Reviews, rants & poetry

Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe in Netflix's Blonde.  The 2022 film directed by Andrew Dominik that stars Ana De Armas as Marilyn Monroe has been panned by streamers and critics alike to the point where it’s been rumored to be cursed because of the way the director portrayed the titular character.   Firstly, it's on record that this film isn't a true biopic but a fictional retelling of Marilyn's life that aims to highlight how Hollywood creates victims out of its stars. The entertainment industry especially in film, fashion, and music is widely known to be a dog-eat-dog world which is why it's extremely difficult for individuals who haven't learned to develop a thick skin towards critics and the emotional demands that comes with acting nor found the right people who truly care for their wellbeing enough to manage them effectively, to survive in.   Secondly, I strongly feel that Andrew's work would have been more appreciated if he had titled it differently...

  Evan Peters as Jefferey Dahmer. photo credit: Netflix.  I think that Ryan Murphy is a god when it comes to telling incredibly complex stories based on true-life occurrences. From FEUD , to the OJ story on his AMERICAN CRIME STORY series, to DAHMER . Ryan has mastered the art of conjoining these complexities and intricacies to deliver a spellbinding all round look into the histories of these people he's exploring and the lessons he wants us to pick up and learn from them.   Having read opinion pieces about the victims’ families reliving the hurt before first watching the 2022 Netflix show, the first 3 episodes ticked me off badly as I thought the series was going to follow the trope of Hollywood's horrible history of "idolizing" criminals and serial killers but thank God as the show progresses, you begin to realize it's rather a cautionary tale that forces its viewers to look beyond the surface storytelling of the titular character.   To me, this show was mo...

  Photo credit A24  Gozie Agbo in conjunction with A24 and Leyline productions decided to bless us in 2022 with this intricately written and beautifully directed film by buddies, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert.   This aptly titled film which really is about Everything from Family to life in general and has the chaotic feel of Everything happening everywhere at the same time applying the concept of Multiverses coupled with existentialism and stars Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, James Hong, Ke Huy Quan, Harry Shum Jr from Glee and Jaime Lee Curtis.  Photo credit: A24.  On the surface, Ms. Yeoh plays Evelyn, an incredibly worn out and dissatisfied, Chinese immigrant laundromat owner in her mid-life dealing with her "rebellious" young adult daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu) her timid husband (Ke Huy Quan) and aged ailing father, Gong Gong (James Hong) We get to witness her marriage and relationship with her daughter crumble before her while she tries unsuccessf...

Two rocks  i  We are two rocks,  lying in the middle of the ocean bare,  a defect of nature.  hard and firm, far-reaching the bottom of the sea, you are.  weak like the soapstone,  thrown into confusion at the waves of the sea,  I am.  what shall become of us?  shall we cause shipwrecks?  shall we be removed to the house of the sculptor with magical hands?  or shall we be left here to lie unharmed?  untouched?  with the breeze caressing our rough-edged rigid structure,  scarred by the gentle waves of the sea's goodbyes,  that never seem to end?  or shall we be cast away like the mountain  triggered by the mustard seed of the faithful Christian?  of these, I worry  as we stare at the stars alone this night.  in pleasures painfully conceived but greatly appreciated  smiling at the constellations,  wishing to be free,  not caged,  in the midst of these troubled water...

It is unfortunate and sad that despite the 16 Emmy nominations and several awards that Misha Green’s Lovecraft Country has won, this deeply spiritual and impactful series doesn’t get the accolades and buzz that it rightly deserves. I consider the work to be one of the best tv shows to grace our screens in the entire last decade and feel that it is a disservice to fans that until now, no other tv station or streaming service has indicated interest to pick up the story and expand it to at least two more seasons. The 2020 supernatural, Sci-Fi, horror and historical TV drama was developed for television from Matt Ruff’s novel, which was originally written to satirize the popular racist narratives common in the author, H.P Lovecraft’s mythologies, hence, the title of the book. It is this “protest novel” that the incredibly talented writer and director, Misha Green reimagines into this spiritual, educative work of high entertainment art value.  source: HBO.  Set in mid-50’s Chicag...

Image credit: Amazon Prime.  Directed by Michael Pearce and written by Joe Barton, this 2021 film stars, Riz Ahmed, Lucian-River Chauhan, Aditya Geddada as main characters, Malik Khan, Jay and Bobby Khan who the story mainly revolves around. Malik, a divorced marine corps veteran decides to take his children outside of their hometown in California, on an unexpected and unplanned road trip. Things get out of hand when the family gets stopped by a police officer and a misunderstanding ensues that leads to several lethal encounters that makes the kids question their father's true intentions, motivations, and sanity as the film progresses.  A lot of sci-fi lovers might definitely feel ripped off by the end of this film due to the massive plot twist revolving alien invasions this film hints at in the beginning and how it's tied in to PTSD, which I really would not like to spoil because it made the viewing experience more enjoyable for me as I figured it out earlier on in the film. ...

Photo credit: Netflix.    There seems to be a lot of rave reviews regarding how wonderful this piece of pretend satire is and I can’t help but wonder why that is, especially when you consider the amount of gloom and doom that saturated the media during the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, and how none of all that drama was even replicated here. The failure to exploit the range of political excesses displayed across different camps makes it hard to find reenactments of right-wing, political figures rejecting science, and ignorant celebrities milking political causes for clout, (which this film is mainly about) funny for long.  Satires are intelligent but this 2021 film by writer/director, Adam Mckay in my opinion, was just an unoriginal farce greatly inspired by MAGA, America’s right-wing politics during the coronavirus pandemic and the general American middleclass society’s obsession with capitalism. Only this time, it pitches as a replacement, the gloomy story of a scie...

photo credit: Sundance.  “I yelled at him,  You have to start working, if you can’t be happy at least, you can do well.  He screamed at me, I don’t want to be happy, I don’t want to do well.  Why? I yelled. Why? Then we were screaming at each other. We were both so sad and we were afraid. I don’t know why, but then he said,  get out before I hit you, get out before I beat the shit out of you. I swear to God, it was terrifying. I went to my room and then I locked the door. Gail! I wished I had let him. I wish I had said, okay, hit me. You hit me sweetheart for as long as you would ever need. Because then, I would have known. I would have known who he truly was.”  A debut of film writer/director, Fran Kranz released in January 2022 by Bleecker Street, MASS stars Jason Issacs, Ann Dowd, Martha Plimpton, and Reed Birney as parents who agree to meet at a neutral venue, an episcopalian church, six years after a tragedy involving the murder of the child of one...

photo credit: Netflix  Friends of a private Facebook group which I belong to raved for days about this supposed limited tv series. Members wrote posts upon posts about how incredibly good the plot twist was and then when I realized that it bothered on astral travel and lucid dreams, two phenomena I often experienced as a child but had no name for until much later into adulthood, I knew I’d been had. I was going to see this.  The English series stars the incredibly talented Simona Brown, Tom Bateman, Robert Aramayo and Eve Hewson as the major characters, Louise, David and Rob/Adele which this psychological/supernatural adultery themed thriller revolves around.   The series begins with a very beautiful, black, single mother of a 7yr old boy named Adam as she prepares for a date. She gets to the venue of the date, a bar and after realizing she’s been stood up, makes a move to leave but bumps into a tall handsome hunk of a man with a Scottish accent. They make small talk...

  photo credit: Netflix Written and directed by Sam Levinson of Euphoria fame, this film follows a heterosexual couple’s arguments after they return home for the night from a movie premiere which the man is responsible for writing and directing.  Filmed totally in black and white, every still in this film literally looks like a work of art, so much that if you find it hard to see films made in black and white, this would be an easy one to sit through as the shots are amazing to look at. High praise goes to the director of photography and the director as well, for their visually outstanding work with the shots. The chemistry between the titular characters the entire plot revolves around is impeccable and this film is actually proof that John David Washington can act, as opposed to the critical reviews he received for his performance in Christopher Nolan's TENET . I could clearly feel his frustrations, anger, disgust, total admiration and love for his partner onscreen and it wa...

photo credit: HBO  (warning: spoiler alert)  From the beginning of 30Coins/30Monedas, the ridiculously elaborate opening theme of the show proved to be such a spoiler that I could already tell that whatever intrigue this series had to offer would be tied to the 30 pieces of Silver the infamous Judas Iscariot was paid for betraying the Judeo-Christian Jesus Christ. I was not wrong. for, by the end of the first episode, It had already been revealed. Although, the way it was woven into the story seemed a bit intriguing, as it's involving a group of red robe wearing underground priests planning to overthrown the Vatican and canonize Judas as a saint for reasons you’d get to discover yourself (trust me, it’s good) should you choose to still see this series after reading.  This had me wanting to follow through to see how it would play out. But then to call the whole process tedious would be an understatement as you’d have to actually see it yourself to believe it.  photo c...