TV Review: The Boys (2019- )

Original Run: July 26th, 2019 – current
Created by: Eric Kripke
Directed by: various
Written by: various
Based on: The Boys by Garth Ennis, Darick Robertson
Music by: Christopher Lennertz
Cast: Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Antony Starr, Erin Moriarty, Dominique McElligott, Jessie T. Usher, Laz Alonso, Chace Crawford, Tomer Kapon, Karen Fukuhara, Nathan Mitchell, Elisabeth Shue, Simon Pegg, Jennifer Esposito, Giancarlo Esposito, Haley Joel Osment, Brit Morgan

Sony Pictures Television, Amazon Studios, Kripke Enterprises, Point Grey Pictures, Original Film, Kickstart Entertainment, KFL Nightsky Productions, 8 Episodes (so far), 55-66 Minutes (per episode)

Review:

If I’m being honest, the trailer for this show hurts it. When I saw it, I thought it looked cheesy and way too edgy boi. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the show was something much better than what the trailer alluded to.

In fact, this is the best superhero show on television. Now I’m saying that only having seen the first season, as that’s all we’ve got at this point. However, I have a good feeling that it should maintain its quality, at least for another season or two, as it ends in a pretty profound way like a stiff, solid gut punch.

Like Preacher, another television show adapted from the comic book work of Garth Ennis, this is a dark tale that shows some people at their very worst while still providing enough lightheartedness to help take the edge off.

The cast is absolutely superb in this. Every single person that’s a regular on the show is putting in some top notch work. Karl Urban kills it in everything and that should go without saying. However, I don’t know much about Jack Quaid but I’m a fan now. The real standout though is Anthony Starr, who plays Homelander, who is this universe’s version of a Superman. Except this Superman is a total asshole that does some unbelievably heinous stuff.

I wasn’t completely sold on the show until episode four, which was the halfway point for this short season. Starr’s Homelander takes center stage and shows you the type of mad god that he is. While powerful superheroes turned evil and running amok is nothing new in the genre, this was some next level shit. And it was a moment that could have made the show or broke it. It certainly made it, as its perfectly executed, giving off the right sort of emotion and context, adding real depth to two of the main characters.

Since I loved the hell out of this show’s inaugural season, I don’t want to spoil too much. But if it’s not hitting the right notes for you early on, give it until the end of episode four. At the point, it’s hard not to go on.

The Boys is solid storytelling, solid character building and maybe the savior of the superhero genre, which is starting to get redundant and tiresome like spaghetti westerns by the late ’70s. And maybe that’s because this isn’t a standard superhero story, it’s real drama with high stakes and there are a lot of narrative threads and different avenues that the show can explore.

In only 8 episodes, it perfected world building and gave us something special… something I definitely want more of. Only two other shows really ensnared me like this in the last ten-to-twelve years: Mr. Robot and Breaking Bad.

Now the rating is pretty high but it just represents the first and so far only season. Hopefully, The Boys can maintain its quality moving forward.

Rating: 9.5/10
Pairs well with: another Garth Ennis comic turned television show: Preacher.

Film Review: The Sixth Sense (1999)

Release Date: August 2nd, 1999 (Philadelphia premiere)
Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan
Written by: M. Night Shyamalan
Music by: James Newton Howard
Cast: Bruce Willis, Toni Collette, Olivia Williams, Haley Joel Osment, Donnie Wahlberg, Mischa Barton, M. Night Shyamalan (cameo)

Hollywood Pictures, Spyglass Entertainment, The Kennedy/Marshall Company, 107 Minutes

Review:

“I want to tell you my secret now.” – Cole Sear

For those that don’t remember the world in 1999, The Sixth Sense scared about as many people as Y2K.

This is a creepy film that penetrated the subconscious of its audience and went on to make its director, M. Night Shyamalan, one of Hollywood’s new “it boys” at the time.

I haven’t seen this since it was in the theater but being that this is its twentieth anniversary, I wanted to revisit it.

It’s not as good as I remembered it and for a long time, I considered it Shyamalan’s second best film after Unbreakable. It is still a much better than decent picture but it is sort of ruined by knowing the twist. However, it was also sort of diminished by knowing young Cole’s secret thanks to the marketing of the film in 1999.

Seeing this now, it is eerie from start to finish but the fact that you were clued in to the fact that Cole can “see dead people” before ever seeing the film, really takes away from that reveal. Plus, you go through half of this film before you actually see a ghost on screen. The first half of the film, had you not known the secret, could have been interpreted as Cole having severe mental issues.

Cole’s secret isn’t the big plot twist though, that comes at the end when it is revealed that Bruce Willis’ Crowe has been dead since the opening scene. I remember being in the theater and hearing everyone gasp when this was spelled out to the audience. That caught me by surprise, as I detected the twist pretty early on and just assumed the audience was supposed to know this all along. There were just too many hints that spelled it out for me before it had to be audibly stated and confirmed by the characters.

I think that the film is effective in how it creates atmosphere and makes you connect to its characters. The thing is, this feels more like a solid pilot for a show than a self contained story within a single film. I think that maybe this should have been a film series or at least found a way to be ongoing on television or books even. I left this film wanting to see Cole do good work in bringing tortured souls some peace.

This film did a nice job of sort of legitimizing horror and making it a bit more mainstream at the time. But the following decade wouldn’t be too kind to the genre, anyway. And this isn’t so much horror at its core, as it just happens to be a solid drama about a child psychiatrist and his very troubled patient. There just happens to be dead people in the story.

My biggest mark against the film is that it is really drawn out and moves at a snail’s pace until dead people start showing up about 50 minutes into the movie. I do like slow builds and suspense but the first half of this movie could have been whittled down.

In the end, this still does a good job of making a real human connection with its audience and it conjures up a thick sense of dread. But I can’t really call The Sixth Sense a classic, despite its cultural impact for the time.

Rating: 7.5/10
Pairs well with: other M. Night Shyamalan movies.

Film Review: Tusk (2014)

Release Date: September 6th, 2014 (TIFF)
Directed by: Kevin Smith
Written by: Kevin Smith
Based on: SModcast #259: The Walrus & the Carpenter by Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier
Music by: Christopher Drake
Cast: Michael Parks, Justin Long, Haley Joel Osment, Génesis Rodríguez, Johnny Depp, Harley Quinn Smith, Lily-Rose Depp

Demarest Films, SModcast Pictures, A24, 102 Minutes

Review:

Kevin Smith had an awful idea. Sure, it was fun fleshing out and debating over a podcast but that bad and bizarre idea became a film. It is now a film that Kevin Smith will have to live with as part of his film catalog that seems to get tarnished more and more with each release since the late 90s.

Maybe Smith never had it, maybe he was a one trick pony, maybe that less than a handful of films he did in the 90s were the best he’d ever produce. If you have ever wondered whether or not Kevin Smith was a hack and were still undecided, this film should make that decision much easier for you.

I don’t want to hate on Smith. I’m part of that group of people that wants to see him find his mojo again. However, Tusk makes me question if there was any mojo to begin with. Maybe those earlier films weren’t as good as I thought they were. Maybe I am just falling victim to nostalgia for films I fell in love with when I was still a teenager without a palate as vast as the one I have now. I can’t say for sure but I can say that Tusk is fucking dreadful and it puts a big exclamation point on everything wrong with Smith, not just as a filmmaker, but as an entertainer.

Tusk is one bad joke told over an hour and forty-two excruciating minutes. It is supposed to be a horror comedy. Sure, it is horrifying but mostly for the wrong reasons. It is only funny in one bit of the film – where Justin Long’s character meets a border agent when he first arrives in Canada. Other than that one minute exchange, the comedy is lost in this ridiculous exhibit.

Justin Long has always been pretty horrible. Sure, he seems like a nice enough guy in the real world but Tusk doesn’t do anything to help his case.

Michael Parks is sometimes amazing and delightful, he may be the bright spot of this film but he’s still thrown into a mess of a movie and what may be a great performance is ruined by the absurdity of everything else happening. You can be the best actor in the world but if you are fed shitty lines and are in a premise that even you aren’t buying into, your performance is doomed.

Johnny Depp shows up and plays one more in a string of really bizarre characters, which has been Depp’s trend since he shook off that teenage heartthrob persona years ago. While this sometimes works for Depp, his weird character in this film is unfunny, boring and falls flat. He is some sort of Canadian private investigator but comes off as someone doing a bad impersonation of John Malkovich playing a French person.

Haley Joel Osment appears in this and it is truly nice seeing him do something as an adult. Also, Kevin Smith and Johnny Depp’s daughters play clerks in a convenient store and do a pretty okay job with their limited time.

Génesis Rodriguez plays Justin Long’s girlfriend and she is maybe the best performer of the movie – beating out Parks because she didn’t have to perform in as many ridiculous situations. She is also extremely beautiful and from what I can gauge, a much better actress than the roles she’s been given so far in her career.

If you don’t know about the premise of this film, it is about a crazy old man who invites a podcaster into his home for an interview, only to drug him, keep him captive and physically morph him into a walrus. If you want it visually ruined for you, just Google “tusk” and hit images. There you will see Justin Long in all his walrusy glory.

The pace of this film was disjointed. It was slow for a bit, then it jumped ahead a great deal. It was confusing. For example, Justin Long finds himself losing body parts and the process to full walrus seems slow. Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he is a full fledged walrus chained to a floating slab.

By the time you get to the end of this film, you are left wondering what the whole point was. Well, the point is that Kevin Smith had a dumb idea on a podcast, his legions of Smithites told him to make it and like a soulless whore, he did. And while I am sure those loyal Smithites jack off to Tusk daily, until the next Smith schlock comes out, the rest of us are left baffled, confused and disgusted.

This is the worst film Kevin Smith has ever made. In fact, it is the worst film that I have seen in a really long time and I went to the theater for Fantastic Four and Terminator: Genisys. I still want Kevin Smith to return to glory. Maybe he should stay away from the horror genre, as he has had two awful duds with this and Red State. Maybe focusing on Clerks 3 and Mallrats 2 is what he should do. But at the same time, the novelty of those films wore off a long time ago.

Rating: 1/10