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...

Not quite the Wolf of the Lord of War... but not too far off either. This review is also up at Channel 24 . What it's about The (mostly) true story of Efraim Diveroli and David Packouz, two childhood friends who reconnect in their early twenties and soon find themselves knee deep in the international arms trade. What we thought By far the most noteworthy thing about War Dogs is just how utterly un-noteworthy it is. The story on which it is based may be pretty amazing for something in real life but, as a film, there is nothing here that we haven't seen many times before, often done quite a bit better. That's not to say that War Dogs is a bad movie, though. It's competently put together, typically well acted by its leads (both Jonah Hill and Miles Teller have really become very fine actors over the years) and basically perfectly enjoyable in an utterly innocuous but rollickingly entertaining kind of way. The problem, though, is that it coul...