Kaos' way behind movie reviews

[Saniflush]

No.  I never did.  Don't guess I considered that.  It was more just the "she stayed with his broke ass and supported him for years, but then as soon as he makes it big he dumps her" feeling.  Seems like I read somewhere they were like on welfare or something in Australia while he tried to make it. 

Although not homemade sin ugly, it was definitely a trade up!

[Godfather]

I’ll be frank (you can still be Kaos) - those movies were so horrific I don’t even remember anyone else in them not named Paul hogan.

Pump your brakes boy that man's a National Treasure!

[Kaos]

Pump your brakes boy that man's a National Treasure!

I believe you have the wrong movie. 

[GH2001]

I believe you have the wrong movie.

I’ll take “actors that Paul Hogan is better than” for 500 Kaos. 

[Snaggletiger]

I’ll take “actors that Paul Hogan is better than” for 500 Kaos.

You put that bunny back in the box, beyotch.

[Snaggletiger]

You know, I'm getting damn tired of you people putting down a great talent like Nicolas Cage and his versatility as an actor.  Name me another actor that can turn their head into a blazing skull.  Go ahead.  Yep, just what I thought.  Stop the hate.

[The Six]

You know, I'm getting damn tired of you people putting down a great talent like Nicolas Cage and his versatility as an actor.  Name me another actor that can turn their head into a blazing skull.  Go ahead.  Yep, just what I thought.  Stop the hate.

That movie sucks. It tries and fails at being a "love story."

[Godfather]

That movie sucks. It tries and fails at being a "love story."

Not true....I totally fell in love with Eva Mendes

[Saniflush]

I believe you have the wrong movie.

Pump yo brakes...I think you have the wrong movie.

[Snaggletiger]

Not true....I totally fell in love with Eva Mendes

Those are some lush us titties.  Nom nom nom nom nom....

[Kaos]

Mile 22

Mark Wahlberg as a super intelligent, super-focused genius assassin.  How could that fail?  Well, Mark Wahlberg as a super intelligent, super-focused genius assassin for one.  

Lots of action, lots of bodies.  Maggie from Walking Dead as a divorced, put-the-job-ahead-of-family killer.  Wasted storyline there.  Several other names and faces you'd know. 

Muddled storyline, often incomprehensible action, mumbo jumbo, jumbo humbo. Dis Could have been a fun movie, but it took itself way too seriously to stay in the fun zone. 

While it's true that what was actually going down was kept well hidden until the final denouement the frenetic pace of the movie and the herky-jerky editing made it hard to really care.   I'm still not exactly sure what the end result was.  

[Kaos]

Borg vs. McEnroe

Tells the story behind the story of the classic 1980 match between four-straight Wimbledon champion Bjorn Borg and enfant terrible upstart John McEnroe. 

Some guy who looked astonishingly like Borg played Borg and Lewis Stevens Sam Witwicky Shia Lebouf took the role of McEnroe. 

I vividly remember what it was like at that time.  Tennis was front and center in the national consciousness. Courts were everywhere. Everybody played.  Even Kaos played a few tournaments -- and played nearly every weekend and most of the summer when he wasn't playing baseball or golf.  There was one glorious summer where Kaos played 18 holes of golf in the morning, hit the pool, played a three-set tennis match mid-afternoon and then closed out the day with 18 more holes of golf.  That was his schedule at least five days a week. But I digress.

Everybody had a favorite.  Borg, McEnroe or Connors basically (or Chrissy or Martina in the women's bracket).  I wanted to be Connors. I wanted Chrissy. Played with the same Wilson T2000 racket that Connors used for a lot of years when most people I knew were still using wooden rackets.  My T2000 and a wooden Dunlop my dad used to use (he was a Rod Laver fan) turned to twisted ash up in my dad's garage when their house burned a few months ago but I digress again.

This film didn't really pay much attention to the brief rise of tennis as the American pastime. It focused instead on the angst suffered by the morose and moping Borg while briefly dabbling in the "can't please dad" emptiness of McEnroe.  It portrayed Borg as a man tortured by his own superstitious rituals and the training he endured when he was barely a teen to rid himself of the mercurial emotional responses that were much more in line with the chaos and rage that fueled McEnroe. It played McEnroe as a ruthless competitor who cared about nothing but winning, that passion fueled by a constant need for approval from a father who was never satisfied.

The film hinted that Borg probably saw a lot of who he wished he could be in the antics of McEnroe. The fact that they became (and remain) close friends attests to that possibility.

Shaia was okay, but he never really completely got the McEnroe mannerisms right.  There were moments when he was almost there, but it never completely gelled.  I forgot the other guy wasn't Borg.  I could never get past the knowledge that it was LeBouf pretending to be McEnroe.  That same staccato, frenetic Lewis Stevens voice energy that he brought to the Witwicky role carried over here. 

It was a good film, but it fell well short of joining the pantheon of great sports films because it was just too much sad Borg moping. Maybe Borg was in the extreme emotional pain this movie portrayed.  He walked away from the game (at 26) about a year after the events of this movie occurred.  It was just hard to generate much sympathy for him when he seemingly had it all in the palm of his hand and I never really understood exactly why he was so eaten up with it -- even though the movie did try to explain it. 

For those of you who don't know (or care) the 1980 Wimbledon battle between Borg and McEnroe was one of the greatest tennis matches in history.  The two best players in the world leaving their heart and soul out on the grass. McEnroe survived countless set points. There were times Borg looked done, and then he'd come fighting back. It was mesmerizing watching it then on a tiny little 19" TV. It played large as a film. If America didn't have tennis fever before that, it certainly did afterward. 

This movie worked well as the singular story of this one tournament, but it wasn't complete enough to be a really great sports movie.  I enjoyed it because I remember living it and thought this movie did an extremely credible job of capturing the mood of the tournament and the passion of the games.  I really wish the movie had been the story of Borg v. McEnroe in total. They played 14 times. Won seven each. Played in two Wimbledon finals and two US Open finals.  McEnroe won three of those.  He broke Borg mentally in the 1981 US Open.  They guy never recovered. Was never the same.

If you don't know or remember that 1980 match, the movie is definitely worth watching.  If you do, it will take you back to that time pretty easily.  It's worth the watch.

[GH2001]

I vividly remember what it was like at that time.  Tennis was front and center in the national consciousness. Courts were everywhere. Everybody played.  Even Kaos played a few tournaments -- and played nearly every weekend and most of the summer when he wasn't playing baseball or golf.  There was one glorious summer where Kaos played 18 holes of golf in the morning, hit the pool, played a three-set tennis match mid-afternoon and then closed out the day with 18 more holes of golf.  That was his schedule at least five days a week. Followed up by a hot tub session with Jacklyn Smith, But then he woke up.

Fixt

[Kaos]

Fixt

You wish..  I was a Prowler back in those days.  The company I was working for went out of business unexpectedly right before the summer.  The guy who owned the place told me I could draw unemployment.  I never imagined that was possible.  I spent several months living on the dole. 

Every week for the entire summer I got an unemployment check. I did manual labor on the weekends for straight cash that didn't go against my unemployment draw.

My dad was a member at the little country club where we lived and I was still young enough to be on his tab.  Golf/tennis/pool all free.  Lunch tab went to my dad. All I had to pay every month was my car note ($75), my gas (less than $1 a gallon) and whatever I did with my girlfriend (and you could do movies and dinner for less than $30 usually).  For the time?  I had plenty of money.  I was rich!

I'd show up at 6:30 or 7 play 18 with the old guys, be done by 10 or so.  Pool until 11.  Burger or chicken salad at the bar.  Try to find somebody to play tennis with and sweat through two and a half hours.  Be ready to run 18 more with the people getting off work at 3 or 4.  Done by 7:30 (darkish), hit the shower and go to GF's house.  

Best shape of my life.  

Then I grew up.  Got off the unemployment.  

[Kaos]

Miracle on 34th Street 

1947.  I'd never watched the movie.  Knew the story of course but over all these Christmases I'd managed to somehow avoid it.  Not intentionally, but it was just never part of the regular rotation. 

It was on yesterday (the colorized version, blah) and having just been to NY and in Macy's on 34th I stuck with it for a minute when I realized that the 34th street mentioned in the title is because of the address of Macy's.  

Baby Natalie Wood, grown up Maureen O'Hara.  And Santa Claus.  

It was a very endearing movie, sweet and sentimental. It was really interesting to me to see some of the same things in that 1947 movie that I'd just seen in real life. Things that are still there in the same manner they were nearly 80 years ago.  Like the iconic wooden escalators that still carry people up and down the floors in Macys, for one.  

Enjoyed the movie and don't know how I missed it all these years.  

Santa won an Oscar for it. 

[Kaos]

Venom

Didn't expect much from this movie.  Don't really like Tom Hardy all that much and don't know anything about the Venom franchise other than that he's a bad guy in the Spiderman pantheon.  So I really wasn't sure how they'd play it.  

Turns out it was a pretty fun movie.  Oh, the plot was ridiculous, the logic of so many people betting killed and maimed while Venom/Brock was allowed to just wander around was absurd, the idea that Brock and the researcher could just wander into the research facility because it was "closed for the night" was laughable (I mean really, the guy has no security cameras?), Hardy seemed to be doing his best to channel Shia Lebouf's mannerisms and speech patterns, Michelle Williams is seriously hard to look at (she's one ugly chick), and they wiped their collective butts with the entire Venom history that I half-way researched before I watched it.  

But it still had its moments. 

It isn't in the same orbit as the tentpole Marvel movies, but it was still better than most of the soggy slate of staid and ponderous DC offerings (save WW).  I'd much rather watch Venom than SvB or JL. It at least had a sense of breezy fun to it. 

I can't figure out how in the world they could tie Venom into the broader Marvel universe, though, given the way they completely trashed the origin story and the rationale for his being.   

[GH2001]

You wish..  I was a Prowler back in those days.  The company I was working for went out of business unexpectedly right before the summer.  The guy who owned the place told me I could draw unemployment.  I never imagined that was possible.  I spent several months living on the dole.

Every week for the entire summer I got an unemployment check. I did manual labor on the weekends for straight cash that didn't go against my unemployment draw.

My dad was a member at the little country club where we lived and I was still young enough to be on his tab.  Golf/tennis/pool all free.  Lunch tab went to my dad. All I had to pay every month was my car note ($75), my gas (less than $1 a gallon) and whatever I did with my girlfriend (and you could do movies and dinner for less than $30 usually).  For the time?  I had plenty of money.  I was rich!

I'd show up at 6:30 or 7 play 18 with the old guys, be done by 10 or so.  Pool until 11.  Burger or chicken salad at the bar.  Try to find somebody to play tennis with and sweat through two and a half hours.  Be ready to run 18 more with the people getting off work at 3 or 4.  Done by 7:30 (darkish), hit the shower and go to GF's house. 

Best shape of my life. 

Then I grew up.  Got off the unemployment. 

hey I was trying to hook you up with Jaclyn. 

[Kaos]

hey I was trying to hook you up with Jaclyn.

I did that on my own many times.  Also Farrah.  She lived on my wall.  

[Kaos]

The Dark Place (aka Bird Box)

Take The Quiet Place, switch it up so that instead of sound it's sight that summons the demons, don't make the mistake of showing the big uglies and then swirl in a dose of Book of Eli and you've got this Netflix movie. 

I never really quite understood the concept of how the madness/sickness was spread or why and I didn't much care for the way the story skipped back and forth in time until it caught up with itself. Felt that was an amateur move by whoever directed the movie. 

It didn't skimp on the star power, drawing in a number of faces you'd recognize including the American Michael Caine, John Malcovich, BD Wong and more. But the seasoned cast couldn't save it from its own missteps. 

I'm going to alienate a significant portion of the base with what I have to say next, but it has to be done.  Sandra Bullock played the lead in this film and she was absolutely painful to look at.  Her surgically butchered nose, her sickeningly doctored Michael Jackson mouth, the 61 pounds of makeup she caked on just to appear somewhat human.... Her rank ugliness was terribly distracting from the tension of the film.  She made me cringe.  Good lord she was putrid.  The idea of her dusty cooze bag being filled with a child?  Laughable. She's 54 years old or something like that.  And that plastic-faced wench is dropping a kid?  Pffffffttt.  Casting her (and she was executive producer so it was her choice) was an awful decision.  One of the worst. Literally anyone would have been better in the role.  Clay Aiken would have been preferable. 

I might have enjoyed this movie much better if I hadn't already seen it done and done better (for the most part) in The Quiet Place and if it didn't star a deformed, ancient plastic fake barbie.  It wasn't bad, but since it trod so much of the same ground as the much better Quiet Place it can't help but suffer in comparison. 

I wouldn't say avoid it, but I wouldn't put it at or near the top of any list. 

[Kaos]

The Santa Chronicles

Ginned up sentimentality, Kurt Russell as a too cool for his suspenders Santa and the occasional "surprise" cameo. 

Another Netflix original.  At this rate, I'd prefer that they stick to showing other people's movies and spend less time trying to make their own stale and stilted duds. 

Just didn't resonate whatsoever.  I'm a sucker for Christmas movies.  Vacation, Story, Grinch, Home Alone, Die Hard, Gremlins, Elf, Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th (now), Christmas Carol, Charlie Brown, Scrooged, Jingle All the Way, Deck the Halls and on and on.

This one? 

I don't see it ever making it onto anybody's must-see Christmas list, except for the parents of the cookie-cutter kids from the movie and maybe Mr. Russell.