This is a brief but reasonably compelling and entertaining documentary about a UBI experiment in Kenya by the charity GiveDirectly. Full disclosure: I have complete drunk the Universal Basic Income Kool-Aid so I am not going to be the most critical reviewer of anything about UBI. You have been warned.
Author: rnhaas
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (2022, Aitch Alberto)
This is a coming of age drama about two teenage boys in El Paso in the late 1980s. Jenn and I were not warned it was based on a YA novel and so we did not know what we were getting into. (To clarify: we knew it was based on a novel, we just didn’t …
R.M.N. (2022, Cristian Mungiu)
This is a film that analyzes xenophobia in a small, multiethnic town in Transylvania in Romania. “R.M.N.” is apparently the Romanian acronym for MRI, so I guess Mungiu views this as an MRI of xenophobia is his native country. (Also, a character does get an MRI and MRI images play a role.)
Emily (2022, Frances O’Connor)
I normally hate when biopics deviate wildly from the historical record but, in this case, it really doesn’t bother me as much. And I think that’s because the director essentially admitted it was all made up in her introduction. I have more time for these historical inaccuracies if only because I know it’s fantasy. Mild …
Economism: Bad Economics and the Rise of Inequality (2017) by James Kwak
I agree with a lot of the author says but I’m not sure I like the way he says it. In fact, this feels a little bit like a book I would write, albeit with better sources – a rant about the spread of an idea from someone who is does not have a background …
They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead (2018, Morgan Neville)
This is a super arty, slightly hagiographic documentary about The Other Side of the Wind, a film Orson Welles never released but apparently completed. If I knew, I had forgotten that the film was released with this documentary. (I have not yet watched the movie.)
Children of Men (1992) by P.D. James
I have seen Children of Men at least twice and am a pretty big fan. So I have no idea if what I am going to say about this book is fair or whether it just comes from having seen the movie (twice) before reading the book. Additionally, the book came out in a different …
Star Force: Fugitive Alien II (1987, Minoru Kanaya, Kiyosumi Kuzakawa)
No, I have not seen the first Fugitive Alien.
Death on the Nile (2022, Kenneth Branagh)
This is a bloated, basically humourless, and simply ridiculous version of Death on the Nile that makes the campy 1978 version look pretty great. I remember, when I saw Hamlet in theatres over two decades ago, an audience member loudly complained about Branagh’s ego in the intermission. I thought, “But it’s Hamlet. He is the …
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022, Sam Raimi)
Can you tell me why some characters in other universes are played by the same actors and others aren’t? In this film Dr. Strange is always the same actor but in other films of the MCU Spider-Man is played by different actors. Jenn suggested it was British cast who stayed the same and American cast …
Starcrash (1978, Luigi Cozzi)
Usually, I’m pretty good about rating a film I’ve watched through Mystery Science Theater 3000. But, apparently, not in this instance. As this film as starting, I got a massive sense of deja vu and so I went to its Wikipedia page and saw that I had indeed already watched it (or most of it) …
Battle Beyond the Stars (1980, Jimmy T. Murakami, Roger Corman)
If you’re looking for a Roger Corman Star Wars ripoff starring Johnboy Walton, with effects by James Cameron and a story by John Sayles…well, you’ve found it.
Viy aka Forbidden Empire aka Forbidden Kingdom (2014, Oleg Stepchenko)
This is a bizarre Russian horror film starring an English actor (and so dubbed into English, at least on streaming services) that was made in 3D, so it looks extra bizarre on your TV. It is bizarrely listed as “Fantasy” on IMDB and, hence, on streaming services, but it’s horror (ish). I actually saw a …
Norm Macdonald: Hitler’s Dog, Gossip and Trickery (2017, Liz Plonka)
This is a pretty amusing but otherwise very standard standup special from someone who has long been one of my favourite standup comedians. (If I can be said to have favourites because I’m definitely a sketch comedy person.)
The Island (2005, Michael Bay)
For some reason, I had rated this movie on IMDB without ever having seen it. I’m not sure why I did that but for some reason I did. Because not only have I never seen it, I had no idea what it was about. MILD SPOILERS
South Park 25th Anniversary Concert
South Park premiered just before my 16th birthday. Though it took me a little while to watch it, I was at the very right age for it. I was still 16 when BASEketball came out and I was only 17 when Bigger, Longer & Uncut premiered. I was only 23 when Team America was released. …
Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist (2022, Ryan Duffy, Tony Vainuku)
All I remember of Manti Te’o was that his girlfriend didn’t exist and he was probably involved somehow. Watching this, that makes me sad. I feel so bad for this man, not just for what this other person did to him, but because of what we as a society did to him, for seemingly no …
Wilco Live at Budweiser Stage Thursday August 18, 2022
I last saw Wilco in 2009 and it was the best show I’ve ever seen. Apparently I didn’t blog about it but they absolutely blew me away. Some of this was my expectations: I don’t know if I’d listened to or watched any of their live stuff yet but, if I had, I still wasn’t …
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (2010) by Siddhartha Mukherjee
This is a far-reaching, thorough but page-turning history of cancer. It is a remarkably readable book and I have trouble imagining that I will read another history of cancer, at least for some time, simply because this one was so readable it’s hard to imagine another book about the same subject would be this “easy” …
Penny Dreadful (2014)
This is a slightly campy (but somehow very serious) British horror fantasy show with the rather old, but somehow not tired conceit of a bunch of characters from famous 19th century history novels exist in the same universe. (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen of horror, basically.) It’s a show that sometimes works well for what it …
The Up Documentaries (1964, 1970, 1977, 1984, 1991, 1998, 2005, 2012, 2019)
When I first was trying to figure out how I would sum this up, I said “probably the most ambitious documentary project ever.” I should have said “in English” as this idea was actually not invented by this series. Rather, the Germans beat the British to it by a few years. Due to typical Anglo …
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (1987)
So, first off, this is not the “complete stories” so that is a mark against this collection. There are both early stories and some later (I believe unpublished) stories that are in this. Still, it collects its most famous stories and a bunch of others.
Homestar Runner Original Soundtrack (2020)
The three-volume soundtrack to Homestar Runner is even more “fans only” than Strong Bad Sings. So I’m probably being too kind to it as stand-alone music, but I can’t help but enjoy it.
Spiderhead (2022, Joseph Kosinski)
I love George Saunders. I’ve only read one collection and one other story, but I’ve loved everything I’ve read. (This reminds me, I really should read his more recent collections.) But I’ve never read this story. So I can’t comment on how true this movie is to the story. [Editor’s Note: I have since read …
Riley Goes to Detroit to See Billy Joel Live at Comerica Park, July 9, 2022
You may be wondering, why did I see Billy Joel? I have made my feelings about him pretty clear. But Jenn really likes Billy Joel, so we went to see Billy Joel in Detroit. I had only ever gotten lost in Detroit and Dearborn many years ago, and I’d never actually been there.
Strong Bad Sings and Other Type Hits (2003)
I was deep in my Homestar Runner obsession when this came out and yet I don’t think I ever managed to listen to it. It’s been forever, and I pay way less attention now, but I still have a strong nostalgia for when I first discovered it, and a nostalgia for everything about it.
The Crawling Eye aka The Trollenberg Terror (1958, Quentin Lawrence)
This is a pretty lame science fiction horror film with pretty bad effects and fairly cliche performances. However, um, it could have been worse. Um, SPOILERS
The White Pass: Gateway to the Klondike
This is a readable and well-researched history of the building of the White Pass & Yukon Railway. As far as I know, this is Minter’s only book and it’s clearly a passion project. But it’s also the work of a non-professional. As such, it’s better than it should be but it’s also not necessarily a …
Yojimbo (1961, Akira Kurosawa)
I have seen A Fistful of Dollars, the American remake of this film, many times and I’ve seen Last Man Standing, the remake of A Fistful of Dollars, at least once. I’ve meant to see this movie ever since I discovered A Fistful of Dollars but somehow it took over two decades for me to …
The Chicks Live at Budweiser Stage, Friday June 24, 2022
We moved during the pandemic. And, because it was the pandemic, for a while, it didn’t really hit home how far east we moved. But, you guys, let me tell you, when you have to go to Ontario Place for a concert and you live in the east end, it’s far. It’s so far we …