Change Your Image
jonyen
Reviews
The Greatest Lie Ever Sold: George Floyd and the Rise of BLM (2022)
Insomnia cure and emetic rolled into one
There is a spate of right wing 'documentaries' being released since the American public decided they did not want a slow witted con artist and his rapacious family stealing all that wasnt concreted into the White House foundations. Inexpicable as this short lived climate of common sense was, it appears to have had the understandable outcome of a spate of MAGA tears that have been channelled into rasing money for dross like this.
Have you ever wanted to vomit because you were convinced it would make you feel better? Well, I turn to Candace Owens in these situations and in this case, she did not disappoint. Within seconds of hearing her unmistakable tones I was throwing my voice until I was all out, then dry heaving like I was having some sort of abdominal epileptic fit. She is without peer both execrable and mind numbingly tedious, as she tellls us how misguided and dangerous the BLM movement is. And while i may not agree with anything she has ever said ever, I found myself nodding in disagreement here.
There is little to say about this except it is compulsory viewing for the proud boy in all of us. So if you feel like a barf and a lie down, this is for you. It is thinly disguised racism (but how could it be, because Candace?? Trust me on this), on big ad for the neo right hate groups that are struggling for members and relevance and a almost 2 hour of pure MAGA lacrimal fluid. 3 stars.
The Real Anthony Fauci (2022)
How Pig Farmer Tony "beelzebub" Fauci is not as nice as he looks
These conspiratorial, unhinged, I'll have two extra downie ones Mike, directors are really something. They raise money from the dim believers and make a comedramocumentary that shows only that they have really gone off the rails. This conspiracy theory flick is based on the tired paranoia of the right and is so improbably stupid that even the braindead incels lining up to gie it 10/10 can't save it from the ceulluloid sewage farm that will inevitably recycle it into a biopic about MJT or a puff piece day in the life movie about Matt Gaetz.
The story: Bill Microsoft, tired of pushing his money around in his fleet of solid gold diamond encrusted wheelbarrows decides to infect the world with a killer virus with his evil buddy Fauci (pronounced Far -key) and the help of BIg Pharma, BIg Tech, Big Trans and Big Government. Lucky there is Big Conspiracy backed up by Big funding from the rich shadow donaters to the GOP. But enough, we're not size queens, lets cut to the chase: Is the real Anthony Fauci likely to win an Oscar? Not likely if BIg liberal Hollywood has anything to do with it. Like the sore losers hawking the big lies, you can be sure that anything but wholesale acceptance of this crock of crap will be blamed on BIG cancel culture, big jewry, the illuminati's secret hand signs and Soros Panda Express Hilary all your kids are belong to the liberal trans Europe express snip and tuck all your bits cos we coming to 'sition y'all humanity....and that means they will be saying they were robbed by Joe "where's my uppers, no not the teeth, the pills" Biden.. Whatevah, its just another grift.
2000 Mules (2022)
D'Plorable, D'lusional and D'ull
Its a review cliche on IMDB. Propaganda "documentaries" like this are rated on politics by liberals and conservatives, undermining the whole review system.
Yes, to most thinking people, the film's politics are distasteful, the whole premise dishonest and disingenuous and the absurdity of this mess akin to flogging an already dead horse.
But is it the worst documentary ever? Not by a long chalk, chum. So, I am being fair and giving it 3 stars. It was hard to watch, not because it is irritating to see D'Snooza oiling the wheels and putting grippy tape on this barrow so he can push it a bit further. This is dull, soporific, plodding fare and the people behind it deserve to be called out for laziness.
Its funny because the anti science, anti intellectual, antiquated MAGA mob deserve credit for inventing the universal argument loop hole. Whenever science, cognitive clarity, evidence or just plain commonsense derails their Qanon laced, whitebread, right wing conspiracy theories they just pull out the fake news/liberal mainstream media lies/yes but I saw on the internets/its all agin us card, and trump a thinking person .
200 dromedaries, isn't going to convince anyone, if that's its goal. If you're from the right I suggest get a box of tissues and check out some youtube clips of MTG. If you are a Democrat, find one of those excruciating doccos about transgender rights instead of this.
Life of Crime 1984-2020 (2021)
Victims of the war on the poor
I saw the earlier incarnations of this compelling documentary, a "41 up on dope" with a bit of Nick Bloomfield's schtick thrown in, a real life drama that I rate amongst the greatest of the doco form It's gripping, sad and frustrating as, purely from real life footage, we see a dope fuelled disaster unfold.
The sad thing is, I doubt we will ever see any thing like the wife slapping, neglected kids ortrue crime shoplifting again. We are too risk averse in film today. They didn't even have an advisory about scenes of cigarette smoking. Reckless! File it under what we used to get away with in film and see Tod Browning's Freaks.
The realism is pretty confronting at times whether it is Deliris working and selling while her kids hover around the stoop in their crowded Jersey flat or watching Freddy whack up or Robbie go into that heroin living dead coma nod state in a vacant block, it should be required viewing for every production team who ever made a reality TV show. Never has the word reality been interpreted with less integrity alongside this masterpiece.
And I haven't even finished my rant. Having watched the gang and knowing their outcomes, what is most infuriating is that almost all the harms suffered by the characters in Life can be traced back to the ideological, arbitrary war on drug, by the legacies of great states people like Richard Nixon. Without this war on the disadvantaged we would not have the drama and hand wringing about the plight of the addict, or the furrowed brow, oh what is to done? When having clean syringes or using a drug is not a crime or when theft for drug money is not penalised by peeing in a cup immediately there are hoards out of work, sure, the massive forensic prison enforcement industries for example, the gunsmiths and Kevlar makers and the abstinence rehabilitation sector staff...on the other hand rather than drug users in jail, dead or dying of blood borne viruses you have a few constpated heroin users on methadone.
And looking beneath the nexus of heroin and the legal system in the US you would almost think a health problem that kills people is being managed by ideology rather than evidence and clinicians. Of course that couldn't happen today, or we'd be making decisions about reducing Covid 19 based on the partisan politics of right and left, as if, no we've obviously advanced from what we were like in the last decades of the 20th century...come on, next we'll have ant vaccination campaigners drowning in their own phlegm or claiming vaccines cause magnetism, can you imagine?
My point is that every moment of this fine work is relevant today, and tells us so much about failed drug policy, corruption, human kindness and love, nodding off on some good gear ...and it is a timeless and timely gem for our times, and.... is that time the time? Gotta go...
So if you spend some time with these flawed, doomed but all round engaging fun lovin criminals I hope you wil pause to reflect on the mistakes we made and make with human lives. For its role in exemplifying real peoples tragedies and joy, without any judgement or barrow to push, this is good art that should sit beside Apted's Xx Up, where we must accept if not relish all the coke and smack and blood and disease and madness.
And as I always ask: "You holdin'?"
Sno Babies (2020)
Drug misinformation is alive & well
Apart from being immediately suspicious of how many 10/10s this got, the film is a shocker of a frankly laughable and bizarre Reefer Madness type hard sell. I wonder is there "peer advisor" or whoever provided the drug use practices reseach information was having a cruel joke on the production.
Having seen the odd drug user in my time: i can tell you this is just plain wrong in what it portrays as (for one) injecting behaviour. Its like they picked up all the myths, since debunked, about injecting drugs and decided they were real enough for this movie. But then most people who see this film will be the just say no brigade, so I guess as long as it paints injection opioids as a one way trip to hell, that justifies liberties with the truth.
A lie is a lie, but I give this 2/10 for the fact that it deals with an important topic, however badly.
Go see Drugstore Cowboy or, if you prefer the newer or more dramatic, see Souvenirs. Better still, find Pure S***...
Shifter (2020)
Time travel ain't always on your side
Before you make a time machine kids, check out this movie as a salutory lesson. And also, all l those budding directors whose movies are streaming during lockdown and who, for the most part, I want to strangle, check out what you can do for 30 large.
Maybe it was the uncontrollable (and surprisingly unannoying) compulsion of Nicole Fancher's character to speak in an "ootchy wootchy" cutesy voice whenever she saw a cat (or a picture of one) or the clever use of a non linear story line (is there any other one in time travel flicks?), but this was a Covid time indie movie that held my interest.
Great art direction, reasonable special effects, convincing performances and feel of growing fear and dread made this engaging throughout. Although much is revealed, there is not much explained in this film: who is this woman and why is she building a time travel device out of an old PC and a 44 gallon drum? And what happens to the cat? A great rhythm develops with enough human interaction to stop you feeling cold as a viewer. I see a great future for Nicole Fancher and writer/ director Jacob Leighton Burns: imagine what they could do if they actually had a budget that was more than most movies' "trendy chemical amusement aid flakes" spend.
If you like dark, clever, moody flicks check this out. You will learn, to paraphrase Fancher's character, why quantum physics is not a fun hobby, its a curse.
Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe (2016)
Wake up sheeple! The CDC is fooling us all! Set your pinkies to like!
Despite all the evidence of bull$hit, and absence of any credibility for this "expose", we are in the Facebook generation where all you have to say is "this is the movie they didn't want you to see" and type "autism" into Google and you have the qualifications for an informed IMDb review.
I admit it, I lied to you all. Me and all my cronies are in the pocket of the CDC, we are pro-vaccination, Wakefield haters and autism deniers with shares in big pharma. Also, I suspect I am part of the illuminati.
I suggest another idea for a documentary. It is based on dishonest science, conspiracy theories and after viewing it, you will support me in a public experiment that will cause death and disability to generations of innocent children. But I saw it on twitter and instant grams. Plus the CDC are incompetent, so the public must know the truth.
I give this 2 out of ten, because I was able to watch it all.
Finders Keepers (2015)
One foot in the grave
There seems to be a lot of documentaries made these days, and even some movies look like doccos. The premise of Finders Keepers is odd, but the tagline/blurb of this film tells little about what it is: a weird human interest/recovery story from NC/SC. Unlike a lot of documentaries based around simple folk, the makers really draw you into responding emotionally to the characters in this one, whether it be annoyance, revulsion or admiration.
Finders Keepers has the right mix of humour, TV/news footage and one on one face camera/narrative dialogue to tell an engaging story of the media, greed, missed opportunities and redemption. The documentary makers keep the necessary distance from the subjects to allow the story to unfold naturally.
It is worth watching and talking about afterwards, especially if you are interested in embalmed feet.
American Heist (2014)
Flawed action flick worth a look
American Heist isn't great but it will fill some cinema watching time without you feeling ripped off.
Set in New Orleans, Christensen plays the usual good-hearted boy in a relationship with a straight arrow gal but with a dark side, dealing with his ex-con brother (Brody). Think Affleck's character in The Town done a bit more superficially. Yep, the dynamic has been done to death and no surprises how it ends up, at least most way through the flick.
Brody has got himself mixed up with some hard crims with a cause (one of the odd twists in the film is the Robin Hoodesque demeanour of the head villain): revenge for the injustices perpetrated by banks, and make a lot of cash. The evil men at the centre of this are the impressive Akon (Sugar) and his friend in crime (Spoonie).
It becomes clear that Brody has got his bro' in too deep. At one point he justifies his following these dangerous gangsters, it seems, based on their helping him extract toothpaste from his keister (something only a true friend would do in the can, presumably).
For those that read the reviews with spoiler warnings, I won't give away the mildly clever twist at the end of a film that otherwise emplys the usual climax of automatic weapon gunplay.
Good dialogue, good use of a 10 million dollar budget and moderately satisfying overall. Don't expect too much and you'll have a good time with American Heist.
Final Girl (2015)
Poorly executed and pretentious
With stark sets, night shooting, hallucinations and ultra low key soundtrack, Final Girl looks an indie flick with aspirations. Unfortunately it is dull and a toss.
We find hot, high kicking Breslin and poker faced and creepily horny Wes Bentley (Hunger Games) carry most of this movie with the usual training master-student relationship until the inevitable and predictable denouement.
I was disappointed so much was wasted in the pay-off revenge scene: instead of Breslin using her creative mad ambush and killing skills, the climax is a series of silly hallucinatory vignettes courtesy of a DMT Mickey Finn she slips the bad guys.
No one is likable in this mishmash, no good reasons for motives demonstrated. The killing comes far too late in the film and nothing surprises.
What you are left with is a wannabe David Lynch joint, which left me saying why, oh why?