Buddha's Rhubarb Of Opinions On Media

Glib Reviews of Movies on the Netflix Deadpool  - Directed by Tim Miller The very first movie I have watched on Netflix in 6 months.....You know given that I’m such a big superhero comics nerd, you’d think all the super-movies out there would thrill me. They are okay. And occasionally they are good, sometimes not very good at all. But I’d say we have enough in this recent wave of them to say the average is pretty average, really. I enjoy watching them, even the crappy ones just because they are my comic books sort of come to life. But mostly I’m disappointed when they aren’t animated. I like comics because of the form more than anything. Graphic narrative storytelling aka comics have always been my first love, go to media to entertain myself. Something about real life versions of super folks though irritates me. Is it the cheesy dialogue? I read and love lots of comics with cheesy dialogue. Really, for me each comic book (or graphic novel) whatever the style of ...

Glib Reviews of Recent movies (and not so recent) Major! - Directed by Annalise Ophelian In the last few days I actually got my butt out to see a couple of films, that couldn’t have been more different, but were both quite satisfying in their own ways. It’s summer, and festival season. Right now there’s the Queer Film Festival, aka Out On Screen, as well as one of my favourite local cinematheque yearly series, their Film Noir series. On Thursday after work I wandered down to the getting slightly easier to find SFU Goldcorp Theatre at SFU Woodward’s on Hastings Street, for the Vancouver Queer Film Fest presentation of ‘Major!’ A wonderfully uncliched in structure and tropes documentary about the legendary trans icon and elder, Miss Major Griffin-Gracy. Known mostly as Miss Major, or Mama, or Grandma to those in the community she has known, loved and helped. Mostly she has spent her life helping others. From being a den mother to young trans, and queer folks for decades...

Glib Reviews Of Recent DVD Releases Matinee Double Feature Edition, kind of. I recently watched a couple of DVDs based on the recommendation of one of my former co-workers from my video store days, which ended in 2014, but seem like ages ago somehow. Both films were pretty disturbing, and despite the very big differences in style and sensibility, had the same kind of message, that ‘regular’ people do very bad things sometimes, and sometimes they pay a karmic price, but sometimes not at all. Nasty Baby - Directed by Sebastian Silva An interesting double bill, which in my case means I watched one of these each over two afternoons. It’s been ages since I did an afternoon movie watch, let alone two days in a row. Nasty Baby came first, directed and starring Sebastian Silva as a queer artist named Freddy living with his boyfriend Mo in what seems to be Brooklyn. He has some pretentious video art installation ideas using adult babies. All the characters are intriguing...

Glib Reviews of Recent DVD/Blu Ray releases Mississippi Grind Directed by Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck Decent buddy flick/road picture from directorial tandem of Fleck and Boden. Ben Mendelsohn and Ryan Reynolds have some real bro-chemistry, as an older/younger gambling team. Mendelsohn’s Gerry really personifies someone who rarely knows when to quit while he’s ahead. His desperation and addiction to one more hand, one more dice roll, is palpable in pretty much every decision the character makes. Why Reynolds’ obnoxiously charismatic Curtis gloms onto Gerry as much as Gerry gloms on to him, is a bit more of a mystery, that is perhaps simply, their chemistry. He seems to like hanging out with Gerry, as much as anything, but both characters are self destructive and complete committment-phobes. There is a dynamite Blues soundtrack, and the montages of neon and nightlife from cities along the road from Iowa to New Orleans are well done, if a bit touristy. I really dug the ...

Glib Reviews Of Recent DVD Releases Tangerine - Directed By Sean Baker Tangerine is one of those films that ‘feels like’ it was shot chronologically. The first few scenes are a bit rough, the acting is a bit iffy, but as the characters of Sin-Dee and Alexandra walk endlessly through their drama filled Christmas Eve Day in L.A. The picture gets more gripping, the cinematography, the acting and the script all get better, more polished in a low budget way. The locations give a nice grimy seventies feel to the whole thing. Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) is especially unlikeable at the beginning of the film, her single mindedness in finding her pimp/boyfriend and the girl he ‘cheated on her’ with while she was doing a month in jail, is not terribly nuanced. The buffer of the her best friend Alexandra (Mya Taylor) trying to keep her from all the drama she is creating, while trying to hustle tickets for a show she is doing that night keeps the whole thing from being one note. ...

Glib Review of Ant-Man - Directed By Peyton Reed I liked a great many things about Ant-Man. The action scenes were good, the sfx I thought were quite good, the story was an interesting spin on a Marvel character I know very well, having been a comics nerd since the early 70’s. The changes in character from the comics to film universe are pretty reasonable. I thought Paul Rudd was great, as was Michael Douglas, and Evangeline Lily. I liked the family dynamic, and Bobby Cannavale is always great. The scene, not to spoil anything, with The Falcon is one of the best 'getting to know you' superhero fights on film. but.... but something about this movie bugged me. Groan.... True story though. I am having a hard time putting my finger on it. But the things I thought gummed up the works, were Lang’s sidekick ethnic stereotype buddies in crime. Michael Pena gave it his all, but a lot of the humour these guys were supposed to add fell flat for me, which messed up the pa...

Glib reviews Of recent DVDs The Wolfpack -Directed By Crystal Moselle Do you like documentaries about charming but creepy outsider weirdo artists or families? Who doesn’t? I keep thinking that film makers are going to run out of odd but relatable weirdo families to follow around. Lucky for me, and director Moselle, that hasn’t happened yet.  I don’t want to spoil it much, but the premise is simple. An alternative couple who find the world around them to be super toxic, decide to have a lot of kids, and to home school and raise the kids in public housing in the lower east side of Manhattan. They have seven kids, 6 boys who don’t seem to have much age difference between them, the oldest being maybe 20 or 21, it seems. They rarely venture outside, but of course make their own fun in the apartment. they do so by recreating their favourite movies from scratch, using quite ingenious home made costumes and props that bring to mind that cult hit from a few years ago, Be K...

Glib Reviews of Recent DVD & Blu Ray Releases. The Man From U.N.C.L.E.  - Directed by Guy Ritchie. A pretty entertaining movie rehash of one of my very first ‘Favourite TV shows.” Like my other early rerun Favourite ‘Star Trek,’ ‘The Man From U.N.C.L.E.’ was in reruns for the first time, after 5 years off the air, so 1973-ish for me.  My first crushes on men, were probably on these two, ‘not as suave as either thinks,’ and awesomely named super spies, ‘Napoleon Solo, and Ilya Kuryakin. I have rose coloured memories of watching that particular spy show. I was very much as a kid into spy tv shows, like this or, ‘the Avengers,’ ‘I Spy,’ ‘Get Smart,’ and the zillion others that came and went in the 70’s. I tried my best not to bring too much nostalgia to this movie remake. I enjoy the Star Trek movies, best as really good two part episodes of which ever show the characters are from. Most old tv shows rebooted into movies suffer from trying too hard to re-invent...

Glib Reviews of Recent DVD/Blu-Ray Releases The Avengers: Age Of Ultron Directed by Joss Whedon Well, it definitely was not as bad as a lot of folks made it out to be this little film. I am a big reader of comic books, and superhero fan, but even I think there are too many superhero movies. While this movie doesn’t quite capture the fun of the first Avengers movie, it scores a lot of points for me, simply by not being called Avengers 2. Oh, there are tons of spoilers in this review, fyi. The initial scene where everything is cgi seemingly except a few cutaways is weirdly out of place in terms of the cinematography, but it is a comic book movie, so I say embrace the cgi. It is supposed to be a bit ‘cartoony’. The lack of actual Loki (Tom Hiddleston) makes the whole thing less fun. The second most jarring thing for me was James Spader’s laconic glib take on Ultron. This really threw me for about half the movie, Ultron sounds like a preppy overprivileged lawyer?  ...

Glib Reviews of Fairly Recent DVD  Releases Inherent Vice - Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson Finally got around to seeing the latest PTA flick, which I had heard a lot of conflicting opinions on. Inherent Vice is also based on a Thomas Pynchon novel, so there are of course some heavy wight ideas going on. Personally the only Pynchon I have ever been able to finish reading is The Crying Of Lot 49.  I had my own sort of mix of skepticism and hope going into this. Tried and tried to get through V. and Gravity’s Rainbow three or four times each, but also, something makes me give up on these books, I usually am so into the books, the first half or so, then something that just happens is that I have put the books down, and moved on to something else. Maybe it’s just timing; and I say this because this is what I see in this film, something that PTA groks about pace and timing, that generally, (with the exception of “The Master, which I can’t seem to stay awake through.)...

Glib reviews of DVDs and Blu Rays. Ride The Pink Horse - Directed by Robert Montgomery It might be a mistake to watch a movie adaptation only one day after finishing a novel that you love. Dorothy B. Hughes’ novel called Ride The Pink Horse is a wonderful small town noir of the sort associated with Jim Thompson, and at the same time a sweaty tension filled fish out of water story akin to the best of Patricia Highsmith. The fact that the film makers let the more literary name stand instead of giving it some generic but more cinematic title is a testament to the strength of the story. Many of the details of the film are changed for those kinds of what works in a book might be too subtle for a movie kind of ways, like some of the names of characters, most obviously, the protagonist (who is no ‘hero’ in ether the book or the film) goes from the no last named ‘Sailor’ in the book to the much more noirishly named Lucky Gagin, who is never once called ‘Lucky,’ with good re...

Well, I have been watching some TV lately, but no movies. Will get together some end of tv season reviewing hopefully soon. But I once again, ave collected a few panels from this week's comic book new releases... 3 weeks into DC's Convergence Event. as usual, some better than others, a few kind of depressing. Marvel is nearing ends of arcs and comics before their big event starting soon. Other comic book companies luckily are not doing these events, making the fatigue less of a factor. Read more Boom, Image, Dark horse etc... cleanses the palette. Starting with DC's Convergences because that's the order I read stuff... One of the better titles this week was the 'New Teen Titans' of the pre Crisis days of the early 80's. These are "my Titans" and I enjoyed seeing pretty bang on interpretations. Though Dick I remember now was a bit more of a pill, back in the day. micromanage much Nightwing. Nice tangent verse characters as the 'enemies...