Curtain Call: Tommy

Tommy 7/10

What a strange ass play. Cam took me to go see Tommy at the Pantages Theater. As many people know from reading any of my reviews where I see a play at Pantages I'm going to complain about the sound. The only time the sound was great was the performances of that play The Six. Other than that I am going to struggle to listen for words. I recently just wrote about seeing Phantom of the Opera a few months ago and they had captioning and that was incredible. While this play did not even have a lot of talking at the beginning once people started singing (other than one person who we could hear fine) I was trying my best to understand what was being said. I have heard songs from this movie before so I was able to piece together what I couldn't understand from watching the show. So this soldier and this lady fall in love. The wife is still pregnant when the husband goes to war. The father ends up dying in the plane crash and she meets another guy. I'm trying not to mix this up with the part of the movie I just watched recently and have not finished because they are very different. So it turns out that the father survived and he comes home and starts fighting with the new dude and ends up killing him. Tommy sees this and the mother and father start telling Tommy that he didn't hear anything and that he didn't see anything and he can't say anything.

Curtain Call: Phantom Of The Opera

Phantom Of The Opera 9/10

I forgot to write about this. Last August Cam took me to see Phantom Of The Opera at The Pantages. This was my second time seeing this show and while not as awesome as the first time it was still really good. The had captioning! Oh, my god. Every theater needs to have this but the Pantages in particular. This theater has a sound system that is so bad it makes me feel bad for the performers. Being able to read what was being said and sung made me look at this story in a very different way. Already looking forward to seeing it the next time its out here.

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The Review: Carrie

Carrie 10/10

If you can't tell by the score I gave this series I thoroughly enjoyed it. I have seen two previous Carrie films and read the book years ago but that's doesn't really matter because this show took the basic premise, put it in modern times, and still managed to make this thoroughly entertaining. It changed the same way Interview With The Vampire was, keeping core plots but different it enough to be original. There were so many times while watching this with my lady that I realize how much worse some of the things that Carrie was put through were made super bad because everyone carries a camera in their pocket. Like, even if you have never seen or read Carrie you know about the shower scene. Now imagine that shower scene where over a dozen girls are filming it happen. So yeah. It's pretty damn bad. This is going to be full of spoilers by the way.

The Review: Backrooms

Backrooms 0/10

This is one of those types of films that I absolutely cannot stand. Sometimes it feels like someone has access to do something and they do it and I get absolutely no joy from it. But for whatever reason millions of people seem to love it. I wish I was one of them. This movie was straight up stupid to me. Me and my lady were watching this and she kept calling it Backshots and I laughed every single time. We started watching and we had pretty much no reaction to it except for a jump scare in the beginning. The rest of what we were able to watch was like how most suspense and horror films are done these days with an unlikable cast. We have this guy named Clark that we don't care about and his therapist named Mary that I had zero interest in. Clark owns a crappy furniture store. He keeps complaining about a high electricity bill and issues with lights. He's also an alcoholic and angry. Those two tend to go hand in hand.

The Review: Lanterns

Lanterns 10/10

Spoilers. I had absolutely no interest in watching the series. I am not a big Green Lantern fan and one of the stars of this has a face that bothered me but now I am used to him. This is the story of how Jordan training John Stewart on becoming a Green Lantern. Green Lanterns normally do not have trainees and Hal knows that at some point this guy is supposed to replace him and does not want that to happen. He barely even trains him and when he does it's dangerous. Like jumping out of a moving vehicle and leaving John the ring to figure out how to survive type of dangerous.

The Review: Cape Fear

Cape Fear 6/10

Spoiler city! It is hard to review this series considering how I felt about the ending. I have seen both versions of Cape Fear in film form and was very interested in seeing this series. Now out of ten episodes I can confidently say that I enjoyed about eight of them. My lady ended up tapping out in episode nine and as I watched the finale I laughed knowing that she was right about what was going to happen and that she would have been very pissed off watching this. This is about a defense attorney named Anna. She's part of this projects that helps free wrongfully convicted criminals. Her husband is named Tom. Tom was the actual prosecutor during this guy named Max Cady trial. Anna was his defense lawyer. As you can see this already seems shady. Max ends up getting released and for some reason we don't know yet Anna seems very upset about this.

Sitting In The Aisle: Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother 11/10

Spoilers!!! It has been very hot. One place that is not hot is a movie theater so Cam decided to take me to go see this movie. I had seen the trailer for it and it seemed to be a sort of Black John Wick style action film. That is not what this is and I really wish that the trailer could somehow show more of this movie but not at the same time. This was an incredible film. I hate that it has a limited release and is not playing in a lot of theaters because I really do see this movie being far more popular than it currently is.

Curtain Call: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom 10/10

A few weeks ago me, my lady, Cam, and her friend all went to see this show at A Noise Within in Pasadena. I have been to this place a few times now and I think it may be one of my favorite places to watch a live show. They have plenty of parking that is free and the seats are comfortable. The seats have to be comfortable considering August Wilson shows are very long. I have counted and so far have seen five out of the ten of these stories (Pittsburgh Cycle). We plan to see another one next year. Now, I know that there is a movie based off of this play but I have not seen it. So going in I did not know what to expect. I thought that there would be a spooky element considering there has been and all of the other August Wilson plays that I have seen but there was not. I also thought that Ma Rainey would actually be in the show a lot more than she was. This is not a complaint just the fact that I did not know anything about this including the fact that Ma Rainey was a real person.

The Review: Is God Is

Is God Is 9/10

A few weeks ago L and I watched this movie called Is God Is. This is one of the movies I wanted to watch when it was in theaters but never got around to it. This is about these twin sisters named Racine and Anaia. One of them gets called ugly when they're children and the other sister gets up and just starts beating the hell out of these kids. We fast forward to them as adults and they get a letter from their mother. They thought their mother had died in the fire when they were little which is why each of them have burns on their faces, arms, and back. They go and meet their mother who they call God and she lets them know that they need to go and kill their father who did this to them. Anaia is the more squeamish of the two of them and has no idea how they are going to try and kill someone. Their mother reveals that injuries to her body which we don't see but it is enough to convince them that, yeah, they need to kill their father.

The Review: Practical Magic

Practical Magic 8/10

A couple of weeks ago L and I watched this crazy movie called Practical Magic. I had heard of this film but did not know who was in it or what it was about. In the late '90s so I knew it was going to be weird. This starts off with a witch being hung named Maria Owens. She ends up surviving when the rope snaps after she steps off and all the towns people take off running. The father of her baby ends up dying and she makes a spell to keep herself from ever falling in love. Over time this jacked up spell ends up becoming a curse and now any man who falls in love with her descendants will die after this crazy little beetle starts chirping. We fast forward to these two sisters named Sally and Gillian and one day their mother hears the bug and their dad ends up dying. I forget how the mom dies actually. So they move in with their two crazy aunts named Francis and Jet. These two odd ladies are all about magic and letting the kids enjoy themselves while also dealing with everyone in town who thinks that they are witches and talks trash to the little girls.

Documentality: Death Of A Pastor's Wife

Death Of A Pastor's Wife 8/10

So me and my lady watch this insane documentary called Death Of A Pastor's Wife on Netflix. I was trying to figure out how I was going to even write this because it's hard to talk about it without inserting my own thoughts. This is about a lady named Mica Francis who started going to this guy named John-Paul Miller's church when she was 13 years old. John-Paul was married with four children and also had a child from a previous relationship. He starts having an affair with Mica and he and his wife get separated. By the way, it wasn't as if this pastor admitted to this affair. His wife found messages on his phone and there is video of him laying on his lawn crying like a little bitch. I wanted to elbow drop him when I was watching this. So he starts being with Mica out in public and dating her. By the way Michael was this guy's babysitter as well. And his now ex-wife looks like Mica. It's very creepy.

The Review: Mother Mary

Mother Mary 0/10

This movie was ass. A few weeks ago we watched this movie called Mother Mary. Did not know anything about it but from the poster knew that it was starring one actress I knew and another that I had seen before and thought had a very creepy looking appearance. We ended up looking her up online and it turns out that she has or looks to have had some work done and comes across as very scary looking. I know that this movie is not about this actress and what she has done to herself allegedly. But I just had to point this out because as I watch the movie I kept being creeped out by the way she looked. This movie is about a pop star making a comeback after an incident on stage. I don't know why I'm being vague. It look like she tried to kill herself at one point. So she goes and finds her old costume designer named Sam and wants her to give her a new look before her next tour that starts in three days.

The Review: The Long Walk

The Long Walk 3/10

This is not going to be very long because I don't have too much to say about a movie that has such a basic plot. I ended up splitting this into two parts because I was waiting for it to improve and it just did not because the movie is what it is: a long walk. So the basic premise is that 50 boys from every state in America are picked and they have to keep a pace of three miles an hour and if they go slower than that after a few warnings they are shot and killed. The reason they are doing this is because the winner gets to make a wish. The story mainly focuses on one of the kids and I think the biggest surprise of this movie was how it ended. I believe I would have enjoyed this more if I had seen previous winners and/or what they receive for their wish. I wonder what is not allowed as a wish. I wonder what happens if you don't make a wish. How long until you have to make a wish? I didn't know enough about the characters or the history of this program to really care so when it ended I just shrugged. It is just “Hi, my name is Victim 12! I am gonna wish for money! Ow! My foot hurt!” Bang!!! This could have been a segment on a anthology series.

Cooper Hoffman as Raymond "Ray" Garraty

David Jonsson as Peter "Pete" McVries

Garrett Wareing as Billy Stebbins

Tut Nyuot as Arthur "Art" Baker

Charlie Plummer as Gary Barkovitch

Mark Hamill as the Major

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The Review: Good Boy

Good Boy 7/10

So last week L and I watched three movies. I watched one that she had already seen before. Out of all of them this was my favorite one. This is about a dog named Indy. All I knew about this movie was that it was a ghost story told through the perspective of a dog. I had already seen a movie that I really liked that was told through the perspective of a ghost so I was interested on how they were going to do this one. So there's this dude named Todd and we don't even see his face until the end of the movie that has a lung disease. For the longest time I thought he was a drug addict or something. Turns out that's not the case. The movie starts off with him just sitting up on his couch bleeding and this poor dog just staring at him until Todd's sister shows up and he goes to a hospital.

The Review: Widow's Bay

Widow's Bay 9/10

I would suggested watching this series Widow's Bay (on Apple TV which means I signed up for a week long trail) and after hearing about how well the show was received decided to check it out. L made it through one episode and decided that she didn't want to continue. I did and ended up finishing the last nine episodes this weekend. I don't tend to binge watch shows but this one is such an easy and fast watch that I did not realize how quickly I was plowing through it. I read today that there is going to be a second season and even if there was not I could imagine slightly how the town would have carried on after the finale. This is going to be full of spoilers.