While I enjoyed Dopesick, it seemed as if it didn’t know whether it wanted to be Succession, The Wolf of Wall Street, or Euphoria, so it took the most banal and surface-level aspects of each and threw it all in.

Michael Stuhlbarg, of course, was still brilliant.

Those mid-tier studios have to find the funding. That’s the point I think is getting lost here.

They aren’t putting up their money (for the most part). They’re putting up other peoples’ money, and those people expect a much larger return, or at the very least, a medium-sized return that’s guaranteed. This is why you…

Deuce Bigelow also came out during a time where the only way to see long-form comedies like that was at the movies.

Nowadays, you can get things similar to Deuce Bigelow (in terms of comedic content) on something as mundane as Youtube, let alone small studio fare on proper streaming services.

Put it this way: if you…

There’s so much engaging comedy that can be experienced in various levels of home comfort, and at your own time-leisure, that pure comedies in theaters will continually have it tough.

I think under late-stage capitalism media devolves in a polarised pair of high-low camps: you either get $500 million production that’s been engineered to the nth degree by myriad lawyers, focus groups, market researcher, brand managers, statisticians, accountants, actuaries, market forecasters, and, eventually, if…

To be fair, Zoolander was screwed not because it was bad (and would’ve done in line with other Ben Stiller comedies of the time), but because it dropped two weeks after 9/11. It still made money (and significantly more once it hit DVD), but I’m almost certain it would’ve gotten a sequel regardless (and it only took so…

There’s also the advance of technology.

A breezy, 90-minute comedy isn’t as big of a sale when you can sit on your own computer for that same 90-minutes and guarantee significantly more laughs for free. As much as I find elements of Reddit, TikTok, and Twitter absolutely loathsome, I’ve undoubtedly gotten more laughs…

The argument is that the expanded security checks after 9/11 and Richard Ried (the shoe bomber) don’t do much when it comes for stopping guns from getting through to an airplane. Why? Because guns were already being checked for, and your gun would get caught going through a metal detector or a scanner regardless of…

She has had two of his kids, so I’m sure she’ll be okay financially.

Yeah, I don’t get why Alien: Covenant is viewed so highly above Prometheus.

Prometheus was a beautiful mess, but at least it was memorable (and the cinematography was well above the quality in Covenant). The most memorable thing about Covenant are James Franco burning alive in the first 10 minutes, the black goo wiping…

Yeah, I don’t get why Alien: Covenant is viewed so highly above Prometheus.

Prometheus was a beautiful mess, but at least it was memorable (and the cinematography was well above the quality in Covenant). The most memorable thing about Covenant are James Franco burning alive in the first 10 minutes, the black goo wiping…

I’m a Beyonce fan, and while I don’t personally get the phenomenon of Taylor Swift, I can see a few reasons why Beyonce’s tour isn’t as big as Taylor’s.

Beyonce’s musical output has slowed down considerably in the last 10 years (only 3 albums, while Taylor in the same time period has released 7), and her height of…

Black Adam, cost $190 million, made $393 million.

Maximum age for politicians right away.

I’d push back a bit on it being a pop culture phenomenon, if that is taken to mean something grassroots.

It’s entirely manufactured by Warner Brothers. There’s ample evidence that they pit Barbie against Oppenheimer to spite Nolan for leaving them back in 2021. In fact, Oppenheimer’s release date was revealed back then…

Counterpoint: one of the biggest movies of the year is a biopic about a physicist and the morality and politics around his work. Art and profit are not an inverse relationship.

I think calling Cocaine Bear a bad movie is reductive, but I did find it tonally schizophrenic. The trailers marketed it as a horror comedy, but there are some weird dramatic turns throughout, and Isiah Whitlock gives what I can charitably call a “confused” performance. The pivot toward tepid family drama during the…

I think calling Cocaine Bear a bad movie is reductive, but I did find it tonally schizophrenic. The trailers marketed it as a horror comedy, but there are some weird dramatic turns throughout, and Isiah Whitlock gives what I can charitably call a “confused” performance. The pivot toward tepid family drama during the…

My inexpert observation is that there is a certain “mid tier” level of fame which lends itself to more tangible infatuation than megastars.

Nope.

Only 19 states and DC have recall petitions for elected officials, and North Carolina isn’t one of them. Even worse, there isn’t even a provision in the state Constitution that allows for the impeachment and removal of state legislators (only the governor, lieutenant governor, judges, and members of the Council…