Documentary Review Rondo & Bob

Rondo and Bob 

Directed by Joe O'Connell

Written by Documentary 

Starring Robert A. Burns, Rondo Hatten

Release Date November 14th, 2020 

Rondo and Bob is a strange documentary. The film purports to tell the story of Robert (Bob) Burns, the legendary propmaster and set designer for the horror classic, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and his obsession with forgotten monster movie star, Rondo Hatton. What we actually get is a confounding series of re-enactments of each man’s life and a few disconnected talking head segments about Burns’ strange life. 

If you are looking for insights into why Bob loved Rondo and how he worked to preserve Rondo's monster movie legend and his unique life, you won’t find that here. What we get instead is a series of facile sketches acted out by amateur actors of suspect acting talent. That, and a bizarre approach to editing that involves slam banging from one story to the next, inelegantly jumping from Burns’ life to Hatton’s life with the care of a sledgehammer through a wall.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Classic Movie Review The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie 

Directed by Luis Bunuel

Written by Luis Bunuel, Jean-Claude Carriere

Starring Fernando Rey, Paul Frankeuer, Delphine Seyrig

Release Date October 22nd, 1972

Dreams within dreams within dreams, that’s Luis Bunuel’s 1972 feature film, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Normally, when a filmmaker uses the trope of ‘it was all a dream’ I get annoyed. But the elegant and deconstuctionist way that Bunuel employs the trope makes it work. The dream within a dream within a dream structure in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie enhances the storytelling while taking the trope and turning it into a charming running gag. 

Ostensibly, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is about a group of six friends trying to get together for a meal. I say they are trying to get together because each time they do, something happens that prevents them from actually sitting down to eat. In the first instance, four members of the group arrive at the home of the other two friends, a couple. They are there for a cocktail party. When they arrive, they are the only guests and the hostess is in her bed-casual clothes. The group came to the party one night early.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Good Luck to You Leo Grande

Good Luck to You Leo Grande 

Directed by Sophie Hyde

Written by Katy Brand

Starring Emma Thompson, Daryl McCormick 

Release Date June 17th, 2022

Good Luck to You Leo Grande is the kind of movie that causes you to evaluate yourself, where you are in life, and how you feel about yourself. It’s also a delightful comedy about an older woman and the sex worker she hires to try and break out of her shell. Myself, I was drawn to the more introspective side of things but if you watch this movie just for the delight of Emma Thompson and her magnetic chemistry with newcomer Daryl McCormack, that works just as well. 

Good Luck to You Leo Grande stars Emma Thompson as Nancy Stokes, a college professor, a mother of two, and a widow. For the first time since her stuffy husband died, Nancy wants to have an adventure, specifically a sexual adventure. Thus why she sought out a service that connects women like her with male escorts willing and able to fulfill fantasies. Nancy chose Leo Grande (McCormack), not his real name, out of a group of potential escorts.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Classic Movie Review Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore 

Directed by Martin Scorsese 

Written by Robert Getchell 

Starring Ellen Burstyn, Kris Kristofferson

Release Date December 9th, 1974

The central conflict of Martin Scorsese’s 1974 drama, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, is a conflict between illusion and reality. The film is about the fictional life we create for ourselves as a protective case against harsh reality. It’s not just Alice who does this, we all do it to some extent. Life can be hard and re-framing negatives to positives can be helpful even as a self-deception. For Alice, the self-deceptions multiply in order to justify the choices she made in her life. 

Alice’s first illusion comes in the form of the opening scene of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Scorsese decides at this moment to start the film as if it were an MGM musical from the golden age of such musicals. The scene is set on a very obvious Hollywood back-lot. The scene is lit in a rose color, evoking the rose colored glasses through which we often see our past. It’s never stated that this is Alice’s fantasy of what life was like for her as a child in Monterey but it doesn’t need to be spelled out. The style of the scene, the set, the idyll, they all communicate what needs to be communicated as we smash cut to Alice’s real life.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Welcome to the Dollhouse

Welcome to the Dollhouse 

Directed by Todd Solondz

Written by Todd Solondz

Starring Heather Matarazzo, Brendon Sexton III

Released May 24th, 1996

Junior High and High School Suck! That’s the theses of director Todd Solondz via his second feature film effort, Welcome to the Dollhouse. Solondz set out to make a darker version of the kind of High School movie that had been around for years but always felt a little fake or a little too sunny and optimistic. Solondz’s vision of Junior High, via main character Dawn Wiener, played by Heather Mattarazzo, was one in which the dangers of High School could be literal dangers as threats and taunts can turn to actual, potential, violence. 

Welcome to the Dollhouse introduces the unusual character of Dawn Wiener. Dawn is a gawky, gangly, socially awkward 12 year old girl. She’s remarkably resilient and thoughtful despite having spent much of her time at school and at home being either bullied or forgotten. At school she’s called ‘Weiner-Dog’ or some other choice insults too nasty to be printed here. At home, Dawn’s college bound older brother, Mark (Matthew Faber) and her ballerina younger sister, Missy (Daria Kalinina) are both adored by their parents while Dawn is a pariah.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Acid Test

Acid Test 

Directed by Jennifer Waldo

Written by Jennifer Waldo

Starring Juliana Destefano, Brian Thornton, Mia Ruiz

Release Date November 21st, 2021

Acid Test is a coming of age drama set in 1992. It’s about a teenager on the brink of a future that includes Harvard, a good job, and a career. Of course, she begins to question this path and that question provides the plot of the movie. It’s a journey of self discovery that will take the main character, Jenny, played by Juliana Destefano, from straight A student to Riot Grrrl feminist willing to experiment with psychedelics as an escape from her troubles. 

Jenny’s father, Jack (Brian Thornton) has had Jenny on track to go to Harvard for years. Jack himself is a Harvard graduate and that makes Jenny a legacy, and more likely to be able to get into the school on a scholarship. Jenny however, as she’s grown up she’s grown disillusioned about whether Harvard is her dream or her father’s dream. Jenny finds a new path via a trip to a concert where she hears the punk rock of a band of Riot Grrls and has an epiphany about being able to make choices for herself.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Classic Movie Review Universal Soldier

Universal Soldier 

Directed by Roland Emmerich

Written by Richard Rothstein, Christopher Leitch, Dean Devlin

Starring Jean Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, Ally Walker

Release Date July 10th, 1992 

Why write about something as silly and seemingly random as Universal Soldier? It goes back to being a teenager who fell in love with the movies while on an adventure with friends. When I was 16 years old on a June day in 1992, myself and three friends decided to see a movie. We intended only to see Batman Returns, the sequel to 1989’s blockbuster Batman starring Michael Keaton. Once we saw that film however, we hatched a sneaky idea.

The theater was extremely busy. Batman Returns was selling tickets fast and the staff was harried and distracted. When we finished Batman we noticed that the baseball movie A League of Their Own starring Tom Hanks was about to start. We decided, we were going to sneak in and see another movie. This sneaky teenage capering (which I am aware is akin to stealing, forgive my aimless, amoral youth) led us to try and make it three movies in a day. We chose the Eddie Murphy comedy Boomerang which had the extra benefit of being R-Rated.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Classic Movie Review A Little Princess

A Little Princess 

Directed by Alfonso Cuarón

Written by Richard Lagravanese, Elizabeth Chandler

Starring Eleanor Bron, Liam Cunningham, Liesel Matthews

Release Date May 10th, 1995 

A Little Princess was written by Frances Hodgson Burnett in 1905 as an expansion on a series of novellas Burnett had written for St. Nicholas Magazine. The movie industry found A Little Princess for the first time in 1917 as a silent picture starring Mary Pickford in the role of Sara Crewe and Zasu Pitts as her friend Becky. Most notably, the silent A Little Princessfeatured a screenplay by Frances Marion, one of the first women to write for the movies.

Then in 1939 A Little Princess received it’s most iconic film rendering with the legendary Shirley Temple in the role of Sara Crew the daughter of privilege whose life is upended by her father’s tragic death leaving her penniless and at the mercy of the cruel boarding school headmistress, Miss Minchin played by Mary Nash. The 1939 version of A Little Princess was produced in ‘glorious Technicolor’ by master showman Daryl F. Zanuck.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Thor Love and Thunder

Thor Love and Thunder

Directed by Taika Waititi

Written by Taika Waititi

Starring Chris Hemsworth, Christian Bale, Tessa Thompson, Natalie Portman, Russell Crowe

Release Date July 8th, 2022

What is it about the Guardians of the Galaxy that no director other than James Gunn can get the voice of the Guardians right? The Guardians of the Galaxy show up in the opening act of Thor Love and Thunder and they appear, for some inexplicable reason, like off brand versions of the characters we love. I had the same feeling about the Guardians of the Galaxy as they were directed by the Russo Brothers in Avengers Infinity War and Avengers Endgame, the Guardians just never sounded right. 

Why am I opening my review of Thor Love and Thunder by wondering about the off-brand version of the Guardians of the Galaxy? Probably because Thor Love and Thunder didn’t give me anything more memorable than this Guardians tangent. Thor Love and Thunder is deeply mediocre compared to the lively, exciting and well crafted Thor Ragnorak. Thor Love and Thunder fails to figure out how to balance heavy drama involving Christian Bale’s villainous Gorr The God Butcher and Thor’s mostly comic adventure.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Crimes of the Future

Crimes of the Future 

Directed by David Cronenberg 

Written by David Cronenberg

Starring Viggo Mortensen, Lea Seydoux, Kristen Stewart

Release Date September 8th, 2022 

Crimes of the Future is yet another example of David Cronenberg’s favorite theme, bodily autonomy, the right of people to do what they want with their own bodies. In his 1975 feature, Shivers, Cronenberg examined how outside forces take bodily autonomy away from individuals by force. In Crimes of the Future, the sides are a little more even. In this strange Cronenbergian universe, the war between those who want bodily autonomy and those who want government control over how humanity is evolving has reached a boiling point. 

Caught in the middle of this ideological war is performance artist Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) and his performance partner, a former surgeon named Caprice (Lea Seydoux). Together this duo performs an act in which Saul is operated on by Caprice and has an organ removed. Something the film calls accelerated evolution has led to Saul being able to grow new organs which may or may not have a function. He, and everyone else in this strange future, have also evolved to no longer feel physical pain. Saul and Caprice's art is a live surgery followed by Saul tattooing the new organ and displaying it all for the paying crowd.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Classic Movie Review The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez

The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez 

Directed by Robert M. Young 

Written by Victor Villasenor, Robert Young

Starring Edward James Olmos, James Gammon

Release Date August 19th, 1983 

The tragic story of The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez remains legend in Texas more than 100 years later. A simple error in translation between a sheriff and a man accused of stealing horses led to multiple deaths and the largest manhunt in Texas history at the time. Director Robert M. Young adapted the story of Gregorio Cortes with the help of star Edward James Olmos in a lovely, muted fashion that underlines how remarkable tragedy can arise simply from our inability to communicate effectively.

Gregorio Cortez (Edward James Olmos) was a quiet farmer in Gonzales, Texas until the day a sheriff arrived and accused him of stealing a horse. The events from then on are retold from multiple perspectives with details that change via the man telling the story. The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez unfolds in the familiar style of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo and turns importantly on the way perspective and bias can affect the truth.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review The Forgiven

The Forgiven 

Directed by John Michael McDonagh

Written by John Michael McDonagh

Starring Jessica Chastain, Ralph Fiennes, Matt Smith, Caleb Landry Jones, Christopher Abbott

Release Date July 1st, 2022

The Forgiven was made as a combination of the rich people ennui of The Great Gatsby and a moralist critique of the shiftless 1% wasting away on their vast fortunes while callously victimizing the disenfranchised. The film comes up short on both accounts. Written and Directed by John Michael McDonaugh, The Forgiven is sweaty, tired and unfocused outside a few genuinely emotional moments involving a grieving father and the man who killed his son. 

The Forgiven stars Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain as a deeply bored and drifting apart married couple. He’s a doctor and she’s a children’s book author. As a couple they have plenty of money but very little joy. As we meet David and Jo Henninger they are traveling through Morocco and on their way to a distant location in the African desert. There, a long time friend of the couple, Richard (Matt Smith) and his partner Dally (Caleb Landry Jones), are throwing an old school bacchanal of rich people excess.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review A Working Man

A Working Man 

Directed by David Ayer 

Written by Sylvester Stallone, David Ayer

Starring Jason Statham, Michael Pena, David Harbour

Released March 28th, 2025 

Published April 1st, 2025 

A Working Man stars Jason Statham as Levon Cade, a construction worker who used to be an English Special Forces operative. When the daughter of his boss, Jenny, played by Arianna Rivas, is kidnapped by human traffickers, Levon’s boss, played by Michael Pena, asks Levon to use his Special Forces skills to get her back. He’s reluctant to jump in as he is in the middle of a custody battle for his daughter with her grandfather who cares for the child in the wake of her mother’s suicide. That said, the premise of the movie has Jason Statham brutally murdering human trafficking scum, his hemming and hawing won’t last long. 

Entering the bleak world of human trafficking, Levon needs all of his skills from torturing drug dealers to pretending to be a drug dealer. He’s a natural detective with the chameleonic abilities of an undercover cop and the physical gifts of a Navy Seal. It’s wish fulfillment male revenge fantasy nonsense that hand-wringers like myself cannot criticize for fear of being accused of siding with the human trafficking scum. Thus, populism bullies us into just pretending that A Working Man is good because human trafficking is bad. Working outside the law, subverting the justice system is good, and the rule of law is useless.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Classic Movie Review Tommy Boy

Tommy Boy 

Directed by Peter Segal 

Written by Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner 

Starring Chris Farley, David Spade, Brian Dennehy

Release Date March 31st, 1995 

Published April 1st, 2025 

Tommy Boy is now 30 years old and watching it again with wizened eyes, I noticed something about Tommy Boy that I’d never noticed before. Tommy Boy contains, almost unintentionally, a concept that I am calling ‘Utopian Capitalism.’ What is Utopian Capitalism? It’s the kind of capitalism that we were sold in school, a notion of capitalism where profits are important, but not as important as helping people keep their jobs. Callahan Auto, the fictional auto parts company at the heart of the plot, is an American company with many employees and is saved by Tommy through hard work and a dedication to people before profits. 

Tommy Callahan (Chris Farley) is the dopey scion of a multi-millionaire businessman, Big Tom Callahan (Brian Dennehy). Big Tom has run a great company funded by his ability to sell people on the quality of the products made in his Ohio plant. When Big Tom dies, the company falls into Tommy’s hands and to say that he’s not ready for this responsibility is a grave understatement. Tommy spent seven years trying to graduate from Marquette University and his major appears to have been being as drunk as humanly possible.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media

Documentary Review Accepted

Accepted

Directed by Dan Chen 

Written by Documentary 

Starring T.M Landry College Prep

Release Date June 12th, 2021

Accepted is a harrowing story, one that begins triumphantly and slowly devolves into an ambiguous sort of tragedy. Director Dan Chen endeavored to explore the incredible success that was T.M Landry College Prep in Louisiana. This factory school that sent low income kids to Ivy League schools was a viral sensation in 2017. That year, the school uploaded a series of videos showing their students reacting to getting into the college of their choice. 

Every news outlet from Fox News to CNN to entertainment outlets such as The Today Show, The View, and Ellen, picked up the story of inner city kids blasting open the doors to the Ivy League. It indeed was a great story and with the charismatic showman Michael Landry at the helm, it appeared there could be an entirely new educational paradigm on the rise. T.M Landry, the T.M is for Tracy and Michael Landry, did not have textbooks or a set schedule or classrooms.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Big Hero Six

Big Hero 6 

Directed by Don Hall, Chris Williams

Written by Jordan Roberts, Robert L. Baird, Daniel Gerson

Starring Scott Adsit, Ryan Potter, Daniel Henney, Jamie Chung

Released November 7th, 2014 

On June 29th, Disney is bringing back Baymax! The hero of the 2014 animated movie, Big Hero 6, is getting his own 6 episode series and fans are excited to have Baymax back. The voice of Baymax, Scott Adsit is returning as is Ryan Potter as the voice of Baymax's best friend, Hiro. And, Maya Rudolph is reprising her role as Hiro's aunt. There is no indication that the Big Hero 6 mech team will be back, they had their own series which just ended its run last year. With Big Hero 6 returning as a series, I decided to reflect on the 2014 movie which was a surprisingly thoughtful and dramatic kids adventure with some big themes regarding death and grief. 

At its core the animated movie Big Hero 6 is a story of grief and recovery. Our hero, Hiro, has lost his brother in a tragic fire. The villain, Dr. Robert Callaghan, has lost his daughter in the tragic pursuit of science and profit. These stories intersect because Dr. Callaghan's attempt at revenge leads to the death of Hiro's brother Tadashi. Hiro's journey dealing with this loss leads him to battle Dr. Callaghan's grief with the love and support of a new surrogate family.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Clara Sola

Clara Sola

Directed by Nathalie Álvarez Mesén

Written by Wendy Chinchilla Araya, Daniel Castaneda Rincon

Starring Wendy Chinchilla Araya 

Released July 21st, 2021 

Clara Sola is a bold, strange and mysterious movie about faith, sexuality, and the senses. It’s the story of a childlike woman of about 40 years old who may or may not be a healer. The woman’s mother believes that her daughter is the living embodiment of the Virgin Mary but the woman, Clara, would prefer to live a normal life, one unencumbered by her mother’s expectations and the requirements of a virgin healer/savior. 

Clara is played by dancer turned actor Wendy Chinchilla Araya, in her first acting role. It’s an unusual and rather brilliant performance that captures both the childlike desires of a stunted intellect and the adult desires of a grown woman. Clara is a dichotomy and her alien-like presence immediately grabs and holds your attention. It’s a captivating performance even as there doesn’t appear to be much of any story going on.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Classic Movie Review Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Who Framed Roger Rabbit? 

Directed by Robert Zemeckis

Written by Jeffrey Price, Peter S. Seaman

Starring Bob Hoskins, Kathleen Turner, Charles Fleischer, Christopher Lloyd

Released June 22nd, 1988 

Detective Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) stands framed by a tunnel leading him to a physical and emotional destination. On the other side of the tunnel is the place where he needs to go to save his new friend, Roger, but it is also the place where, years earlier, his brother and partner was killed. The conflict weighs heavily on him as he ponders his fate, past and present colliding in a whirlwind of emotions.

I could be describing a 1940’s detective movie directed by John Huston or Jules Dassin with a story by Daschiell Hammett and starring Gene Tierney or Robert Mitchum. Instead, the movie I am describing in the opening of this review is Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the iconic live action-animated feature from visionary director Robert Zemeckis. The comedy comes from the remarkably brilliant clash of animated storytelling and Zemeckis' love of classic detective stories.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Marcel The Shell With Shoes On

Marcel the Shell With Shoes On

Directed by Dean Fleischer Camp

Written by Dean Fleischer Camp, Jenny Slate, Nick Paley

Starring Jenny Slate, Rosa Salazar, Thomas Mann

Released June 24th, 2022 

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On bursts forth from the imagination of Jenny Slate and her creative partner, Dean Fleischer Camp. The story of a lonely little shell with shoes on and the documentary filmmaker who briefly lives with the shell and makes a movie about him, Marcel the shell with Shoes On is a wildly inventive and genuinely lovely movie. Vibrant, strange and endlessly beautiful, Marcel the Shell with Shoes on is one of the reasons we love going to the movies. 

Marcel, voiced by co-creator Jenny Slate, has lived a lifetime in the last two years. It’s been that long since most of Marcel’s family of fellow shells disappeared. Since then, it has only been Marcel and his grandmother, Connie (Isabella Rossellini). Together, they’ve invented ways to survive on their own as one person after another moves into and out of their suburban, multi-bedroom home. What was once the home of a loving couple has become a permanent Air B & B.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here.