Bob’s Burgers 7.21 Review: “Paraders of the Lost Float”

May 23, 2017

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“You had me at ‘pee everywhere.'” https://www.bubbleblabber.com/review-bobs-burgers-paraders-of-the-lost-float/

SNL Review May 20, 2017: Dwayne Johnson/Katy Perry

May 23, 2017

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This review was originally posted on News Cult in May 2017.

Love It
Hallelujah – Following its first post-election episode this season, SNL chose to forego comedy for melancholy in the cold opening. But now it is time to reflect (or refract) that approach through a cracked looking glass. With leaks now pouring out of every conceivable hole, it is time for Trump and his cronies to prattle on to the tune of Leonard Cohen, striking a note of face-palmingly eternal denial.

There is a certain craze that has seemingly come out of nowhere, so it makes perfect sense that a baby adult would be pacified by it, ergo the Cartier Fidget Spinner…I am categorically in favor of any sketch that features the entire cast, and if it can be managed in merely three minutes, as with the overstuffed rap video One Voice, all the better…Dawn Lazarus is one of those characters that makes such a huge impression in her first appearance that she is brought back almost instantly on her way to a meteoric rise (too bad this is Vanessa Bayer’s last episode, then)…I am not sure if I have ever officially said this, so let me be perfectly clear: Drunk Uncle is one of the best SNL characters of all time.

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What Won TV? – May 14-May 20, 2017

May 22, 2017

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In this feature, I look back at each day of the past week and determine what shows “won TV” for the night. That is, I consider every episode of television I watched that aired on a particular day and declare which was the best.

Sunday – Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
Monday – Jane the Virgin
Tuesday – Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Wednesday – Arrow is bringing it back.
Thursday – The President Show
Friday – RuPaul’s Drag Race
Saturday – In memory of a lost rock voice, the SNL Vintage vault busted out one of the best episodes of all time.

This Is a Movie Review: Stuck in a Teenage Girl’s Bedroom, ‘Everything, Everything’ Has a Teenage Heart and Soul

May 18, 2017

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , 1 Comment

This review was originally published on News Cult in May 2017.

Starring: Amandla Stenberg, Nick Robinson, Anika Noni Rose, Ana de la Reguera, Morgan Saylor

Director: Stella Meghie

Running Time: 96 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Artfully Shot Sickness and Tastefully Shot Teen Sensuality

Release Date: May 19, 2017

Everything, Everything is a teen romance fantasy in a vacuum. The good and bad thing about vacuums is that they keep everything out – in this case, both the distractions that can get in the way of a genuine connection but also the context and experiences that deepen that connection.

18-year-old Maddy Whittier (Amandla Stenberg) has been housebound nearly her entire life, due to her Severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), a disorder that leaves her deathly vulnerable to all the infections of the outside world. She has managed to carve out a decently satisfying routine in her domestic prison: writing mini reviews of all the books she reads, assembling dioramas of the places she cannot visit, and having game/movie nights with her mom (phonetic Scrabble and Moonstruck are a couple of favorites). But when prototypically cute boy with a hardscrabble home life Olly (Nick Robinson) moves in next door, her desire to break free can no longer be so easily contained.

This is the type of movie in which a character 100% earnestly says, “I loved you before I knew you” (to which the response in real life should always be, “That is not how love works”). But when it comes to the outsize emotions of adolescence, such a sentiment is understandable and can often make for thrilling stories about first love. Everything, Everything wants to be that type of story, and the physical entrapment in its premise is a potent formula for a big tension release, but the trouble is, the chemistry between Stenberg and Robinson is supposed to be self-evident, but in fact it never really clicks.

The lack of passion is a shame, because the design around the lovers is striking. Their conversations are mostly through text or online messaging, but they are sometimes presented as taking place in life-size versions of Maddy’s dioramas – a lovingly designed diner or library occupied just by them, but in which they dance around each other’s orbit, never really in the same spot, representing both the effort to protect Maddy and their emotional distance. When the two are finally allowed to meet in person, their dialogue is accompanied by subtitles representing their inner thoughts (a la Annie Hall), which is insightful enough to make up for the lack of chemistry, but alas that technique lasts only that one scene.

Eventually Maddy decides that she simply must take the risk of leaving home, which ultimately leads to an alarming twist that re-contextualizes the entire film. Suddenly, Everything, Everything is filled with so much more depth than it has been letting on, but there is not enough running time left to fully grapple with all of the implications of this reveal. What at first appears to be (and in fact largely is) a shamelessly mushy love story transforms into an examination of grief and the lengths that people go to protect themselves. These are two sides of a coin that could very well complement each other, but it is hard to be satisfying when one is so much more heavily weighted than the other.

Everything, Everything is Recommended If You Like: The Space Between Us, The music of Ludwig Göransson

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Astronauts

 

Billboard Hot Rock Songs – Week of May 27, 2017

May 16, 2017

jmunney Billboard Charts, Billboard Hot Rock Songs, Music , , , Leave a comment

Each week, I check out the Billboard Hot Rock Songs chart, and then I rearrange the top 25 based on my estimation of their quality. I used to rank all 25, now I just rank the cream of the crop.

Original Version
1. Imagine Dragons – “Believer”
2. Linkin Park ft. Kiiara – “Heavy”
3. twenty one pilots – “Heathens”
4. Rag’n’Bone Man – “Human”
5. Lord Huron – “The Night We Met”
6. Imagine Dragons – “Thunder”
7. Fleetwood Mac – “The Chain”
8. The Revivalists – “Wish I Knew You”
9. Paramore – “Hard Times”
10. Lil Wayne, Wiz Khalifa, & Imagine Dragons with Logic, Ty Dolla $ign ft. X Ambassadors – “Sucker for Pain”
11. Portugal. The Man – “Feel It Still”
12. Electric Light Orchestra – “Mr. Blue Sky”
13. HAIM – “Want You Back”
14. Imagine Dragons – “Whatever It Takes”
15. Ocean Park Standoff – “Good News”
16. Paramore – “Told You So”
17. Lana Del Rey ft. The Weeknd – “Lust for Life”
18. Sweet – “Fox on the Run”
19. Fall Out Boy – “Young and Menace”
20. Gorillaz ft. Popcaan – “Saturnz Barz”
21. George Harrison – “My Sweet Lord”
22. Jay & the Americans – “Come a Little Bit Closer”
23. Papa Roach – “Help”
24. Cat Stevens – “Father & Son”
25. Cold War Kids – “Love is Mystical”

Jmunney’s Revision
1. The Chain
2. My Sweet Lord
3. Fox on the Run
4. Human
5. Father and Son
6. Mr. Blue Sky
7. Young and Menace
8. Feel It Still
9. Saturnz Barz
10. Come a Little Bit Closer
11. Love is Mystical
12. Want You Back
13. Hard Times
14. Lust for Life
15. Told You So

Billboard Hot 20 – Week of May 27, 2017

May 16, 2017

jmunney Billboard Charts, Billboard Hot 100, Music , , , , Leave a comment

Each week, I check out the Billboard Hot 100, and then I rearrange the top 20 based on my estimation of their quality. I used to rank all 20, now I just rank the cream of the crop.

Original Version
1. Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee ft. Justin Bieber – “Despacito”
2. Bruno Mars – “That’s What I Like”
3. DJ Khaled ft. Justin Bieber, Quavo, Chance the Rapper, and Lil Wayne – “I’m the One”
4. Ed Sheeran – “Shape of You”
5. Kendrick Lamar – “Humble.”
6. Future – “Mask Off”
7. The Chainsmokers and Coldplay – “Something Just Like This”
8. Lil Uzi Vert – “XO TOUR Llif3”
9. Zedd and Alessia Cara – “Stay”
10. KYLE ft. Lil Yachty – “iSpy”
11. Kygo x Selena Gomez – “It Ain’t Me”
12. Post Malone ft. Quavo – “Congratulations”
13. James Arthur – “Say You Won’t Let Go”
14. Julia Michaels – “Issues”
15. Sam Hunt – “Body Like a Back Road”
16. Kendrick Lamar – “DNA.”
17. Khalid – “Location”
18. Harry Styles – “Sign of the Times”
19. Drake – “Passionfruit”
20. Imagine Dragons – “Believer”

Jmunney’s Revision
1. Stay
2. Sign of the Times
3. Location
4. Humble.
5. DNA.

This Is a Movie Review: Sequel-Prequel ‘Alien: Covenant’ Follows the ‘Prometheus’ Template and Adds a Few Bizarre Details of Its Own

May 15, 2017

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

This review was originally published on News Cult in May 2017.

Starring: Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride, Demián Bichir, Carmen Ejogo, Amy Seimetz

Director: Ridley Scott

Running Time: 123 Minutes

Rating: R for the Usual Chest-Bursting Shenanigans

Release Date: May 19, 2017

When horror movies are successful enough to merit sequels, the follow-ups can either repeat the same scares or expand the mythology. They usually do both, with the latter generally growing in prominence as the series drags on, with the diminishing returns on the former become clearer and clearer. (They can also try to summon entirely new scares, but that is one of the most difficult tasks in all of moviemaking.) Ridley Scott’s Alien is pure horror, despite its sci-fi setting. When other directors took over for the first batch of sequels, their genres may have tended more towards action, but the mythology certainly blew out as well, what with cloning Ripley and hurtling hundreds of year into the future.

Now that Scott has taken back the reins, he has apparently decided that if crazy ideas are going to be the name of the day, he might as well underpin the franchise with his own peculiar philosophizing. Because otherwise, this would just be a rehash of intrepid spacefarers treading too far on the edge and getting ripped apart by lethally invasive extraterrestrials. That approach is not necessarily terrible, and Alien: Covenant does not avoid it entirely. Chest-bursting can no longer be as iconic as it was the first time, but it still packs a sickening kick, and there are other body parts to slice off and wear away with acid blood. And there are also some larger-scale action sequences, demonstrating Scott’s still vibrant eye for scale and knack for properly calibrating tension.

But Covenant truly excels when it gets weird. It bridges the gap, both temporally and thematically, between the original Alien and 2012 prequel Prometheus. The latter film started to answer the question of what made the original attack on the Nostromo possible, a question that nobody really ever asked. Covenant continues to answer the question, and while it is still unnecessary, the backstory on display is fascinating enough to justify itself.

The actors playing the human crew of the Covenant fulfill their duties, but it is android Michael Fassbender who is pulling the strings. Prometheus and Covenant are explicitly about creation myths and the limits of human ambition, and these fundamental themes of existence are represented and mercilessly toyed with by humanoid beings created by humans. Certain revelations come out squarely tsk-tsking against hubris, while other moments are more impenetrable with their messages. But that is no criticism. Traversing across the universe should be stunning, humbling, and mysterious, perhaps even to the point of incomprehensibility. What is the purpose, for example, of Fassbender teaching himself to play the flute? I cannot genuinely say that I know, except that it makes Alien: Covenant unforgettable.

Alien: Covenant is Recommended If You Like: Prometheus But Wish It Had Been Better, Even If You Thought It Was Good

Grade: 4 out of 5 Fingers

SNL Review May 13, 2017: Melissa McCarthy/HAIM

May 14, 2017

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This review was originally posted on News Cult in May 2017.

Love It
Lighthouse Features Logo – Endings are notoriously difficult in sketch comedy, so I have got to hand it to SNL when it comes up with a great closer, especially when it is the last sketch of the night, sending the whole show out on a high. The powerful conclusion in this case involves simply revisiting the stated premise at the beginning and putting a button on it to explain the protagonist’s incompetence. In between is a series of disturbing and multi-layered micro short films.

Mother’s Day seems like the ideal time for SNL to come up with fake technological products that cater to the older generation – add the ever-patient Amazon Echo Silver to that heap…When it comes to Women in Film, Kate McKinnon’s Debette Goldry (this time joined by Melissa McCarthy’s Gaye Fontaine) is only as strong as her stories, and this time she has killer ones, like removing her molars to maker her face less Polish and being married to a Nazi…Now for the continuing romantic saga of Kyle & Leslie, in which we learn that Lorne (not little Lorne) is okay with Colin being shot, because he can be annoying…The birthday party sketch ends perhaps a bit too abruptly when Melissa Villaseñor discovers her Mom Animal, but the satire of the cult of motherhood is equal parts disturbing and enticing.

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What Won TV? – May 7-May 13, 2017

May 14, 2017

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In this feature, I look back at each day of the past week and determine what shows “won TV” for the night. That is, I consider every episode of television I watched that aired on a particular day and declare which was the best.

Sunday – Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
Monday – Better Call Saul finally laid it all out there.
Tuesday – Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Wednesday – Fargo is hot on the trail.
Thursday – Riverdale is just not letting up.
Friday – RuPaul’s Drag Race
Saturday – Doctor Who

This Is a Movie Review: Guy Ritchie Adds Some Cockney Flair to Camelot with ‘King Arthur: Legend of the Sword’

May 12, 2017

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This review was originally published on News Cult in May 2017.

Starring: Charlie Hunnam, Jude Law, Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey, Djimon Hounsou, Aidan Gillen, Erica Bana

Director: Guy Ritchie

Running Time: 126 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Stab Wounds That Seem to Only Happen During Thunderstorms

Release Date: May 12, 2017

The King Arthur legend has been told and re-told countless times over the centuries. On film, it has been fantastical, animated, “realistic,” romantic, and explicit. Could Guy Ritchie, that purveyor of stylish British gangsters, possibly have anything new to add to the mythos? Based on Legend of the Sword, the answer is: apparently there were options that we were never even considering.

The bare bones of the plot of this edition play up the similarities between Arthurian legend and the biblical tale of Moses. Uther Pendragon (Eric Bana) places his infant son Arthur in a basket in a river to escape the grasp of his power-mad brother Vortigern (Jude Law), who murders Uther to ascend to the throne. Arthur then grows up in a brothel to become Charlie Hunnam, and he promptly draws the sword Excalibur from the stone. So far, so sticking to the script. The rest of it, however, is Ritchie’s unique vision – surprisingly fascinating, intermittently satisfying.

With phrases like “honey tits” and nicknames like “Kung Fu George,” this is basically the cockney version of Camelot. The archaic aesthetic is not committed to fully, though, but that oddly leads me to somewhat admire Ritchie’s restraint. There is, however, complete commitment to editing the film like a heist caper, rendering the future Knights of the Round Table a sort of Pendragon’s Eleven. The plan to topple Vortigern is not exactly a matter of trickery (at least no more so than any rebellious maneuver is), but I guess you have to get your kicks in somewhere. Legend of the Sword leaves its most lasting stamp in its fetish for oversized, foreboding animals. They are not quite as visionary as the eels in A Cure for Wellness, say, and I have no idea what purpose they serve (beyond the maxim “critters accompany magic”), but I have to give some props to a summer blockbuster with such strange, gooey visuals.

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is Recommended If You Like: Slimy, Scaly Creatures

Grade: 2.75 out of 5 Mages

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