Gorgon Reviews

If ignorance is bliss, what does that mean for the movie Bliss? Is it also ignorance?

The is a good question, and honestly, the movie Bliss is definitely going for this quote when it picked the title. You can live your life happy. You can live your life normal. But what if there is more out there? What if you are in a simulation and trapped? Would you want to know that? You wouldn’t be blissful in that regard.

But bliss can be brought by different ways. Through narcotics, for example, that just wipe away your worries, and make you forget about the bad.

Huh, maybe this film is about both.

I don’t know what is happening here, but ACAB.Greg Wittle (Owen Wilson) is some sort of person with a job and a family. He isn’t that successful at either. He is divorced. And even though he has a big job in in his firm, his performance has been notably slipping lately.  In fact, his boss wants to talk to him about that specifically, and fires him.Aw shucks.

Well, an argument happens with his boss, and Greg books it out of the building to hide out across the street, where he meets Isabel Clemens (Salma Hayek), a girl from his drawings. She helps him get out of a few jams, so he trusts her now, and is whisked away in the city.

Sure, she may be some level of homeless, but she says she does it to live off the grid. She knows that they are living in a simulation and that Greg is one of the few real people in the simulation for a visit along with her. She proves it by giving him a pill that gives him the power to mess with the world around them, like they are kinetic. Oh shit. This must be real!

But what about Greg’s kids (Nesta Cooper, Jorge Lendeborg Jr.)? Are they really fake? Will being on the streets, hiding from the world improve his life? Can he escape this situation?

Also starring Bill Nye.

You mean to tell me the Bill Nye? The Science Guy? Is in this film? Wow!

Bliss wants to be a movie that has it both ways and keeps itself open to interpretation to keep the conversation going. Never fully giving an answer. But honestly, after watching it, I can only see one answer. Is it drugs? Is it a simulation?

This isn’t a spoiler, it is my just thoughts on the film. But when watching this movie, throughout, the only thing I can ever think about is that this movie is about drugs and drug addiction. It just has the simulation angle as a hook to get people to watch it, and hey, people addicted can totally live their reality thinking their reality isn’t real. (Damn, what a sentence that was).

And when examining this film as a movie about the dangers of drug addiction, and seeking out help, and letting them overtake your life, this is a much better film. If you examine it as a movie about being in a simulation it is pretty bad. It doesn’t have a great ending, despite believing it to be a simulation still, and uhhh, I just don’t get a lot out of this thought process.

So why the low rating? Well, there is a certain simulation scene, that takes up way too much of the movie. It is like, the entire second and maybe part of the third act. There is no reason to be in that mode for so long. It is so boring. It is uninteresting. It is like ten minutes of content that they just stretch over 30-40 and it slows the movie down. It is really quick early on and stays that way for a good chunk. A slow down could be helpful, but not if we are just sitting there wondering what is the point and waiting to get back to the actual story (because we all know its coming).

Wilson and Hayek are okay at the acting in this one, this is probably one of Hayek’s better in the last few years, but she also has been in a lot of shit lately, so that doesn’t say a lot. The film does a good job of having us feel for the daughter character, and we can all be so lucky to have a kid like her.

1 out of 4.

Who would have thought we would finally be getting a sequel to Big Fish. Or is Little Fish the prequel?

Really, Big Fish felt like a very complete story, so it is odd that it would have any follow up.

Oh, Little Fish is a different story. Well, shit.

Let me just take this moment to say that I don’t care what size fish you have. You can have a big fish, a little fish, a spotty fish, or a dead fish, and I equally do not want to cuddle your pet.

I am more of a people cuddler than an fish cuddler. Emma (Olivia Cooke) and Jude (Jack O’Connell) have been dating for some time, hell, they are married. It hasn’t always been easy. They are in a band. Oh, and there is a pandemic affecting the world.

No this isn’t COVID. This was probably made and developed before that. As far as I can remember, this virus seemingly affect people randomly at different levels of severity. What does it attack? The memory. It takes away memories from perfectly healthy individuals. No matter the age. Sometimes it is a slow loss, sometimes it is all in a big bunch, sometimes it is somewhere in between.

People who get the virus lose their lives, forget their loved ones, their kids, their purpose, and it is not great. And sure enough, Jude gets the virus, he starts to forget, so Emma puts all of her efforts into helping him remember, helping find strategies to fight the virus, and hope that her husband doesn’t lose all memories of their relationship and find her a stranger.

Also starring Raúl Castillo.

Surprisingly this scene has nothing to do with Covid. I know what you are thinking. “A memory wiping virus? How is that different than Alzheimer’s?”

Well, slight differences, but honestly yeah, this could be a story about that. The only difference is the sudden big wipes of memory that happens to some characters, which isn’t the most important part of this plot. Treating this like an Alzheimer’s movie that affects people of many ages helps keep it more grounded in reality, and make a lot of sense.

Early on, I didn’t expect much out of the film, but it grabbed me surely over time. I think I cried at least twice during the movie, two notable scenes involving Jude and his memory loss. A speech and a beach walk. With this sort of film, you can sort of tell where the ending is going to be, and the natural conclusion. This is true for this film, and yet despite knowing that, nothing is lost. I am there for the journey.

I loved Cooke in this role, she was so caring and raw. But is she starting to make a theme of movies of “Being in a band with a lover who has a problem affect him and she has to help him out?” At least Little Fish she is the main character and it is about her during this crisis, versus Sound of Metal where she was barely in it.  I hope her next movie is a period piece. Where she is in a relationship with someone in an orchestra, but that person she is courting ends up getting polio or something similar.

3 out of 4.

Here it comes! Studio Ghibli has crossed a line many animation companies have already crossed. They have made a CGI movie. Will they fully cross over and become completely CGI? They were probably the last major holdout that was doing a more traditional look for all of their animated releases.

And I already hate it. I will admit, looking at the stills/trailer for Earwig and the Witch, I didn’t have high hopes for the film. It doesn’t look  great at all. The animation levels look like a small independent company doing their first film ever, that happens to be CGI. Not a pretty successful animation company trying CGI. They have money, they can make it look better.

But alas, I have been iffy on Studio Ghibli movies lately anyways. I have been having a hard time getting into their whimsy and mystery. Maybe this one will fix it?

Spoilers: It wont. Earwig (Taylor Henderson) was left on the porch of an orphanage as a baby, from a mysterious woman. They didn’t like that her name was Earwig, and apparently from a witch, so they figured they would hide that latter fact and also call her Erica Wig.

Ten years later, she is a bit of a terror in the orphanage. She does what she wants, she whines and complains, and she knows she wont be adopted ever, so she is biding her time. That is until a scary lady, Bella Yaga (Vanessa Marshall) and a tall scary guy, The Mandrake (Richard E. Grant) waltz in and totally pick her. But why?

Well, Bella Yaga is a witch, she could sense the witchy-ness in Earwig, and she needed an extra set of hands for potion making. Earwig thinks she will learn how to do magic and will totally help out! Turns out that Bella has absolutely no intention of making it pleasant for Earwig, or teaching her magic. Just someone to gather ingredients.

Ah, this new situation sucks. Who would have known that you can just adopt a kid to get a house worker?

Also featuring the voices of Kacey Musgraves, Logan Hannan, and Dan Stevens as a cat.

“Damn, that’s a huge witch.”There are quite a few problems with Earwig and the Witch. And honestly, the CGI is probably the least of its concerns. The CGI is still not great and notably average or below average throughout the movie, but it is not the biggest cause of concern.

Band plot – Worthless. Check out this poster graphic for the film. It is the most common form of advertisement I saw. It definitely does not represent this film. There is a brief band plot, involving history, the witch, mandrake, and Earwig’s mom. And it goes absolutely no where. It certainly doesn’t end up with them all being a band together with Earwig the lead vocals. This poster makes it look like a musical or band movie or anything, and it certainly is not. It teases some of these elements, and never does anything useful with them.

Earwig – She has no growth in this film. She is put into a trial to overcome and succeeds. The problem is, she started as a do whatever she wants child, and the movie ends the same, although definitely worse. No lessons learned. It is a terrible message. When she kept repeatedly calling the cat by her old friend’s name, I assumed it was some twist about the old friend being the cat. But no, they are two different entities. She is just a shitty kid who doesn’t care about the names of who she is talking to. They made a kids movie about a shitty kid.

The ending – By far, this is likely going to be the worst ending of a movie I have seen all year. I can easily imagine this movie making my worst list, and it is far too early to know where it land. But holy shit, this ending is such a waste.

SPOILERS ON THE ENDING. SPOILERS ON THE ENDING. Okay, here it is…It just ends! After some changes with magic occur, we get some weird time jumps, and it feels like the last hour of movie should have taken like 20-30 minutes max. It feels like the movie is about to start and do the main plot. And then with the a door opening and a mom arising, the movie is like, lololol credits. It makes absolutely no sense to have an ending there. It is like we got a prologue of an eventual story, but one I will never seek out, because of being dicked around in this film.

I hope this movie continues to get blasted, because it is truly really bad. And I hope Studio Ghibli doesn’t look at this and blame it on the CGI. Because sure, it is bad, and if it helps not make more like this, then that is swell. But fix the goddamn narrative structure, because this movie is absolutely a waste of anyone’s time who decides to watch it.

0 out of 4.

With this review, I think I am mostly set for the Oscars. Those nominations don’t get even announced until mid March this year, with a ceremony in April. But because of their dumb rules we got the confusion of what is 2020 and what is 2021 in movies. I know there are still things that I haven’t seen that will probably get nominations, but, Judas and the Black Messiah is the last one I was looking forward to for the last couple of months.

Known star talent, plus, a real story, and a fantastic name for a film, means a lot of hype for me.

So although this might get nominations for Oscars, and I ended up loving it, so you might not hear me talk about it again until the next best of the year list. Or hell, forgotten about and never heard from again by the end of the year. Who knows!

I will remember this one all year for its acting, and its hats.Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya) is the charismatic leader of the Illinois Black Panther party in the 1960’s. Charismatic, because he is damn good at speaking, in a decade with quite a few good black activist speakers. But he was in Chicago, a large city, and focused on his community, and uplifting the community. And people had problems with that.

Quite famously, the FBI had a problem with him. Just like they had a problem with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. They needed eyes and ears on these activists, worried about uprising, or worse, a demand for equal rights and treatment. The horror.

So they did what any manipulative and sneaky government group would do. They put a mole on the inside. Enter Bill O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield), who is not some trained FBI agent. He was caught doing crime! He isn’t tainted by the FBI cops. And that means if they blackmail him, he can go into the Black Panther group and let them know what is going on. Yeah!

Good job FBI. Going to war with Americans, one group at a time. Anyways, Fred Hampton was a pretty righteous dude. And the FBI wronged him, and this is his story and the aftermath of it.

Also starring Jesse Plemons, Dominque Fishback, Algee Smith, Ashton Sanders, Darrell Britt-Gibson, Lil Rel Howery, and Martin Sheen.

Although cropped out, you can probably imagine what is happening with his hand. Alright! Kaluuya! Phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal. Damn man. I have never seen him go this much into a role before, with obviously a limited pool for me to pick from so far. I just found out as I wrote this that he is going for a supporting actor role and not lead, and, uh, okay, fine. Although him and Stanfield are basically equally present in this film, fine. I hope Kaluuya wins that.

(Technically, if that happens, and Chadwick Boseman wins for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, then that would be the first time that both male acting categories went to black men and that has a good chance of happening this year. If not Kaluuya, then probably Odom Jr. for One Night in Miami).

The story is told in an easy to follow and strong way. A lot of the side actors give their moments to shine, it is not juts the Kaluuya/Stanfield show. The FBI is not seen as a misunderstood entity that was doing its best, they are shown to be the bad guys in this situation which better reflects reality. The FBI always knows exactly what they are doing.

Judas and the Black Messiah is one of those very important films that tell an important part of American history that is pretty fucked up. And it sucks, that it is fucked up. But we have to know about the fucked up things America did if we hope to ever embrace it. This movie gives us the details of the events that were talked about midway through The Trial of the Chicago 7, which was happening at the same time. It is a good companion piece to this movie.

4 out of 4.

I have had to google this title so many times since I received a screener for it. I cannot have my mind wrapped around The Mauritanian. When I try to type it without looking at the title, my mind goes to The Martian, and that damn The Manchurian Candidate.

Saying it isn’t that bad, while reading it, but then it goes through my brain and out the other. I hope I accidentally type this enough times with the posting of this review so that I will be able to remember the damn movie name.

Mauritanian. Mauritanian. Maurtanian. Mauritanian. Mauritanian. Martanian. Martian. Fuck.

Oh, this intro is rambling, I literally knew nothing about this movie going in to watching it, so let’s get on it with it.

 

Yeah. Hurry up and shine a light on the movie’s plot. 

Mohamedou Ould Slahi (Tahar Rahim) is stuck in (had to google the spelling) Guantanamo Bay. He has been for years, despite no charges being placed against him. Everything they want him to talk about he denies, and he gives them info when he can, but he seemingly is not the high stakes Al-Qaeda member they think he is. 

Damn it. They need people to blame and punish for 9/11, and they are sure he is one of them. 

Nancy Hollander (Jodie Foster) is a lawyer who has been a defender of the constitution and often goes for clients who no one else  wants to touch. She doesn’t know if she can trust Slahi or if he is innocent. But she does know no one should be contained in a facility, and probably tortured, for any length of time without charges or a chance of a trial. 

So they will have to take on the American government, and George Bush, and the war machine driven by patriotism post 9/11 at the risk of basic freedoms for people who need help the most.

Also starring Shailene Woodley, Benedict Cumberbatch, Zachary Levi, Corey Johnson, and Denis Ménochet.

“Is that someone breaking the constitution I see?”

The (looks at the top of the review) Mauritanian would pair really well with The Report, which also dealt with finding out information about the torture that was taking place in (looks up earlier in review) Guantanamo Bay. We know it now, and honestly, it still doesn’t feel like a big deal, and that really sucks. In The Report, I walked away thinking that the methods were really gross and uncomfortable and my life didn’t change. After watching The (looks up again) Mauritanian, I am even more disgusted and disturbed and I fear nothing will change.

Like, parts of this movie are going to be extremely triggering for people. We have the standard stuff you might be imagining: Blinking erratic lights, sleep deprivation, food water/scarcity, lack of bed, loud metal music, long periods of standing.  But they did a whole lot more too. We have rape. We have threats of harm to family members. We have threats involving bringing family members to Guantanamo, frail old ones, who will then also be raped, and hurt. Just to get info out of someone who knows nothing. 

Oh, this is a true story by the way. The Guantanamo Diary tells the story of a prisoner’s life for 14 years, of his torture, of his lack of rights and his struggle to just stay alive. Fuck.

The acting from Rahim is top notch in this film, and its saving grace, because everyone else is forgettable. (I did enjoy Cumberbatch’s accent though). He is hard to hate and easy to love, and you hate that this is happening to a person on America’s watch. And we know a lot of this happened, to many people, good or bad. It is disgusting. 

I would say some of the camera work in the flashback scenes are something that almost dropped this movie another rating. But I like the story, and think it is important story worth seeing and experiencing. It is okay going into it knowing eventually he will be freed, but despite that, the struggles are still felt. 

The (damn it) Mauritanian might just be forgotten about over time, like The Report quickly was, and what constantly happens about torture. But for now, it is rough, and worth the watch. 

3 out of 4.

 

The word Caged should bring up some very specific imagery, especially with recent events on the border these last couple of years. People in literal caged prisons, crammed together, families separated.

But really, what is the difference between those cages and the prison cages that hundreds of thousands of Americans are already inside of as well? I am not saying that we shouldn’t care about one because the other exists. No, we should care about both and be furious at both. Other countries have prisons wildly different than hours, that actually focus on rehabilitation versus punishment, and social programs to help communities to reduce crime.

But that isn’t relevant to this movie. Which is a horror movie about a guy in solitary confinement losing his touch on reality.

You can tell this is the Warden by the facial hair and the flag. Dr. Harlow Reid (Edi Gathegi) is imprisoned for killing his wife (Angela Sarafyan). He claims he is innocent. The government doesn’t believe that to be so. And he lost he first case, landing him in the big house, so he is working on his appeal. There might be some evidence that the lawyers did not reveal that helps him out and he thinks he can fight it.

But the start of the film has the law firm representing him, a good friend of his, canceling the appeal because all of his assets were taken. He has to do it on his own, but he is educated, so he can handle it. However, the issue is for whatever reason he was deemed threatening and is put in solitary confinement.

Solitary confinement sucks. One of the guards (Melora Hardin) there seems get pleasure in ignoring him almost. In his misery. Despite listening to everything, it is almost as if he is being further tortured by this lady. Not with waterboarding, but emotional and psychological torture. And when the wall starts to talk to him, that is really when Reid feels it.

Also starring Tony Amendola, Robert R. Shafer, James Jagger, and Andy Mackenzie.

We will see their entire relationship played out on one scene on a boat. Oh check it out. This is my first 0 out of 4 of the year! Congratulations Caged!

Where to begin? Well, on a superficial level, the film clearly has a really low budget. The special effects, when they start inside the cell, are not great. The scenes are extremely limited.

For example, in the flashbacks with his wife? We don’t see any real part of the relationship. We see literally one scene with an awkward argument between the two, that is broken up into tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny components, and sprinkled throughout the film, to give a sense of mystery. But it is disjointed in a way to make it look like it should have bigger time gaps between cuts instead of a few seconds. It should have been one scene, for real, and flashbacks of them doing more to really build and see a reason for the relationship to exist. Or why the suspicions exist. They jump the connection and the flashbacks do nothing for the viewer.

The audio is absolutely one of the reasons I hate it. In order to make the film more jarring for the viewer, to get some of the main character’s angst, we get to hear terrible sounds and screeches too. And sure, I am annoyed now too. And I don’t like it. It isn’t done in a good way. It is done to be annoying and it works.

However, the plot is kind of really shit. I don’t care about the lead, it fails to produce empathy outside of the first scene. If you want to be scared, it also won’t produce any of those feels. Just an uncomfortable movie, that you wish to end to put yourself out of your own misery.

0 out of 4.

Let’s say we had the title as a real item. You know, The Map of Tiny Perfect Things.

What does that mean? Is it a treasure map thing that takes you on an adventure? One tiny prefect thing to the next? Or is it just like a regular map, but instead of street names (or in addition to street names), it has some perfect things along the way.

What a useless sounding map, holy damn.

I mean, these things that are perfect. They are tiny? And I guess they are plentiful enough to make a map? I don’t know why I’d want a map like this.

“Oooh, I love it when you talk to me like a cartographer.”Mark (Kyle Allen) wakes up one summer morning, during a time when he has summer school, and has an interesting morning. He knows stuff in the crossword, he knows what his sister will say, and he has breakfast timed perfectly. Heck, traveling around his town, he flows seamlessly around traffic and people, helping people along the way, things are going great. It is because, sure enough, Mark has been here before.

He is stuck in a time loop. Pretty normal situation for anyone to be in really, nothing weird to see here. Except he is a teenager, with limited income, and resources, so he feels pretty stuck. And while trying to go on a date with this one girl whom he barely knows (getting closer and closer each time maybe?) he spies another girl, whom he never saw in that part of town at that point of the day.

Her name is Margaret (Kathryn Newton) and, sure enough, she is also in a time loop on the same day. Great! Mark wants to hang out, someone they can share experiences about. They can meet up. They can feel less repetitive! And of course, Mark is going to fall for her, because he is a horndog and wants that physical touch, but she is uninterested.

Well, Mark has the idea that to get out of the loop, they should have a perfect day, mapping out the perfect events around town, those weird moments where something perfect occurs all the time around them in life, but now they are going to try and find them and map them (and redraw the map daily). I mean, sure, why the fuck not, you got eternity I guess?

Also starring Jermaine Harris, Josh Hamilton, Cleo Fraser, and Anna Mikami.

This must be that big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff. Oh hey. Did you like Palm Springs last year? The R rated movie of a similar subject matter, with two people stuck in the same day? Then you’ll love this movie! Then you might like or might hate this film.

And for me, it definitely falls in the latter. Part of Palm Springs being great was the uniqueness of the concept, having a second person in the loop, after it was already going on for a long time, and having an expert of the day.  And obviously this movie has the same concept, but it is a lot more toned down. You know, because of the age of the protagonists, and the rating.

So it is nowhere close to being a funny film, it is just a very uncomfortable romance with a “sci-fi” element. It isn’t original, but it is well shot I guess?

I will say by the end, they start to go for something profound. Just a bit. And it all deals with the Margaret character and her struggles, but they haphazardly put it together, and things get solved because of it. Oh okay. Kind of not only fumbled throughout the execution, but the ending as well? It didn’t drive the point home at all well enough, and just sort of ended. And of course, the plot about the map of little perfect things, the title, is exhaustingly boring.

One final nitpick. The “moon date” scene I hated so much. Besides feeling extremely creepy because he is just trying to court Margaret against her already stated wishes, but it is just…impossible to have done given their constraints of time. They use one line to explain it, but it isn’t believable, and that is important even during a fantasy film.

Definitely one to skip and pretend didn’t really happen.

1 out of 4.

Robin Wright is someone who has had a spectacular resurgence over the last decade and not enough people are giving it credit. Everyone mentions the McConaissance, but what about the Wright Stuff? No that is bad, sorry.

Okay, in the McConaissance, Matthew was in notably a lot of rom coms and became a good actor suddenly with a string of films, so we were like, “Oh! Where have you been this whole time?!” and then he won an award, probably. I don’t remember.

For Robin Wright, it was more of a “Oh, where have you been this whole time?” because despite being in things most of her career, she has felt a bit more unnoticeable since Forrest Gump. That was until House of Cards put her back on the radar, and with big roles there, and Wonder Woman, and Blade Runner 2049, she is back. So after all this time what does she wants to do? She wants to direct and star in a movie damn it. And that movie is Land. And it isn’t even based on a book.

Just a woman and her own private cabin and mounain.

Edee (Robin Wright) is tired of all the shit. You know. The social media. The news cycle. Going to work. Grocery stores. Doggy day cares. Minimum wage. Maximum wage. Racism. Electric stoves. Theme parks. Museums. War. Famine. Movies being made about Dracula. Literally all of the shit, she is tired of it, and she has decided to get away.

Full stop, no contact, she now is going to live at this tiny little cabin on a mountain deep, deep in the woods. She has brought no money, no tech, nothing but clothes to help her. She is going to live off the land (movie name!), hunt, and sleep on her own. And if it kills her, it kills her, but she is going to make a real good try of it. Why did she decide this? Well, wait until the end of the movie for that.

And despite wanting to be alone, she does have someone to help her, eventually, after saving her life. Miguel (Demián Bichir), who actually knows hunting and survival skills, can’t just leave her there to die. So he agrees to help her out and he agrees to her rules. No news about the world. Just some lessons for a season, and then off he goes.

Also starring Sarah Dawn Pledge and Kim Dickens.

Learning is great, especially when it keeps you from not dying.

Wright is a lovely actress and a strong actress. She has been doing this for a long time. And it shows. She is very strong in this as well and open. We see her at some very low moments in this characters story, and she bears it all to get those emotions across to the viewers. She is wonderful in this. 

But it is not enough to carry the movie for me.

 The entire movie it just feels like we are being teased info that we know they will tell us eventually. Why did she run away from life? What happened in her past? We get snippets, but we don’t get the real reason until the last few minutes of the movie. And it is a brief story, and honestly, I think at that point it would have been better to have kept it a mystery. 

Like, if you wait until the end of the movie, I expect something very dark, or unimaginable, because she changed her whole life, and damn it, we weren’t told why. It would be hard to live up to those expectations. And almost would have been better to keep it a secret, very true to her recluse lifestyle. It makes sense why we found out from the plot, and it involves growth, but by then I care a little less.

As for the rest of the movie, like I said, it has a lot of strong acting, but the story is certainly weak in the middle. The plot can be summarized as someone goes to the woods, they struggle, they struggle a lot more, they are saved, they learn, they thrive, and life is good. I know most films can be broken down into ridiculous ways like that one, but damn it, I wanted something more.

2 out of 4.

So far I have seen three documentaries directed by Rodney Ascher, not his entire body of work, but probably his biggest titles. The first one, Room 237, I definitely did not get. I have only seen The Shining once anyways, so watching people talk about its metaphors for what feels like forever wasn’t something I could get behind.

What I could get behind was The Nightmare, about people describing their sleep paralysis. A terrifying thing, that I had only heard about years prior, and I was so glad to never experience it personally (although I think maybe I did once? Just once). It’s use of visuals to go with the stories just really got me in the fears. And it might have made my best of the year list, or at least the honorable mentions.

And the third documentary of his? Well, it is A Glitch in the Matrix, the one I am reviewing right here, right now. And sure, let’s talk to people and “Experts” about why they definitely have arguments that we are likely stuck in a computer simulation and not the base level world. That won’t give me extra nightmares at all, no.

Glitches be like. Now, experts is a loose term. We get people who really believe that we are in a simulation, describing why, what makes sense, what doesn’t, and moments when they have had an out of simulation experience and their expectations from when they die.  Some are more ingrained in it than others.

And uhhh, one of the people interviewed is actually a guy who thought he was in The Matrix so much that he killed his family. And that isn’t a joke. It is a real person, and they describe their experiences and he went to jail. I wasn’t expecting that part of the story, it was dark. It fits, but I still feel a bit conned that I heard the disturbing tale without like, a real warning on that, so not sure if it is spoilers, but there is warning on that. If you want to hear a recount of someone who killed his family, because of computer simulations, you will get it in this documentary.

Overall, the whole thing is a bit disjointed. It is a few people having conversations that are somewhat related, but it just feels like I am being ushered around the room to hear different people talk about things. It doesn’t fully answer the question (because it couldn’t), just gives some snippets that someone could probably find with some googling.

And apparently this documentary is all Elon Musk’s fault, for talking about simulations in interviews and really driving up that theory. I’m not saying we aren’t. I am not saying we are. But I am saying, this documentary could have had a lot more going on for it.

2 out of 4.

The Little Things, if I do say so, was probably the most hyped up movie coming out in January, 2021. Sometimes it is hard to say that with certain, but for movies that hit theaters and online at the same time, I think I saw more advertisements for this on social media than any other movie this month. Heck, I was excited to see it. But the more ads, the worse some of them look.

For example, most ads ended up looking something like this. Great, cool, advertising the three leads, looks suspenseful, that is what it is going for.

But I also saw an ad like this for Cinemark. In teacher land, sometimes we ask questions to get students to discuss, usually “What do you notice, what do you wonder?” And well, I found the Cinemark ad odd, given that it focused on two thirds of the leads, leaving out the one who happens to be black.

Is it to highlight academy awards? I hope not, because Denzel has two for acting, compared to the others having one each. (And arguably those single Oscars are pretty debatable for each of their roles). It is just something I notice and wonder. You know. The Little Things.

Yes, yes, I was in Suicide Squad. Please, please. No Autographs.

Joe ‘Deke’ Deacon (Denzel Washington) is small town sheriff far outside of the city of LA, working where things are calm most of the time, but still good at his job. He is asked by his superior to head to the city though, to pick up some evidence they have for a case.

Turns out, Deke used to work at that same precinct about 5 years back before an incident. He became transferred from the area, and accepted his new life of solitude. He does minimal snooping around, because he’d prefer to be there and out and not stay and hang with his former coworkers. But, there is an interesting new case. And Jim Baxer (Rami Malek), a young hot shot detective who wears suits and has a family and charisma, who got the job with Deke being ousted. Jim just finds Deke interesting and wants his input.

There’s a serial killer afoot it turns out. They might have a live witness too. And some bearings of the kills and bodies might be connected to what Deke was investigating years earlier.

So of course, Deke puts in some vacation days and decides to hang out longer. He will find this guy, damn it. Also they think it is a person played by Jared Leto.

Also starring Chris Bauer, Michael Hyatt, Sofia Vassilieva, and Terry Kinney.

Don’t cross the tape they say. Don’t murder they say.Acting. Acting is important. And the advertisements for this film really wanted to make sure you knew that for the main three roles of this movie we had three academy award winners for acting. That way the viewer can walk up and go, “Hot damn, look at all that acting talent, I am in!” at the theaters or, more likely, on HBO Max.

And sure enough, Washington, Malek, and Leto, act pretty darn good. Washington doesn’t just play a serious good cop, you can tell he is also obsessive and willing to skirt the law. Malek normally plays more serious characters, or friendly characters, I don’t think I’ve seen him play the young hot shot charismatic type before. (Yes, this is very different than Freddie Mercury). Leto just has to play a mysterious and smart normal person who may or may not be a serial killer. Seems like that is in Leto’s normal wheelhouse.

So if you want to see two hours of some cop drama and investigating with some pros (mostly Denzel is the driving force here), then sure, go for it.

But damn do I hate the overall plot and final act of this movie. It throws in some surprising (ish) moments and it leaves some things up in the air, but not in a satisfying way. Prisoners, for example, was a long cop drama, with questionable actions along the way, with an ending that wasn’t fully explained or finished, but still extremely satisfying and fulfilling at the same time. This ending feels hollow and absent. This ending doesn’t make me want to see the movie again. It just leaves me disappointed.

And you don’t want to leave a movie feeling unfulfilled and disappointed, even if the acting was top notch. Jut the mystery wasn’t worth the time.

2 out of 4.