I wish my life was non-stop Hollywood movie show, a fantasy world of celluloid villains and heroes. Because celluloid heroes never feel any pain… and celluloid heroes never really die.” From CelluloId Heroes, written by Ray Davies.

There are times when you read a movie review that is so shallow and bitchy that you think the critic didn’t see the flick, or they pushed their ChatGPT button and went back to sleep. This has been particularly true of late with respect to “superhero” movies, and especially true since cultural dogmatists like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola started to complain about how these movies are pushing down the box office of their latest self-indulgent claptrap.

When it comes to not watching a movie, evidently a lot of people have been of similar mind when it comes to Joker: Folie à Deux, which opened to a weekend box office of less than half of its predecessor. That 2019 Joker earned over a billion dollars, eleven Oscar nominations, and an Oscar win for the guy who played the lead. This one attracted a lot of bad and mediocre reviews, which have little impact on opening weekend receipts. Of course the internet reviews have been offensively bitchy, just like the vast majority of all social media comments. The sainted New York Times suggests it will have a hard time recouping its $200,000,000 budget (that’s in round numbers). Continue reading “Brainiac On Banjo: Reviewing The Blank Screen” →