The Review: The Wonder Years (2021)

The Wonder Years 8/10

This was a funny ass series. When I first heard that this was going to be a thing I shit all over it because I'm a dick. I thought they were just gonna remake the show but after watching just the first episode I realized that while it takes place in the same time period as the original Wonder Years it could be a completely different series when seen through the eyes of a Black family in the same era. I laughed my ass off when the star Dean milked the death of MLK to do less work in school. The thing I enjoy more about this than the original is that I actually cared about everyone in the family and they all had their own story going. Maybe the OG show did but I don't remember them or care. The father was a musician. The mom had a job we actually got to see her at while running the home. The sister was going through wanting to be a teen and a revolutionary. Dean had friends and a girl he had a crush on and I noticed that he had more friends than Kevin in the original. He also seemed to be more involved in what was happening. His brother was fighting in Vietnam and he would compare himself to him as from what we have been told he was just good at everything and everyone liked him. Dean is not close to perfect and reminds me way too much of myself at times which is why I cringed so much while watching. This is on Hulu and only eight episodes which you could watch in a day but I watched it every week as it came out and got bummed when I realized it was finished. I look forward to another season.

Elisha "EJ" Williams as Dean Williams

Don Cheadle narrates as an older Dean

Dulé Hill as Bill Williams

Saycon Sengbloh as Lillian Williams

Laura Kariuki as Kim Williams

Amari O'Neil as Cory Long

Julian Lerner as Brad Hitman

Milan Ray as Keisa Clemmons

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The Review: Soul Food (1997)

Soul Food 5/10

I saw Soul Food a few days ago and have sat on reviewing it and talking to folk about it and dropped it a point since then. Why? Because this movie has a terrible message which is: if they are family you should forgive them no matter what. This movie has everything. Sunday dinners. Divorce. Cheating. Arguing. Guns. Greens. A horny pastor. Diabetes. Its like the recipe for a Black film. And its long and I definitely felt it at times, usually when there was music playing. This is told through a boy named Ahmad. His mother is Maxine who started dating and married a dude that her older sister Teri liked. Teri is still mad about it all these years later and after being married multiple times since then. The youngest sister Bird just married a felon named Lem who dances with this woman at the wedding and she is rubbing her booty all over his dickbone. It was so disrespectful.

The Review: The Harder They Fall

The Harder The Fall 10/10

This gonna have spoilers. I fucking loved this movie. Just everything about it. I have no complaints. Even things I would normally complain about in films and TV that The Harder They Fall did managed to work. I tend to cringe when modern movie is used in movies about the past but for whatever reason in this it made it better like some kind of damn magic trick. I knew that this was coming out and some of the cast got me excited but I didn't watch a trailer thankfully because I did afterward and they showed way too much cool shit.

The Review: Red Notice

Red Notice 1/10

I don't know how I feel about Red Notice. I mean, I know I didn't like it. It was bad. But I don't know how I feel about being able to wrangle Deadpool, Wonder Woman, and Black Adam into a movie and finding a way to make it bad. This is about a dude and a cop trying to catch a thief and then another thief getting involved and then it turns out the thief and the dude are working together while the cop tries to catch all of them. The movie looks good. That's about all I can say and why I didn't give this a zero. The story wasn't good. Reynolds is Reynolds and while I like Reynolds I don't think he needed to do this movie. The Rock is The Rock and acts like The Rock anytime you've seen him. Gadot can't act. I have seen her in eleven movies now and feel comfortable with saying this and not sounding like a dick. Maybe this would have been good with three unknown actors and actresses. That lady that made me dislike the second season of Umbrella Academy was in this too. That didn't help.

Dwayne Johnson as John Hartley

Ryan Reynolds as Nolan Booth

Gal Gadot as Sarah Black 

Chris Diamantopoulos as Sotto Voce

Ritu Arya as Urvashi Das

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The Review: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings 9/10

Full of all the spoilers. Holy shit I wish I could've seen this in theaters! This is the type of film my ass would have been in the theater the first week at a matinee with a bucket of popcorn and a soda. But no. We still in a damn pandemic and I'm not trying to sit in a theater with a bunch of other weirdos and pulling a mask down and sitting with the public like that. I mean, I did see that classic film months ago but this isn't about me being a hypocrite. Shang-Chi made me so happy about the upcoming MCU film because Captain Marvel and Black Widow stank so I was getting concerned. This movie fixed that by introducing a cool ass new hero that has a personality and fucking awesome looking powers but a villain that was crazy but also cool and had focus. I might watch this again while I'm writing.

The Review: Doom Patrol Season 3

Doom Patrol Season Three 1/10

This season was terrible. I loved the first season and the second was riddled with issues. I started watching this and this huge arc from the first season was wrapped up in the first two minutes of this season. I thought it was a dream or illusion but, no, it was real and stupid. I remember when this series had interesting villains and other characters that would randomly pop up. When things would get weird they weren't cool or funny weird. Its like the show was suddenly being done by folks who had heard what the show was like and then they got to make it. This one had uninteresting villains and any extra person that appeared was dull. I seriously straight up could not give a damn about anyone this season.

The Review: Ghosts (BBC)

Ghosts (BBC) 9/10

This series is awesome. L. and I saw this pop up on HBO Max and decided to check it out and immediately enjoyed it. We also found out that there is a new United States version that she started checking out but I will wait because I don't wanna watch a remake so close to the original especially when I liked the original so much. This is about a newly married couple named Alison and Mike. After a distant relative of hers passes away she discovers that she inherits Button House which is this big ass mansion. The problem is that the place is filthy with ghosts that passed away there over the years and never moved on. Even the distant relative moved on immediately which upset some of the ghosts that seem stuck there. The ghosts like having the house to themselves so when Alison and Mike move in they are pissed.

The Review: Peppermint

Peppermint 1/10

Years ago when I first heard about this movie I talked mad shit about how bad the movie poster looked (click here for that). I watched this movie in two parts because I couldn't imagine sitting through this nonsense straight through. This lady gets revenge after her husband and daughter are killed by a cartel. She gets shot too but survives. Why they shoot her family? Cause her husband agreed to do a heist then changed his mind but the bad guys found out it was going to happen. The cops find out that she stole some money and traveled the world doing fucking MMA and stealing guns. So she lives on Skid Row which is now safe cause she kill folks that fuck with the homeless. The rest of this movie is dirty cops, drug dealers, and a bunch of Latino dudes getting their faces blown off. This woman gains the ability to teleport eventually. Seriously. Like, she shoots the main bad guy right in the face with dozens of cops watching who immediately open fire on her and hit her. Moments later she vanished. They find her at her family's tombstone and she dies. Then she is wakes in the hospital where the main cop gives her a key to her handcuffs and she vanishes from the hospital that is filthy with police. With such a heavy plot this movie shouldn't have been as cartoonishly ridiculous. This movie was ass.

Jennifer Garner as Riley North

John Ortiz as Detective Moises Beltran

John Gallagher Jr. as Detective Stan Carmichael

Juan Pablo Raba as Diego Garcia

Annie Ilonzeh as FBI Agent Lisa Inman

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The Review: Dune

Dune ???/10

A couple of weeks ago I watched Dune on HBO Max. I have not read the books. I have not watched the previous films though I did know they existed. I also knew there were giant worms in the sand. What do I know after watching? The worms are bigger than I thought. I honestly don't know what to even say about this movie. It wasn't bad at all. The sound was cool. The movie looked cool. I just don't know what the fuck I watched. There is this young dude that has a special power that is a legend and he is gonna save folk. There is space politics. People that bath in juices. Water is valuable. I know I sound dumb and that is because I sat here for a couple hours and just said “What happened?” I also didn't know that this was half a story. Just when things were revving up there were credits. That didn't help. So yeah. Folks who know this story loved it. So there's that.

Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides

Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica

Oscar Isaac as Duke Leto Atreides

Josh Brolin as Gurney Halleck

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The Review: Only Murders In The Building

Only Murders In The Building 10/10

I absolutely loved watching this show. Only Murders In The Building was one of those series that I had sorta heard of but didn't say that I would even check it out. Then one day L. and I started and got hooked. I think there were already about three episodes out at the time and we blasted through them. This is about an actor named Charles-Haden Savage, a struggling director named Oliver Putnam, and a young woman named Mabel Mora who find out that they have an obsession with a murder podcast on the same night a murder takes place in the building. It turns out that Mabel once knew the guy who was killed and they start a podcast and investigation into who did it. Until the very last episode we were trying to guess who was the murderer and when we did I didn't feel like an idiot for wasting my time. Some shows and movies will answer the question and you never could have guessed not because you aren't bright but because of bad writing. I loved everything about this show. The acting, the music, the look, all the characters that came and went. This was a perfect show. Zero complaints or issues with it. Check it out on Hulu.

Steve Martin as Charles-Haden Savage

Martin Short as Oliver Putnam

Selena Gomez as Mabel Mora

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