H. Seitz
August 7, 2018
Movies and Television, Reviews
Death Star, Disney, Ewoks, Lando Calrissian, Lucasfilms, Man of Steel, Return of the Jedi, Star Wars, Starkiller, Superman, The Force Awakens
Star Wars: Return of the Jedi Rated PG Return of the Jedi is a symbolic exploration of the difficulties involved in expediting the elusive female orgasm. This theme has been taken up by more recent films such as Man of Steel and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and was touched upon by the original Star Wars film released in 1977, but nowhere is it as explicit as in Return of The Jedi. The Death Star, like the Empire, is barren and sterile. All is male, grey, and English. Cloaked within this cynicism is the somehow subtle manifestation of death as a feminine sphere, hinting that within death lays the potential for new life. This is most obviously, and prudishly, illustrated by The Force Awakens, in which the destruction of Starkiller Base (aka The Death Star 2.0) culminates with its rebirth as a star. Likewise in Man of Steel, when the…
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H. Seitz
July 31, 2018
Movies and Television, Reviews
Bobcat Goldthwait, Kim Cattrall, Michael Winslow, Police Academy, Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country, Steve Guttenberg
Police Academy Rated R Police Academy is “problematic” because in the 80s, people weren’t as culturally woke as we are today. One almost gets the feeling that it was meant to be crude and offensive. We start with the destruction of a photomat. For you millennials who don’t know what a photomat is, it’s a place we used to have to go to pick up our selfies. In the 80s, cameras weren’t just an app, they were an actual device, and they used “film.” After exposing the “film” to light, it would capture images. We would take this “film” to the photomat, and they would turn it into selfies. In a way, this scene foreshadows the destruction of old institutions as society progresses. Like most of our detritus, the remains of the photomat are dumped into the ocean, signaling our continuing scorn for the environment. The archetypes are simplistic and…
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H. Seitz
July 23, 2018
Movies and Television, Reviews
Empty Nest, Gone Girl, Kristy McNichol, Paul Winfield, White Dog
White Dog Rated PG ********SPOILERS AHEAD******** Originally released in 1982 but suppressed in America over concerns it was racist, White Dog, like Gone Girl, is basically a Lifetime movie come to the big screen. It started to gain a cult following in the early 2000s after insomniacs who saw it on TV at 3:00 a.m. just had to tell their friends about it. Most of them swore they’d seen it on Lifetime, some even thought it was a Lifetime movie. Eventually, White Dog was reinterpreted as “misunderstood,” rather than “campy” or “insane,” and released as a Criterion Collection DVD in 2008. White Dog is about a racist white German shepherd who attacks black people. These attacks are as brutal as they are hilarious, and they are brutally hilarious. Laughing will make you feel like a racist, but you won’t be able to help laughing. Kristy McNichol (Empty Nest) plays an…
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H. Seitz
July 17, 2018
Movies and Television, Reviews
Alyssa Milano, Charmed, Chewbacca, Clash of the Titans, Ivan Drago, Rocky Balboa, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Stygian witches, Thanos
Charmed 2018 TV-MA Imagine the original Charmed minus the hot women and exposed midriffs and voila: you have Charmed, a reboot so uninspired it doesn’t even have a colon followed by a description like Charmed: We’re Out of Ideas or Charmed: That Show Your Ex-Girlfriend Used to Make You Watch. They made one of the witches a lesbian activist this time because nowadays, everyone is a lesbian. Thanos is a lesbian, Chewbacca is a lesbian, even Rocky Balboa is somehow a lesbian (Ivan Drago was always a lesbian). If you don’t have bare midriffs or Alyssa Milano, you have to have lesbians so they can make out with each other. And in 2018, forcing young girls to make out on camera is considered to be empoweringly titillating, rather than exploitative. Watching Charmed, I became nostalgic for the blind Stygian witches in Clash of the Titans and the three batty witches…
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H. Seitz
July 12, 2018
Movies and Television, Reviews
Blossom, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, Star Wars, The Big Bang Theory
The Big Bang Theory Rated TV-MA Full disclosure: I’ve never actually seen The Big Bang Theory, but I already know that I hate it. How do I know? To start, the commercials do an excellent job of showing the viewer exactly what to expect, which is crap. Pure, unmitigated crap. This show has a laugh track. I’ll bet that when people kiss, the laugh track goes “ooooooo!” The TV-MA rating is another dead giveaway. Kaley Cuoco and the other blond chick aren’t getting naked and making out with a TV-MA, which leaves hetero males and lesbians exactly zero reasons to watch. Lastly, the people who actually like this show are reprehensible. No offense, but you’re honestly some of the worst people on earth. You’re the reason suicide bombers want to blow us up. How you can willingly choose to watch this crap episode after episode, year after year, when a…
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H. Seitz
July 10, 2018
Movies and Television, Reviews
Bones, Charmed, David Boreanaz, Emily Deschanel, The Closer, TNT, Zooey Deschanel
Bones TV-MA Bones is the kind of show you leave on in the background while vacuuming. It will live on in syndication forever because housewives and the unemployed need something to distract themselves from the sad state of affairs they call existence. Instead of getting drunk or looking for a job, they can just turn on TNT and phase out until suppertime. And then get drunk. I made it through season one of Bones and I still have no idea what it’s about. Like Charmed, The Closer, and most TNT fare, Bones is hypnotic in its banality. Even when they’re doing something that should be interesting, like discovering a corpse or chasing down a bad guy, it’s bland. I keep expecting one of them to ask me to switch to Splenda or try H&R Block’s accounting software. David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel have all the chemistry of an ant…
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H. Seitz
July 3, 2018
Movies and Television, Reviews
Al Bundy, Disney, Ed O'Neil, Gloria Delgado, Leave It To Beaver, Married With Children, Modern Family, Sophia Vergara, Spiderman, Walt Disney
Modern Family TV-PG At first glance, Modern Family appears to be progressive despite its standard archetypes. We have the goofy dad, the two hot moms, a hot 18-year-old girl pretending to be 14, and two guys living together. Gloria Delgado (the feisty latina hot mom) is played by Sofia Vergara, age 45. Her husband is played by Ed O’Neil, age 72, most famous for his role as Al Bundy on Married… with Children. This time around, he plays the exact same character, except old and rich. It’s like Al Bundy won the lottery, dumped Peg, and married a trophy wife. The other hot mom is also a housewife, and so is one of the gays. So we have a sitcom about three “modern” families. All three of them are led by rich white patriarchs, all three of them have wives that don’t work, and all three of the husbands have…
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H. Seitz
June 27, 2018
Movies and Television
Fonzie, Happy Days, Jackie Chan, Katie Holmes, Lena Dunham, Matt Damon, Mr. Cunningham, Mrs. Cunningham, Rosie O'Donnell, The Fonze, Todd Bridges
Happy Days: The Awakening Rated TV-MA For the love of God, another reboot. But let’s put that aside for a moment. I consider myself to be a “woke” individual. I’m an alcoholic who shoots speedballs and frequently cries in front of prostitutes and I refuse to judge myself (or let anyone judge me) for any of it. But Lena Dunham’s Happy Days is beyond temporally biased. It isn’t even insane as much as it’s totally incoherent. The Fonze is played by Rosie O’Donnell. And that’s about the only thing I’m sure about. As far as who anyone else is supposed to be, it’s anyone’s guess. Maybe it’s my unacknowledged biases coming through, but I’d assumed that Jackie Chan was playing Arnold. But apparently, he’s supposed to be Potsie? Or maybe Mrs. Cunningham? One minute he’s talking to Todd Bridges about picking up chicks, the next he’s wearing an apron and…
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H. Seitz
June 19, 2018
Default, Movies and Television, Reviews
Alex P. Keaton, American History X, Edward Norton, Emma Watson, Family Ties, Gabrielle Union, Jeff Goldblum, Justine Bateman, Meredith Baxter-Birney, Michael Gross, Michael J. Fox, Tina Youthers, Willem Dafoe
When I first heard about this, I thought “great, another fucking reboot.” Is Hollywood really this creatively bankrupt? (Yes.) With The Transformers reboot, at least there was the chance that today’s technology could give us a paradigm-shifting experience (and it did! Seven times!). And reboots of 90s classics like Sabrina the Teenage Witch just make sense. Who wouldn’t want to watch a cat puppet talk to a girl we’re not sure how to feel about wanting to hump? But Family Ties? Really? The only reason it worked in the first place was the spank-bankability of Meredith Baxter-Birney. Without the sexual tension between her and Michael J. Fox, what’s the point? I’m happy to report that I was wrong. Dead wrong. Family Ties: The Ties That Bind melds all of the classic archetypes of the original with today’s dystopian angst. We still have the liberal dad (Jeff Goldblum), the hot mom…
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RK Galaga
May 16, 2018
Movies and Television, Reviews
A New Hope, Alden Ehrenreich, American Graffiti, Beanie Babies, Bespin, Billy Hoyle, Capt. Kirk, Chewbacca, Chewie, Chris Pine, Chris Pratt, Clint Eastwood, Cloud City, Coen Brothers, Donald Glover, Ethan Coen, George Lucas, Hail Caesar!, Han Solo, Harrison Ford, Henry Fonda, Jabba the Hutt, James Stewart, Jawas, JJ Abrams, Joel Coen, John Wayne, Lando Calrissian, Millennium Falcon, Paul Le Mat, Ponda Baba, Repo Man, Richard Dreyfus, Robot Chicken, Ron Howard, Shia LaBeouf, Sidney Deane, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Star Wars, Storm Troopers, Walrus Man, White Men Can't Jump, Woody Harrelson
Solo: A Star Wars Story is the movie everyone was asking for but nobody really wanted. And why wouldn’t a Star Wars fan want a Han Solo origin story? Because they know what to expect from Disney’s desperate pandering. Focusing on the western film genre influences in Star Wars, Solo casts Alden Ehrenreich in the title role. This is undoubtedly due to his previous role as a goofy cowboy who can’t act in the Coen brothers film Hail, Caesar! Fan reactions to this choice were mostly negative. In discussions of who would have been better, many names are thrown around, including Chris Pratt (too obvious), Chris Pine (Capt. Kirk, really?), and Shia LaBeouf (seems like they weren’t even trying). In my opinion, all of those guys would have sucked, too. Clint Eastwood was the best cowboy of all time and therefore would have made the best young Han Solo. James Stewart’s…
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