Stop at Nothing: The Lance Armstrong Story

Wanna see Lance Armstrong get eviscerated for 90 minutes? Well, here's your movie! This movie tells the story of Armstrong's career while also telling the story of his PED usage in parallel. There are interviews with Greg LeMond, Betsy & Frankie Andreu, and several others - all of them just shredding Armstrong. The depth and breadth of the manner in which his legend is torn down is pretty amazing. There's also some stuff in here on the media and its canonization of Armstrong as well as plenty of stuff on Lance's (in)famous vindictiveness towards those he believes wronged him. I mean, we're talking about a guy who sued people for defamation for saying he was using PEDs - while he was using PEDs. Amazing. Anyway, on the whole, there's not a ton of new stuff here since we all know the Lance story already, but it's still very good. 8/10.

I Am Street Fighter

Originally produced as a pack-in for the 25th Anniversary Street Fighter package, Capcom eventually released this doc as a freebie into the wild. This generally focuses on the players and tournaments for SF, rather than the games themselves. Obviously, there's a lot on the games but that's not the focus. And that's OK. What's here is very good and interesting. Profiles of several top players, tournament directors, and so on. There's a lot of stuff with one hardcore SF-related collector. And there's lots of discussion on USA vs Japan as far as skills and why things are what they are (fewer arcades in the US = less in-person competition and, thus, lower skills, etc). All in all, I liked this one a lot. I like the SF games and have played just about all of them. If you're a fan, you'll like this. 8/10.

Unbreakable

Bruce Willis is David Dunn, a security guard. Samuel L Jackson is Elijah Price, the owner of an art gallery that exclusively sells comic book art. They meet and become friends when Willis is involved in a train derailment that kills every passenger onboard - except him. And he walks away completely uninjured. Price hears about him and contacts Dunn, letting him know that he thinks Dunn is some kind of comic book hero brought to life. Slowly, this idea takes hold in Dunn as well and we see him destroying his bench press personal best, learning of his powers of detection and so on. This is an M. Night Shamalamadingdong movie from back when M. Night was still making good stuff. This isn't on the level of The Sixth Sense but is still very good. Of course there's a twist, as well. And, yeah, there's some ridiculous moments, in particular a scene with Dunn's kid, but this is generally really good. And, hey, it's got Robin Wright, too. 7/10.

Life Itself

Also the name of his autobiography, Life Itself is a documentary chronicling the life and career (and, ultimately, the death) of film critic Roger Ebert. This is at once an interesting, funny, moving, slightly disturbing, and flawed documentary. On the one hand, it does a terrific job of capturing Ebert's early career and his rise as a partner with Gene Siskel. And we get some fun outtakes, some of which I'd seen before. And there's a nice interview with Gene's widow. And we get lots of footage of Ebert as well as he undergoes treatment with his wife Chaz by his side. That's where the slightly disturbing part comes in - Ebert's cancer treatment included the removal of his lower jaw. He's left with, well, the skin from his chin hanging down, making it so you can look through his mouth and see his neck. That's a bit unsettling. Through it all, Ebert maintains a mostly good attitude, staying funny, communicating via his trusty Macbook. He keeps busy, writing a lot and still watching movies. Unfortunately, he declined faster than expected and so the director was left finishing sooner than he wanted, at least as far as Ebert footage is concerned. And there's where the "flawed" aspect of the movie comes in. They left out an entire segment of Ebert's career - his partnership with Richard Roeper, which lasted nearly a decade - entirely, a terrible oversight that wounded Roeper personally. And they never directly get Ebert's final opinion on Siskel. They were enemies at first and that shifted over time but even Gene's widow isn't sure 100% certain of how they felt about each other. The director spent plenty of time with Ebert to get a full answer from him on this topic but never does. An interesting, if sad, side story is that Siskel never told Ebert he was sick with his brain tumor before passing. Roger was deeply wounded by that and he vowed to make his own illness known so that people wouldn't feel hurt by not knowing. Anyway, this was very good. 8/10.

Atari: Game Over

Were there really millions of Atari 2600 E.T. cartridges buried in a New Mexico landfill? This documentary seeks to answer that question. It also brings together the guy who developed E.T. (Howard Warshaw) and a few execs from Atari. So we kind of weave together three stories - the rise & fall of Atari, the career of Warshaw (the only dev at Atari whose every game was a million seller), and the search for the cartridges. And the movie succeeds on all three fronts. The story is well told, it's coherent, it's detailed enough, and the parties are all interesting. And the stuff with the landfill is very interesting. This is a terrific documentary, the best video game doc I've seen in awhile. 9/10.

Occupy Unmasked

Documentary claiming to expose the true origins of the Occupy Wall Street movement that seemed to rise out of nowhere back in 2011. And, to some degree, it succeeds in that regard. There's some rather damning video and email information shown detailing how the media helped to, well, create the movement. Unfortunately, that kind of hard-hitting actual investigative stuff is a small portion of the movie. The rest of the movie is more of a Breitbart and Brandon Darby hit piece akin to Jay Leno's "Jaywalking" segments where they show Occupy protesters that are clueless to the movement itself. They also spend a fair amount of time talking about rapes & sexual assaults at the various Occupy sites. And then there's a long diversion into a tangent somehow trying to link murders of Cambodians post-Vietnam to the Occupy movement that is just truly bizarre. Mostly, though, the movie is a lot of Breitbart ranting intermixed with clips of Occupy protesters swearing at cops or looting. In the end, this is not really a quality documentary but there IS some good stuff to be seen here. It's just lost in a mess of other nonsense. 4/10.

Bloodline

Coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler) is John Rayburn, the #1 (but not oldest) son of the Rayburn clan. Linda "Good God, I was annoying on ER" Cardellini is Meg, his sister. They have two brothers, Danny and Kevin. The show is set in south Florida, with the Rayburns being the wealthy owners of some kind of resort hotel down there. On the surface, they're the All-American family. But things are not quite what they seem. "We're not bad people. We just did a bad thing", John says. And the show spends just about all of the 13 episodes of season 1 getting around to that bad thing. This is a reaaaaaaaaaaallllly slooooooooow burn of a show. Lots and lots and lots of build. Lots of hint at past issues in the family that are sloooooowly revealed. Lots of meaningful glances, sentences with double meanings and so on. That's mixed with a sometimes confusing structure that mixes dreams, flashbacks, looks forward, and so on in a way that sometimes isn't real clear. And all of that adds up to a show that might just lose a lot of its audience along the way. The pacing is pretty glacial but it does pay off eventually (you can argue whether that payoff is worth it or not). The cast, which also includes Sissy Spacek as the Rayburn mom and MTV alum Jacinda Barrett as John's wife, is stellar. I was entertained but this isn't quite the home run I'd hoped for. And the big reveal at the end of season 1 to set up season 2 was pretty laughably obvious, which was a letdown. Still, I liked it and I want another season. 7/10.

From the Rough

I'm a sucker for "based on a true story" sports movies. Love 'em. This one tells the story of Catana Starks, the first black woman to be the head coach of a men's college golf team. Starks was the head coach at Tennessee State University. And in those last two sentences I have captured literally everything the movie gets factually correct about this story - Starks's name, her school, and her historical significance. It gets EVERYTHING ELSE COMPLETELY WRONG. I don't know that I've ever seen a "based on a true story" sports movie miss so many other details before. They shift the time from 1980 to present day. They change ALL the people. They make up schools. They Starks getting static for "failing" after ONE WEEK ON THE JOB. They have TSU winning a national title in their first season. And you know what? None of that would matter if the movie itself were any good. It's not. It's terrible. The golfers are a mishmash of stereotypes and caricatures. The storylines are cliched to the max. The dialogue is just awful and was clearly written by somebody who knew nothing about golf ("when I'm a golf player" being one egregiously bad example). The acting is terrible. The golf scenes are terrible - in one, a guy strikes his putt and it's clearly at least a foot to the right of his line and then they cut to the ball rolling straight in. Ugh. So, yeah, this sucked. 1/10.

Mirage Men

What if a lot of UFO hoaxes and "coverups" were actually disinformation spread by the government itself? This movie sort of tells the story of Richard Doty. Doty was apparently an Air Force guy who was involved with one Paul Bennewitz. Bennewitz lived near an Air Force base in the 1970s and noticed some strange stuff - stuff he thought were UFOs. He started filming things and contacted the Air Force. Doty was assigned to feed disinformation to Bennewitz and apparently somehow convinced him that aliens were invading. Or something. And Doty's actions apparently drove Bennewitz crazy and ruined his life. And this movie covers some of that. And there's maybe a good story to be told there. But it's structured in such a terrible, confusing fashion that you'll have no idea what's being talked about most of the time. And so much of what's being talked about is such obvious nonsense (Doty actually claims to have seen a film of "a live alien sitting and talking") that the film loses all credibility. If you want a movie that shows the UFO crowd to be a bunch of crackpots and lunatics, this one does the trick. I was hoping for more than that. Not a LOT more than that but wanted a little something. 1/10.

Houdini

Man, what a mess this was. I can't even imagine the discussions that went into writing this. "OK guys, we're gonna do a mini-series on Harry Houdini, one of the most amazing and fascinating characters of the early 20th century. He lived an incredible life, was world famous, STILL is world famous, and did all kinds of remarkable stuff. But forget all that. LET'S JUST MAKE STUFF UP INSTEAD!" Good grief. Adrien Brody is Harry Houdini, the world-renowned magician and escape artist of the early 20th century. And he does a tremendous job of looking the part. He is in incredible shape - kudos to him. But...man. They mangle just about every detail of his life, altering stuff for no apparent reason (having Houdini jump off a bridge into icy water for his famous escape instead of being inside a crate as actually happened), or just making stuff up (putting Houdini into an affair he never had, making his wife a pothead, and so on). I suppose it's appropriate this was done by The History Channel - they long ago abandoned their dedication to actual history and truth, so this fits right in. What a joke. 3/10.

The Fall

Agent Scully plays Stella Gibson, a tough, cool high-ranking detective with a penchant for one-night stands, who has been placed in charge of a case review (and later task force) investigating what turns into a serial killer. Fifty Shades of Grey guy is Paul Spector - the serial killer. This is a Netflix original series produced in cooperation with the BBC and takes place in Belfast. The entire show is very dark, often disturbing, understated, and very compelling. Spector is charismatic, able to charm women into doing whatever he wants. His 15-year old babysitter practically throws herself at him, is real close to figuring out he's the killer and he is able to draw her onto his side by NOT seducing her. His wife lies for him. Etc. Meanwhile, Gibson is inquisitive, probing, dedicated but realistic. The show obviously revolves almost entirely around the search for Spector but there are other stories going on as well. This is good stuff - really creepy, well-acted, and dark. There's only a handful of episodes on Netflix (11 total covering the only two seasons made so far) but they're really good. Check it out - 8/10.

Red Army

Red Army tells the story of Soviet hockey greatness through the eyes of retired superstar Slava Fetisov. Fetisov had a remarkable career playing for Red Army before eventually being allowed to travel to North America to play in the NHL. He's now Minister of Sport for Russia. The movie features a number of great interviews from Soviet players and officials, including a former KGB guy. Fetisov generally comes off well here except at the very beginning where he's pretty rudely ignoring the director and flips him off. Overall, the movie tells its story well but... there's really now around the fact that much of the impact of Red Army has been blunted by ESPN's release of their 30 For 30: Of Miracles and Men, which covered a lot of the same ground, a few weeks ago. In fact, ESPN's piece is arguably the better movie, covering more ground (it goes back to the start of Soviet hockey, while Red Army starts in the late 70s) and in more detail. The two movies complement each other well and it's worth seeing both BUT, if you're going to see just one, see the ESPN film. Red Army also, for whatever reason, decided to make a confusing mess of the little montage they did of the Miracle on Ice. Clips are shown super-zoomed in, out of order and generally just in a very confusing fashion. Makes no sense. Gripes aside, this was very good anyway. 8/10.

Foxcatcher

Steve Carrell is John DuPont, the crazy DuPont heir who murdered wrestler Dave Schultz. Channing Tatum is Mark Schultz, Dave's brother and author of the book on which the movie is based. The casting here is very solid and Carrell, in particular, shines in his role. Unfortunately, the movie itself is a mess. There's so many factual distortions, changes, and flat-out creations that it's hard to take the movie seriously. And I don't mean stuff you'd only know if you knew the story intimately. I mean stuff like having the wrestlers in the movie (in 1988) watching a UFC fight from 1996. And then you get the bigger things - creating scenes with DuPont shooting a gun inside the gym, having Mark & Dave training together at Foxcatcher (they didn't), and a million other things. And, like the book, the movie suffers from too much Mark Schultz. It's essentially the story of him when it really needed to focus more on DuPont and Dave Schultz. In the end, this is a pretty good movie with some terrific performances but some really, really glaring issues, too. 7/10.

Whiplash

his is a movie full of great performances in search of a great movie to put them in. JK Simmons is Terence Fletcher, a ruthless, maniacal jazz instructor at the top music school in the country. Miles Teller is Andrew, his newest student. What follows is something of a rehash of An Officer and a Gentleman with Fletcher berating Andrew, throwing stuff at him, throwing gay insults at his classmates, and generally just being a jackass. Then there's a conflict and a resolution. The end. Oh yeah, along the way we get a throwaway diversion with the girl at the movie theater, some wasted scenes with Andrew's father, a "My music is as important as your sports" scene with Andrew's family, and a whole lot of drumming. Simmons here is off-the-charts. Incredibly great. Intense, angry, maniacal, instructive, the whole nine yards. Unfortunately, the movie itself is really just a rehash of stuff we've seen before, told in a not-particularly-unique way. It's a good movie but nowhere near the tour de force it's been hyped as. 7/10.

History of the Eagles

An official documentary on seminal rock band The Eagles. Not sure if this is the same thing as what ran on HBO/Showtime last year or not. Clocking in at just over 3 hours, this is pretty darn great. Every band member - past, present, former, etc - participates as well as managers and music execs. Because it's done by the band themselves, they don't go into a ton of detail on internal strife or controversy but every topic IS covered. Each membership change is discussed, all the major lawsuits and controversies are covered. LOTS of talk (and photos and film) of drug and alcohol usage. Lots of great discussion on the creation of various songs. Lots of great discussion on the music histories of each member. And tons of great archival footage of past interviews and concerts as well as home video footage. Truly a remarkable amount of that kind of stuff, quite frankly. And perhaps the best little tidbit - audio of an on-stage argument between Glenn Frey and Don Felder during their last-ever performance that features Frey telling Felder he's going to kill him after the concert. Seriously great stuff there. That's all in the first part of the doc. The second part covers the reunion in 1994 and subsequent albums and tours. Interesting tidbit: a reunion was planned before 1994 and all guys had agreed to it but Glenn Frey backed out. Didn't know that. Discussion of Don Felder's removal from the band. In general, most of the guys in the group come off pretty darn well in their interviews. Don Henley, who has a reputation of having a massive ego and being tough to work with, comes across here more as confident and not overbearing. Glenn Frey comes off the worst as he's the one telling the story of getting Don Felder involved in the reunion (Frey wanted Henley & Frey to make more money than the other three guys and Felder wasn't cool with that). It's obvious Frey has a very large ego and is much aware of his role within the Eagles and the music industry. On the flip side, Timothy B Schmit comes off as really humble and likable. He joined the band late and is still very much in the "Man, this is great!" mindset, loving what he's doing. Anyway, the whole documentary is really great and a must-see for fans of the band or rock in general. Great stuff. 9/10.

Please Subscribe

A friend asked me to watch this and, well, I did. I can't say I was impressed in any way. This is one of the laziest documentaries I've seen in a long, long time. The makers take what could be an interesting subject - "Youtubers" who make a living posting videos to Youtube - and do nothing with it. What we get are short 5-10 minute interviews with each person, a tiny bit of behind-the-scenes at how their videos are made and...that's it. The people profiled seem nice enough - Hannah Hart, in particular, seems pretty darn cool (though I suspect I'd find her "drunk chef" videos incredibly annoying) and SeaNanners seems pretty cool as well. But, again, nothing much is done with them other than the interviews. Then, in one interview, we get what is almost the documentary equivalent of one of those annoying Facebook clickbait articles. They put up a little screen that says they asked one guy some really personal question and show him not answering. Then another screen saying three weeks later he's willing to address it. Then he...doesn't. And at no time are we told the actual question. It's sort of implied that the question is along the lines of "ARE YOU TEH GAY???????" but never stated as such. It feels like a "We asked this guy a really personal question. You won't believe his shocking response" clickbait thing. There's some mention of a "Youtubers convention" but not much is shown of it. There's references, and a couple brief video clips, highlighting the fame some Youtubers achieve but, again, not much done with it. In the end, the whole thing just feels like one big missed opportunity. 5/10.

Mission to the Edge of Space

Mission to the Edge of Space - Documentary detailing Felix Baumgartner's famous skydive from 122,000 feet in 2012. This is a good documentary in the sense that you get a complete picture of all the preparation, the years of work, and so on that went into the jump. All the key players are interviewed and they all come across as likable and all of them seem to have really enjoyed their work on the project. That makes their interviews interesting as it's a story they obviously enjoy telling. There's lots of great, spectacular photography from Baumgartner's various jumps as well. Having said all that...this never quite rises to the level of greatness. Probably could have been a little shorter (125 minutes). Also, I was disappointed they never revealed the final tally for the cost of the mission. C'mon guys, that's something everybody wants to know! Still, if you're interested in the story, this is worth checking out. Hits right at the Tabedoza Line™ - 7/10.

Side note: I am apparently the only person on the planet who was not aware of this mission before it happened. I remember hearing about it afterward - since you pretty much couldn't avoid hearing about it - but not beforehand.

The Act of Killing

WTF. This is one of the most messed-up, surreal movies I've ever seen. On some level, I get these guys being matter-of-fact, even proud, of the killing they did way back when. But to agree to make a movie about it? And re-enact all the torturing? And so on? And then to do it in various genres, like a musical? With one of the guys running around in drag for 80% of the movie? Again...WTF. I can't say this was a good documentary but it was compelling. And interesting. But good? I dunno. The one guy coming to the crushing realization at the end of the movie as to the horrors he's committed was certainly something to see. I did find myself wondering the whole time, "How the heck did the filmmakers even get this setup in the first place?" Anyway, worth seeing. 8/10.

Focus

Will Smith is Nicky, an uber-accomplished thief and con man who runs a crime ring that targets major sporting events. Margot Robbie is Jess, a small-time criminal who tries to rob Nicky but ends up joining his team instead. What follows is 2 hours of pickpocketing (the scene of them in New Orleans ripping people off will probably terrify every tourist - the little bit with them stealing a camera lens is dead-on), capers, and double crosses. It's a fun time but...never quite gets there. This is a movie that's supposed to be style over substance, to be super-slick and super-cool and just isn't quite slick or cool enough. There's a couple things that strain believability (like the setup for one crime that simply would never happen) as well. And the pacing is a little off, with some scenes that simply move too slow or are too long. They probably could have chopped about 15 minutes off and improved the movie. The cast is great and it's certainly nice to stare at Margot Robbie in super-sexy outfits for 2 hours but it ends up being not quite enough. 6/10.

Wikileaks: War, Lies & Videotape

Documentary on Wikileaks, the web site that publishes classified documents in the interest of openness and (maybe) justice. Wikileaks is a controversial group with a lot of heat both in favor and against them. Unfortunately, this documentary simply isn't up to the task of digging into Wikileaks. We Steal Secrets is far better. Watch that one instead. 5/10.

The King of Kong

Take what sounds like a terrible premise - ONE MAN'S QUEST TO BREAK THE DONKEY KONG WORLD RECORD HIGH SCORE!!!! - and mix in some highly-compelling and interesting characters and what do you have? A truly remarkable documentary! King of Kong follows the efforts of Steve Wiebe, an unemployed family man with a passion for Donkey Kong. Wiebe purchases his own machine, sets up shop in his garage and sets to work. Along the way, we're introduced a host of remarkable personalities - Walter Day, the founder of Twin Galaxies, the arcade that maintains the list of "official" high scores. Billy Mitchell, the first man to ever achieve a perfect game on Pac-Man and the current record holder for Donkey Kong. And lots of others as well. There's intrigue - with Mitchell & Day possibly conspiring to sabotage Wiebe's efforts. There's drama. There's poignancy. There have been some questions raised on the accuracy of the editing and timelines in the movie but ignore that chatter. This is a GREAT movie. It can be enjoyed by anyone but will ring especially true for anybody who practically grew up in an arcade, like myself. This is the standard by which all "video game documentaries" will be judged. 10/10.

* - if you happen to get the DVD version of this, watch it twice - once as released, and once with the director's commentary. The commentary is awesome.

Man on Wire

This is a highly-praised documentary concerning the efforts of Philippe Petit and his high-wire crossing between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. Lots of interviews, remembrances and so on but it all just adds up to an exercise in boredom. Painfully dull and ultimately uninteresting. A big letdown considering how many good things I'd heard about it prior to watching. 3/10.

Perfect Sisters

This movie is based on the true story of "The Bathtub Girls", a pair of Canadian sisters who murdered their alcoholic mother by drowning her in the bathtub. And got away with it. Until they, being teenage morons, bragged about the murder. This movie is basically a Lifetime movie but with profanity. Very low budget, very "small" in feel. The director makes some interesting choices that simply don't work - lots of imaginary stuff, dream sequences and the like. What we end up with is a very shallow retelling of the story and a movie that's pretty darn empty. Some fine performances from the cast, but this one simply isn't very good. 3/10.

The Wolf of Wall Street

Lots of people have sung the praises of this movie, assigning to it great depth and meaning as a cautionary tale. It isn't. No, this movie is an excuse to show 2-1/2 hours of debauchery. Seriously. There's no cautionary tale here. Leonardo Di Caprio is Jordan Belfort, a gifted and highly driven stockbroker who, after being laid off, forms his own company and immediately begins cutting corners and committing fraud to be successful. And it works. Big time. What follows are years of drugs, prostitutes, binges of all types, massive profits, and wild living. And it's pretty much all true (except the part about people calling Belfort "wolf" or "wolfie" as a nickname - didn't happen). Di Caprio is magnificent in this, commanding every scene with incredible charisma. But that deeper meaning and cautionary tale stuff? Nah. What's the cautionary tale? That you get massively rich and marry a scorching hot woman, while ripping off people? Sure, Belfort gets his comeuppance - sort of. He loses his wife, serves a couple years in a country club prison, wrote a really successful book, and is now a successful motivational speaker. Hell, the real Belfort is even in this movie. It's not like he's broke and he's not paying back the $110m fine he owes. So, no, this ain't a cautionary tale. It's 2-1/2 hours of constant profanity and mayhem. And it's really entertaining. But let's not assign some deep meaning to it that ain't there to try and make ourselves feel better for enjoying watching a movie about a guy who destroyed a whole lot of lives. 7/10.

From Bedrooms to Billions

This is a kickstarter-funded documentary covering the rise of British computer & video game development companies in the 1980s. Because of the diversity of the UK computing scene (lots of different computer formats) and the relatively low bar of entry (systems were usually cheap) to get in, there was a ton of creativity in the game community back then. And a lot of companies that rose from...bedrooms...to form part of the industry that is now worth billions. I was recently able to finally watch this and...

Is it possible to think something is well done and yet still be disappointed? If so, that's where I am. In terms of production, the movie is well done, with better production values than I've seen in similar documentaries. As for the rest...

I am a US gamer. 99% of my familiarity with the history of British gaming comes from reading Retro Gamer. I'm familiar with all the big players but am hardly an expert. Still, there wasn't a TON of new information in the movie for me. Not that there necessarily SHOULD be but when you're pitching a product to a niche market, and that market is already going to be very familiar with what you're pitching, it seems like you dig harder for "new" info. Additionally, for a movie whose title is "...to BILLIONS", I expected a little more on the numbers and figures - there were a few mentions but nothing as specific as I would have liked. I did like the flow of the movie as it seemed to do a nice job of moving from one era to another with lots of accompanying game footage to show the improvement in graphics, etc. And the last bit about the increased size in dev teams and the disappearance of so many UK devs was also really good.

In the end, though, this felt "solid" or "good" rather than great. Perhaps it's just too large a subject for 2-1/2 hours to give me the depth and detail I want? I dunno. Not having the Stamper brothers in the film hurt it as well though that's obviously not necessarily the fault of the filmmakers.

Side note: wish they'd done overlays on top of the gameplay footage stating the game and platform.

Bottom line: 7/10, maybe 7.5/10.

Southland

Lemme get it out of the way immediately: Best cop show of all-time. There, I said it. Yeah, better than Hill Street Blues. This is the show The Shield wishes it had been. Gritty, realistic, flawed people. The story focuses on a core group of patrol officers and detectives with Regina King (as Lydia Adams) being the star detective and the always-awesome Michael Cudlitz (as John Cooper) the veteran training officer and Ben Mackenzie (as Ben Sherman) his hotshot protege. We see the growth in Sherman from a rookie going through a ridiculously difficult early career to a comfortable (but not perfect) veteran spreading his wings and challenging his superiors. We see Cooper as he struggles with pain and addiction. And all of it comes off as realistic. There's nothing cartoonish or exaggerated here. If there's a flaw, it's that there's a bit too much gunplay and death. What's here is realistic, it's just a bit too frequent.

Unfortunately, Southland struggled to find an audience during its original run. NBC moved it around, stuck it in terrible timeslots and generally tried to bury it during its 7-episode first season. They ordered a second season, then canceled the show after 6 episodes had been filmed. TNT picked it up, aired the second season, then ordered three more seasons of 10 episodes each before canceling the show after season 5. THAT cancellation resulted in one of the all-time most frustrating cliffhangers ever. The net result of the cancellations and bouncing around in the early seasons is that there's one or two storylines that get dropped without explanation. That's unfortunate.

Bottom line: This is a really, really great show that deserves a much-larger audience than it ever got. 10/10.

McFarland, USA

Kevin Costner is Jim White, the cross country coach at McFarland High School, an almost entirely Latino high school in a very poor agricultural area of California. White takes his rag tag band of kids, who work in the fields before school and after practice, and transforms them into a real team. This movie is based on a true story* and is made by Disney, so you can probably guess how most of the movie will play out. Still, it has some nice moments, the cast is good, and the movie is entertaining. Costner is Costner. Personally, I love the guy and enjoy his work in pretty much everything. He's a great "everyman" and fits that role here very well. Bottom line: liked this a lot. 8/10.

The Replacements

This is one from the "Can't believe I haven't watched this previously" file. Keanu Reeves is Shane Falco, a former college star quarterback who washed out of football after a disastrous showing in the Sugar Bowl against Ohio State. He and a host of other misfits are recruited to be replacement players when the regular NFL guys go on strike. What follows is a completely paint-by-numbers sports movie that nevertheless remains entertaining throughout. There's the obligatory bar fight, the hot girlfriend, the miracle comebacks, the whole ball of wax. The football scenes themselves are not particularly well-done, consisting entirely of ridiculously over-the-top collisions and tackles, combined with incorrect rules (one scene shows Keanu's team advancing an onside-kick, which you can't do) and stupid timeouts (Keanu's guys call timeout after that on-side kick when the clock would already be stopped), and so on. Still, this is nice light, easy entertainment. Keanu is Keanu for 2 hours, there's some funny moments, a hot girl, and football stuff. Good enough. 6/10.

Smash His Camera

Documentary on famed paparazzi photographer Ron Galella. Galella was a pioneer in his field and made a big name for himself with his photos of Jackie Kennedy. This movie covers much of Galella's early career juxtaposed with scenes of his current work and life. We also get interviews from those that are for/against Galella in general. It's pretty remarkable how famous Galella became for his work (and rich too - he's got quite the palace he lives in). Anyway, this is a mildly interesting, at times disturbing, look into the career of a guy for whom "invasion of privacy" has no meaning. 4/10.

Joe

Nicolas Cage is Joe, a dude with a sketchy past now in charge of a crew that poisons trees on behalf of lumber companies. Gary is the abused 15-year old who shows up at Joe's work site one day looking for a job. Joe puts him to work and he works hard. They develop something of a father figure relationship as we see more of Gary's troubled background - his abusive father, his indifferent mom, etc. And we learn more about Joe too - his penchant for creating trouble for himself for no reason, his frequenting of prostitutes, and so on. The idea here is obviously to be something of a deep, emotional movie leading us to care about the connection between Joe & Gary. It fails in that regard. Instead we're just left with a bunch of seemingly random scenes and a movie that kind of pinballs all over the place. Another disappointment for me. 3/10.

Dead Man Down

Colin Farrell is a gangster. Terence Howard is a gangster boss who apparently has made an enemy and that enemy is picking off his associates. Noomi Rapace is Colin's girlfriend and she blackmails him into killing somebody for her. And...yeah. This a movie that's supposed to be a tense, revenge thriller and it's not. Instead it's a disjointed mess. You'll end up not caring about Farrell's motivations long before he drives his truck into a house without knowing if he'll run over his girlfriend in the process - and then throws a grenade that could blow her up. Good grief. Was expecting so much more from this one. 3/10.

Basic

John Travolta is a DEA agent with a sketchy past brought in to investigate a shooting during training at an army base. If that premise alone doesn't tell you how off-the-rails this movie is, well... let's just say this movie is a mess. There's a shooting and all the people involved tell their story and we learn that there's drug running going on with a doctor and other army folks. And then there's a twist. And another twist. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And soon you just give up. And then we get an ending that makes absolutely no sense and contradicts most of the rest of the movie. This movie sucks. 3/10.

Phenomenon

John Travolta is George Malley, a kind-hearted, simple man who is a mechanic in a small town. He's known and loved by the entire town and is celebrating his birthday one night when he sees a bright flash of light and a loud boom. Suddenly, he is super-energized with an endless thirst for knowledge and the super-accelerated mind to be able to process that knowledge. He is suddenly able to predict earthquakes, crack cyphers, perform telekinesis, and learn languages in less than an hour. All the while he's trying to win the affections of Lacy, played by Kyra Sedgwick. Meanwhile, his lifelong friends slowly turn on George as his new found "powers" frighten them. There's a sweet love story in the middle of this movie along with a bunch of kind, simple people. Hard to explain but this is a movie that really connects with me. I can totally relate to being the academic "freak show" and so, much like Good Will Hunting, that part of George's story resonates for me big time. Anyway, this is a movie I probably like a lot more than it really deserves but can't help it. 9/10.

Dark Tide

OK, I've read the reviews so I was expecting terrible going in. No problem there. I was looking for brainless entertainment while I just chilled out. And, hey, 2 hours of Halle Berry in a bikini, how bad can it be, right? Well...the answer is "pretty freaking awful". Holy cow. This is a really strong candidate for worst movie I've ever seen. It's just such a mess of...well, everything. The story is that Berry is a diver who free swims (i.e. outside of a cage) with great white sharks. She retires after her diving partner gets eaten by a shark. So no more shark diving. Until her husband, from whom she's estranged, shows up with a millionaire Brit who wants to free swim with sharks. Halle is REALLY AGAINST THAT because, ya know, guilt and stuff, until dude backs up the Brink's truck full o' cash. They go out on the water and mayhem ensues. Along the way, we get terrible dialogue delivered by bad actors and good actors acting poorly all mixed into a choppy story that has no meat on it and doesn't flow at all. The whole thing is just plain terrible. Really, just amazingly bad. 1/10.

Vantage Point

Dennis Quaid is a Secret Service agent seeing his first duty since taking a bullet for the prez some time ago. That dude from Lost is his partner. They're in Spain for some conference with a gazillion other world leaders and the prez is going to give a speech in the courtyard of a palace or something. Anyway, the prez gets shot and all chaos breaks out. The gimmick, and title of the movie, is that we see the same 15 minutes or so from all different vantage points in order to piece together what all happened. The action is fast, the movie is slick, and the gimmick is a fun one. There's some twists and turns, of course. There's also a much higher than I remember body count (this being the second time I've seen the movie). Anyway, this is a well-done movie with everyone doing a good job in their part. Entertaining, definitely. 7/10.

3 Days to Kill

A rather un-serious take on the spy thriller genre. Kevin Costner is an assassin who has just retired and wants to establish a relationship with his daughter before he dies. Turns out he's got some cancer that's going to kill him. He also has specific knowledge and skills the CIA needs to another assassination. They, in turn, have some magic medicine that's going to make Costner all better. Quid pro quo, ya know. The result is a pretty entertaining movie with some nice funny spots, like Costner's phone ringing at inopportune times with his ringtone for his daughter. Amber Heard co-stars in a completely useless role. She's Costner's CIA contact but her shtick is some kind of noir femme fatale or something. Whatever. She can't act and her part is terrible. Fortunately, she's not on screen all that much. Anyway, this is hardly a great movie but it's amusing and Costner is pretty good in it. 5/10.

Juno

Ellen Page is Juno, a 16-year old who gets pregnant by her boyfriend Paul, played by Michael Cera. Juno isn't ready to be a mom so she's going to give up her child for adoption by a couple played by Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman. The movie is about Juno's relationship with Paul, with her dad & stepmom, and with the adoptive couple. In general, this movie works pretty well. I think I liked it more the first time I saw it but it's still pretty good on a second watch. It feels fairly authentic though Juno's dialogue is often really rude and is disaffected youth to the extreme and ends up being grating and annoying frequently. There are a lot of funny moments and the cast is terrific. Page and Cera were basically made for their roles and the supporting folks (Garner, Bateman, JK Simmons, and Allison Janney and a great cameo from Rainn Wilson) are all fantastic. Anyway, this one is pretty good, right at the Tabedoza line - 7/10.

St. Vincent

Bill Murray is Vincent, a crabby old Vietnam vet who just wants the world to leave him alone. Melissa McCarthy and her son ("Oliver") move in next door. Oliver and Vincent strike up an unlikely friendship when Vincent becomes his babysitter. While this movie treads over old ground (the crusty old guy who learns from a young friend, the feel-good ending, the old guy with some tender secrets underneath, the hooker with a heart of gold, etc), it does it really well. This is funny and touching and well-done. McCarthy is good in her role, as understated as you'll ever see her, with nary a fat joke to be found. Here she's just...a normal mom, struggling to make things work. Anyway, this was really good. 8/10.

Reign Over Me

Adam Sandler is Charlie Fineman, a dentist whose life is destroyed when his wife, three children and dog, are aboard one of the planes on 9/11. Don Cheadle plays his college roommate who sees Fineman wandering the streets four years later. Fineman has disconnected from the world, retreating into a life of endlessly remodeling his kitchen, video games, and shutting himself off. Sandler is REALLY great in this. He shows us Fineman's pain and it is raw and overwhelming. Cheadle is excellent as always and the rest of the cast does a nice job of rounding things out. This is a fantastic movie. The ending is perhaps a bit too easy but the rest is really great. 9/10.

Rampage: Capital Punishment

Uwe Boll's sequel to the surprisingly good Rampage about a guy who loads up on armor and guns and shoots up his town and...gets away. Now he's decided to take over a TV station and broadcast his "You are all brainwashed" message to the world. This one is nowhere near as good. There's just nothing here, really. A very disappointing sequel to a movie I liked a lot. 3/10.

Halt and Catch Fire (Season 1)

Liked it. A lot. The show has some issues - the occasional anachronistic phrasing, a tendency early on to force feed you technical stuff to establish credibility, some random events not really followed up on - but it still works. The cast is terrific and the characters feel authentic. And there are some great moments - when Joe walks into a conference room at Comdex '83 and sees the Macintosh for the first time and senses a paradigm shift in computing, that's a great moment. That resonates with me big-time because I remember that feeling myself - 11-year old Tabe seeing a Mac and having his mom drive him to computer stores just so he could play around with MacPaint. I'm happy to hear they've signed on for a second season and can't wait to see what they do with it. 8/10.

Kids For Cash

This movie tells the story of the "Kids For Cash" scandal from Pennsylvania where two judges were accused of improperly sentencing juveniles to a privately-owned detention center in return for cash payments from the owners of that facility. The reality is a little more nuanced than that. There's no proof offered that the judges were getting kickbacks specifically for sentencing kids. More they were bribed to force the shutdown of the state facility (which, from all sounds of it, NEEDED to be shut down) and guaranteeing they would sentence kids to the private facility. The two judges split $2.2m for their disgusting actions. The movie tells that story and also dives into the details of some particularly egregious miscarriages of justice. There's the girl* who was sentenced to jail for creating a fake/satire Myspace page of her vice principal. There's the kid who served *5 years* for buying (supposedly unknowingly) a stolen moped. There's the girl who served 6 years for getting into a fight in school. And on and on and on. In each case, they were essentially tricked into not having legal counsel present. Amazingly, both judges for some reason consented to participate in the documentary, with neither coming off particularly well. This is just a truly awful story and the movie tells it well. It's horrifying what the system did to thousands of kids. The only good news is that both judges are in prison for a long time. Excellent documentary - 9/10.

* - The Myspace girl and the daughter of one of the judges are now somehow friends and are actually trying to work together on juvenile justice issues. Go figure.

Interstellar

LOL. Seriously, that's my reaction. There's some nice ideas and themes in this movie but...man. There are so many plot holes, mistakes, and leaps in logic it's like somebody took a machine gun to the script. Good grief. Even technically it disappoints. It was apparently shot on film- film left out in one of the dirt storms from the movie, that is. It's grainy, dull, and flat. The special effects are unimpressive, with some looking like they were ripped straight out of a medium-budget sci-film. From 1984. Anne Hathaway's dialogue and delivery range from pretty good to laughably terrible. And, well, it's an Anne Hathaway movie so, of course she cries. Maybe she's crying over the way her skin changes shades for no apparent reason, from pale to almost ghostly white and back again. Matthew Mconahayhayhayhayhay spends the entire movie acting like he simply doesn't have the energy to enunciate or even fully speak his lines. The little girl who plays the daughter is very good in her limited screen time. Jessica Chastain looks good but is pretty unremarkable in a part that doesn't ask much of her. Having said all that, like I mentioned, there's some nice themes here. The overarching "survival instinct" theme is well-done. The pull of love and family are well-done. The last 5-10 minutes of the movie is really good. And, despite being 3 hours long, the movie doesn't feel particularly long. In the end, though, this movie is simply not good. 4/10. Maybe.

John Wick

Do you want to see 90 minutes of Keanu Reeves half-growling his lines and busting out headshots on a whole bunch of fools? Yes, yes, you do. This movie does nothing original - except perhaps not having Reeves bang the hot female assassin trying to kill him - but it does everything really well. It's slick, it's fast-paced, it has some humor and Reeves is fantastic in this. The bad guys are a bunch of cliches (Russian bad guys who smoke with the youngish son who's a totally entitled douchebag listening to obnoxious rap music) mixed with the "Mayhem" guy from car insurance commercials but you don't care. They mess with Keanu's dog and he makes them pay. And it all just...works. So ignore the flaws, dream of a world where John Wick kidnaps Liam Neeson's daughter or something, and enjoy this movie. It's a lot of fun. 9/10.

Standing Up

Came across this one on a "what's new on Netflix" site a few months back and the premise (victims of a horrible summer camp prank go on a journey of self-discovery and stuff) sounded promising so I added it to my list. Last night, decided to give it a shot. it's apparently based on a beloved children's/juvenile book. I wouldn't know. Anyway, admitting that I'm not the target audience, I still thought this wasn't very good. And wouldn't have been when I was 12 either. Howie & Grace are stripped naked and left alone on an island by their fellow summer campers. They decide to find some clothes and wander around for a few days instead of returning to camp. They make some friends at another camp and sort of try to get Grace's mom to come rescue them. I say "sort of" because Grace calls her mom, screaming and crying for mom to come get her but when pushed for a reason why, instead of coming up with something even remotely close to what happened to her, she just says "they're all a bunch of hypocrites". Yeah, THAT will get mom to come take you home from camp. Whatever. It does do a nice job of not having completely ridiculous situations or adults that are over-the-top. And we get a nice feel-good ending. In the end, not quite what I'd hoped for from the IMDB reviews. 4/10.

If I Stay

The wife really wanted to see this one and I had to pay penance for taking her to Gone Girl, LOL. Mia is a world-class cellist who falls in love with Adam, the lead singer of a local rock band that's about to go big. Mia and her entire family of impossibly cool parents and brother are in a car crash that leaves Mia fighting for her life. We then see her spirit running around the hospital reviewing her life while she tries to decide whether to live (and return to a horribly altered life) or die (and end her suffering). This movie is a mess. I thought the premise was stupid when I saw the previews and I was right. The script is a joke, ignoring the ages of the characters constantly (yeah, I'm sure the local bars are more than happy to have 16-year olds drinking without checking IDs), with faux angst and tension, and just...ugh. I get that I'm not the target demo for this movie but c'mon. This stunk. 3/10 - maybe.

Gone Girl

I really, really wanted to like this one. Heard great things about it, was intrigued by the story and......was let down. I'd heard all about this "shocking twist" but I saw it coming from pretty much the opening 5 minutes of the movie. In fact, it was so underwhelming that my wife & I actually sat there and discussed other options that would have been better twists. Felt there was never really tension and the ending disappointed greatly. When the credits started rolling, everyone in my theater was looking around and asking each other "That it's? It's really over?", expecting there to be more. We felt the same way. In the end, this was a mediocre effort that really should have been a lot better. 6/10.

Out of the Furnace

Christian Bale is the steel-plant-working older brother of Casey Affleck. Affleck is an Iraq War veteran struggling to find his way in post-war life. To make ends meet, he's fighting in bare knuckle underground fights. Woody Harrelson is a big deal in that scene. Affleck gets in over his head and Bale, after serving a stint for killing 2 people in a DUI, has to rescue him and get revenge. This is a movie that's dead-set on being gritty and it works in that regard. Unfortunately, there's not actually any tension. Coupled with a ridiculous ending, it just ends up not really working. 5/10.

The Frozen Ground

Nicolas Cage is a detective who locks onto the scent of a possible serial killer in Alaska. John Cusack - spoiler alert - is that serial killer. Vanessa Hudgens is the prostitute victim who got away and brings the whole thing to light. Cage, Cusack & Hudgens are all fine in their roles but the movies ends up being nothing special. There's not a lot of tension or drama. Instead it kind of just lurches forward from one example of Hudgens' character running away from safety to some other dangerous situation for no apparent reason. Speaking of Hudgens, it's pretty obvious she took this role to show how grown up she is. Look, she's a hooker who smokes, does drugs, and says the f-word a lot! This is all based on the real story of serial killer Robert Hansen. In the end, it's pretty good but never rises up. 6/10.

The Iceman

Michael Shannon is Richard Kuklinski, a contract killer for the mob - and husband/father. He earns the nickname "Iceman" by freezing his victims for up to 2 years before disposing of their body parts. Kuklinski starts out as a guy with a vicious streak who is then recruited to be a killer for the mob. His financial profile benefits, he lands Winona Ryder as a wife and eventually gets older and sloppy with his killings. Shannon is very good here as the stone-faced killer. Unfortunately, the movie doesn't really give us much in the way of background on Kuklinski - we learn he has a brother in prison and was beaten as a child but that's it - and starts with his first killing right away. Also, though based on a true story, the movie apparently has a questionable relationship with the truth. His real-life wife claims he beat her but the movie shows him as not abusive (other than one angry outburst). He claims 100+ murders and that's what the movie shows but his mob associates put it more like the 5 he actually got convicted. Whatever. This is a pretty good movie. 6/10.