Ernie & Emma (2026)

 

Unfortunately I missed the four screenings at our local Alamo Drafthouse where Bruce Campbell appeared and talked about the movie in person.  They were all sold out and I was disappointed believing that I would never get a chance to see the film in a theater. Lucky for us our local Alamo chose to screen the film a couple of more times without Bruce and those screenings were not sold out. 

Ernie and Emma is a mediation on Grief, but done with the typical Bruce Campbell wit. Bruce wrote and directed this film, and has been promoting it by appearing at screenings throughout the Alamo franchises. The movie is really going to appeal to a specific audience. It is designed for an aging demographic, and it approaches one of the most difficult dilemmas elderly people face, through humor and honesty.

I won't pretend that the film is anything more than a slightly racier version of a Hallmark movie, but it wears its sincerity on its sleeve, and Bruce is giving it his all. The premise gives away the tone of the film immediately. The deceased Emma, has left a series of instructions for her husband, to distribute her ashes and bring closure to some of the events in their life. Along the way there are minor complications, a couple of reveals, and Bruce narrates as he drives through the idyllic town in Oregon where Ernie and Emma lived.

This is a self-financed film so we're not all surprised that the locations may in fact be Campbell's residence. The movie is shot well and edited competently, but it definitely feels like a modestly budgeted television production. Story is more important in the long run, and performances help sell the story quite a bit. 

I think everyone will quite enjoy the art studio owner who accompanies Ernie on some of his ventures in the second half of the movie. You can see what's coming a mile away but that doesn't make it any less pleasant. There are also a couple of security guards that appear in the film, and rather than having them be a*# holes, they instead are interesting characters that you appreciate for having sensitivity to Ernie in his journey.

One of the ways that you can tell that this is a homegrown project is that when you get the credits at the end of the movie, you not only get a photo of the actors who appeared on the screen but there are images of the production designer, the cinematographer, the best boy and the key grip, and a whole bunch of other behind the scenes contributors to the film. 

I wish Bruce all the luck in the world with this project, I know for him it is a labor of love. He is facing an unfortunate prognosis with his health , but he continues to be the shemp we have known him for over the past 50 years. If you get a chance to see Ernie and Emma, take it. It won't change your life but it will make you enjoy your life a little bit more.

It-Chapter 1 (2017) Revisit-Panic! at the Paramount

 

I remember when this film first came out, the trailer consisted primarily of those moments when little Georgie meets Pennywise in the sewer. It's a bold choice to take the best moment from your film and make it the trailer, but it certainly succeeded in getting people hyped for the movie and into Cinemas. I know I had a fairly positive reaction to the movie back when it came out and you can read about that here.

Our experience with "It" this last week was at the Bullock theater which is an IMAX screen, and claims to be the largest screen in the state of Texas. It's not hard for me to believe, having been seated in that theater a number of times this last summer. This is another film that is part of the Paramount Theaters programming which has had to move for the year while they are under renovation. Seeing the movie in IMAX doesn't hurt it at all, in fact I think it added quite a bit to my experience.

Of course I remembered the key scene that I mentioned above, but I was pleased to be reminded that it was not the only moment in the movie that “It” is effective. There are disturbing visualizations, a couple of very effective jump scares, and a sense of dread that runs throughout the movie. The sense of dread is not just dependent on our Supernatural monster, it is also present through human characters that threaten our group of young protagonists.

This film is only chapter 1 of the two part "It"  movie series. I do remember that this was the more effective of the two. I plan on following up, but that will be a home screening rather than a theatrical presentation. I was quite pleased to be able to experience this film again in a theater and this time when I say on the big screen, I mean on a big screen.

The Social Reckoning (2026)

 

16 years after the brilliant “The Social Network”,  Aaron Sorkin returns to the target rich field of social media to once again take on Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg. This time he also takes on the responsibility of directing the film as well as writing it, and that may have just been a little out of his reach. This is not a bad film, in fact in some ways it's quite good, but for all of the supposed political impact that the subject matter is supposed to have,  Aaron Sorkin takes a swing, and misses. 

The whole point of this movie is to gin up outrage about the algorithms that lead to promoting hateful clickbait on the social media sites. Sorkin really wants to tie this into the January 6th riot at the Capitol. The problem is, for all of the work that goes into explaining the technical aspects of data analytics, there's almost no demonstration that the algorithm under criticism had anything to do with the events of that day. The only connection seems to be that  President Trump had a video available and that  Facebook took it down, but we never see what was in the video, and there's plenty of evidence to indicate that Trump kept advocating for a peaceful protest not the insurrection that the credentialed class keeps trying to validate.Opinions being treated like facts is the very thing that this movie is supposed to be about. 

“The Social Network” was a film about the origins of the most powerful social media platform in the world., that there was deception and betrayal along the way was what made it a fascinating story. Let's face it, origin stories can be quite interesting. “The Social Reckoning” on the other hand, takes us into an existing world and tries to show that that view of the world that is so negative is partially the fault of this new medium. That's a conclusion that probably everybody accepts before we even think about the film's content. I doubt that you will find many people who deny that the influence of social media can be extremely harmful, duh. That takes a lot of suspense out of the story even though it is a procedural about a whistleblower and a journalist trying to reveal insider knowledge about the mechanisms of Facebook.

Mickey Madison plays the part of a data engineer, Frances Haugen, at Facebook who is responsible for monitoring civic engagement. She's prompted to investigate after seeing a video shared online of a woman speaking extremist views and behaving abrasively while believing that she is in the right. The data that she pursues suggests a strong link between Facebook's meaningful social interaction index and attraction to extremist views. Of course nobody at the company listens to her, and Mark Zuckerberg is portrayed as an even more robotic automaton than he was in the previous film. 

I have not studied extensive film of Zuckerberg, so I can't say authoritatively that this portrayal is inaccurate, it just feels a little over the top. Jeremy Strong replaces Jesse Eisenberg as the CEO of Meta. His main strength as an actor in this film is an inability to express anything on his face. So that is apparently a characteristic of the real Zuckerberg. We see several scenes where PR experts are trying to turn Zuckerberg into a human being for public hearings. The idea that they are struggling to make him appear human is funny, but it's a sidetrack from the main purpose of the film which is to explain how Facebook's algorithm is screwing up the world, oh and it's Zuckerberg's fault.

Jeremy Allen White plays the journalist from The Wall Street Journal who is working on the story, but is not really a tech writer. Regardless of whether it is true in real life, this does allow our two main protagonists to engage in frequent exposition which explains things to those of us in the audience who are not used to doing a deep data dive online. This is also an old trick of Sorkin from his days on The West Wing, where a character would plead ignorance in regard to a subject, typically it was CJ the character played by Alison Janney, who then has to have somebody explain what the hell is happening. You don't really get the walk and talk in this film like we got in the TV series, we just get the talk.

One of the things that's missing from this film that made its predecessor so effective is a score from Trent Reznor. The music of “The Social Network" was designed to set a mood and it was nearly another character in the film. Alexandre Desplat , has created a score that feels like it's transition material between exposition rather than setting the mood for the exposition. There's nothing wrong with the music, it's just that it doesn't work in the same way, and it's noticeable.

I think there are certainly issues with how social media works that deserves attention, but our screenwriter here is so concerned with the political ramifications that he ignores the everyday consequences of this sort of negative reinforcement. There are a couple of times when those effects are mentioned, but we never follow up on them, we just keep coming back to the same statistical point that our whistleblower character has been emphasizing from the beginning. We could use a little bit more context for that 64% figure that she keeps throwing around. And does anybody really find it surprising that people who watch a media post that is hate based follow up by looking at hate based groups? Here's a big reveal, water is wet.

The movie plays like a detective story told out of sequence and that structure is so ubiquitous nowadays I'm not sure it helped with this story. For example there are several references made to misinformation or outright lies being told during covid period.  But because of the agenda of the screenwriter, we ignore the fact that the checks that were in place largely suppressed not bad information, but valid criticisms covid policy. Outright lies were told by the medical establishment in order to get people to comply with what they thought was the best advice, and then we were ignoring criticism of that advice. 

The movie wants to have it both ways, it wants to defend free speech but it wants to do so by suggesting that somebody should be regulating that speech. There is an analogy concerning a crossing guard in the story, but this is a weak comparison. Information on Facebook is not like a traffic pattern that threatens to run over kids, it's more like a form of consumer reports being used by shoppers as they make their choices in the grocery store.  The hyperbole suggests that somebody's going to die because of this misinformation, but that's not where the story is. Where is the data that proves that?  Instead we get scenes of the melee at the Capitol back in 2021, without any connection to a media post or group which were the things that this film was criticizing in the first place. 

This is a well-made piece of agitprop, but since it contains misleading information itself, it feels a little bit hypocritical. As an example, the film passes on an apocryphal story about changing the rugs in the capital because of blood stains from Capital police officers who were injured on January 6th. That story has been debunked, but apparently it makes a good point for the plot, so we're going to ignore the fact that it is as dubious as the things that are suggested by the screenwriter. I'm not buying it, and it doesn't look like anybody else is either.

Heart of the Beast (2026)

 

Let me be upfront with you, I'm pretty much going to enjoy a movie where the co-star is a dog. It's my plan to do an episode of the Lambcast featuring movies where the leading character is a canine. “Heart of the Beast”, starring Brad Pitt, is an example of one of those stories about soldiers and their canine partners. “Dog” , that movie from a couple of years ago with Channing Tatum, working with the dog who had PTSD, is a good example of these films. This one however is working on the survival story, and that gives us a chance for a lot more suspense and action.

About 93% of the film consists of Brad Pitt and the dog. There are a couple of other characters that appear on screen and have some dialogue, but those are very small components of the movie. The story is about how this special combat operations officer and the dog that has retired with him, are facing their future by visiting the wilderness, and accidentally getting stranded. 

As a wilderness survival story, “Heart of the Beast” checks a lot of boxes when it comes to action and suspense.  There are confrontations with wildlife which are life-threatening, there are insurmountable physical obstacles the two have to overcome. And there is the fact that Odie, the German Shepherd named Odin, has an artificial paw so he is already handicapped, and Brad Pitt's character is suffering from severe heart problems which led to their crash in the wilderness in the first place.

The survival moments are fine, but it is the relationship between man and Beast which makes up the most important part of the story. We get some of the backstory of our special operations Soldier, and we learned that he has suffered plenty when it comes to loss. Odin may be the one thing that is holding him together, which helps account for the extreme measures that he goes through to make sure that the dog stays with him. A variety of things will make you  think that the dog is incredibly loyal to the man as well. You would expect nothing less than that in a movie like this.

I wouldn't say that the movie is by the numbers, but it does seem that it is checking off a variety of events that the two are faced with. Even the encounter with a character played by JK Simmons, feels a little conventional, in spite of the fact that it is nicely written and performed. Everything is shot in a way that emphasizes the beauty of the environment but also its hazards. As I said before, I'm a sucker for dog stories, and this one was just fine, it's just not the best one I've seen.

Digger (2026)

 

If ever a movie deserves to lose 170 million dollars at the box office it's this misbegotten piece of crap from Academy award-winning director Alejandro G. Iñárritu and actor Tom Cruise. I've said it up front a number of times. I'm a Tom Cruise fan, the idea that this part might be the one that gets Tom an Academy Award for his acting was quite appealing  to me. The director Iñárritu,  created an interesting film that previously won an Academy Award, not my favorite but I could see artistically why it was so important, but “Birdman” and “The Revenant” are a long way from this self-important attempt at satire, which has one maybe funny moment in it, and pretends to be hilarious the rest of the time.

You know your movies are in trouble when 2/3 the way through we have to have a character engage in a long diatribe of exposition about why the thing they are doing is so meaningful. There are going to be plenty of people out there who will try to tell you that this is an Artful film, that it is simply misunderstood by the stupid masses. Don't let them get away with that. A movie can be artistic and crappy, and just because you find it boring or ridiculous or annoying, doesn't mean that you're an idiot who can't appreciate art, it means your taste does not include the choices that the artist made which in this case are obnoxious.

Everything from the beginning of this movie is played in a loud overbearing and preposterous performance. No one, including our main character played by Tom Cruise, is portrayed as believable. I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to tell you that that is intentional. As the story plays out you will discover why the characters act in such mannered and over the top ways. There is a plot device here that is being used to justify manic bellicose shouting, on a permanent basis. Some people will find this to be clever, I thought it was contrived. I did think it was handled as an element of the film very effectively, but the way that clues are dribbled out can be a little frustrating. I know the filmmakers want you to be frustrated about climate change, but what I was frustrated about was the inane approach to the story. I'll give you a spoiler warning in a paragraph or two so you can stop reading if you are worried that I'm giving away too much.

The director is making a bold choice, it certainly seems original on its face. The idea is not without Merit, but the execution is so heavy-handed and self-congratulatory that it is irritating. The fever dream of climate collapse that this movie is projecting is nowhere near a reality. All the climate models are speculation at best, and a lot of them are presented as nightmares to drive a political agenda. That's what this film seems to be doing, this is an attempt to legitimize the wildest fears of climate doomsdayers.  It's also an attempt to poison the Well against anybody who has legitimate questions about whether or not our attempts to alter the weather are worthwhile. Digger Rockwell, is the Boogeyman of every enthusiast of carbon trading, alternative fuels, and the idea of shutting down fossil fuels for the benefit of the planet. It takes a piece of Science Fiction to create a threat that will kill people to stampede folks into accepting the extremes of these cultists. Once again I'm going to hesitate to say too much here until I give you a spoiler warning.

This is supposed to be a satire, and there are people out there who have the audacity to make comparisons to "Doctor Strange Love : or how I stopped worrying and learned to love the bomb". Stanley Kubrick's farce of military and political systems is funny because it's believable. Although there are moments when things are said that are absurdist, they're said by serious people among a variety of other reasonable things that they believe. At no time in “Digger”, does anybody come across as a serious person. Riz Amed is supposed to be a scientist that is the voice of reason, but his characterization is so shallow that you wonder how anybody with his credentials could be so weak-willed and cowed so easily. 

Digger Rockwell himself, as played by Tom Cruise, is the least believable character in the story. His obsession with his pet cat, his fairly cloistered lifestyle, and his physical mannerisms, all give Cruise a chance to flex his acting muscles. Which, by the way, the character can't do because he is so flabby with make up,CGI and costuming the same to emphasize.  We are supposed to laugh, it is outrageous behavior, but he doesn't really exist in contrast to anybody who isn't equally outrageous, except for the occasional video call. Even then those callers are usually dispatched from the story so quickly that they seem like cartoon characters themselves. Besides, the only way Diggers seems able to communicate with anybody is at a hundred and ten decibels. 

Spoiler warning,  spoiler warning, spoiler warning. I'm about to tell you something that is supposed to be a secret in the film, but for which there are hints a half dozen times before the final reveal. If you are quick on the uptake, you will probably figure it out by the second or third break between scenes. So this is only a spoiler for people who don't want to guess what's coming. This is actually a dystopian movie, set 30 years in the future, and what you're seeing is the tech rehearsal of a play. The original version of the play was made 25 years earlier and depicts events that supposedly happened three decades in the past. Cruise is an actor playing an actor playing the part of a megalomaniac billionaire. All the other characters are really caricatures of historical figures that are being mocked in the play. Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu has contrived to create a Wes Anderson film, without any of the charm. We aren't let in on what the hell is going on except occasionally when we see The black out breaks When the theater actors Are changing scenes. Is it technically efficient? Yes. Are the production values Interesting.? Yes. Do the actors sell themselves out as bloviating actors playing to the far back of the theater in a character designed to ridicule the past? Yes they're all doing a good job. But doing a good job that isn't really something worth doing in the first place feels like a waste of talent and time.

There's a moment when Digger Rockwell, supposedly is addressing a gathering of international political figures, and he confesses his crime and offers a rationalization. Except it isn't a rationalization, it's a very legitimate argument about balancing environmental concerns with human welfare. By putting it in the mouth of a preposterous character, and having him shout it while everybody in the background is screaming, is a way of trying to win the argument by making it a joke. This is one of the reasons why I really can't take the film seriously. It never takes itself seriously. It's self-important, but that's not the same thing as being serious. 

I've read a number of people who say that in the future this film will be considered masterful. I doubt that that will be the case. The only people who will find this to be an important and critically deserving film, are those who see “An Inconvenient Truth" as a pressing documentary, instead of a swing at a bad pitch, by those devoted to climate destruction nightmares. 

Those people who are shouting that originality and creativity have been called for by the public, and we are now all hypocrites for ignoring this film, are missing the point. We want originality that will entertain, inform, and move us. What we don't want is to be hectored and demeaned by the artists who are asking us to support them. 

I don't expect anybody to learn any lessons from this movie, One Way or Another. People who are afraid of climate change will continue to be afraid of climate change. People who are worried about what will happen to the world if we start running out of energy, are not going to be convinced to give up their cars, their conditioning, everyday lets us enjoy life, as a result of widespread access to energy. They are just going to feel browbeat by this movie, that's of course if any of them bother to see it. Which apparently they're not going to.

Lambcast Franchise Draft Poll

 I could use some support for my slate of Franchises in this Draft Episode of the Lambcast. Clicking on the image should take you to the poll where you an cast your vote for me. 

https://poll.fm/17544786

Avengers Endgame (2019) Encore

 

An amazing thing happened this last weekend, a movie that came out 7 years ago was re-released into theaters and took the number one position in the box office for the weekend. You might ask yourself how that was the case, in truth it's not really that hard to understand. The film in question is “Avengers Endgame" and the re-release is part of the build up to a new MCU film that is meant to reestablish the dominance that the franchise once had. I hadn't realized when I scheduled a trip to the theater to rewatch the film that it was going to include four stingers that didn't play in the original movie and were specifically designed to promote the upcoming version “Doomsday”.

When I first posted on “Endgame" back in 2019 I was enthusiastic but I was not of the opinion that this was the best film of the MCU franchise. It is a very solid follow-up to “Infinity War”, and it has a lot of emotional beats to it which should work for the faithful comic book audience. When I originally reviewed the film I thought it was a little bit slow in it's build up. As I watch it these days, I appreciate that more deliberate approach vastly more than I did in 2019. The events of the previous film needed time to settle, and we need to absorb the impact of what ultimately gets called the blip. And that's what takes place in the first hour of the film. My reappraisal of the movie has to do with this part of the film more than any other. The emotional defeat that the Avengers are trying to live with, it creates the emotional foundation for what is to follow. If we didn't get to experience the low, then the high that we get at the end of the film would not be as meaningful. 

Obviously there's a lot of fan service built into the movie, and since I'm a fan I don't really object to that. Let me just share with you a couple of my favorite moments from the film. When Scott Lang waves at the camera at the entrance of the Avengers compound, announcing himself and trying to remind the people inside of who he is, I both laughed and smiled. I had known from the end of “Ant-Man and the Wasp" that Scott was going to play a big part in trying to restore the Galaxy after the Thanos decimation. 

Of course the moment that I most remember, and that so many people who are fans of the MCU hold in their heart, is one of the greatest shots in the whole film series. It is the point at which Captain America picks up Thor's hammer during the battle with Thanos and we all cheer because we know he is worthy. In a film loaded with shots that are designed to provoke a cheer from the faithful audience, this is probably the one that is most satisfying. Another moment from the final battle sequence which is clearly fan service for the girls, the key female superheroes line up to support Wanda as she is confronting Thanos himself. It's probably a little bit more “woke" than we need, but it is a fun shot so I'm not going to dump on it. One more moment from the final battle that deserves to be called out, is the reunion between Spider-Man and Iron Man. We know that Tony Stark  felt the weight of the loss of Peter Parker, and we get a chance to enjoy an emotional connection that we knew existed and was part of Tony’s defeat.

Probably the things that I should be speaking about the most in regard to this revisit are the “Encore” stingers. It's probably not fair to rank them in order of their emotional impact, but that's the only way I can respond to them until I see Doomsday at Christmas time. From my point of view the strongest one, which evoked the best response from the audience including me, was the appearance of Loki in the Captain America wrap up story from the original version of “Endgame”. A knock on the door and then Loki stepping through the door produced a collective gasp and laughter simultaneously.

In one of two mid credit clips, we see Bruce Banner sequestered in what looks like an underground Atomic bunker, and he is providing exposition for story elements that we are not yet aware of. I suppose it's designed to provoke questions about the upcoming film. And also let us know that some of the characters that we have loved are going to return for this next episode. I found it mildly interesting but it didn't really have any emotional impact for me, it's simply a sequence from the upcoming film that's been inserted for a reason that I cannot yet fathom.

A second mid credit clip reminds us that the Time Variance Authority is a thing, and that it will be playing a role in this story. It's not clear how big an impact the TVA will have, but what is shown to us is designed to give us a sense of the significance of Dr Doom on the universe. It's an example of raising the stakes, because after all, we've already had Thanos wipe out half of life in the universe, we need something bigger than scale to make the next episode feel important. 

Finally there's just a short image at the end of the credits, which shows a metal mask being forged in the Darkness, backlit by flames and enhanced by the sound of a pounding hammer. I'm not sure which way this is supposed to be going, but it was a nice little period at the end of the film.

I completely understand the criticism that the MCU films have had over the years. Frankly because the material is all comic book based, I don't understand why anybody would expect something different. People who have enjoyed the pulp entertainment of comic books are being given something that they can enjoy on screen, and the films have been well produced, spectacularly shot and staged. They have enough emotional beats both humorous and dramatic, to make the stories acceptable. There may be occasional retconning of some of the plot lines, but for the most part it feels to me like there was also elaborate planning. I do know that the Doomsday approach is in part a reaction to another plot line blowing up due to an actor in an earlier film getting into some trouble. The diversion to Doomsday, will probably result in creativity that we might not have gotten otherwise. I hope it all works out, regardless I was happy to see “Avengers Endgame" again.