Author Archives: Doc

Den of Thieves: Pantera

Posted on by

Den of Thieves: Pantera is the first, actual, film from 2025. I had never watched the first film and, this being a sequel, I was a little concerned about that fact.

And truthfully, I could never get into this flick. I do believe the fact that I had not seen 2018’s Den of Thieves was a big reason I could never build any connection to the film. I disliked the characters, I thought the story, with a few exceptions, was dull and boring, and I just was peeking at the time through much of the first half of the movie wishing it would get over.

I could care less about the robbery that they were setting up, but I will say that the execution of the robbery itself was my favorite part of the film. Outside of that 20 minutes or so, I really found this to be an excruciating watch.

Without spoiling it, there were no less than two… TWO… Deus ex machina endings for this movie, and I hated both twists… SO MUCH!

According to IMDB, “Butler returns as Big Nick (Gerard Butler), this time on the hunt in Europe for Donnie (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) who is embroiled in the dangerous world of diamond thieves and the infamous Panther mafia as they plot a massive heist of the world’s biggest diamond exchange“

I thought both Butler and Jackson Jr. were fine with their characters. i just did not care about either one. There was a scene early in the film where Nick gets drunk/stoned etc. and I thought that was so ridiculous that it completely derailed the film for me. I was having enough issues getting into the story so something like this knocked it down even more.

As I said, the actual robbery had some good tension to it, although it was very difficult to swallow. I was more able to give the leeway here because the set up to the theft was so much better than the rest of the movie. Sadly, the post robbery stuff had me rolling my eyes (including a moment that seemed to go from night to day in an instant).

I don’t know if my opinions would be different if I had seen Den of Thieves before going to the sequel, but I did not, so I can only judge this on what they gave me, and what they gave me was substandard in my thought.

2.2 stars

Edit: I went back and looked at my other reviews and I actually did see Den of Thieves in 2018. I gave it a 2.3 star rating. It shows you how memorable that first film was for me.

Better Man (2024)

Posted on by

Some of the movies that I missed from 2024, specifically a lot of the Oscar worthy ones, come out in limited release in one year, such as 2024 and then go wide in the following year, 2025. Recently, I have been holding off watching those films until the June Swoon, but there are some that I will watch immediately. September 5, next week, will be one that I will see in the theaters because I am really looking forward to it. I went to one of these films today. It was called Better Man and it was a weird biopic of British pop star Robbie Williams.

To be honest, I did not know much of anything about Robbie Williams going into the movie. I think I had heard about the boy band he was in, Take That, but that is about all. With my limited knowledge, I learned a lot about the pop star.

Like, for example, he was a talking, singing monkey.

It is an interesting choice by the film creators to make Robbie, the character, a CGI monkey, voiced by Jonno Davies and the film is narrated by Williams himself. None of the other characters referenced him being a monkey so it is clear that this is the way the character sees himself and the others were just seeing the human version.

The story follows the rise and fall of Robbie Williams. The biopic does not sugar coat the life that Williams led. It showed his drug use, his suicidal thoughts, and struggles in his career.

I will say that I think the conclusion of this movie was completely emotional. I was tearing up through the whole scene and I just loved it.

Steve Pemberton does a great job as Robbie’s father, a major factor in the life of his son, both negatively and positively.

This was a really great biopic about a person who I did not know much about. I was thoroughly entertained throughout the film. It was a creative film that took the musical biopic in a different way.

4.75 stars

ReMastered: The Two Killings of Sam Cooke (2019)

Posted on by

January 10

Another ReMastered documentary on Netflix was today’s entry in the Genre-ary. This time, the ReMastered doc is focused on musician Sam Cooke.

Sam Cooke was a black musician who was gaining a lot of power during the 1960s through his amazing music and his desire to help bring about civil rights. Cooke was forming friendships with other powerful black men of the period including Cassius Clay, Malcom X and Jim Brown.

Sam Cooke’s murder was a mess. The story that was in 1964, Cooke picked up a woman and went crazy. She believed that she was about to be raped. Her story was that she grabbed his pants and took off. Cooke went after her and wound up being shot by the hotel manager. The trial was determined to be justifiable homicide.

Most of the people who had been interviewed in the documentary could not believe that this was truth. There was some speculation that there was a conspiracy behind this event as Sam Cooke was becoming a very powerful man and he had created a recoding studio that threatened the industry. The end certainly did not mesh with the the picture that we had been shown about Cooke.

We heard interviews from Smokey Robinson, Quincy Jones, Jim Brown, Dionne Warwick, Lou Adler, and Billy Davis.

The doc was interesting and engaging. It featured a person that I did not know much about and had a amazing, though way too short life.

Too Funny to Fail: The Life & Death of The Dana Carvey Show (2017)

Posted on by

Disney + is the home for tonight’s Genre-ary film, Too Funny to Fail: The Life & Death of The Dana Carvey Show.

According to IMDB, “this feature length documentary from director Josh Greenbaum (Becoming Bond, The Short Game) will take a fresh and irreverent look at the successes and humorous missteps of a show that brought together an amazing slew of future comedy giants before they were household names. Featuring interviews with Dana Carvey, Robert Smigel, Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, and more, the film will explore the creation of the show as the brainchild of two of Saturday Night Live’s most beloved alumni, the twists and turns of its brief life on air, and its legacy-one of stellar careers, lasting relationships, and an affirmation that in art, risks are always worth taking.”

The Dana Carvey Show was a sketch show on ABC that lasted just seven episodes. Dana Carvey was coming off the huge success of his time on Saturday Night Live and he was going to do a sketch show featuring a lot of counter-culture comedy.

The doc started with the creation of the show, and the hiring of the cast. The cast turned out to include Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert, who would be major stars later. Robert Smigel, who was also the voice and creator of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, was one of the creative forces, along with Dana Carvey.

The doc was extremely funny as it had all of these comedians and performers speak on the reason this show collapsed and the process of making the show. You could tell that the creatives involved with The Dana Carvey Show really loved their time on the show, even if, in reflection, they understood what they were putting on the air was doomed from the start.

I was entertained by the memories and commentary of these funny people. It is a wonder that they failed so sensationally.

EYG Favorite Comic Covers of the Week

Posted on by

January 8

Welcome back for the EYG Favorite Comic Covers of the Week, this week on time on Wednesday night AND ALL COVERS AVAILABLE as it was NEW COMIC BOOK DAY and my comic shop, Comic World had the covers on time (sort of). I do not have to go back to Dubuque on Thursday or Friday to pick up the rest of the books this week. I have them all (for the most part).

Last week, we were all Marvel and DC. Interestingly enough, this week there are none from those two companies among the medalists.

Here we go…

Bronze Medalist

Parliament of Rooks #2.

Variant Cover B

Cover art by Abigail Jill Harding

A beautiful cover in the elegant black and white. This book has had two exceptional covers to kick off the series, both lovely and somewhat frightening too.

Silver Medalist

Geiger #10

Cover art by Gary Frank

The cover combines the faces of Geiger and Junkyard Joe in a very intriguing image. The glowing green of Geiger’s skull is very much popping off this cover and the smoke behind the Joe face is excellent as well.

Gold Medalist

Return of the Living Dead #1

Cover art by Mark Spears

This new series from American Mythology Productions is very hot and has been released some over the last couple of weeks. The cover by artist Mark Spears, himself burning up the cover work, is amazing and the cover has helped this book become such a success. Mark Spears was awarded the EYG Comic Artist of the Year in the Year in Review and I think he may be the early leader for the cover artist of the year for the 2025 Year in Review.

In-spi-ra-tion (2023)

Posted on by

January 8

Woke up too early so decided to do the Genre-ary with a documentary short this morning. So I searched up doc shorts, and I cam across this one on YouTube. It was called In-spi-ra-tion and it told the story about three different artists from the Isle of Man as they created art and speak about what inspiration meant to them.

The doc is short, but it does create an interesting viewing experience. Watching these individuals making their art while speaking about their lives and their beliefs was fascinating. I thought the background music over top of the artistic imagery was very calming and enjoyable.

The three artists the doc looks at are Juan Moore, Alice Dudley and Bruno Cavellec. Even though the film only spends a few minutes with each of these three, it does a great job of taking us inside the mind and creativity of them and showing us why this art is important to who they are as individuals.

I am a big supporter of creativity and this doc short certainly personifies that concept. I wish more people could find the creative aspect of themselves and try to bring it out.

With that done, I’m going to try to get back to sleep for a little bit before my alarm goes off.

Skeleton Crew S1 E7

Posted on by

Spoilers

“We’re Gonna Be in So Much Trouble”

Whoa. Skeleton Crew went hard this week in the penultimate episode. Jod is a downright horrendous person and the kids make it back to At Attin. But that final shot was frightening.

The final shot of the episode was Jod extending a lightsaber out in front of the four kids and their parents seconds after their reunion. The way he extended the lightsaber was reminiscent of the way Anakin extended his lightsaber when he slaughtered the younglings during Order 66 in Revenge of the Sith. This was after Jod had threatened to slice the kids’ parents up earlier in the episode if they did not behave.

What an a-hole. He decapitated 33 a little while after the droid had turned on him and went to aid the kids in regaining control of their ship (as he expectantly hit Jod in the face in one of the biggest cheer moments of the series).

There was so much drama on this episode and Jod had become such a bad guy that you have to admire the skill of Jude Law. At one point, Jod seemed like a bad guy with a heart of gold. I am not sure you could say that any longer.

This was one of the most exciting episodes of the series and I was glued to the screen the whole time. One final episode which I hope brings this story to a satisfying conclusion.

The Blue Angels (2024)

Posted on by

January 7th

I went to Amazon Prime today for the entry in the Genre-ary. I was excited about this one. It was one that I remember wanting to go see in the theater, but did not get around to it. This was The Blue Angels.

Sadly, I was just not that into this doc. There was some amazing aerial footage of the Blue Angels, but I found much of the remainder of the doc to be fairly dull and I had trouble getting into it.

According to IMDB, this movie “Follows the veterans and newest class of Navy and Marine Corps flight squadron as they go through intense training and into a season of heart-stopping aerial artistry.“

The film does not spend much time diving too deeply into the story of the doc. It feels at times like a commercial for the Navy and the Blue Angels.

As I said, some of the footage in the film was sensational, but I needed more than what they gave me. I just struggled to get into anything in the doc, outside of the great visuals.

ReMastered: Tricky Dick and the Man in Black (2018)

Posted on by

January 6th

Today’s Genre-ary documentary I found on Netflix and it was a short doc about the time Johnny Cash was asked by President Richard Nixon to come and play at the White House.

The doc gave us some basic background on both Johnny Cash and on Richard Nixon. The Nixon section was specifically focused in on the Vietnam controversies among his presidency.

The doc talked about Nixon using the “Southern Strategy” that has been well documented in Presidential politics since the sixties when the south became more of a Republican stronghold instead of a consistent Democratic voters. It brought up how Nixon used some dog whistles to bring out the “Silent majority” to support the Republican party and create a nation of divisiveness. It was very connected to the present day politics and how it has its roots in this time frame.

The doc never went into too much detail about any of the sections, as it was just under an hour long.

It was interesting seeing how Johnny Cash was affected by his own trip to Vietnam and how he made some changes to the songs Nixon had requested Cash play at the White House. Both of the songs he asked for were songs that took shots at some of the marginalized people of the time, including hippies and those on Welfare.

I liked this doc, but I really believe it could have gone into much more details about the performance and about the two figures of American culture. It touched on a lot of the issues, but it did not go into enough depth.

Silo S2 E8

Posted on by

Spoilers

“The Book of Quinn”

Apple TV +’s sci-fi series Silo is marching along this season with plenty of tense and anxiety-filled moments.

My favorite section is those including Rebecca Ferguson. She is an awesome actress and her character, Juliette, is one bad ass. Just this episode, she gets shot by an arrow, pulls it out, treats the wound, while suffering from the bends, and continues on in her search for the person who took Solo. She needs her suit back to make it back to her own silo and only Solo knows where it is.

At the end, though, Juliette comes across three others, one of which had that bow trained back on her for a second time.

Bernard is a real dirtbag. His quest for power is just non-stop as he manipulates poor Walker into becoming his snitch. He placed her former spouse’s life in danger in order to blackmail her. He truly is an epically horrible man. He is also going to be taking advantage of Lukas until he gets the message translated. Sims told Lukas that Bernard will dump him immediately after he gets what he needed from him, and I believe that fully.

More details on the mysterious and apparently awful Salvador Quinn are revealed as Lukas found the book that he was looking for, a copy of the Pact.

Two more episodes remain in season two of Silo and I see big things preparing to happen.

Dexter: Original Sin S1 E5

Posted on by

Spoilers

“F is for F*ck Up”

Okay, the last couple of episodes of Dexter have been a bit lacking for my tastes. This episode, Dexter gets stoned eating some of Deb’s pot brownies. That whole section of the episode felt like it came out of nowhere and did not mean anything to the story. Outside of trying to build some connection between Dexter and Debra, there was not much more for it to be included in this episode.

Harry’s arc through the episode was inconsistent too. I am not sure I enjoyed either the flashbacks with Harry or his incompetence at the trial of Dexter’s soon to be next victim.

Having Harry end up on Dexter’s table, wrapped in plastic, did not convince me that the cop would accept this as a possibility from his step-son.

Dexter trapped with the horse was another silly moment in the episode, as was him tucking the horse’s hair behind its ear.

The best part of the episode continues to be Debra, and her attempts to have some relationship with her father and brother. After letting her down again, Deb went to her mother’s gravesite on her own, with a ride from her new boyfriend. They have sex in his car later in the episode as he seems very kind and loving toward her. I have a feeling that won’t stay that way very long. I hope I am wrong about that, but it feels like the cliched manner in which this story will go.

I have not been a fan of this show as much as I thought I would after the first couple of episodes. I hope it starts to improve soon.

Battlestar Galactica S3 E19, E20, S4 E1, E2

Posted on by

Spoilers

“Crossover Part 1”

“Crossover Part 2”

“He That Believeth in Me”

“Six of One”

The finale two episodes of Battlestar Galactica season three and the first two episodes of season four were wild.

They revealed four of the Final Five Cylons and I found it difficult to believe. Sam, Chief Tyrol, Tory Foster and, of all people, Colonel Tigh were revealed to be Cylons in disguise. They were understandably confused, but seemed to have more free will than I thought they would.

Of course, that leaves one more Cylon of the five and the show is trying to make us think that it is Kara. Kara, who showed back up, not dead, came back with a story of finding earth. I do not think she turns out to be the Cylon. I think she is a red herring. I think there are some other possible suspects at this time:

Baltar: Another one what feels too obvious. With all of the interaction with Cylons, Baltar feels wrong. Plus, he is really buying into the one person/one god thing and the worshiping that the One-God crew was giving him.

Laura Roslin: With the cancer returning, I think this would be the shock that the show may be going for. She also has a connection to Number six through these visions. She shot at Starbuck at close range and missed. Maybe she can’t harm one of her own (or at least in his mind).

Admiral Adama: I think he has been really inconsistent as a character recently. He is up and down all over the place and this could explain that. It could also be that shock moment.

I am not sure what Lee Adama’s exit from Galactica meant this episode. Did he just leave the series or is he on a new arc into the political world?

Entering into the final season of the show, I expect things to be on a high level as the season progresses. I have questioned how uncertain I am of any of these characters, yet it feels very compelling.

Remembering Gene Wilder (2023)

Posted on by

January 5th

This documentary covers the life of EYG Hall of Famer Gene Wilder, one of the great comedic actors of all time. Wilder was the star of a multitude of amazing movies including Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, Stir Crazy, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory along others.

I love Gene Wilder. Willy Wonka and Young Frankenstein are two of my all time favorite films and so I was interested in seeing this life

The film touches on his youth, but spends most of the time with his career and adult years. The background of the filming of The Producers and the other movie that followed was really great.

We had comments about the different movies and the genius of Gene Wilder from Mel Brooks, Alan Alda, Carol Kane, Harry Connick Jr., Eric McCormack, Ben Mankiewicz, daughter of Richard Pryor- Rain and Mike Medavoy.

The film spoke about Gene’s love and marriage with Gilda Radner as well as his discovery of his second wife Karen during research for the film See No Evil, Hear No Evil. Karen was a real emotional beat in the last section of the doc. As she was giving her first person POV of Wilder’s Alzheimer’s Disease, it was heartbreaking and I found myself with tears in my eyes.

Gene Wilder was such a kind and loving person and that comes across in this movie. We got much of this doc in Gene Wilder’s own voice. He did much of the narration of the film and it brought us even closer to this icon.

Battlestar Galactica S3 E16, E17, E18

Posted on by

Spoilers

“Dirty Hands”

“Maelstrom”

“The Son Also Rises”

I have not had the opportunity to watch many Battlestar Galactica episodes recently, so I decided to do a run of them tonight. I hope to try and wrap up season three tomorrow.

These were some wild episodes. “Dirty Hands” looked at the working class aboard the Galactica. Chief Tyrol was the intermediary in the episode as he was trying to help the people doing the horrible work keeping Galactica going. This was tough to watch because Roslin and Adama were brutal during the episode and they seemed really like the villains of the episode. When Adama told Chief Tyrol that he would have Cally executed if Chief did not call off the strike that he had initiated, I could not believe it. Of course, mere moments later, both Roslin and Adama were back all smiles and reasonable again. The whole story wrapped up in a third act switch, like it was a sitcom that had reached the end of the episode. It was a real whiplash effect.

Then was a shock. It was a Starbuck episode, featuring on the trauma in Kara’s past, including her relationship with her mother. The shock came at the end of the episode where it appeared that Kara flew her plane into a storm and it exploded into pieces, effectively killing her before the very eyes of Lee. LOST used to do this all the time, focus an episode on the back story of certain characters and then kill them off at the end. I do not know if this was the final episode for Katee Sackhoff and the character of Kara Thrace, but it sure seemed final. Kara had been in a downward spiral for quite awhile now and this felt like a fitting end to the character. I actually hope that there is no more sign of Kara Thrace outside of flashbacks. I have a feeling that we have not seen the last of Starbuck though.

Then, it seemed as if we focus in on Baltar’s lawyer. It was a weird episode where we have a new character named Romo Lampkin. Lee was assigned by Adama to protect him after the last lawyer for Baltar wound up dead from an explosion. The episode saw both Lee and Adama dealing with their grief over Starbuck in different manners. Of course, when Roslin was pulling random names out to form the tribunal for the trial of Baltar, Adama wound up on the panel, which was about as cliche as you are going to get. There is no reason why he should be anywhere near a tribunal in Baltar’s trial because, as we saw a couple of episodes ago, he was willing to shoot a woman as a “co-conspirator” to try and torment one of his friends into giving up a strike. He hid it under the guise of ‘following orders’ but it was a cruel use of extortion. I really get the feeling that Roslin just wants this trial over and I am not convinced that she will allow a truly fair trial to happen. Both Roslin and Adama are characters that I consider very much tainted since this season began, if not prior to it.

Season three has not been my favorite season so far. Perhaps it is because there is so much shade of grey in the storytelling, which I normally enjoy, but I would like to have a character or two that can rise above that. A character or two that I could really root for, knowing that they will always do what was right, and I do not thing that character exists currently on Battlestar Galactica.

Of course, the tension is always great and the acting is top notch, so there are still many reasons to love this show.