The Influencer and the Critics

The day I tell a young person that their opinion doesn't matter and that they are an influencer and not a critic, is the day I need to get out of the business of film criticism. Recently, there has been a rising tide of discourse in critical circles where old guard critics complain about the young whippersnappers on Instagram and TikTok who are usurping the traditional space of entertainment journalists and professional film critics. The gripes have some validity in the idea that some who have cultivated a following on social media use that influence to peddle movies while not revealing that their influence peddling is based on the price of being given access to celebrities and the clout that comes with attending junkets and premieres. 

There is something despicable about not sharing the fact that you are essentially being paid for your opinion via access to celebrities. That said, let's not act like this is something new. For years, the entertainment journalism realm has been populated by many real, genuine reporters doing their job and a group of blow dried blowhards whose livelihood was derived from being given access to celebrities that they would fawn over and give free reign to sell their movies unchallenged by questions regarding their movies. Junket Whores or the more kind and less problematic label of 'Junketeers' have plagued the realm of film journalism since film promotion became a thing. 

Wherever there was a marketer selling a movie, there was a 'journalist' willing to offer a vast platform in exchange for the relationship, real or fabricated, with a celebrity. I know many fellow 'film critics' or 'film journalists' whose walls are filled with signed photos of them with celebrities. There is nothing wrong with being a critic and a fan but there is a line that can be crossed when you become friendly with actors or filmmakers and then have to assess their work. The price critics pay for access can, at times, be their ability to objectively assess the work in front of them. 

Myself, I love doing interviews with directors. This presents an ethical question, how can I be critical and have an effective, honest conversation with a filmmaker? I've drawn a particular, personal, ethical line. I will only interview a director after I have seen and liked their movie. On two occasions I've been given access to something that could be considered ethically questionable. Netflix has flown me out to a pair of Hollywood events, one for The Irishman and one for Marriage Story. Each time I was able to see the movie and then meet the stars and filmmakers. I ended up not writing about The Irishman because of the experience of being given the privilege of meeting Martin Scorsese, Robert DeNiro, and Al Pacino. 

I did end up writing about Marriage Story, twice, but that was only because I saw the movie first and absolutely loved and then was able to have a genuine moment with the actors and director Noah Baumbach afterward regarding my enthusiasm for the movie. When I love a movie, I want to tell the filmmakers and film criticism has offered me that chance a few times. But, as I said, there is a line there that when crossed it can affect your personal credibility. Did I like Marriage Story more because Netflix put me up in a hotel in New York City? It certainly didn't hurt my feelings. But I do believe that I shared honest opinions on that movie, I loved it and I would have loved it the same if I had not been gifted a trip to New York City just to see it. 

That's my opinion anyway. I've gotten away from what I intended for this article. My point is that this fight brewing between influencers and supposed real film critics is a very silly and needless bit of gatekeeping. It's gatekeeping born of insecurity and fear. Influencers are willing to do for free what many entertainment reporters have been doing for years, using access to celebrities to leverage a career. Before social media, reporters could get assigned to the Hollywood/entertainment/movie beat. They could leverage their position by gaining access to celebrities and use that to build clout and maintain their job. 

Find my full length article at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Bottoms

Bottoms (2023) 

Directed by Emma Seligmann

Written by Emma Seligmann, Rachel Sennott

Starring Rachel Sennott, Ayo Edibiri, Havana Rose Liu, Ruby Cruz, Marshawn Lynch

Release Date September 1st, 2023 

Published September 1st, 2023 

Queer kids are horny too. This should not surprise anyone but our popular culture, our culture in general has tried to hide from this fact for, perhaps, the entire history of film. Queer kids in movies may have longings, they may have desires and even a love interest, but they are, more often then not, saintly, sexless representations of their community, sanitized for the protection of mainstream moviegoers, even the so-called allies who like the idea of supporting LGBTQ but aren't comfortable actually seeing that representation in its infinite variety on the big screen. 

This makes Emma Seligmann and Rachel Sennott's Bottoms a rather revolutionary new movie. Bottoms portrays a pair of queer, female lead characters whose libidinous desires drive the plot. If that's a problem for you, I suggest you skip movies like the American Pie franchise or Superbad because Bottoms, at least in terms of the frank depiction of horniness, is no different from those teenage, straight, male presentations of sexually active and desirous teens. 

But where those outrageous comedies play everything straight, pun intended, Bottoms starts from a recognizable reality and spins out to a broad story that satirizes the tropes of High School comedies while getting at the heart of the anxieties that drive teenagers, gay or straight. Much like the equally spiky 80s comedy of Heathers, Bottoms presents High School life as violent dystopic, minefield of social expectations while reveling in the catharsis that can come from stepping around the expected into a place that disrupts the norms with gleeful intent. 

Bottoms stars Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edibiri as best friends, P.J and Josie. Outcasts since kindergarten, the queer teens are hopeful that the start of a new school year can be a restart to their High School lives and personas. Both have crushes on cheerleaders that are destined to be unrequited but where P.J is willing to press the issue, Josie prefers a depressing long game that she lays out in one of the funniest monologues of 2023, punctuated by a perfect quip from Sennott's P.J for one of my favorite laughs of the year. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media

Movie Review The Equalizer 3

The Equalizer 3 (2023) 

Directed by Antoine Fuqua 

Written by Richard Wenk 

Starring Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning, David Denman 

Release Date September 1st, 2023 

Published September 1st, 2023 

I was not ready for how astonishingly violent The Equalizer 3 is. In the opening scenes we see a parade of viscera, a series of dead bodies that have been wrecked and bloodied in a fashion that would shame Jason Voorhees. When we finally see the man responsible for this buffet of brutality, our old friend Robert McCall (Denzel Washington), he's being held at gunpoint but seconds away from murdering everyone in the room. In a scene punctuating moment, McCall picks up a shotgun and blasts buckshot into the backside of the main baddie as he attempts to crawl away. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Dude Bro Party Massacre 3

Dude Bro Party Massacre 3 (2015) 

Directed by John Salmon, Michael Rousselet, Tomm Jacobsen, Joey Scoma 

Written by Alec Owen 

Starring Alec Owen, Greg Sestero, Patton Oswalt, Nina Hartley 

Release Date July 7th, 2015 Re-Release Date September 1st, 2023 

Published August 31st, 2023 

Dude Bro Party Massacre 3 is a glorious piece of horror satire. Released in 2015, this comic send up of 80s horror tropes and Dude Bro caricatures is now getting a special re-release for on-demand rental on Friday, September 1st. The creation of 5 Second Films, Dude Bro Party Massacre 3 comically satirizes 80s horror movies by picking an in progress franchise with a deathless villain named Motherface and a group of Dude Bro frat guys who make terrific bloody fodder for inventive and imaginative horror movie death scenes. 

Dude Bro Party Massacre tells the story of a twin frat brothers, one of whom has survived two previous Dude Bro Party Massacres at the hands of the vengeful Motherface. The twins are played by Screenwriter Alec Owen and part three picks up with the brother who'd starred in the previous massacres being murdered. This his more shy and reserved twin brother to his old college campus to investigate his brother's death. To do this, he will have to join his late brother's frat, Delta Bi, a group of hard partying survivors known for their epic parties and epic pranks. 

In classic frat movie fashion, those darn Delta Bi's are major pranksters and troublemakers. The only difference is that there pranks tend to have a body count. The frat was responsible for more than 4000 deaths but hey, it's just a prank bro. They also toppled a South American dictator? Maybe? These scenes are hilariously presented as boys will boys stuff punished with a week long suspension, during Greek Week, so you know they are in real trouble. 

The suspension is a ruse to get the Dude Bros of Delta Bi off the campus and onto a lake side where they are set up to be killed by Mother Face. As happens in long in the tooth 80s franchise horror, new supernatural elements tend to get added to the plot. Here, the local sheriff, played in a brilliant cameo by Patton Oswalt needs the Dude Bros to be killed and a virgin sacrifice in order to protect the town from some vaguely specified demonic presence. The sheriff has conspired with the College Dean, played by adult film star Nina Hartley to set up the Dude Bros while he sets up a former Dude Bro turned cop to be the virgin sacrifice. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Classic Movie Review Surf Ninjas

Surf Ninjas (1993) 

Directed by Neal Israel 

Written by Dan Gordon, Neal Israel 

Starring Ernie Reyes Jr, Ernie Reyes Sr, Leslie Nielsen, Rob Schneider 

Release Date August 20th, 1993 

Published August 29th, 2023 

With apologies to Ernie Reyes, Jr and Sr, Surf Ninjas is a truly terrible movie. This incomprehensible mess of a kids movie posits a world where orphan brothers are protected by a homeless drifter who may or may not be their father and who stealthily dispatches of ninjas looking to kill his children. The kids are unaware of the constant peril they live in and they don't seem to have any questions about their lives, their back story, or the father that abandoned them. They just want to surf bro. Reality however, comes crashing through the walls when Ninjas attack and daddy is forced to reveal himself. 

I genuinely don't know what else you need to know about Surf Ninjas. The plot is rudimentary, the shooting style is amateurish and the performances are devoid of interest. For reasons that defy logic and the ability to suspend disbelief, the brothers go to school with their pal, Iggy, played by Rob Schneider. Is it supposed to be funny that Schneider is 30 years old while playing a character described as a Junior in High School? It's not funny but I also don't know why this choice was made at all. I get that in 1993 Schneider was vaguely appealing as a cast member on Saturday Night Live but why not have him play his age instead of defying credulity as a supposed teenager. 

Naturally, Schneider cannot wait 10 minutes before committing a minor hate crime. As the kids fall under the attack from Ninjas in the employ of Colonel Chi, a hate crime committed by Leslie Nielsen, Schneider breaks out the racist accents and tells a ninja that he 'no speaky the English.' It's hard to even write that line and yet Schneider says it as if it's just totally normal. This was only Schneider's third feature film role but he was setting the tone for the cinematic hate crimes he would continue to commit for the next 30 years of devolving as a human being, and as a comedian and actor. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Coneheads

Coneheads (1993)

Directed by Steve Barron

Written by Tom Davis, Dan Akroyd, Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner 

Starring Dan Akroyd, Jane Curtin, Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, Phil Hartman, Sinbad, Michelle Burke 

Release Date July 23rd, 2023 

Published August 30th, 2023 

Am I more mature or less fun? It's a sad question that I was forced to confront as I sat through another movie from my youth that was not nearly as much fun as I remembered. Coneheads is an utterly dreadful movie. When I was a teenager, with a heavy nostalgia for the glory years of SNL that, admittedly, I had only experienced via reruns, I liked Coneheads The Movie. As I once said in a column on this very website, linked here, movies don't change, you do. That's very clear to me after watching Coneheads for what I thought would be a nostalgic look back at a cult favorite. 

Coneheads began life as a popular running sketch on SNL in the late 1970s. Beldar and Prymaat Conehead (Dan Akroyd and Jane Curtin), are aliens from the planet Remulak who are hiding out on Earth and trying to cover up the fact that they are very obviously aliens. They have giant cone shaped heads and they speak in a staccato monotone, like some kind of robot affecting a human voice. That's the joke, the juxtaposition of the attempts by Beldar and Prymaat to seem like suburban Americans versus the tension of them obviously being aliens. 

It's a great sketch premise. I imagine that it is a premise that Dan Akroyd had in mind for many years before he got his big break on SNL. It has the feel of something improvised on stage at Groundlings or Second City show. On SNL that improvised vibe fueled the 5 to 6 minute sketches with one character entering the world of the Coneheads and obliviously accepting the premise that these are normal suburban parents or someone growing more and more frustrated in their attempt to prove that they are aliens. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Horror in the 90s Hardware

Hardware (1990) 

Directed by Richard Stanley 

Written by Steve McManus, Richard Stanley, Kevin O'Neill 

Starring Dylan McDermott, Stacy Travis, John Lynch 

Release Date September 14th, 1990 

Box Office $5.1 million 

You know your career is not going well when someone makes a documentary about your being fired. Richard Stanley became infamous in 1994 when his first major studio directing job went worse than it could have possibly gone. The behind the scenes documentary, Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's The Island of Dr. Moreau, is an all timer in terms of epic film boondoggles. Stanley went over budget, fought with executives, lost the star of his film 2 days into filming, was forced to watch as Mother Nature destroyed his multi-million dollar sets and then was fired during filming. 

Then, taking a bad situation and making it even crazier, a distressed and lunatic Stanley, snuck back onto the set of The Island of Dr. Moreau, made up like one of the movie monster extras, and was able to appear in several scenes as a background player. No joke, the fired director can be seen writhing and shrieking with his fellow freaks in a couple scenes in the final cut of The Island of Dr. Moreau. It's the kind of story that goes down in Hollywood lore and it all really happened to the young director who was making his major studio debut with a ludicrous cast that included the infamous Marlon Brando and even more risky and infamous Val Kilmer. 

The epic mishap of The Island of Dr. Moreau will be the lead in Richard Stanley's obituary one day. Perhaps, somewhere near the bottom of the article, there will be a mention for the rather ingenious, low budget sci-fi horror movie that brought him to the set of The Island of Dr. Moreau, 1990's Hardware. This hybrid of horror, steampunk, and post-apocalyptic sci-fi is kind of genius and kind of deeply awkward. This is likely due to the director making one thing and executives, led by Harvey Weinstein, wanting the film to be cut to a length that was potentially more commercial, the point and purpose of the film be damned. 

Hardware is a movie that is sort of about how advancements in technology have begun to dehumanize us, reprogram us, and convince us to give up more of our freedom for a sense of security. Through the story of Mo (Dylan McDermott), a scavenger, and Jill (Stacy Travis) we get a glimpse of the modern condition of the world, one where scrappers can thrive if they are willing to risk their lives and artists, like Jill, struggle to get by despite creating transcendent works of art, things that belong in museums that no longer exist. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media