Mafia Mamma: Insert You Own Corny Mobster Cliché Here

Allegedly, this film is a mafia comedy, but as any successful gangster will tell you, allegations have to be proven. In this case, good luck with that. To be fair, you can certainly see it trying to be funny. Oh boy, can you ever. It is also probably supposed to be another half-baked story of “family,” when Kristin Balbano Jordan inherits two family businesses from the grandfather she never really knew. One is a terrible winery, but it doesn’t have to be very good, because it is really a front for the down-on-their-luck Balbano crime syndicate. Being a soon-to-be-divorced empty nester, she has the time to turn both around in Catherine Hardwicke’s Mafia Mamma, which opens today in theaters.

Jordan always put her son and husband first, but after the coddled little brat leaves for college, she catches her not-nearly-as-cool-as-he-thinks-he-is husband with another woman. It is the perfect time to claim her inheritance from her recently departed grandfather. As Bianca, the consigliere, explains, old man Balbano picked her to succeed him as the don, or whatever. Of course, that does not sit well with the presumed heir apparent. Frankly, he is welcomed to it, as far as Jordan is concerned. She just wants an Italian fling that will live up to her bestie’s “Eat, Pray, F***” mantra. Yes, the comedy of Michael J. Feldman & Debbie Jhoon’s screenplay is largely built around a cringy Eat, Pray, Love reference. You’ve been warned.

Of course, through incredibly dumb slapstick, Jordan manages to foil the rival crime family’s assassination attempts. She even turns round the Balbano syndicate’s fortunes with a feel-good, totally ethical, if not 100% legal generic drug importation scheme, but then the stupid husband and son show up.

Kids vs. Aliens, on Shudder

1980s kids were uniquely qualified to fight alien invaders. They were well-versed in geek culture, but were also self-motivated and self-reliant. The notion of “safe spaces” would be as foreign to them as little green men. That will be just as well for teenaged Samantha and her little brother Gary, because the invaders make the spaces of their small Canadian town decidedly unsafe in Jason Eisener’s Kids vs. Aliens, which premieres tomorrow on Shudder.

Samantha is an underappreciated big sister, both by her bratty little brother and their frequently absent parents. Being a good sport, she often performs in his science fiction-wrestling home movies, even though she yearns to hang with the cool kids. She thinks she will finally get her wish when Billy, the popular “bad boy,” starts paying her attention. Unfortunately, he shows his true jerky colors when he turns the small Halloween party she agreed to host into a massive blowout. Then the aliens attack.

K vs. A is not explicitly set in the 1980s, but it definitely has an analogue look and texture. Gary and his friends shoot their movies on VHS and the film itself has a retro style similar to Eisener’s over-hyped Hobo with a Shotgun.  Obviously, every pitch for this film included generous use off the words “Stranger Things.” Yet, K vs. A also has a surprising (and not in a good way) mean streak, not unlike Hobo. It is not quite as brutal as the neo-exploitation “spoof,” but it still is not nearly as much fun as it should have been.

Once Upon a Time in Ukraine

Taras Shevchenko was a former serf, who became Ukraine’s national bard. His poetry was so important to Ukrainian cultural identity (which Putin denies ever existed), the Soviets never banned his work. They just emphasized his anti-Czarist writings, rather than his Ukrainian pride. He also teamed up with a half-Ukrainian half-Japanese samurai to fight ninjas. That part might be a bit of dramatic license on the part of screenwriter-director Roman Perfilyev. Regardless of historical accuracy, Ukrainians will rise-up and fight for their freedom in Perfilyev’s Once Upon a Time in Ukraine, which releases tomorrow in theaters and on VOD.

Shevchenko and his ilk are still referred to as “Bondman,” meaning they are bonded to the land. He almost escaped over the border with his beloved, Maria, but their plan was foiled, by her master, Yaromir Loboda. While awaiting execution, Shevchenko is “liberated” by Bogdan Chuba, a supposed peasant revolutionary, who is really just out for himself, like every other “revolutionary” since 1776. Instead of joining his gang, Shevchenko shuffles off with Akayo Nakamura, the half-Japanese son of a Ukrainian Bondwoman, who also has business with Loboda.

The vicious landowner also does business with Nakamura’s nemesis, Yoshi Harimoto, an opium dealing human-trafficker, who killed the samurai’s master and stole his sword. Subsequently, Harimoto gave the katana to his new business partner, Loboda, with whom he exchanges opium for Ukrainian women. Obviously, Nakamura will not let that stand.

The Tarantino echoes here are obvious and deliberate. If anything, Perfilyev’s film is even less historically accurate than Inglorious Basterds. However, like Tarantino’s films, Once Upon a Time is presented as a wish-fulfilling fantasy—one that happens to be particularly crazy and over-the-top. It is not trying to re-write history, like the recent Chinese film that radically altered the events and implications of the Battle of Chosin. In further contrast, Perfilyev’s film clearly believes all people deserve freedom and human dignity.

Perhaps the happiest surprise is how much great martial arts and swordplay this Ukrainian film stages. It is debatable whether Sergey Strelnikov really looks half-Japanese, but he is convincingly fierce and was well-trained for Nakamura’s fight scenes. Roman Lutskyi’s portrayal of Shevchenko is surprisingly comedic, for a national hero, but he also gives him everyman grit that is easy to identify with and root for. Weirdly, they mesh pretty well as odd-couple action buddies.

Makoto Shinkai’s Suzume

Daijin considers himself a god, but he looks like a cat and he has a decidedly selfish, feline-like personality. Unfortunately, he doesn’t just walk on people’s laps with his penetrating paws. He is determined to open portals that would allow Namazu, the mythical worm kaiju, to enter our world, like when he caused the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. It is Sota Munakata’s calling to keep those doors closed, but he will need Suzume Iwato’s help in Makoto Shinkai’s Suzume, which opens Friday in New York.

Iwato is still haunted by the loss of her mother during the 2011 Tohoku earthquake-tsunami. Since then, she has lived with her Aunt Tamaki on picturesque Kyushu. One day, while biking to school, she encountered Munakata, who asks if there are any ruins on the island. In fact, there is an abandoned resort village. Intrigued, Iwato starts exploring the ruins, trying to find the mysterious door Munataka mentioned. The surreal looking stand-alone door certainly looks like what he had in mind, but as she pokes around, she inadvertently releases the “keystone” sealing the portal.

That keystone turns into an extremely mischievous cat that calls itself Daijin (sort of like Daimajin). With Munakata’s help, Iwato barely manages to close the door, but to keep it closed, they will need to put the keystone back in his proper place. Daijin leads them on a merry chase across Japan, opening door after door, with no regard for the death and destruction that could result. Adding a further degree of difficulty, Daijin also curses Munakata, transforming him into the old three-legged stool Iwato’s mother hand-crafted for her.

Only an anime master like Makoto could successfully pull-off a sentient, self-ambulatory stool, sort of like the Beauty & the Beast candlestick, but in a contemporary dramatic setting, presented in a serious manner. Indeed, he pulls it off, while building some truly poignant chemistry between the two lead characters (even though one of them spends most of the film as a small piece of furniture). In this case, the relationship between Iwato and Munataka takes on romantic dimensions, but it is more complex and ambiguous than that of Your Name, Shinkai’s most comparable previous film.

Yonder, on Paramount+

In Charlie McDowell’s The Discovery and the subsequent, derivative Next Exit, scientists discover the existence of an afterlife that holds cosmic implications. In contrast, Dr. K decides to invent one for his own peace of mind, digitally. Kim Jae-hyun, a journalist and grieving husband, suspects K’s scheme is as hubristic as it sounds in the six-episode Yonder, directed by Lee Joon-ik, which premieres today on Paramount+.

A few years into the future, new Korean euthanasia laws have the National Health Service working overtime to keep up with demand. In compliance with regulations, Kim helps his wife Cha Yi-hoo end the pain of her fatal cancer, but not before she is visited by the mysterious Seiren.

He soon deduces Cha contracted the services of the By N By corporation to download her memories and place them in a VR world known as “The Yonder,” from where Cha contacts her shocked husband via video emails. At first, he assumes they are deep-fake spam from Hell, but he realizes differently when he starts digging into the By N By. He even interviews Dr. K, whom he assumes is a deceased neuro-scientist, speaking to him from the Yonder.

It all sounds too good to be true, especially since real flesh-and-blood people are considering ending their physical existence, to join their loved ones in the Yonder. Unfortunately, that might include the extremely vulnerable Peaches, a member of his informal Yonder-family support group.

In addition to The Discovery, etc, Yonder also shares thematic similarities with Pantheon, but its heartfelt, ultra-morose tone is K-drama all the way. Writers Kim Jung-hun, Oh Seung-hyun, and Kim Sung-cheol definitely focus on the emotional response to the speculative technology rather than the underlying coding. Yet, that allows them to build to a surprisingly distinctive climax.

The Lost Weekend: A Love Story

Beatles fans, all your anger and resentment focused on Yoko Ono is about to be vindicated. It turns out, her influence on John Lennon was maybe even worse than you thought, at least according to May Pang. She ought to know. She was Lennon’s great lost love—and it was Ono herself who got them together. Pang chronicles her 18-month romance with Lennon in Eve Brandstein, Richard Kaufman, & Stuart Samuels’ The Lost Weekend, which has a special nationwide Iconic Events screening this Thursday night.

Nobody denies Pang’s relationship with Lennon, not even Ono. Pang already told her story in her memoirs, whose publishers sent her on considerable publicity tours, as viewers can tell from the talk show footage incorporated into the doc. It all started in 1970, which was a very different era. A teen like Pang could just knock on the door of Apple Records and talk her way into an entry level job. From there, she was hired by Lennon and Ono to be their personal assistant, working on their experimental films nobody ever wanted to watch.

Sensing Lennon was getting a little restless, Ono told Pang to have tryst with Lennon, because she assumed she could control their young assistant. However, a lot more developed between them than a quick and dirty weekend. It turns out, they had real feelings for each other—and Pang was much better for Lennon than Ono ever was.

This film will pretty much damn Ono in the eyes of Beatles fans, because she explicitly explains how Ono tried to isolate John Lennon from his son Julian, while forcing Pang to do her dirty work. In contrast, while he was with Pang, Lennon regularly saw and spoke with his oldest son, as Julian Lennon himself confirms on-screen. In fact, Julian Lennon is one of the major talking heads seen throughout the film, giving Pang credit for maintaining a life-long relationship with both himself and his mother (Lennon’s first wife).

We also hear from archival interview footage that Lennon started to see Paul and Linda McCartney socially again while he was with Pang. Had he stayed with Pang, it is easy to imagine (so to speak) the possibility of a Beatles reunion. Plus, the music he produced during their time together was less didactic and much more fun to listen to. Yet, somehow Ono exerted a Svengali-like hold over Lennon, at least when she was close enough to exert her evil powers of mesmerism, metaphorically speaking.

Am I Being Unreasonable, on Hulu

The characters of this comedy series should sequester themselves from people, because their toxicity is off the charts. They never should have married and they certainly should never reproduce—and yet they did. Of course, that is where the comedy comes from. Writer-creator-co-leads Daisy May Cooper and Selin Hizli take no prisoners in the six-part Am I Being Unreasonable, which premieres Tuesday on Hulu.

Nic has genuine affection for her son Ollie (who was born with a dwarfism condition), but she is still a terrible mom. She can barely pretend to be interested in him and her contempt for her husband Dan is starting to show. Instead, she mopes around in a state of depression, unable to fully mourn her secret lover, Alex, who died in front of her, one cold winter night. However, Dan can mourn for him just fine, since Alex was his brother.

Emotionally hobbled by the horror and guilt of the experience, Nic is barely functioning. Then she meets Jen, who’s cool, couldn’t-give-a-toss attitude appeals to her. They become fast friends, thanks in part to a great deal of booze. However, we soon learn Jen is prone to obsessive behavior and clingy attachments. For some reason, she deliberately set out to insinuate herself into Nic’s life.

The series is mostly a dysfunctional family sitcom, albeit an unusually dark one, but Cooper and Hizli also incorporate some thriller elements, in the tradition of Single White Female and Fatal Attraction. Regardless, these are some of the most messed-up, brazenly manipulative, and irredeemably self-absorbed characters any TV or streaming series has dared to feature in years. Naturally, that is why Unreasonable is so refreshing. These people regularly humiliate each other and themselves, but it is always very funny, precisely because they so richly deserve it.

You might say nobody is trying to make a statement or teach us anything, but that is not entirely true. Viv, one of the busybody moms Nic cannot abide, gets mercilessly skewered for her didactic “feminist comedy routines,” which often involve making inappropriate sexual references in front of the children. If you think the show is laughing with her rather than at her, than Unreasonable is also laughing at you too.

Frankly, it is a bit surprising Hulu and the BBC had the gumption to produce and stream Unreasonable. This is basically throwback Ab/Fab humor, but with a darker misanthropic undercurrent. Cooper is hilarious as the shameless Nic. Her character arc starts at utter rock-bottom and then craters further. Hizli gives off massively creepy vibes as Jen, but weirdly, her character somewhat recedes into the background for the final episodes.

Cube (the Japanese Remake), on Screambox

Vicenzo Natali's 1997 film gave fans some life-and-death math well before Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code—with an emphasis on the death part. Instead of Fibonacci sequences, it was all about Cartesian Coordinates and primes, as well as brutal death traps. The rumored reboot has yet to happen, but it was remade in Japan, with Natali on-board as an executive producer. You still want to avoid prime numbers in Yasuhiko Shimizu’s Cube, which premieres Tuesday on Screambox.

Like in Natali’s original, six people wake up in a mysterious structure of interlocking cubes with no memory of how they got there. When they eventually find each other, it is clear the blue-collar Ide is the one who has had the most time to figure out the cube’s deadly ways. However, it is the emotionally-damaged teen Uno who figures out the significance of the serial number-like digits attached to each of the cube like rooms. If any of the three sets of three numbers constitutes a prime, there is sure to be a trap waiting for them in the corresponding chamber. However, even if there is no prime, there still could be a trap.

Much like the source film, most of the Cube’s prisoners have serious personal issues, like Ando, the obnoxious business man or Ochi, the psychopath. The one who doesn’t seem to have anything going on, actually holds the biggest secret, which represents the greatest departure from the 1997 film.

Frankly, Shimizu’s remake, adapted by Koji Tokuo is even weaker when it comes to characterization than the original. Whereas the first film might have been slightly more tethered to the real world, Tokuo’s version has more science fiction implications, but there is no time to explore them to any substantial extent.

A Pure Place

It is a parable of fascism, refracted through a cult of personality, produced in Greece, by German filmmakers. That makes perverse sense, because if anyone knows fascism and authoritarians who demand obedience, it is the Germans and the Greeks. Two siblings will be corrupted by a psychopath’s cult of cleanliness and virtue in Nikias Chryssos’s A Pure Place, which releases today on VOD.

Initially, it sounds like Irina has bought into the purity mythos of the evil Jim Jones-like Fust, but he younger brother Paul cannot help but ask awkward questions. When Fust plucks her out of the basement soap factory to replace the aging Maria as his “favorite,” Irina is supposed to leave Paul behind, but she cannot shun him altogether.

Despite his less advanced years, Paul is the more experienced sibling, because he often helps Albrich, the soap foreman, ship and sell their product. That necessarily involves leaving the villa-compound, even though the children are told exposure to the air outside can lead to death. As he becomes more skeptical, Paul grows more defiant and potentially violent.

Having the Puritanical death cult produce soap is a little too on-the-nose and in-your-face, but that is definitely how A Pure Place rolls. It seems unlikely the Greek-German Chryssos would be totally unaware of soap-making’s horrific historical associations. Admittedly, the cult’s soap business is non-lethal, for the most part, but it summons far too real images, just for the sake of driving home his themes of outer cleanliness and inner corruption, with merciless blunt force.

The Portable Door, on MGM+

Paul Carpenter and Sophie Pettingel are too old for Hogwarts. At this point, they are mostly kind of adults. Fortunately, the J.W. Wells & Co offers a sort of magical management training program. The tweedy firm administers fateful coincidences and serendipity, for a fee, but it takes Carpenter a few beats to figure that out. He was only hired thanks to providential happenstance and dumb luck. Nevertheless, he must navigate the company’s magical intrigues in Jeffrey Walker’s The Portable Door, based on Tom Holt’s YA novel, which premieres Saturday on MGM+.

Carpenter needs a job, any job, so when an odd chain of events leads him away from a barista interview to the mysterious Wells Company, he goes ahead and applies for the open position they have posted. The new CEO, Humphrey Wells seems to give Carpenter’s explanation more credence than the rest of the board interviewing him, but sure enough, he lands the paid internship.

Initially, he gets the cold shoulder from his officemate, Pettingel. She is on the management training fast track, because she is an actual seer. Carpenter isn’t sure what his place in the fantastical company could be, but Wells (who just succeeded his missing father) is convinced he has divination powers that can find the Portable Door, a magical portal device that theoretically takes users anywhere they want to go. However, in practice, the door can be a bit unpredictable.

Co-produced by the Jim Henson Company, Portable Door is an upbeat fantasy with a lot of visually distinctive world-building. The creature creations are as charming as you would expect from the Henson team (including goblins and baby dragons), but the target audience definitely skews young. The energy is high throughout the film, but not so much the intensity level.

Catching Lightning, on Showtime

How was MMA cage-fighter Lee “Lightning” Murray a lot like George Soros? They both nearly broke the Bank of England. At least Murray wasn’t trying to do so. His gang just stole a princely amount of cash from one of the BoE’s private currency depots, purely for the sake of the money. Yet, the takings and the resulting closure of the Securitas facility took so much cash out of the economy, it put a system-threatening strain on the BoE. In fact, it remains the largest cash robbery in British history and one still one of the world’s biggest hard currency heists ever. The irony-laden true-crime sports story unfolds in director Pat Kondelis’s four-part documentary, Catching Lightning, which starts streaming on Showtime tomorrow.

As Elia Kazan would say, Lee Murray could have been a contender. He was nicknamed Lightning because his fists were dangerously fast. He would have been the UFC’s first international breakout star were it not for his visa problems. Even Brazilian champion Anderson Silva speaks highly of his skills, as one of the docuseries’ onscreen commentators.

However, cage fighting was not Murray’s only line of work. He still served as an active member of the Buttmarsh Boys gang, which is how he came to know the shady characters involved in the Securitas depot robbery in quiet Kent, England. It was not a caper in the gentlemanly Raffles/Rififi tradition. It involved the kidnapping of a shift-manager’s wife and young son as well as holding about a dozen depot employees at gunpoint, which is probably why Murray and his accomplices have yet to become folk heroes, like Murf the Surf.

Murray also is not super-available for interviews, but Catching Lightning incorporates previously unheard prison recordings of Murray, wherein he tries to finally speak for himself. Do not make assumptions regarding those prison tapes, because the Kent police’s mission to bring Murray to justice took on some wild legal and jurisdictional twists.

A four-parter chronicling the Securitas heist might sound like overkill (especially since the concluding episode is well over one and a quarter hours long), but Kondelis and company make surprisingly economical use of viewers’ time. The first part establishes Murray’s rise and fall in the MMA world, including his notorious street brawl with then-champion Tito Ortiz. The second part provides a step-by-step account of the hostage-taking and robbery, the third follows the investigation, and the capper covers the prosecutions, which is probably where the greatest ironies come into play.

Slasher: Ripper, on Shudder

Thanks to the mysterious “Widow,” the Progressive Era comes early to late Nineteenth Century Toronto. She intends to reform the city’s rich and depraved one severed head or eviscerated body at a time. Nobody is richer or more corrupt than Basil Garvey, the town’s society patron and not-so-secret power-broker, but she will have plenty of guilty parties to work through before she gets to him. It is Det. Kenneth Rijkers’ job to stop her, but the incompetence of his ethically-compromised colleagues will not be helpful in creator-writer Adam MacDonald’s eight-episode Slasher: Ripper, which premieres tomorrow on Shudder.

This is not the first time a serial killer has stalked the streets of Toronto. Twelve years earlier, a maniac dubbed “The Ripper” due to his similarities with Jack the Ripper terrorized the sex workers of the redlight district. Supposedly, he was caught and executed—or so the police and city fathers claimed, so everyone would get back to business as usual. However, Rijkers is not so sure—and The Widow would certainly beg to differ, judging from some of the notes she leaves behind.

In addition to the obvious exploiters of women, she has it in for everyone involved in the frame-up job. She will start by picking-off the lower hanging fruit, assuming she really is a she. Soon, suspicion focuses on Georges Rondeau, a flamboyant magician, who happened to be playing Toronto during the time of the original Ripper (copycat) murders. Meanwhile, Rondeau becomes somewhat obsessed, in a professional way, with Regina Simcoe, the widow of the Widow’s victim from the first episode’s prologue, who apparently displayed genuine spiritual sensitivity during the ostensibly phony séance Rondeau arranged for her.

Slasher continues to be a seasonal anthology, in the mold of American Horror Story, but the appearance of Gabriel Darku as Rijkers, who shares a surname with his character in season four, “Solstice,” suggests a distant continuity for fans who might be interested. Nevertheless, the whole point is to allow new viewers to come in without any prior knowledge required.

Based on the first four episodes provided for review, the horror and procedural stuff all really works well. The veiled Widow costume is creepy looking, even if it is not particularly practical for sprinting through back alleys. The problem is the subplot involving Verdi Botticelli, an unfortunate orphan forced to live with her abusive and exploitative half-sisters, regularly kills the momentum.

One Day as a Lion, Co-Starring Frank Grillo and J.K. Simmons

Pauly Russo would probably agree with Texans about why all their trees lean to the North. Adjusting to Oklahoma is a challenge for the Brooklyn mobster. The dry heat is annoying, but folks’ laidback sensibilities are even more so. His plan to whack a cowboy in no hurry to pay off his gambling debts leads to a lot of trouble for everyone in John Swab’s One Day as a Lion, which opens today in select theaters and releases Friday on VOD.

Jackie Powers is a big time loser, but it is actually his son Billy who is behind bars. Technically, it is juvy, but Powers knows if he can’t get his son out quickly, he will get chewed up by the system. To earn money for an attorney, Powers agrees to kill Walter Boggs, who owes Russo more than is good for business. Unfortunately, Powers makes a hash of it, accidentally killing an obnoxious short-order cook in the crossfire. Of course, Boggs is fine—and he will be ready for Russo when the gangster-creditor comes calling.

Assuming himself to be on the run, Powers tries to take Lola Brisky the diner waitress hostage, but he cannot really handle her either. However, Brisky sees an opportunity to use him for her advantage. If he can convince her judgmental but wealthy mother Valerie, “the Black Widow,” they are a couple, there could be money in it for both of them. To do so, they must evade Russo’s fixer, Dom Lorenzo, who needs Powers to give himself up, to take the heat off Russo’s outfit.

In the 1990s, when “indie film” was thought to mean something, screenwriter-star Scott Caan’s combination of hardboiled snarky dialogue and gritty gunplay would have been considered an important cinematic statement. Today, it’s the stuff of straight-to-VOD releases. Yet, this kind of material can be just as entertaining now as it was then.

To that end, Caan’s script is just okay, but three of his co-stars do a lot to elevate it. Frank Grillo and J.K. Simmons are perfectly cast and impeccably compliment each as the brash Russo and the sly, deadpan Boggs. The two do gangster attitude better than just about anyone.

The Fist of the Condor, Starring Marko Zaror

El Guerrero is not yet as blind as Zatoichi, but his extremely light-sensitive eyes are irreversibly deteriorating. As a consolation, the same is true for his sworn rival, which makes sense, since that happens to be his twin brother Gemelo. Each wants to control the book that holds all the secrets of Rumi Maki, an ancient Incan martial art. Obviously, when it comes to this kind of knowledge, there can be only one. Both archetypal brothers are played by Chilean martial arts superstar Marko Zaror in Ernesto Diaz Espinoza’s The Fist of the Condor, which screens this Tuesday in Drafthouses theaters across the country.

The two brothers wanted to learn the ancient Condor-style martial art discipline from Mother Condor, but she only deemed El Guerrero worthy. However, Gemelo kept watching them outside the grounds of her school, biding his time. Now, Gemelo is a master and a criminal kingpin, but he still worries about what his brother might know.

For years, El Guerrero has trained for an inevitable showdown with his twin brother. He even abandoned his family, to live and train like a mystical nomad, sort of like Cain on Kung Fu, or any number of angsty martial arts protagonists.

It makes sense for Well Go USA to try to build the Chilean Zaror into the next big martial arts superstar. He is recognizable from the John Wick franchise and lacks the baggage of many of his colleagues or competitors from Hong Kong and Mainland China. Speaking solely for myself, I will no longer be covering films starring Donnie Yen or Jackie Chan. They have endorsed 7.5 million of their fellow Hongkongers losing their freedom to curry favor with the CCP. This makes them traitors to their homeland and total sell-outs. It is simply not acceptable.

That brings us back to Zaror, who has tremendous skills and an imposing screen presence. He might have to work on developing more leading man charisma, but the trippy, spiritual vibe of Fist shrewdly fits his muscular, bird-of-prey-like physicality. He can fight like crazy and brood like a house on fire. Yet, he clearly establishes very distinct personas for El Guerrero and Gemelo.

Quantum Leap: Judgment Day

For a time travel show, Quantum Leap has been remarkably unconcerned with time paradoxes, until now. To make up for it, the season finale literally turns back the clock, leaping whole-heartedly into potential butterfly effects and time distortions. Dr. Ben Song is still trying to save his fiancée, Addison Augustine, but he will jeopardize the space-time continuum to do so in “Judgment Day,” which premieres tonight on NBC.

Everybody could be in very big trouble, because Song is about to leap into the future—and it does not look good. He cannot stay long, for technical reasons, but future Ian Wright has something important to tell him. Unfortunately, Song isn’t sure he gets it. Initially, the next leap should be easier, since he is familiar with his new host—himself. However, changing things will create paradoxes, since he would remember the original timeline. Nevertheless, he might just do so anyway.

Some of this season’s lesser episodes almost forgot about the time travel making each leap possible, focusing instead on social justice lectures or some pleasant but small stakes family drama. With “Judgment Day,” they compensate for lost opportunities. It also involves the full regular cast and the recurring Janis Calavicci and Richard Martinez (a.k.a. “Leaper X”), all of whom have key roles to play.

This episode was written by series story editor Margarita Matthews as was “Leap, Die, Repeat,” which was the only previous episode to really tackle time paradoxes and it that case, time loops. They are definitely the two episodes of the first season that most directly explore the theoretical dangers of time travel. “Judgment Day” is also the only episode to have action in more than two time periods.

Living with Chucky, the Child’s Play Doc

Chucky, the evil “Good Guy” doll was sort of like the Universal Monsters. They all made horror a family business. Dracula had a daughter (Gloria Holden) and a son (Lon Chaney Jr.). The Bride for the Frankenstein monster did not work out so well for him, but the good doctor had his own son (Basil Rathbone). Likewise, Chucky had both his “Bride” and his “Seed.” It was also a family business for filmmaker Kyra Elise Gardner, who grew up with the franchise as the daughter Tony Gardner, one of the special effects artists who brought Chucky to life. Gardner chronicles the franchise with the help of her father and family friends in the documentary Living with Chucky, which premieres this Tuesday on Screambox and on VOD.

The 2019 reboot is largely ignored by Gardner and company, because it was produced by a different creative team, but all the prior films and the subsequent TV series get full coverage. During the course of the doc, they track the evolution of the films, as they first became funnier, campier, and more ironic and then far less so, in response to trends in the horror genre.

Of course, Gardner talks a lot to her father, but not his predecessor, Kevin Yager, or Yager’s wife, Catherine Hicks, the star of the original Child’s Play. However, the creator of Chucky, screenwriter (and later franchise director) Don Mancini is heard from at length, along with series producer David Kirschner. Brad Dourif, the voice of Chucky, and his daughter Fiona, who played a prominent on-screen role in the later films, are interviewed together, in keeping with the film’s family vibe. Fan favorites Jennifer Tilly and Christine Elise McCarthy also get a good deal of screen time, as does Alex Vincent, the first little boy terrorized by Chucky.

When watching Living with Chucky, you can see how the Chucky franchise still survives to this day. While they changed up the tone, they always respect the fans, by bringing back their favorite characters and cast-members. Of course, Seed of Chucky gets played-up as an early manifestation of wokeness, but most fans probably just enjoyed it as an homage to Ed Wood’s Glen or Glenda, which the doc never mentions.

Confess, Fletch—Soundtrack on Blue Note

The standards for journalism have fallen so low, even Irwin Fletcher has left his old profession in disgust. However, he is still perfectly happy to defy authority and engage in some improvised deception, for a good cause. For him, an attractive Italian woman in trouble certainly qualifies as such. Of course, his new misadventures cannot compete with Michael Ritchie’s original Fletch film, but at least the soundtrack full of classic Blue Note (and Pacific Jazz) tunes keeps everything cool and jaunty in Greg Mottola’s Confess, Fletch, which releases Tuesday on DVD.

Angela de Grassi was rather surprised when her father the Count hired Fletch to track down several of the family’s valuable paintings (of semi-dubious providence), but she was pleasantly surprised by his progress—and his charm. Indeed, he will be a great comfort when the Count is kidnapped. Instead of money, his abductors demand the stolen paintings, so Fletch makes haste to Boston, to investigate Ronald Horan, the dodgy art dealer possibly fencing the stolen paintings.

Complications immediately set in when Fletch finds a murdered body in the townhouse de Grassi arranged for him. Inspector Morris “Slow-Mo” Monroe takes an instant dislike to Fletch, but he needs more evidence for an arrest. Fletch will have to clear his name while saving the Count, but the two cases are probably related anyway.

Confess, Fletch is amusing, but nobody will be quoting from it in a year’s time. It is brisk and breezy, but even more laidback than the first Chevy Chase film. As Fletch, Jon Hamm has an appropriately casual attitude, but his wisecracks do not land with the same crispness. Hamm shares some appealing chemistry with Lorenza Izzo as de Grassi (she’s Chilean, but she convincingly passes for Mediterranean). He also kvetches drolly with his old Mad Men colleague, John Slattery, playing an old newspaper crony, but it is dry chuckles rather than big laughs.

Spinning Gold, the Casablanca Records story

Every record label that means something to fans has a very distinctive style and sound, like Blue Note, Pacific Jazz, and Stax. That was certainly true of Casablanca Records too. They recorded Buddy Miles and Hugh Masekela, but they are best known for disco. Yet, their biggest, most profitable outlier was KISS, even though they took a while to catch on. Timothy Scott Bogart brings his father Neil’s tenure at the label to the big-screen as an ill-advised movie-musical in Spinning Gold, which opens today in New York.

Neil Bogart died at the premature age of 39, but he still tells his own story in his son’s musical memory play. He was born Neil Bogatz in Brooklyn, but he was eager to leave his modest roots behind. Music became his business, first as a one-hit teen idol and then as an executive for MGM and Buddah records, where he signed Gladys Knight and the Pips, the Isley Brothers, and Bill Withers, all of whom get more screen time in Spinning Gold than a lot of Casablanca artists, such as the Village People, Cher, and Lipps inc. (Considering the notorious reception for the Village People’s 1980 film, Can’t Stop the Music, maybe we shouldn’t blame T.S. Bogart for not tempting fate in that respect).

Fatefully, when Bogart struck out on his own with Casablanca, his distributor, Warner Music, tried to undercut their sales, so they started handling sales and distribution in-house, at least according to the film. They had three acts that would eventually be huge: KISS, Donna Summer, and George Clinton’s Parliament, but all three struggled with their initial releases.

It will be interesting to hear what KISS thinks of their portrayal in Spinning Gold. They might either dig it or hate it. It could go either way. Ledisi has a nice number as Knight (“Midnight Train to Georgia,” of course), but the scene of Bogart shouting and gyrating to the sounds of Edwin Hawkins’ choir (another Buddah signing) is pure cringe. At least it is rather amusing to watch Sebastian Maniscalco mumble through his scenes as producer-composer Giorgio Moroder, but Tayla Parx does not bear a strong resemblance to Donna Summer.

In a way, Spinning Gold is a lot like Cadillac Records, simply replacing Bogart’s relationship with Summer for that of Leonard Chess and Etta James. Bogart and Summer kept it professional, not counting her orgasmic “Love to Love You” session, another embarrassing cringe fest, but he rather openly carried on an affair with Joyce Biawitz, KISS’s co-manager, who seemed to have an office at Casablanca (presumably for the sake of convenience).

Fonseca is fine as Biawitz and Michelle Monaghan plugs away valiantly in the thankless role of Bogart’s thankless wife, Beth Weiss, but Jeremy Jordan (who was very good in Broadway's Bonnie & Clyde) dominates the film, in the worst way possible, preaching to the choir and projecting to the back balcony as Neil Bogart. His performance is exhaustingly showy. [Timothy Scott] Bogart desperately needed to tone him down, but instead, it looks like his direction consisted of texting “100%” emojis.

Tetris, in The Epoch Times

Apple TV’s TETRIS provides some entertaining international intrigue, but it is also a good story of naïve capitalism triumphing over socialism and corruption. EPOCH TIMES review up here.

Space Oddity: Kyra Sedgwick Directs Kevin Bacon

Everyone knows SpaceX will beat NASA to Mars by decades, if not centuries. A new start-up plans to do it sooner. Nobody has ever heard of them, which should signal problems to their prospective recruits. Nevertheless, Alex McAllister is eager to go. Supposedly, they can make the journey cheaper, because their colonists are only going one way. For the depressed twentynothing, that is a feature rather than a bug. He is still probably the only person who believes he is Mars-bound in Kyra Sedgwick’s Space Oddity, which opens tomorrow in New York.

McAllister is still openly grieving the accidental death of his popular big brother, for which he partially blames himself. At least training for the Mars mission has given him a renewed sense of purpose, or so his mousy mother tells herself. On the other hand, his father Jeff is openly skeptical of the mission. He would much prefer his son take over the family flower farm, since his brother cannot and his sister Liz moved away to become a high-powered corporate PR flak.

Since he will be dead to the world, part of McAllister’s preparations involve purchasing life insurance—nobody bothers to explain just how his heirs would produce a death certificate to collect. The box needs to be checked regardless, so he walks down to Mike Taylor’s insurance office, where his daughter now works. Daisy Taylor already had an annoying meet-cute with McAllister, so she indulgently tries to craft a policy for his unusual circumstances. The more they see of each other, the more she thinks she might like him, but he still isn’t ready to rejoin life on Earth.

Alexandra Shipp is enormously charismatic, so it is altogether unfathomably that she could fall for a loser like McAllister. As awkwardly portrayed by Kyle Allen, McAllister hardly seems capable of tying his own shoes. Frankly, walking and chewing gum at the same time would be well beyond him, let alone astronaut training. Not surprisingly, his chemistry with Shipp is unconvincing, despite her game efforts.