Because Everybody Else Has One

So, You People on Netflix. I have thoughts.  And none of them positive.  (Reprinted in part from my Twitter multi-post). First off, on a simple, artistic level how the hell did they get this many excellent comedic actors in a movie this unspeakably bad? David Duchovny, Julia Louis Dreyfus, Rhea Pearlman, Matt Walsh, Nelson Franklin, and Eddie frickin' Murphy, but not a single laugh between any of them. But not only is it horrifically unfunny, its racial politics are also genuinely grotesque. Now, to be clear, I tend to roll my eyes when films and TV shows are criticized for being "woke" because normally such criticisms come from basement dwellers whinging about women or minorities having the audacity to, you know, be represented on screen, but this film is pretty powerful proof that there is a serious argument to be made against "woke" identity politics from a liberal, (centre-)lefty perspective.  You People is clearly, by today's standards, entirely "p...

No roundup of last week's releases because the only other film I saw was 30 Minutes or Less, which was the very definition of forgettable. Here, however, is a review from Channel24 of the surprisingly decent Tower Heist, which opens this week. What it's about: After a group of working stiffs find themselves the victims of the duplicitous dealings of a wealthy Wall Street broker, they conspire to get their own back by breaking into his luxury penthouse apartment and robbing him of a multi-million dollar fortune that he has stashed away. What we thought: Tower Heist has a number of things wrong with it but, by the time you reach the end of its surprisingly entertaining 100-odd minutes, there's only one flaw that is of any consequence. This film is preposterous, asinine, unbelievable, fatuous and utterly unmemorable and yet, when you get right down to it, the only real crime that it is genuinely guilty of is one of (as Woody Allen might put it) "insuf...