Tag Archives: 2024

The Amazing Jonathan Documentary (2019)

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January 2

Day two of the 2025 Genre-ary brought me to Disney + and a film about a magician by the name of the Amazing Jonathan, a documentary that started off as a story about a magician who was diagnoses with a heart condition that gave him one year to live, but ended up in a much different direction that included a deep internal conflict for the documentarian Ben Berman.

The Amazing Jonathan had been diagnoses with a heart condition and he told an audience that he had one year to live. When Ben Berman approached him, that was three years prior and Amazing Jonathan was going back out for a five-show tour.

However, the doc was not as much about Amazing Jonathan as it was about Ben Berman himself and trying to discover exactly was going on. He found out that there were other people working on a documentary about Jonathan, people whom Jonathan had also given permission to. During the doc, we discover three other documentaries in progress besides Berman’s.

As Berman filmed, he began to question what was real and what was being made up by the magician as an illusion or a prank.

Some may say not to turn the camera back on the documentarian, but I feel as if this film does it in a very effective manner. I was more compelled by the story about the making of this documentary than I was about the story of this dying magician. For a good chunk of the film, I saw Amazing Jonathan almost as the antagonist of the doc, which is crazy. I did like how this documentary brought the conflict to a close at the end. It felt like redemption for the film character Amazing Jonathan.

I see some hate for this documentary online, but I thought this was a fascinating tale of the creation of a doc featuring a magician and the documentarian and their intertwining story. I watched this on Disney +, but it was released officially on Hulu.

Squid Game S2 E6, E7

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Spoilers

“O X”

“Friend or Foe”

I finished up the second season of Squid Games on Netflix late last night and I have thoughts.

First, it sure ended at a strange place. It almost felt like this was a first part of a season like they did for Stranger Things and Cobra Kai. I have not heard any info on a second part to season two though. Perhaps it is just setting up for season three instead. If so, then season two would absolutely be the Empire Strikes Back of the Squid Games as things went oh so wrong for our heroes (PS… just looked at the end of the episode and it says season three will be back in 2025 so there is that.)

Gi-hun’s whole plan to take it to the people running the show by hijacking guns from the guards was wild and was never going to work. The pink suits had such a huge number of people that the handful of rebels were just not going to get through. However, it got fairly far and might have had a chance if they did not have a rat inside their team. Of course, that is In-ho, 001, who had been inside the game manipulating the situation. His eventual betrayal ended the uprising and led to the unfortunate death of Jung-bae. I had seen a spoiler about a death in the final episode that was shocking and this was the one. For a minute, I actually thought it was going to be Gi-hun instead. That would have been a shocker.

Defying all odds, Geum-ja has survived. I was sure she was going down after her son Yong-sik had changed his vote from X to O. I thought he was going to have to pay for his choice with his mother, but she continues to fight on. It did look like she was a goner during Mingle, but she was thankfully saved.

Speaking of Mingle, that was another game that was intense and very difficult to watch at times. The way alliances were tossed aside by some compared to those that were going out of their way to try and help the others.

Seeing Thanos get his final payment at the end of season six was very satisfying, and of course, brutal. Fork to the neck is not something I expected to see.

For a season that I was not sure was needed, this was a very tense and exciting seven episodes.

Yellowjackets S2 E1

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“Friends, Romans, Countrymen”

The second season of Yellowjackets is underway and the winter has started to take its toll. There also appears to be some mental breakdowns starting to creep into the survivors (I say ‘starting’ although this is probably a mad rush). Shauna eating the ear of Jackie, who had died two months earlier, but not buried (I assume because the ground is too frozen to do so). Shauna has spent much of the last two months since her friend’s death talking to the frozen corpse in the food storage area (unsanitary). Of course, Jackie would talk back to her too, as they got into discussion of Shauna and Jeff’s affair. Tiassa continuing her own crazy behavior, which will continue into the present day. And there is Lottie who is some kind of self-help cult leader and the person who had Natalie kidnapped at the end of season one. Don’t worry Nat, cause Misty is on the case.

Present day, I would think that Shauna would have been better about concealing a crime by this point in her life. Burning Adam’s license and things in her barbeque was just a silly way to get rid of evidence. Then, the art studio caper made no sense either. They can’t control their passions? Shauna and Jeff have sex and leave all kinds of DNA evidence around. And did they just use paint remover to ruin all the painting of her they found? Um… that is not a good choice.

Natalie and Lottie coming face to face at the end of the episode as her cult were burying an old naked man alive was weird, and probably not the best choice by Natalie, but she is a very impulsive character so I can believe that she would see her old teammate and head right forward to her.

A couple of strange choices were made this episode, including some new survivors in the wilderness (I assume they were the background characters in season one and now have more importance… aka Nikki and Paolo from LOST. We know what their fate turned out to be).

Yellowjackets S1 E7

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Spoilers

“No Compass”

An exciting episode. With the three current day women dropping off the money, and the dramatic danger at the end of the episode with a pack of wolves, this was exciting throughout the whole episode.

So many things happened. Taissa had tackled the guy who was blackmailing them, but took an elbow to the face allowing him to get away. Kevin discovered that his gun was messed up and questioned Natalie about it. Shauna came back and had sex with Adam.

I saw that Christina Ricci was on the credits and I did not know that she was on this show. So I looked up who she played. I thought it might be current day Natalie, but I was shocked to see that she is playing current day Misty. Couldn’t believe it. Then, we see Misty and her sociopathy tendencies as she interviewed the reporter.

The wolves attack at the end with them tearing off parts of Van’s face. It was a brutal reminder how dangerous of a situation that they were in.

The whole Shauna/Jackie story with Shauna’s pregnancy was another key component of the episode. Jackie found the diary with the truth in it after Shauna had told her that it was Randy who had gotten her pregnant.

Three more episodes of season one.

The Garfield Movie

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I have not been looking forward to this movie because the trailers for The Garfield Movie have been truly awful. Still, I went in with the hope that this would be better than I thought it would be.

Sadly, it is not.

I did not like The Garfield Movie at all. There are so many things that I just did not work for a Garfield movie. This was an action movie with a character that had always before spent all his time on the couch eating lasagna. The entire storyline with Garfield’s estranged father, Vic (Samuel L. Jackson), just did not work. It was something that did not work for the character and stood out as a huge problem with the script. Seeing Garfield jumping from drone to drone just should not happen.

The animation was good. I think some kids would like this movie, however, my theater was mostly filled with youngsters, and there was very little responses during the film. Very few laughs. There was no energy in the room. I did not think that was a good sign for the film.

I know there was some controversy with Chris Pratt as the voice of Garfield, but he was fine. I do not think that the voice performance of Chris Pratt was the problem of this movie.

This film did not resemble the classic Jim Davis Garfield character at all. He became an action hero and the relationship story with Vic was both ridiculous and predictable. There was not enough humor and the story was weak. Some youth may find this entertaining.

2.5 stars