Jeff "Jmunney" Malone's Self-Styled "Expert" Thoughts on Movies, TV, Music, and the Rest of Pop Culture
May 5, 2020
Comedy, Television Ben Schwartz, improv, long-form improv, Middleditch & Schwartz, Thomas Middleditch Leave a comment
CREDIT: Jeffery Neira/Netflix
I watched the new Middleditch & Schwartz improv specials on Netflix recently, and I decided to collect my thoughts on them in the form of the question-and-answer information-gathering segment that typically kicks off a long-form improv session.
Is there anyone here who did anything interesting the past few weeks?
I watched some improv specials on Netflix!
Okay, I think I heard someone say they watched improv?
Yeah. On Netflix.
April 17, 2020
Entertainment To-Do List, Music, Sports, Television Ben Schwartz, Chicago Bulls, Fetch the Bolt Cutters, Fiona Apple, Middleditch & Schwartz, One World: Together at Home, The Last Dance, Thomas Middleditch Leave a comment
CREDIT: Jeffery Neira/Netflix
Every week, I list all the upcoming (or recently released) movies, TV shows, albums, podcasts, etc. that I believe are worth checking out.
TV
–One World: Together at Home (April 18 on Various Networks) – Concert special for covid-19 fundraising.
–The Last Dance Series Premiere (April 19 on ESPN) – 10-part documentary series about the final championship year of the 90s Chicago Bulls.
Music
-Fiona Apple, Fetch the Bolt Cutters
Comedy
–Middleditch & Schwartz (April 21 on Netflix)
October 16, 2019
Cinema, Movie Reviews Abigail Breslin, Avan Jogia, Emma Stone, Jesse Eisenberg, Luke Wilson, Rosario Dawson, Ruben Fleischer, Thomas Middleditch, Woody Harrelson, Zoey Deutch, Zombieland, Zombieland 2, Zombieland: Double Tap, zombies 1 Comment
CREDIT: Sony/Columbia Pictures
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin, Zoey Deutch, Rosario Dawson, Luke Wilson, Thomas Middleditch, Avan Jogia
Director: Ruben Fleischer
Running Time: 93 Minutes
Rating: R for All the Fluids That Spew Out in the Zombie Apocalypse
Release Date: October 18, 2019
There’s a running gag throughout Zombieland: Double Tap in which Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) attempts to secure the title of “Zombie Kill of the Year.” He can never seem to quite pull it off, as his companion Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) is on hand to helpfully inform us of some other recent dispatch of the undead that was just a little more impressive. This begs the question, in a post-apocalyptic world in which all mass communication has been decimated, how is word about these kills spreading so quickly and seamlessly? By Columbus providing this info via voiceover narration, there is an implication, perhaps unintentional, that he is somehow omniscient. Or maybe the conceit is that he is telling us this story years later, although that does not appear to be the case, what with the sense of immediacy to his dictation.
This is not the most worrisome concern to have, but it does stand in contrast to the original Zombieland, in which everything clicked into place just so, both comedically and logically. Double Tap has several elements like this that feel important but ultimately aren’t terribly so. The jokes are given greater emphasis, but even more essential is an investigation into a nagging sense of malaise. How do you go on living in a world overrun by zombies when killing zombies has become second nature? In addressing this question, the ten years that have passed since the first Zombieland are actually an advantage.
While people do die and new zombies are turned in this world, we are never worried that the makeshift family of Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita (Emma Stone), and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) will fall victim to the carnage. And they seem to know it. They’re living it up in the White House, treating every day like it’s Christmas, but that sense of security is only engendering mid-life, or quarter-life, crises. Columbus and Wichita especially are struggling with the realization that they have already accomplished all they need to in life by their thirties. I wish that the script had dug into these neuroses a little more deeply, but this movie works as well as it does because this malaise is the foundational conflict.
Now, to fully enjoy Double Tap, you’ll have to have a pretty big appetite for the same self-aware self-deprecating jokes being told over and over and a full embrace of certain stereotypes that have already been thoroughly deconstructed. But there’s a lot more melancholy than you might expect from a past-it-sell-by-date carnage-filled zom-com. If that’s not quite a Zombie Endorsement of the Year, it’s at least enough to assure us that our undead imaginations haven’t been fully depleted yet.
Zombieland: Double Tap is Recommended If You Like: Staring into the void, while repeating your favorite jokes over and over again
Grade: 3 out of 5 Rules
May 30, 2019
Cinema, Movie Reviews Aisha Hinds, Bradley Whitford, Charles Dance, David Straitharn, Godzilla, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Ken Watanabe, Kyle Chandler, Michael Dougherty, Millie Bobby Brown, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Sally Hawkins, Thomas Middleditch, Vera Farmiga, Ziyi Zhang 1 Comment
CREDIT: Warner Bros./YouTube
Starring: Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown, Bradley Whitford, Sally Hawkins, Charles Dance, Ken Watanabe, Thomas Middleditch, Aisha Hinds, O’Shea Jackson Jr., David Straitharn, Ziyi Zhang
Director: Michael Dougherty
Running Time: 132 Minutes
Rating: PG-13 for Monster-on-Monster Smashing and Even Some Human-on-Human Violence
Release Date: May 31, 2019
As promised, there are plenty of massive beasts in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, but there are also a lot of human beings, and they’ve got plenty on their to-do list. They debate which monsters are friends and which are foe, and they retrieve some objects that may or may not be MacGuffins, and honestly I could not make heads or tails of what they’re trying to do. This is a murderer’s row of heavy hitters wading through incomprehensibility. That’s not necessarily a dealbreaker, though, because when you come to see a Godzilla movie, you’re there for the monsters.
But here’s the thing: the fight scenes are just as incoherent! They’re distressingly dark, and edited way too quickly to make sense of what is going on. Every once in a while, there’s a really satisfying chomp or smackdown, but for the most part the splendor of the kaiju is obscured by too much visual clutter. King of the Monsters put me most in mind of the third Transformers flick, Dark of the Moon, a good chunk of which was an interminable clash of metal on metal. King of the Monsters is marred by sound design that is just as off-putting. In theory, I can understand why people would enjoy Godzilla getting into a battle royale with Mothra, Rodan, and the like a lot more than I can understand the appeal of robots clanging against each other. But this numbing onslaught is far from the best that this genre can offer.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters is Recommended If You Like: Non-stop giant monster battles
Grade: 2 out of 5 Roars
January 20, 2019
Cinema, Movie Reviews Alice Eve, Aria Leabu, Emily Alyn Lind, Emjay Anthony, Jeffrey Nachmanoff, John Ortiz, Keanu Reeves, Replicas, Thomas Middleditch Leave a comment
CREDIT: Replicas Holdings, LLC
As Replicas moves closer and closer to its climax, it becomes more and more aware that it must grapple with the consequences of its premise, or else there will be hell to pay. Keanu Reeves is attempting to clone his recently deceased wife and kids, and he’s pretty good at it, too. But he doesn’t want them to know that they’re clones, which presents problems upon problems upon problems. If he attempts to keep up the charade, that would make his character not just hubristic, but also profoundly cruel, and maybe even a little evil. So instead he chooses to be honest, and that’s when Replicas starts to click into gear. It all leads to a surprisingly happy ending that maybe does not grapple with bioethics as carefully as it should, but you know what? It’s a relief that a speculative sci-fi film like this one can offer some hope instead of total despair. If only the rest of Replica were not weighed down by a generic score and too many shots of Keanu wearing a funny helmet and waving his hands around a floating screen.
I give Replicas 3 Cloning Pods out of 5 Corporately Owned Subjects.
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