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21Feb

The Weekly Review: February 15 – 21

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They found a fucking glove! That’s top-of-the-page news for the New York Post.

I am so fucking sick of this fucking story.

**

“May you live in interesting times” — British phrase based on a Chinese adage. Maybe.

OK, but these last ten years have been ridiculous.

**

Watching Europe destroy itself, I have to wonder if we Americans, across the pond, will learn anything from it. Or is it already too late?

**

On a lighter note, here is what Netflix is recommending to me. I’ve watched at least part of them all, and added a few notes:

Bottom line: The good shows are all old. The more recent the show, the more likely it’s junk.

14Feb

The Weekly Review: February 8 – 14

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Dawson’s Creek

I know, I know. I was already too old to watch this show when it aired 25-30 years ago.

My excuse for watching the teen drama, as I recall, was that I had learned it was created by Kevin Williamson, who was also responsible for writing Scream. I liked Scream, so I thought I’d check out his new show.

As fans know, Dawson’s Creek is soap opera. It features high school kids talking like adults. But I got hooked on it.

So I was sad to learn that James Van Der Beek (front-center above with the show’s main gang), who played Dawson, died earlier this week at age 48.

Maybe I’ll go back and watch an episode or two, see if I still like it — or if I should have had my head examined.

**

Body Bitching

How and when did we allow the insulting word “skinny” to describe women who are slender or in good shape? Popeye’s Olive Oyl was skinny. Women like Melania Trump are not.

I’m old so I didn’t know who Nicki Minaj (above) is. She seems funny and OK. But her ass is too fat.

Notice I said fat; not “plus-size.”

08Feb

Reviews in Short: February 2026

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Drop

A single mother on a first date at a fancy restaurant gets anonymous “drops” on her phone threatening to harm her young son if she doesn’t do something right now: kill her date. Is someone in the restaurant sending the threats? What should she do?

The first hour of this (sort of) Hitchcockian thriller is pretty good. It plays on the dangers of new technology (cell phone texts) by capitalizing on a nice setting (the skyscraper restaurant), clever editing, and an intriguing premise.

Alas and alack, alack and alas, the last act of the film undermines all of those positives by being a) predictable; b) outrageous; and c) insulting to the audience’s intelligence – multiple times. Release: 2025 Grade: B-

Would I watch it again? No.

**

Fall

You can pretty much tell from the posters and plot synopsis if Fall is a movie for you. Do you have a fear of heights? Do you get a vicarious thrill from watching people in precarious positions — like atop a 2,000-foot-tall TV tower? If so, Fall is a rollicking great time.

On the other hand, if you’re a stickler for plot and realism, well, maybe watch something else, like 2015’s The Walk.

Grace Caroline Currey and Virginia Gardner play two women who attempt to bond — and bolster their TikTok clout — by climbing an imposing but dilapidated tower. This they decide to do alone in the desert. Do you think things will go smoothly?

Director Scott Mann says he eschewed green screens and digital sets, and actresses Currey and Gardner reportedly did the bulk of their own stunts. I’m guessing this was not the case for all of the shots.

I didn’t much care how the visual effects were created; they worked, and regardless of numerous departures from reality in the story, I shut off my brain and had a nail-biting good time. Release: 2022 Grade: B+

Would I watch it again? I wouldn’t seek it out, but if it happened to be on TV, why not?

Gratuitous Sidebar

I wasn’t familiar with the two stars of Fall, so as part of my, ahem, research, I looked them up. Turns out Virginia Gardner (the blonde) appeared in the TV show 1923. Turns out she was featured in a kinky nude scene. Turns out I decided to share a couple screen captures with you (above and below).

I’m a dirty old man, so I will see a scene like this and wonder: Was it a closed set? Did the gaffers get a look between her legs while she was naked and spread-legged on that bed?

07Feb

The Weekly Review: February 1 – 7

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TV Tidbits

Best Medicine

After a blah first episode, this new comedy-drama might be growing on me. It’s a redo of Doc Martin, a long-running British show that I adore. It airs on Fox. I can’t recall the last new network show that I liked. Episode one did not feel promising. However ….

Maybe it’s because I live just a few miles from where ICE and protestors are clashing on a daily basis, but I’ve been craving something old-fashioned and wholesome. I’ve seen three episodes of Best Medicine now and … it’s still not in Doc Martin’s league, but it is growing on me.

*

The Rip

Perhaps it’s because I’m an old fart now, but what I liked and disliked about this Netflix movie are the inverse of what I would have liked and disliked about it 30 years ago. Or even 20 years ago.

A coworker watched this Ben Affleck-Matt Damon action-drama and told me it gets better in the second half. This coworker is 20 years younger than me. He enjoyed the chases and shootouts in The Rip’s second half. I preferred the first half, which was more about tension and suspense.

Bottom line: I can recommend half of The Rip. Which half probably depends on your age.

*

I had the Olympics on this morning, but the way I watch the Olympics these days is by not watching; it’s just background noise on the television while I do something else. But I suddenly heard something I did not expect: the name Lollobrigida.

If you’re male and old enough, the name probably rings a bell. Gina Lollobrigida, pictured above, sometimes called “the most beautiful woman in the world” (per Grok), was a famous Italian actress. Every teenage boy in the United States knew about her sixty years ago.

Gina’s great-grandniece Francesca Lollobrigida won the gold for Italy in speed skating today. I don’t care about that. I’m just surprised because I never expected to hear that name again. And isn’t it a great name?

*

I am not a big fan of Lindsey Vonn. I think that’s because with her, everything seems to be about Lindsey Vonn.

01Feb

The Queen’s Gambit

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by Walter Tevis

The word “wonderful” is so overused that it’s become meaningless: “That meal was wonderful.” “Our running back had a wonderful game.”

But I think wonderful applies to Walter Tevis’s novel The Queen’s Gambit, about a fictional chess prodigy named Beth Harmon.

The story, set primarily in the 1960s, traces young Beth’s rise from her childhood in an orphanage to her ascent to the top of the chess world. She’s a phenom at chess — but life is another matter.

The term “on the spectrum” was not a thing in 1983, when Tevis penned his book, but it seems to describe pill-popping, socially awkward Beth, who is only comfortable sitting at a chessboard. She’s a fascinating character.

By the way, the miniseries starring Anya Taylor-Joy is remarkably faithful to the novel. And Taylor-Joy’s performance as Beth is — you guessed it — wonderful.

31Jan

The Weekly Review: January 25 – 31

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25Jan

Reviews in Short: January 2026

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Sinners

Plot: Twin brothers (Michael B. Jordan) return home to 1932 Mississippi and run into an unexpected obstacle when they open a juke joint: vampires.

Pros: The movie is well-produced and well-shot. There is a fantasy dance sequence incorporating music through the ages that’s a thing to behold. The cinematography and acting are top-notch.

Sinners, at least in its first hour, is often a thought-provoking drama. Writer-director Ryan Coogler had lofty ambitions. His story isn’t just horror; he tackles race and temptation in the 1930s South.

Cons: For a movie promoted as a vampire flick, it’s not scary. Vampires with red eyes and who dance an Irish jig don’t exactly tingle the spine.

Crucially, Coogler’s metaphors and political themes don’t mesh well with vampire shenanigans.

The elephant in the room: Sinners garnered a record 16 Oscar nominations. This is a movie that wants to be taken seriously but winds up a peculiar mix of To Kill a Mockingbird and From Dusk till Dawn. It’s good, but not 16-Oscars good. Release: 2025 Grade: B

Would I watch it again? Possibly. But I forgot to mention one more con: Like so many Hollywood movies these days, at 138 minutes this one is too damn long.

24Jan

The Weekly Review: January 18 – 24

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“They are weaponizing that ‘Minnesota nice.’” — Ayaan Hirsi Ali, pictured above, calling out the liberals who are fighting deportations in Minnesota. Oh, yeah, and also enabling massive fraud.

Progressives, led by Tim Walz, Jacob Frey, Ilhan Omar, and Keith Ellison — none of the four are native-born Minnesotans — created this mess and now are complaining about Trump’s attempts to clean it up.

It’s all so predictable, and all so depressing.

**

WTF Stories

“Hidden clues”? Aren’t footprints the most obvious — not to mention the oldest — clues in murder-mystery lore?

*

What am I missing here? A “record” two games pitched and four games started?

I should have been a ballplayer.

17Jan

The Weekly Review: January 11 – 17

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It’s 12 degrees and snowing outside, and a few miles from where I sit, protestors/insurgents/malcontents are battling with ICE. Again.

The news is relentlessly depressing here in Minnesota.

So, please forgive me if I prefer to look at Sydney Sweeney’s ass in the trailer (above) for a new season of Euphoria.

I don’t watch the show, but I certainly watch the trailer.

By the way … that shooting water in the above GIF: Is it some sort of subliminal comment on what male viewers might be up to while gawking at Sydney’s jiggling ass? They wouldn’t do that, would they?

**

Speaking of gratuitous nudity (or near-nudity), I wondered who the guest might be on Tim Pool’s podcast. I scrolled the YouTube menu and saw the thumbnail below:

Apparently guest Arynne Wexler is more than just a pair of tits, as I discovered when I saw the rest of her on the show (below):

I feel much better now — don’t you?

10Jan

The Weekly Review: January 4 – 10

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“We’re Not in Fargo Anymore”

I live ten miles (a 15-minute drive) from the shooting of Renee Good, from the epicenter of Somali daycare fraud, and from the scene of George Floyd’s death.

In other words, I don’t live in Salina, Kansas, and so my perspective might be a bit skewed. But from where I sit, it certainly feels as though “civil war” is not something to fear on the horizon; it’s already here.

What’s it like living in Minnesota? This is purely personal, but yesterday I had a performance review at my day job and, for the second year in a row, I was financially penalized because my “values don’t align” with those of the company. A manager told me this to my face. Translation: I am not a card-carrying Democrat. Also, I was terminated from a previous job because I refused to get the COVID shot. Again, I did not toe the leftist line.

Granted, none of my woes are anywhere near the level of the tragedies occurring with Floyd, Good, et al. But it does give an idea of life in the land of so-called Minnesota Nice.

It’s only nice if you lean left.

**

Brits discussing recent events in Minnesota on The Podcast of the Lotus:

Host 1: “Minnesota’s reputation is in the absolute gutter.”

Host 2: “Being British I don’t have to think about Minnesota that often … the last time I did was when I watched the film Fargo. The next time I have to think about it, they’ve got Somalians everywhere. How am I not living in a simulation, if that follows from that?”