Movie Reviews: The Many Saints Of Newark

The Many Saints Of Newark
directed by Alan Taylor

The Many Saints of Newark (TMSOM) is a prequel to the HBO crime drama series The Sopranos. The Sopranos creator, David Chase, produced and wrote, but did not direct this film. With prequels, unless there is some undetailed and exciting narrative that improves the original story, audience interest can flag.

The audience already knows what happened to the major characters in the original story. Skilled creators can find ways around that.  

Instead of examining the young adult Tony Soprano who will become the intimidating (and depressed) boss of the DiMeo Crime Family, TMSON focuses on Tony's mentor, his uncle by marriage, Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola), whose translated surname provides part of the film's title and serves as a indicator of the struggle between good and evil that lives in his heart. 

Less successfully TMSON also tries to say something about race, by introducing the character Harold McBrayer (Leslie Odom Jr). A Black gangster who was a high school schoolmate (and football teammate?) of Dickie's, Harold now works for Dickie overseeing numbers and gambling rackets in inner city Newark. And I do mean "overseeeing". 

Email Spam and Lottery Win

In the past sometimes friends or loved ones sent me email which I didn't see either because I wasn't online or more likely because the email went to my spam folder. 

After a few unpleasant conversations that could (wrongly) end up with the person believing that I didn't think that they were important, I changed all of my personal email filters so that certain ids were automatically sorted into the appropriate non-spam folders. 

I didn't do this with my work email because there I think there are indeed many emails and senders that aren't that important. Still, from time to time, on both work and personal email accounts, occasionally stuff winds up in the spam folder that really isn't spam and really is worth my time to read and respond. So far such items have never included a notification of a $3 million lottery win but you never know right?
Jan. 21 (UPI) -- A Michigan woman checking her email spam folder for a missing message made a far more surprising discovery -- she had won a $3 million lottery jackpot. Laura Spears, 55, of Oakland County, told Michigan Lottery officials she bought a ticket for the Dec. 31 Mega Millions drawing on MichiganLottery.com.
"I saw an ad on Facebook that the Mega Millions jackpot was getting pretty high, so I got on my account and bought a ticket," Spears said. "A few days later, I was looking for a missing email from someone, so I checked the spam folder in my email account."
Spears said a message from the Michigan Lottery caught her eye.
"That's when I saw an email from the lottery saying I had won a prize. I couldn't believe what I was reading, so I logged in to my Lottery account to confirm the message in the email. It's all still so shocking to me that I really won $3 million," she said.  LINK

Health Care Costs Continue To Rise

Because many people who supported the PPACA, both popularly and derisively known as Obamacare, did so from moral fervor and political partisanship (as did many opponents, often with the added fecal nugget of racism dropped in) they were utterly uninterested in any epistemological or evidence based evaluation for the claims that Obamacare would lower premiums, deductibles, and health care costs. 

Supporters took it as an article of faith that Obamacare would do all of those things. And if you questioned that belief or wondered if there were a better way of lowering health care costs, lemming like supporters squealed that you were a dummy, a useful idiot for Republicans, or worst of all some sort of hateful right-wing conservative cretin misogynist misandrist who just wanted people to die.

Silence heretic!!!!

Well.

Movie Reviews: Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard

The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard

directed by Patrick Hughes

This is a sequel to the film The Hitman's Bodyguard. While you might argue that the first movie had some Odd Couple comedic points to be made about learning how to get along with people who don't share your world view, personality, or sense of professionalism, this film downplays those points to ensure that you know that the actress Salma Hayek has very large and very firm breasts. 

Now I was already aware of that factoid but if you didn't have that piece of information floating around your skull, I guarantee you will remember it after you have finished watching this movie.

I am certain that the male audience will like this. Even so, I thought it was a little over the top; it was even called out by the character which the actress was playing. 

Although exaggerated for comedic effect I didn't think the cleavage display was degrading or sexist. It was similar to some classic Hammer movies from the fifties thru the seventies in which much appears to be exposed but not that much is actually seen. But other viewers may see things differently. 

This was a movie sequel that, like many such, didn't really need to be made. The story, such as it was, had been completed. 

Movie Reviews: The Undercover Man

The Undercover Man
directed by Joseph Lewis

This 1949 film is more of a crime drama than a noir film.

Although Eliot Ness and his high profile raids are popularly linked with the downfall of Chicago Outfit head Al Capone, it was actually the more anodyne work of IRS accountants/tax agents like Frank Wilson that actually resulted in Capone's conviction and imprisonment on tax evasion charges.

This movie is loosely based on Frank Wilson's story. 

The film deviates from noir storylines by avoiding the true bleakness of real life events.

In real life although Capone was convicted and later sent to Alcatraz, the organization that he inherited and built thrived without him, growing to wield national influence, including in Hollywood and Las Vegas. 

Capone's conviction did not prove that good would win over evil. It just showed that mobsters needed to pay their taxes and keep a lower public profile, a valuable lesson that Capone's successors took to heart. 

Nevertheless The Undercover Man still effectively used noir elements of claustrophobic corruption and frustration with the law. Although everyone at the time would have recognized the Capone story, this movie set its tale in an unnamed city. As Tolkien did with Sauron, the film keeps its Big Bad (Capone) off screen for 99% of the story.

Ferris State History Professor Goes On Rant

Occasionally I had some eccentric teachers throughout educational career. Some instructors had little interest in the subject matter, didn't like me or for that matter any of their students, or were clearly just playing out the string until they retired, married someone rich or won the lottery, which ever came first. 

That's life. But I don't recall any of my teachers (and most of them were indeed decent men and women) ever losing it quite like Ferris State University History Professor Barry Mehler recently did. To be fair, evidently the good professor was a little peeved by the University's insistence upon holding in person classes at a time when the Covid pandemic is not subsiding. 

I can understand this frustration. My employer is making unpleasant noises about ending working from home options. If you force people to choose between their money and their life you might get more responses like this. 
BIG RAPIDS, MI – A Ferris State University faculty member has been placed on administrative leave after he reportedly went on a profanity-laced rant about the coronavirus pandemic during a class lecture video that was posted online.

Barry Mehler, a history professor in Ferris State’s humanities department, called his students “vectors of disease” and blamed the university for holding in-person classes amid the COVID-19 crisis during an introductory video posted to his YouTube account on Jan. 9, 2022.

Movie Reviews: Venom: Let there Be Carnage

Venom: Let There Be Carnage

directed by Andy Serkis

This is the sequel to the previous Venom film. If you didn't watch the first film it doesn't matter because this stands alone. This film is not about impressive characterization or complex storylines. It's about special effects. The Venom movies are modern reworkings of the werewolf legends. 

Imagine that a mild-mannered schlub had a monster inside of him, one that was virtually immune to harm, needed human flesh and blood to survive, and was almost all id with nothing to moderate or channel its impulses. 

Or think about being the host for a alien parasitic life form that told you that it had your best interests at heart but was actually insidiously reworking your body for its own mysterious purposes. There are some serious horror movie vibes to either of those situations but the sequel doesn't go down those paths. Despite a fair amount of well, carnage, this movie's violence is neither that explicit nor impactful.

Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is a journalist who shares his body with the alien symbiote Venom (also voiced by Hardy). Venom, like all of his species, can't survive for long on this planet without being bound to a human body. And not every human body will do. There must be, as with any relationship, the correct chemistry. However, lately Eddie and Venom are increasingly at odds. Venom sees no reason to hide.  Eddie wants Venom to stay hidden as much as possible.