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Is This Thing On?

Is This Thing On?

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I like to think I’m a funny guy.  That being said, I’ve never once considered going on stage on open mic night.  Not only do you need to be fearless, you have to get total strangers to laugh at your jokes while they’re busy getting drunk.  Maybe this is why the movie has a character everyone refers to as “Balls”.  You gotta have balls to be a performer, figuratively for ladies, of course.  And while the amateur stand-up comedian at the center of Is This Thing On? is both funny and ballsy, the movie isn’t the story of him becoming famous.  It’s about what drove him to write his name on the call sheet to begin with.

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The Friend

The Friend

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What do you do when your friend asks you for a favor above and beyond what you would normally do for them?  For example, “Would you look after my dog after I’ve checked out?”  That kind of request can affect your life dramatically, especially when that dog is a Great Dane, you live in a small studio apartment and the building has a no pets policy.  How do you turn down your friend’s dying request?  And more importantly, what does the dog think about this arrangement?

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Cloud (2024)

Cloud (2024, Japanese, director Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

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In the old days, people who sought out back-alley bargains knew what they were getting.  In the era of digital commerce, however, buyers only know a seller’s user name and can’t tell whether what’s for sale is legitimate or not until a package arrives.  Conversely, sellers don’t know who they’re scamming or how their victims will react to being swindled.  Cloud takes a harsh look at the perils of ecommerce in the cloud era, where new-fangled criminality hides behind anonymity and revenge is sought through on-line doxxing forums.  It’s a canny, secretive film that progressively builds towards a shocking climax.

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Hamnet

Hamnet

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“What inspired William Shakespeare to write Hamlet?” is the sort of question that propels historical fiction, a genre that reflections the modern mind’s insistence on understanding everything.  The origins of a consequential work of art simply can’t remain a mystery after so much time has passed.  With that mindset, if we take the clues (a.k.a. historical facts) and align them with the play, an answer will surely reveal itself.  Superficially, putting the puzzle pieces of history together is what Hamnet is about.  However, the movie is much more than that; it’s also a thoughtful discussion about art, life and how both affect us in distinctly different ways.  As such, Hamnet is part literary detective work, part metaphysical curiosity, and the results are  spellbinding.

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Zootopia 2

Zootopia 2

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A lot has changed since Zootopia was released in 2016.  For starters, the buddy cop movie is practically nonexistent.  Decades ago, these movies regularly appeared in theaters in the form of action-comedies (Lethal Weapon, Rush Hour), spoofs (21 Jump Street), satires (The Other Guys) or fresh takes on the genre (The Nice Guys).  Besides the evergreen Bad Boys franchise, I’m hard-pressed to recall a notable buddy cop movie from the past ten years besides the one starring Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling.  If sneaking the genre into a family film helps keep the genre alive, I’m all for it.  I wish the filmmakers had given their animal detectives a better case to crack than the one in Zootopia 2.  Ah well, perhaps they’ll get one in the next sequel, which is hinted at in a credit cookie.

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The Thing With Feathers

The Thing With Feathers

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If grief appeared before me as a gangly, foul-mouthed, eight-foot tall crow who spewed insults, I’d assume I was done for.  Which is what makes The Thing With Feathers so oddly compelling.  The crow doesn’t appear before the Sad Dad in this film (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) to harm him, but help him.  The crow wants to shock him out of his grief so that an even worse creature doesn’t do him in, Despair.  As far as therapy options go, this one beats Yoga and keeping an “emotion journal”, either of which would push me off the deep end.

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Wicked: For Good

Wicked: For Good

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A year ago, I wondered how the sequel to Wicked would incorporate the source of its inspiration, The Wizard of Oz.  The answer arrives with Wicked: For Good, a noisy and unwieldy  contraption that sabotages much of the goodwill from the first movie while it furiously crams the classic movie into the plot.  Despite all of its clunky contrivances, the film is still modestly entertaining due to Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, who save the film from collapsing under its own weight.  If it weren’t for them, I would have prayed for flying monkeys to pluck me out of the theater and carry me to safety.

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Nuremberg

Nuremberg

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WWII movies fall into two categories, those that following tradition and those that chart new territory.  Those that opt for the former envelop you in their warm, cozy familiarity with the genre, like your favorite quilt.  They don’t challenge you, but they’re entertaining.  WWII Movies that eschew tradition in favor of bold and daring choices are more admired than loved.  They’re the quilts you receive with a polite “thanks” that currently reside in the dark recesses of your closet.  Nuremberg is solidly in line with the first approach, a direct descendant of the WWII movie from the Forties or Fifties.

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