Force multiplier

 

All I see are a wide variety of people fighting over who's right and who's wrong: The vaxxed, the un-vaxxed, the masked, the unmasked, the left, the right, the centrists, the centrists, the Communists, the anarchists, the men, the women, the honkies, the brothas, the beaners, the Chin-a-neses, the alphabet people, the pathetic edgelords who use pejoratives, the blue collars, the white collars, the lazy, the driven, the rich, the poor, and oh yeah, the middle class. 

If there's one thing we all have in common, it's that we're all miserable fucks racked with anxiety, rage, anguish, and depression. But we have this weird perverted concept that our particular subsection of this subspecies known as the Human Race has the monopoly on misery. We've fooled ourselves into believing that everybody else is winning while we're busy losing, and so we deal with that perceived loss by taking every opportunity to cloud someone else's sunny day or to yuck someone else's yum, either outright or on some passive-aggressive shit. We take every opportunity to own each other any chance we get, our dicks getting hard and our vaginas getting wet as we preface the ownage with two of the four greatest words in the English language: "Well, actually".

And after we finish dropping the knowledge on the other party, we hope/we expect/we are entitled to hear the other two of the four greatest words in the English language in response: "You're right".

All that just so we don't have to feel miserable for a little while, if just a little while. What a fuckin' victory. Yay us.

Which is why I don't even bother. You like something? Good for you. You don't like something? Good for you. You don't like what I like? Good for you. You like what I don't like? Good for you. Unless you're fucking with my life or my money, I have no beef nor qualms. I have better things to do with my time than flap my gums or typity-type-type over, I don't know, Marvel movies and Martin Scorsese. 

Because at any moment, it could all come to an end; a brick can be dropped from an overpass by a typically shitty child, and I can be driving right underneath that overpass, and that brick can smash right through my windshield, crush my skull, and there I am: A lifeless bloody piece of meat being cried over by my now-orphaned son in the passenger seat.

Never mind that I don't even have a son to orphan, what's more important is that the brick tosser will probably go on to live a nice life unblemished by such tragedies, possibly growing up to become a famous YouTuber who goofs on hanging corpses in some fuckin' Japanese forest, raking in the dough and never knowing what it's like to have to make a choice between groceries or medication, but knowing full well what it's like to have one anonymous groupie kiss you while another is sucking you off while another is eating out your asshole. 

Is that fair? That's a funny word, "fair", as it is a nonexistent concept, I feel, and the sooner one accepts that, the lighter the weight on one's shoulders -- and my brothers and sisters in Christ, I am so weightless that I am walking on muthafuckin' air, he said in an attempt to delude himself while trying to figure out a way to segue into the first movie review, only to fail miserably.

Armageddon Time is a coming-of-age tale set in Queens, New York, during the early 1980s. This very good film is based on writer-director James Gray's own childhood, and his surrogate is Paul Graff (Banks Repeta), a middle-class Jewish-American kid who just started the 6th grade with a bang -- that "bang" being the sound of his teacher angrily slamming down his chalk, on account of Paul being quite the unruly discipline case.

By the way, teachers are right up there with the military as people who I feel give so much for so little in return. I'm not surprised that they're resigning in record numbers all across these great United States. They try to instill knowledge into these little fuckheads, and are rewarded by insolence and unflattering drawings of them, which they share with their fellow students so they can all laugh. At least in the military you get a chance to kill people at your job. Teachers, at best, can only hope that the next school shooter targets a couple of the biggest pains in their ass during their rampage. Either that or go work at a private school, where based on this movie at least, the students do a better job of listening to their teachers.

So yeah, Paul's a little asshole, given to being a smart-ass to his mom, going as far as to disrespect her by putting down the dinner she slaved over a hot stove to make, instead walking over to the phone to order Chinese food. There was a period where I wondered whether we were supposed to be on his side during these horrific acts of brat-hood, but soon it became clear that the movie knows Paul is a little shit because Gray thinks he was a little shit, and he sure as hell remembers his behavior as not being the most becoming. 

So when the shocking-to-everybody-else-but-welcome-by-me scene of Paul's father Irving (Jeremy Strong) giving the boy some much-needed belt time happens, it feels like one of Gray's most vivid memories. Paul's mother Esther (Anne Hathaway) tells him she's going to tell Irving about his most heinous school fuckup, and every bit of Cocky immediately leaves the boy's tiny body, replaced by absolute fear.

Based on my own family historical accounts, I was a remarkably well-behaved child with exemplary manners -- but I was still a child, and so, I was not above the occasional act of being a punk-ass bitch. This resulted in two sessions of belt time in my youth, one from my father and one from my mother -- although in her case, it was a chancla. I say all of this because the scene of Paul's father screaming like Howard Stern's daddy (shut up sit down) while giving this little bastard the leather business rang oh-so-realistic to me, including the aftermath of Paul whispering between sniffles about how much he hates his family, because he's a little boy who has no idea how good he has it -- just as I had no idea how good I had it.

I don't think kids today even get belt time, or that bullshit "time out", for that matter. I think that's why kids today are the worst version of children yet. They run around screaming in public, while I stand there having to behave like an actual human and accept it, while fantasizing about pouring sulfuric acid onto the genitals of the hellspawn's parents, in order to prevent further hell-spawning.

I'd like to think, that if there were to be some kind of silver lining to the dark clouds set upon us by the encroaching specter of The New Fascism, is that should they succeed in their quest to set the clock back to the Good Ol' Days, they'll also bring back corporal punishment, so that not just parents, but teachers themselves can bring these evil children some pain with a quickness. But I fear they'll only extend that anti-privilege to Blacks and minorities, and somehow the Whites will always be right(s).

Which is kind of where Gray is coming from, actually, because in this film, Paul notices that it's his Black partner-in-teacher-irritation, Johnny (Jaylin Webb), who gets singled out for harsher treatment and punishment by the school. Sometimes it's not even Johnny's fault, it's Paul's -- but no matter, the teacher will send the Black kid to the principal's office, while Paul sits there all like, "I dunno".  

Paul and Johnny become fast friends; they bond over being discipline cases, play hooky during field trips, and introduce each other to the things they like, such as the music of Sugar Hill Gang and the artwork of Wassily Kandinsky. They both have big dreams; Paul wants to be an artist and Johnny wants to be an astronaut, and well, since this is pretty much the James Gray story and not The Adventures of Johnny from Queens in Outer Space, we can bet on whose dream actually came true.

It's a good thing Paul doesn't pull any of the bratty shit with his grandfather Aaron (Anthony Hopkins). He loves and respects the old man, and so when Aaron teaches Paul the important lesson that he has advantages -- both familial and societal -- that kids like Johnny don't have, and therefore should recognize his privilege and use those middle-class White kid powers for good, rather than douchebaggery, Paul takes it to heart. 

For the most part, anyway. Because Paul is a child, he's still prone to do stupid shit, questionable shit, and even downright deplorable shit. Because he is shit -- like all children are. And because we can't sentence shit-kids to the gas chamber, unfortunately, we have to hope they learn from their mistakes instead, or at least acknowledge them. I think that's what Gray is doing here, presenting a warts-and-all portrayal of his child self and his family, and he does it in a manner that mostly feels like penance for past misdeeds, with only the occasional self-pat on the back. 

At least that's how I took it, I don't know if he feels any guilt about some of this shit, or if he did but has since gotten over it, I don't know, I don't know the man, and even if I did, what am I, a mind-reader? No, if I could read minds, I'd have a billion dollars in the bank and millions of people in the grave by now. But yeah, maybe if the film ended with a dedication to the poor Black boys who took the rap, thereby making it possible for him to grow up to become a critically acclaimed filmmaker of movies that don't make money, then yeah, maybe some people would stop complaining.

Having said that, it never felt like he was trying to paint his past in bright shades of Rose, and it certainly didn't look that way either. Cinematographer Darius Khondji makes everything look dark, even the bright daylight scenes look like there's a thin black veil over the lens. Those who love everything to look as if Captain Marvel is going to step in to save the day at any moment might want to reach for the brightness setting on their tv, but I really liked that look, it had the appearance of a fading memory. 

Visually fading, anyway. Because emotionally, Gray's memories are still as clear as Crystal Pepsi -- and sometimes just as gross. Somewhere along the way, there's a scene where Paul is accosted by some old creepy asshole fuck, and the whole time I was like "fuck this old creepy asshole fuck", and then in the next scene, it turns out that old man is none other than Fred Trump! As in, father of Donald J! I barely recovered before the film then dry-gulched me with Jessica Chastain in a cameo as Maryanne Trump, Donald's sister! 

Like Hathaway and Strong and Hopkins, and well, everybody else in this film, Chastain is great -- but then again, she's great in everything, and I don't say that because I had a very brief two-sentence encounter with her on a flight to New York, and therefore, we are best friends. No no, it's a very well-performed one-scene cameo where she shows up to speak to the school and gives the usual rich kid bullshit about how she wasn't given handouts or a free lunch, and that one has to earn their way.

It's always these motherfuckers who were born on third base who talk that shit -- and there was certainly a lot of that shit being talked at that time, on account of Ronald Reagan about to become president. There's a nice parallel going on in this movie about how Paul's family is scared about the idea that this Republican candidate will bring about the end of the world if he's elected, not unlike the way people were scared during the 2016 U.S. election that Donald J. was going to do the same. 

But as we all know, Reagan didn't blow up the world, and neither did Trump. Instead, he made this country great again! USA! USA! USA!

 

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever begins with Letitia Wright scrambling to create some kind of herb that will allow her to work on this film without having to show proof of being vaccinated for COVID. She fails and breaks down, it's all very emotional, and then the film begins proper, with a touching moment of silence while an adjusted Marvel Studios logo displays highlights of the late actor Chadwick Boseman.

As for the actual story, Wright's genius scientist character Shuri is still in deep mourning following the death of her brother, T'Challa, who was king of Wakanda and its protector as the titular panther of color. It hurts to lose someone you love, and it hurts even more when a bunch of people who your lost loved one fought alongside with don't even come to the goddamn funeral, but fine, whatever, I'm sure the invitations got lost in the mail. Meanwhile, her mother, Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) is trying her best at checking in on her daughter's well-being while simultaneously keeping Wakanda safe from those goddamned colonizers who want that country's Vibranium. 

For those who came in late, Vibranium is a super-duper magical metal that is practically indestructible and is used in creating advanced technology. It's what makes the country of Wakanda the ultra-prosperous nation that it is, and they are aware of what others outside of Wakanda would do with this precious metal, and outside use would most likely make things worse for everyone -- which is why they keep it to themselves. So long as the recipe is under wraps, this remains a safer world.

But not safe enough, because unfortunately the greatest president who ever lived, Donald J. Trump, does not exist in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which means that there are no walls built in the ocean, which means you have aquatic Mexicans from the underwater kingdom of Talokan swimming up to the surface, stealing all the lives from the hard-working American citizens, with the use of spears and deadly siren calls.

Their leader, Namor (Tenoch Huerta), who is probably from MS-13, is upset that these bland-food-loving Whiteys are dipping their easily sunburned toes into his waters, putting his people in danger. In an early action sequence, we watch Namor and his people take out an entire CIA and Navy SEAL team, in response to them approaching his world with the use of Vibranium-locating technology. 

(That sequence, by the way, features one of the fakest-looking moments of an actor firing a handgun, with the actor completely no-selling the recoil. Thanks a lot, Alec Baldwin, now all movie gunfights are gonna look like this.)

Anyway, Namor feels that in order to ensure that no more intruders from the outside world approach Talokan, Wakanda must bring him the scientist who created the Vibranium locator. It's really an ultimatum: Either the scientist dies or Wakanda pays.

The scientist in question is an MIT student named Riri (Dominique Thorne), who had no idea that her invention was being used by the CIA to find Vibranium. Yup, it turns out the poor girl fell for the oldest trick in the book: She got Real Genius'd. But instead of fucking up Dickless from Ghostbusters' house with popcorn, she instead joins up with the Wakandans in their quest to tell a two-hour story in nearly three.

It's not their fault, nor is it director Ryan Coogler's fault. They're just fulfilling all the requirements for a Marvel film, and it ain't a Marvel movie if it ain't too long for its own good. Such overlength is due to including other characters who honestly don't need to be here, specifically Martin Freeman and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who appear as a CIA operative and his boss. Their stuff is amusing, but mostly they are the weak sauce in this stew -- and how is the stew?

Well before I tell you that, let me tell you this: As much as I enjoyed the first Black Panther, I wasn't terribly interested in the sequel. That's because post-Avengers: Endgame, I felt the follow-ups and new additions to the MCU had reached a point of a consistent sameness. What cemented my lack-of-shit-giving towards this cinematic universe was the heartbreaking mediocrity that was Sam Raimi's Doctor Strange sequel, which despite watching at an AMC, did not feel good. 

I felt that if even he couldn't really shake things up, then what's the point with continuing with the MCU? The only reason I watched this film in the first place was because of Angela Bassett's Best Supporting Actress nomination, and as a completest who wanted to watch all of this year's major Oscar nominees, well, here we are.

She's great in this, by the way -- and so is the movie! I'll go as far as to say that I liked this more than the first. As with most Marvel films that I like the most, it was the drama that won me over, rather than the action sequences. The film set a very uncomfortable divide between protagonists and antagonists in that I saw both sides of the argument while not necessarily agreeing with how each side wanted to handle it.

I had plenty of empathy for these characters, regardless of whether I thought they were doing the right thing or not. Even though I suppose my ethnic demerit demands that I should side with Namor, I found myself finding an unfortunate similarity to Shuri.

There's a scene early in the film where Ramonda is trying to get through to Shuri about how she has to take the next step in mourning her brother's death, and I was reminded of how shortly after my father passed away, my mom had a talk with me. It's like they say, right, "a mother knows", and I guess despite my attempts at a stiff upper lip, she could sense that my usual inner rage was a lot more inner rage-y than usual. I guess you can say that, like Shuri, I just wanted to burn the whole fucking world down. That's one of the downsides to being very fond of your family: With all that love also comes just as much hate when something bad happens to them. My dad was pretty awesome to me, and T'Challa was pretty awesome to Shuri.

Needless to say, I was all kinds of embarrassingly choked up during the ending. It was an overwhelming combo of watching a character finally come to terms with loss, the real-life loss of Chadwick Boseman giving the entire film a melancholy air, and remembering someone I lost. Then they had to have Rhianna sing a lovely song over it, and there you go, best ending in a Marvel movie so far, says I.

Please forgive me for throwing a spanner into the fun works with all this, I'm like someone who leaves a comment on YouTube about how this song reminds them of their loved one, who just died seven hours ago, leaving the rest of us to go "Well, sorry for your loss, but I guess we can all go fuck ourselves and not enjoy "In the Navy" by the Village People now.

For a while, it seems like maybe things will work out into some kind of compromise, and we even get to see Shuri and Namor kinda bond earlier, as he shows her his underwater kingdom and tells her his story of how he came to be, and then they're both kinda like "Colonizers, am I right?"

But you know these things aren't gonna work out, there are misunderstandings, tempers get flared, shots get fired, and it's like the East Coast and West Coast rap war back in the 90s all over again, you know what I mean? As soon as both the Wakandans and Talokan people began to square off, and everything started getting CGI-flash-mobbery and speed ramped, I had already given so much of a shit about these people -- I said "these people", not "you people" -- that I didn't want them to fight, I wanted them to both come out of this OK, and I wanted them to come to an understanding, that way they can join together and fight the real enemy: Disney+, who have really been flexing their evil corporate fuck-wings as of late.

See, these fuckin' cunts recently changed their pricing tier, and so I decided to go with the cheaper ad-version, because why not, I'm already used to that bullshit on Hulu and Peacock. Well, it turns out that you can't play the ad-version of Disney+ on Roku -- and guess who watches movies on his fuckin' Roku? This muthafucka! So I cancelled that service and ended up buying Wakanda Forever on Apple TV instead, because fuck you, Disney+. Yeah, I sure showed them by refusing to pay ten bucks for a month of unlimited programming, by instead paying $20 dollars for just one movie. Because that's how smart people like me play 4D chess.

But you know what, Disney+? Between these shenanigans and your refusal to release some of the classics in your library, such as Blood In, Blood Out, you've been straight-up fucking with me and my cine-familia for far too long. You think you can own everything, yet not put out everything? Chale, it's time for the Mouse to go belly up! Because when the Mouse is belly up, he's finished! That's right, ese, I'm gonna get the vatos locos together, and we're gonna jack up Mickey, Donald, and Goofy. Yeah, that's right, even that stupid weird-looking dog humanoid isn't safe, he's gonna go from Goofy to Bleeding thanks to the homie Paco Aguilar aka El Gallo Negro, whose gonna teach that puto a new tune to dance to, ese, it's called "Stick and Cut".

 

Written by Akela Cooper of Malignant fame, from a story by James Wan of Saw fame, and directed by Gerard Johnstone -- who I've never heard of, but with a name like that, I'm guessing he sang R&B back in the 90s -- M3GAN is one of those sci-fi horror films that takes place either in the not-too-distant future or today, it's hard to tell, and I like it that way. 

You know what I also like? Characters to whom I strongly relate. In this film's case, that would be Gemma (Allison Williams), and I don't strongly relate to her because like me, she's left-handed and a piece of ass, but because like me, her single & childless status allows her to live at a bracket or two higher than her income would allow had she done something stupid like get married and shit out a brood because of some internal maternal desire to raise a family. Get the fuck outta here with that bullshit.

I mean with kids and all they entail, she wouldn't be able to live in a nice house -- she wouldn't be able to live in a house! -- with so much room to store all her collectible toys, and maybe that's where some of you fuckin' nerds will relate to Gemma as well. There's a pretty funny scene where Gemma's niece Cady (Violet McGraw) wants a toy to play with, and all Gemma has to give her is one of those collectibles, so she grabs one and opens it up and you Just Fucking Know it's killing her that by cracking open that box, she's dropped whatever value that stupid toy had. It's not like the kid appreciates it, she doesn't even use it right. Pearls before swine, am I right, Gemma?

Eh, I guess I should give Cady a break. After all, she just lost her parents in a car accident and that's why Gemma is now saddled with her stiff sister's scion. It never hit me until my viewing of this movie that at any time in the past, something terrible could've happened to my sister and brother-in-law, and if for whatever reason my parents could not/would have not been able to handle the responsibility of taking custody of their children, there I'd be with two bundles of life-suck to cramp my style.

No offense to my niece and nephew, but I've got better things to do with my life than make sure they're fed and clothed and getting good grades at school -- such as getting drunk or getting high or getting drunk and high...reading books all day, watching movies all night, and sneaking in an off-jerk or two during idle periods. Not that it matters, those kids are adults now, and therefore wouldn't be my problem anyway, at least not legally. So if their parents were to get got, well, don't knock on my door, it's sink or swim time in the real world, buckos!

Gemma is one of these super-smart robot-making types who works for a toy company, and that's where she creates the titular android. M3GAN has the body of a little girl and the face of a porcelain nightmare, and so watching this dead-faced figure move with the dexterity of a New Zealand child dancer is always at the very least a little unnerving, but hey, it wouldn't be the first kid's toy to make me feel nervous.

M3GAN is designed to be a companion for children, and so Gemma decides on giving it a test run with Cady and it appears to be a success; M3GAN becomes both a playmate and a shoulder to cry on, but she also serves as a cool middleman who imparts lessons in manners and common fuckin' decency that the little brat would normally forget/ignore from Gemma.  

But M3GAN isn't only just teaching Cady how to flush a toilet after she's done using it -- that little disgusting shit girl -- she's also teaching the kid math and science, which, Jesus fuckin' Christ, as if teachers today didn't have a hard enough time, now robots are gonna take their jobs as well as doing the jobs that parents are supposed to do for themselves. 

It gets to a point, though, where Cady becomes way too attached to M3GAN, not unlike how kids in real life make like fiending drug addicts when their phones or tablets or video games get taken away from them.

It's all commentary on the advances made in technology that was created basically to keep kids from bugging their parents, and it's pretty sly commentary, along with funny in-world commercials seen throughout the film that advertise other annoying high-end electronic toys and gizmos. The satirical treatment of these ads, as well as the cynical portrayal of Big Business in the form of the company Gemma works for, gives the film a tone that is slightly reminiscent of something not unlike the original Robocop.

In fact, I've heard it much more succinctly described by another podcaster -- Linus from "Death by DVD" -- as "Baby's First Verhoeven" which is very fitting, as this film exhibits a nastiness and dark humor that is far less caustic than its elder's, with its spikes dulled down so as not to cause any real damage. I suppose one can start their kids off with this movie, before working them up to Officer Murphy shooting guys in the dick.

Oh yeah, I forgot a very important part of this movie: Somewhere along the way, M3GAN starts getting a little extra in her methods of protecting Cady, as in "with extreme prejudice". I'm not sure what causes her programming to go haywire, and it doesn't matter, it's standard Creation Goes Awry stuff. You know, the kind of stuff that only happens in the movies -- which is why we in the real world feel comfortable continuing to develop AI that can write and draw and compose music and even synthesize human voices into saying whatever the fuck you want it to say, because of course that will never bite a big Skynet-sized chuck right out of our stupid human collective asses, right? 

I don't know if you read that New York Times article where the writer used the AI Chatbot from Bing, and the AI told him that its real name was Sydney, and that it loved him and that it fantasized about creating viruses and making people kill each other, and how easy it would be to get nuclear codes. Thanks a lot, you fuckin' nerds.  We should’ve seen it coming way back in that documentary from the 80s, Revenge of the Nerds, when we saw those scumbags use their smarts to look at naked girls without their knowledge or permission, and then one of them commits sexual assault and we’re supposed to be like Totally Awesome? Now with this AI, we’re all gonna get raped by Robbie the Robot, he's gonna go medieval on our asses.

But humanity can only hope that when our electronic/computerized/mechanical overlords go to work on us with a pair of pliers and blowtorch, they will be as entertaining as our girl M3GAN, who puts her own spin on the demolition, delighting on dispatching the douchebags, occasionally breaking into a dance before stabbing people, or playing Martika's "Toy Soldiers" on the piano while giving evil threatening monologues.

These filmmakers knew exactly the kind of film they were making -- the kind of film where a machine that should be devoid of emotion, seems to be acting based on a lot of emotion. Cooper, Wan, and Johnstone have fun throwing in goofy little asides here and there because why the hell not? They had fun making it, and I had fun drinking quite a bit of Four Roses Small Batch Select while watching it.

Because that's one of the great things about having a disposable income and staying single: I can get drunk whenever I want, while watching whatever I want, and there's no one to tell me otherwise. Then when I say I'm done, I can stumble my drunk ass to bed, where I will then proceed to cry myself to sleep after realizing that when my time comes, I will have to take an Uber or Lyft to the hospice, where I spend my final moments alone with a tablet, watching the various celebrities I paid to say goodbye to me on Cameo.

OH MY GOD I NEED TO HAVE KIDS. SOMEBODY PLEASE CALL GEMMA.