DREAMS WITH SHARP TEETH

I thought I would just watch this for 5 minutes and then just go to bed. But Harlan Ellison is such a motor-mouthed prick, with ideas and philosophies and rants just flying at you in a barrage of writerly macho posturing that I ended up going to bed tired and feeling totally unaccomplished.

The actual documentary is cheap and shitty, but Ellison is a compelling and funny subject so it's well worth it.

SARAH SILVERMAN: JESUS IS MAGIC

You do like to laugh right?

SHERLOCK

Another BBC special. Netflix is really good for British TV and British TV is really good in general. Basically it's Sherlock Holmes updated for the 21st century, which sounds kinda lazy and forced, bu this show is anything but. Each episode (there are 3 in each season) acts as a self-contained 90 minute movie focused on a single case. So basically if you like this, you get 3 Sherlock Holmes movies, which is pretty damn cool. But it's a TV show so naturally there's character arcs and through-lines that carry over through each episode so it's like the best of both worlds-film and TV. Sherlock is sort of cast as an autistic, anti-social dickhead who is always the smartest person in the room and let's everyone know it. Basically nobody likes him, including Watson. This thing makes those terrible Guy Ritchie movies look like a joke.

LUTHER

This show really sucked me in. It has all the same silly contrivances as most American cop shows, but I don't know... the British just carry this kind of shit off with more style. Luther is basically a super-humanly smart homicide cop who has mental issues stemming from a previous case and a wrecked homelife. Sounds pretty standard right? But this shit is soooo intense! Part of it is Idris Elba who rules in whatever he's in, and the other part of it is the balls-to-wall scripts for each episode which keep ratcheting up the tension and taking the show into darker and darker places. This is really good.

MR. MOM

YUP!
Keaton can fucking do anything! He can play a psycho, a devil-may-care mental patient, fucking Batman and even a cgi snowman! You fucking best believe he can handle staying home with the kids when he gets downsized.

THE SHADOW

It's hard to know what to think about A-Ball. I mean in one sense he's basically a suave, 300-pound silky voiced waste of potential. And in another sense, he totally rules and is doing exactly what he should be doing.
From the late 80's to the very early 90's it looked like A-Ball would either become the "greatest actor of his generation" doing edgy shit or a totally bonafide leading man. But neither really happened. He's incredible in Miami Blues, but from what I remember, just kinda lost in Hunt For Red October.
Anyway, it ultimately doesn't matter because he made The Shadow, which is a total Batman ripple-effect abortion that shouldn't even exist and helped to seal his fate as just a fairly rich actor who will be able to work for the rest of his life, but probably never achieve anything great.

Is The Shadow good? No. But it RULES!
The opening scene alone had me rolling on the floor. I saw this in the theatres way back when, but I wasn't really as fascinated with Baldwin then as I am now, so it kinda just stunk. But now it stinks in an amazing way!

Btw, Alec Baldwin has a great podcast where he talks to people and is exactly as dickish and pompous as you think he is. It's great!

THE BLOB

I always really liked this remake. I owned it on VHS. Johnny Drama as a leather-jacketed motorcycle rebel vs. a killer blob from space.