January 1, 2021
jmunney
Cinema, Entertainment To-Do List, Television
Alex Trebek, Brad Rutter, Call Me Kat, Celebrity Wheel of Fortune, Craig Ferguson, Doctor Who, Doctor Who: Revolution of the Daleks, Earth to Ned, History of Swear Words, James Holzhauer, Jane Krakowski, Jenny Slate, Jeopardy!, Ken Jennings, Mayim Bialik, Megan Mullally, Mr. Mayor, Name That Tune, Nick Offerman, Nicolas Cage, Pieces of a Woman, RuPaul's Drag Race, Sara Haines, Ted Danson, The Chase, The Great North, The Hustler, Will Forte, Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist
The Chase; Celebrity Wheel of Fortune; The Hustler (CREDIT: Ron Batzdorff/ABC; Carol Kaelson/ABC; Christopher Willard/ABC)
Every week, I list all the upcoming (or recently released) movies, TV shows, albums, podcasts, etc. that I believe are worth checking out.
Movies
–Pieces of a Woman (January 7 on Netflix)
TV
–Doctor Who: Revolution of the Daleks (January 1 on BBC America)
–Earth to Ned Season 1 Part 2 (January 1 on Disney+) – A delightful talk show hosted by an alien. I wrote about it on my newsletter.
–RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 13 Premiere (January 1 on VH1)
–Call Me Kat Series Premiere (January 3 on FOX) – Starring Mayim Bialik and cats.
–The Great North Series Premiere (January 3 on FOX) – New animated show with the voices of Nick Offerman, Megan Mullally, Jenny Slate, Will Forte, and others.
-Alex Trebek’s last week of new Jeopardy! episodes (January 4-8, check local listings)
–The Hustler Series Premiere (January 4 on ABC) – Another game show on ABC! This one’s hosted by Craig Ferguson.
–History of Swear Words (January 5 on Netflix) – Hosted by Nicolas Cage himself.
–Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist Season 2 Premiere (January 5 on NBC)
–Name That Tune Reboot Premiere (January 6 on FOX) – Hosted by the one and only Jane Krakowski.
–Celebrity Wheel of Fortune Series Premiere (January 7 on ABC)
–The Chase Reboot Premiere (January 7 on ABC) – Jeopardy! all-time greats Ken Jennings, Brad Rutter, and James Holzhauer square off against contestants. Sara Haines hosts.
–Mr. Mayor Series Premiere (January 7 on NBC) – Ted Danson gets right back in the sitcom swing.
December 30, 2020
jmunney
Cinema, Movie Reviews
Alice Braga, Angela Bassett, Donnell Rawlings, Graham Norton, Jamie Foxx, Kemp Powers, Pete Docter, Phylicia Rashad, Questlove, Rachel House, Richard Ayoade, Soul, Tina Fey
Soul (CREDIT: Pixar/YouTube Screenshot)
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Graham Norton, Rachel House, Alice Braga, Richard Ayoade, Phylicia Rashad, Donnell Rawlings, Angela Bassett, Questlove
Directors: Pete Docter and Kemp Powers
Running Time: 106 Minutes
Rating: PG
Release Date: December 25, 2020 (Disney+)
Graham Norton as a hippie sign waver? I wasn’t expecting that. I like it!
I’m going to go ahead and whip out the “Does this movie make me want to do what it’s about?” type of review. So here goes: does Soul make me want to have a soul? Very much so! I may already have one, but if I don’t … I’d like one! Also relevant: when I’m listening and/or singing along to soul music, that’s pretty dang invigorating as well. (Soul features more jazz than soul, but soul and jazz are often in conversation with each other.)
It’s ultimately a religio-philosophical matter whether or not an inner essence exists, and what it should be called, and how it should be defined. Which is all to say, we probably can’t fully ever know all there is to know about the soul. This film is part of that inquiry, and if its inquiring essence resonates with anybody, then it might just be worth incorporating its ideas into our personal philosophies. Soul posits that our purpose isn’t what we’re passionate about, but how we’re passionate. That’s pretty damn life-affirming from my vantage point.
Grade: 4 out of 5 Jerrys (and 1 out of 5 Terrys)
December 28, 2020
jmunney
Cinema, Movie Reviews
Chris Pine, Connie Nielsen, Gal Gadot, Kristen Wiig, Patty Jenkins, Pedro Pascal, Robin Wright, Wonder Woman, Wonder Woman 1984
Wonder Woman 1984 (CREDIT: Warner Bros. Pictures/YouTube Screenshot)
Starring: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal, Robin Wright, Connie Nielsen
Director: Patty Jenkins
Running Time: 151 Minutes
Rating: PG-13
Release Date: December 25, 2020 (Theaters/HBO Max)
Wonder Woman 1984 was … not exactly what I was expecting. It’s a “Monkey’s Paw”/be careful what you wish for-type story. In fact, at one point Diana Prince literally says “Monkey’s Paw.” Multiple times, if I’m remembering correctly. You see, there’s this stone that grants wishes to whomever’s touching it. Which sounds like a pretty sweet deal, right? But alas of course, something important is taken from the wish-grantee in turn. Not exactly mold-breaking in terms of the history of storytelling, but quite unusual in the realm of big-budget superhero cinema. At the very least, I gotta give Patty Jenkins and company credit for very much not taking the road most travelled.
I wish I could say I was thrilled by the execution, though! Instead, I was trying to figure out what the whole deal with the execution was throughout most of the movie. And this is a long movie! Spending more than two hours trying to figure out a movie’s whole deal is not my preferred way of watching a movie. I could envision some structural changes to the script/editing that would make character motivations a bit more clear and resonant. I’m pretty sure I got what Diana’s situation was, and K-Wiig as Barbara Minerva and Mr. Pedro Pascal started with intriguing setups, but at the end, I found myself thinking, in multiple ways, “Wait, how’s that again?” Also, this movie took place in the 80s, but there were very few, if any, scenes of people doing coke or voting for Ronald Reagan.
Grade: More Lassos of Truth, Less Confusion
December 25, 2020
jmunney
Cinema, Movie Reviews
Adam Brody, Alfred Molina, Alison Brie, Bo Burnham, Carey Mulligan, Chris Lowell, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Clancy Brown, Connie Britton, Emerald Fennell, Jennifer Coolidge, Laverne Cox, Max Greenfield, Molly Shannon, Promising Young Woman, Sam Richardson
Promising Young Woman (CREDIT : Merie Weismiller Wallace/Focus Features)
I’ve already published a rave review of Promising Young Woman that you can check out here, and now that the release date has finally arrived, I’ve got some spoiler-rific thoughts to share. This is all to say: SPOILER ALERT! So you know, don’t read this unless you’ve seen it or if you’re fine with knowing all the details ahead of time.
ONE LAST WARNING! Don’t click ahead unless you really mean to…
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December 25, 2020
jmunney
Cinema, Entertainment To-Do List, Television
Charlie Brooker, Death to 2020, Joel McHale, Ken Jeong, New Year's Eve Toast & Roast, Promising Young Woman, Soul, The Masked Dancer, Wonder Woman 1984
Death to 2020 (CREDIT: Saeed Adyani/Netflix)
Every week, I list all the upcoming (or recently released) movies, TV shows, albums, podcasts, etc. that I believe are worth checking out.
Movies
–Promising Young Woman (Theaters)
–Soul (December 25 on Disney+)
–Wonder Woman 1984 (Theaters and HBO Max)
TV
–Death to 2020 – Some sort of comedy special from Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker.
–The Masked Dancer Series Premiere (December 27 on FOX) – The Masked Dynasty expands.
–New Year’s Eve Toast & Roast (December 31 on FOX) – Hosted by Joel McHale and Ken Jeong!
December 22, 2020
jmunney
Cinema, Movie Reviews
Bill Camp, Elizabeth Marvel, Helena Zengel, Mare Winningham, Michael Covino, News of the World, Paul Greengrass, Thomas Francis Murphy, Tom Hanks
News of the World (CREDIT: Bruce W. Talamon/Universal Pictures)
Starring: Tom Hanks, Helena Zengel, Michael Covino, Mare Winningham, Elizabeth Marvel, Thomas Francis Murphy, Bill Camp
Director: Paul Greengrass
Running Time: 118 Minutes
Rating: PG-13 for A Particularly Tense Shootout and a Few Other Occasional Bursts of Western Meanness
Release Date: December 25, 2020
The title of Paul Greengrass and Tom Hanks’ latest collaboration might lead you to believe that America’s Dad is finally getting his Frank Sinatra on. And while he does indeed start spreading those titular news, the focus is much more squarely on his journey with a young girl in a sort of gentler spin on The Searchers. Both elements of the story are about the importance and difficulty of communication. Hanks plays Captain Jefferson Kidd, a widowed Civil War veteran who traverses the Texas frontier to tell tales of recent events of notes to whomever is willing to listen to them. During his journeys, he encounters 10-year-old Johanna (Helena Zengel), who’s been raised by the Kiowa tribe ever since they killed her German immigrant parents. She fancies herself a Kiowa now, so when the family she’s been living with is also killed, she becomes an orphan twice over. She then winds up in the captain’s care as he attempts to deliver her to her aunt and uncle, which is not a plan she’s exactly a fan of.
News of the World demonstrates the value of an unexpected title. There are only a handful of scenes of Captain Kidd delivering those news, so I don’t think I would have considered them very deeply if the title hadn’t primed me to. In a setting with rudimentary mass communication, these stories are orphans that find themselves in as precarious a position as Johanna. There is no guarantee that the ears they fall on will even accept them. They benefit immensely from a patient medium like Captain Kidd. Both the news of the world and Johanna require love and support in getting from where they are to where they need to be going. I wasn’t expecting the philosophy of Marshall McLuhan to be so starkly clear in the latest Greengrass film, but in this case, the medium absolutely is the message.
News of the World is Recommended If You Like: A kind and gentle (but not that gentle) approach to Westerns, Clutch supporting turns from Bill Camp and Elizabeth Marvel
Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Wagons
December 21, 2020
jmunney
Cinema, Movie Reviews
Aldis Hodge, Beau Bridges, Eli Goree, ingsley Ben-Adir, Joaquina Kolukango, Kemp Powers, Lance Reddick, Leslie Odom Jr., Michael Imperioli, Nicolette Robinson, One Night in Miami, Regina King
One Night in Miami (CREDIT: Amazon Studios)
Starring: Kingsley Ben-Adir, Eli Goree, Aldis Hodge, Leslie Odom Jr., Lance Reddick, Nicolette Robinson, Michael Imperioli, Joaquina Kolukango, Beau Bridges
Director: Regina King
Running Time: 114 Minutes
Rating: R for Language (There’s a Lot of Dialogue)
Release Date: December 25, 2020 (Theaters)/January 15, 2021 (Amazon Prime Video)
On one particular day in February 1964, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown spent an evening together in Florida and the makers of One Night in Miami… thought we might like to see how that may have played out. First this idea took the form of a 2013 play written by Kemp Powers. Now he’s adapted it into a screenplay, with Regina King making her feature directorial debut. (Spoiler alert: you can tell that it started out as a play.) Are these African-Americans titans of the 20th century just as interesting together as we knew them to be individually? Although of course, the more relevant question is: do the actors playing them do them justice, and can they find the right chemistry for their little powwow? The answer probably won’t blow your mind, though it might satisfy you.
Reporting for duty on this night are Kingsley Ben-Adir as X, Eli Goree as Ali (actually still going by Cassius Clay at the time), Aldis Hodge as Brown, and Leslie Odom Jr. as Cooke. Odom’s casting makes the most sense to me, because he can sang. He can be musical anyway you want him to, so summoning the majestic voice behind “Chain Gang” is no problem for him. Meanwhile, Ben-Adir commands most of the attention, and he’d better, because Malcolm had plenty to cover that he thought was pretty damn urgent, and he wanted everyone to hear him. Goree and Hodge, alas, fade a bit into the background. That might mean that the promise of the premise isn’t fully fulfilled, but the others pick up on the slack as this ultimately becomes the “Malcolm & Sam Show” more than anything else. Everyone, especially Malcolm, picks on Sam for not carrying his weight in the civil rights fight, while Sam fires back that he’s actually figured out part of The Man’s formula for getting a piece of the pie and he’s in fact been sharing it with his associates. In conclusion, they’re all doing their part!
Whenever people with big personalities are having passionate debates about the issues of the day, you can pretty much guarantee that there will be at least something satisfying. But I did find myself wondering throughout much of One Night in Miami… why I wasn’t finding it as dynamic as I thought I would. It probably boils down to the fact that I would rather watch these famous guys do what they’re famous for, rather than watching them talk. To be fair, Malcolm and Muhammad were partly famous for their wordsmanship, but playing to a big crowd and having an intimate conversation are two very different situations. We do get to see some of Muhammad in the ring, but we don’t get to see any of Jim on the football field or roughing up Martians. At least we get a decent amount of Sam onstage. Letting Leslie Odom Jr. loose with the Sam Cooke songbook is hardly a groundbreaking revelation, but it gets the job done enough when we need it to.
One Night in Miami… is Recommended If You Like: Movies That Walk and Talk Like Plays
Grade: 3 out of 5 Close-Cropped Haircuts
December 18, 2020
jmunney
Cinema, Entertainment To-Do List, Music, Television
Alex Trebek, American Dad!, Ariana Grande, Chadwick Boseman, Evermore, I Love You Daddy, Jeopardy!, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, McCartney III, Paul McCartney, Taylor Swift, Viola Davis
Every week, I list all the upcoming (or recently released) movies, TV shows, albums, podcasts, etc. that I believe are worth checking out.
Movies
–Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (December 18 on Netflix) – Viola Davis plays the title role alongside Chadwick in his final role.
TV
–American Dad! Holiday Episode (December 21 on TBS)
–Jeopardy!: “Around the World with Alex” (December 21-January 1, check local listings) – 2 weeks of classic episodes of Alex presenting clues from across the globe.
Music
-Paul McCartney, McCartney III – Macca making more music.
-Taylor Swift, Evermore – This came out last week. Taylor keeps sneaking up on us with surprise releases.
Music Documentary
–Excuse Me, I Love You (December 21 on Netflix) – Ariana Grande in concert, hurray!
December 15, 2020
jmunney
Cinema, Movie Reviews
Alicia Silverstone, Amy Miller Gross, Charlie Bewley, Jake Hoffman, Mark Blum, Mathilde Ollivier, Sister of the Groom, Tom Everett Scott
Sister of the Groom (CREDIT: Saban Films/YouTube Screenshot)
Starring: Alicia Silverstone, Tom Everett Scott, Jake Hoffman, Mathilde Ollivier, Mark Blum, Charlie Bewley
Director: Amy Miller Gross
Running Time: 92 Minutes
Rating: R for Language, Casual Nudity, and Molly in the Wedding Cake
Release Date: December 18, 2020 (Theaters/Digital/On Demand)
Alicia Silverstone is an immensely charming person, and yet somehow Sister of the Groom has the temerity to ask her to be immensely un-charming. She plays Audrey, the titular sister of the groom, and that’s not an individual who should be commanding attention on the wedding day. But typically a movie’s main character does indeed command the most attention, so we find ourselves at an impasse immediately. That’s not a place I like to find myself with Silverstone, but actors should certainly be allowed to stretch themselves beyond where they’ve been pegged. In this case, that stretch is quite the challenge, and the end result lays bare the difficulty of delivering on it.
Audrey has a lot of stressors in her life, perhaps more than most people do, but she also has a way of behaving, particularly during her brother’s matrimonial weekend, that mainly serves to amplify all that stress. She’s trying to get back into the swing of her architecture career, so she doesn’t appreciate that her bro Liam (Jake Hoffman) has hired her ex-boyfriend for a job she assumed was hers. She also is no big fan of his significantly younger French fiance Clemence (Mathilde Ollivier), but you kind of get the sense that she might not approve of any potential sisters-in-law. On top of all that, she’s viscerally insecure about her pregnancy-altered belly. At least she seems to be affectionate with her husband Ethan (Tom Everett Scott), although it’s not much of a surprise when it becomes clear that there’s actually a lot of strife bubbling barely beneath the surface there.
If you’re a fan of angsty cinematic family gatherings like The Family Stone or Home for the Holidays or (to keep it wedding-themed) Rachel Getting Married, Sister of the Groom might offer something to entertain you. But from my vantage point, it leans too hard into the unpleasantness and struggles to tease out any profundity. I’ve got to at least give Silverstone credit for so thoroughly stripping herself of any emotional vanity. Alas, though, she didn’t convince me that that was a good idea.
Sister of the Groom is Recommended If You Like: Unrelenting angst
Grade: 2 out of 5 Chuppahs
December 14, 2020
jmunney
Cinema, Movie Reviews
Adam Brody, Alfred Molina, Alison Brie, Bo Burnham, Carey Mulligan, Chris Lowell, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Clancy Brown, Connie Britton, Emerald Fennell, Jennifer Coolidge, Laverne Cox, Max Greenfield, Molly Shannon, Promising Young Woman, Sam Richardson
Promising Young Woman (CREDIT: Focus Features)
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Bo Burnham, Laverne Cox, Clancy Brown, Jennifer Coolidge, Alison Brie, Connie Britton, Alfred Molina, Chris Lowell, Max Greenfield, Adam Brody, Sam Richardson, Molly Shannon, Christopher Mintz-Plasse
Director: Emerald Fennell
Running Time: 113 Minutes
Rating: R for Twisted Jokes, Drug Spikings, Discussions of Sexual Violence, and Some Up-Close Acute Violence
Release Date: December 25, 2020
Promising Young Woman hooked me immediately with its trailer, seemingly telling me everything I needed to know. When I finally saw the actual movie, it somehow still had plenty of opportunities to surprise me. It fits one of my favorite formulas for all-time great movies: simultaneously exactly what I was hoping for and so different from what I was expecting. Carey Mulligan is a knockout, in every way you can imagine. She plays med school dropout Cassie Thomas, a black widow who lures entitled men into this intoxicating trap she’s cooked up. She pretends to be blackout drunk at bars so that someone will not-so-gallantly bring her home to take advantage of her, at which point she drops the charade and spooks like them like a zombie popping out of the grave. She has her own history with assault, but she’s also an avenging angel taking on the entirety of rape culture.
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