Girls, you could actually find this thing and say yay.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: STAR GIRL (Disney+)

“Where were you when amateur critic Zach Alexander put the first Disney+ original film in his worst list of the year?” is what you might be asking yourselves years from now…even amid this pandemic. Just kidding, no one gives a shit what I think, but eveb among this COVID-19 shit, I will remember that STAR GIRL is the first Disney + original film that I didn’t much care for. For people like me…you…you always remember your first. Here’s the thing, well…two fold: first, the movie isn’t that bad, I’m about to write a review after this one of a movie called Lost Girls on Netflix, which was way worse than this. Secondly, A lot of you will like this anyway, especially if you’ve read the beloved book, and at the same time, I’ve just seen this kind of movie too many times to care at this point. It’s another weird, awkward, yet very nice and inspiring person being accepted at a school in a small town movie. She says her name is Star Girl, and at first the school thinks she’s odd (except for a boy, who is our narrator and has a crush on her the entire time) and keeps her at a distance, some of her actions (like singing nice songs) makes the school conform and the school at one point after she starts going there breaks down social barriers where everyone is accepted by everyone and no one dislikes each other, get bullied etc. But that’s the middle of the movie, and you know there has got to be some kind of conflict for this thing to stretch out into an hour and 47 minutes (really only an hour and 37, fucking Disney+ is still stretching out their credits to no man’s land), so other stuff happens, but I won’t be that spoilery type person. Suffice to say, her star shines bright, but then it doesn’t.

It just takes a long time to get to some kind of plot. Over the half of the movie it is just this boy, telling the audience about his crush and admiration for this really weird chick that dresses different and acts different and doesn’t give a shit. And he wishes he could still be that way, because he used to be weird with his clothing choices (really only his dead father’s really large tie). And I kept wondering where the fuck the movie was going. And instead of showing it’s hand card by card, it just lays them out on the table right after halfway through the film, and it didn’t feel like any of the hard hitting social lessons were earned very well. Especially when it reveals that in Star Girls good deeds, she does two things accidentally wrong (only one I really understood, the other seemed like really not a big deal at all, and something that the entire student body wouldn’t get upset over in real life). And the ending seems abrupt and not earned either with how depressing it is. The ending doesn’t make that much sense, and I’d get into it more but if you have any interest in this movie, and want to watch it, I don’t want to ruin it, especially if you are quarantined in your house and have nothing to do.

The acting all around is pretty good, even though the great Giancarlo Esposito’s (Gus Fring in Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul) character in this is completely pointless. Also, it LITERALLY looks like he stepped off the Better Call Saul set to shoot less than 10 minutes of this film. It had me laughing, the just dishevel his hair and point and shoot. Star Girl is played by Grace VanderWaal, who was a giant sensation on America’s Got Talent, musically speaking. Or so I heard, never watch that show. But she sings and plays a guitar/ukele in this and is really quite good. Who knew she could act? While I didn’t care much for the movie, I enjoyed her performance and could see her doing better films in the future. All in all, the movie has good messages about social conformity (kind of ironic since we are practicing social distancing right now because of the virus) but it just didn’t work for me. I was interested in the movie for the first ten minutes when the boy was explaining his chool life, but quickly got bored, and basically never recovered. However, I will always remember that this is the first Disney+ film that I didn’t really care for too much. Noelle and Timmy Failure were barely passable though, Togo and Lady & The Tramp being its highlights. So this is only the fifth film, take that for what you will. I’m sure there will be something worse down the line, in fact, I’m 150% positive there will be, I just wish at this point that Disney+ maybe would’ve debut with more original shit under its sleeve. All it really has original masterful content wise is The Mandalorian and the last season of Clone Wars. And no, that isn’t enough to earn this streaming service a star on the classroom board for me yet.