Seth Harris

Movie Review – Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar

Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar (2021)
Written by Kristen Wiig & Annie Mumolo
Directed by Josh Greenbaum

From the first scene of Barb and Star, you can tell this isn’t going to be a gross-out comedy. Instead, it hints at the best sort of absurd comedies like The Jerk or Wayne’s World. It isn’t a masterpiece, but it doesn’t have to be, it made me laugh, and that’s what I wanted. Not every joke hits the same, but the ones that work are hilarious. It had been a long while since I’d watched a mainstream comedy that I actually found funny. I was right that the team behind Bridesmaids would deliver.

TV Review – Wandavision Episode 6

Wandavision Episode 6 (Disney+)
Written by Chuck Hayward and Peter Cameron
Directed by Matt Shakman

The sitcom world of Wanda Maximoff reaches the early 2000s, so we get a pretty brilliant Malcolm in the Middle homage. Of all the sitcom nods in the series so far, this one felt the most confident, in my opinion. Having the twins narrate directly to the camera was a beautiful touch, and Pietro felt like a variation on Malcolm’s older brother/Francis character. The show does a pretty excellent job balancing the in-sitcom story and SWORD plot happening outside the illusion. Once again, there are hints and teases towards the finale, which is three episodes away now.

Movie Review – The Color of Money

The Color of Money (1986)
Written by Richard Price
Directed by Martin Scorsese

The Color of Money is a very appropriately titled film because it feels like Martin Scorsese made it to progress other projects, mostly The Last Temptation of Christ. This was essentially a work-for-hire picture that helped keep Scorsese busy and honing his craft. He doesn’t really use any of the stable of actors you might expect, even in minor roles. John Turturro, who had a “blink and you’ll miss him” cameo in Raging Bull, has a small supporting role, but overall, this is a group of performers Scorsese was working with for the first time. Paul Newman and Tom Cruise are the co-male leads, with Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as the female lead. It’s also a sequel to a film made twenty years earlier. All these elements make for a movie you probably wouldn’t guess Scorsese made unless you saw the opening credits.

Movie Review – After Hours

After Hours (1985)
Written by Joseph Minion
Directed by Martin Scorsese

Following Raging Bull, Martin Scorsese made The King of Comedy, a thematic companion piece to Taxi Driver. The audience’s expectations didn’t match what the director had in mind and so it did not perform well at the box office while being well received by critics. Roger Ebert tussled with the film and declared it “one of the creepiest […] and best of the year.” The 1980s would prove to be an odd decade for Scorsese and he seemed to embrace that strangeness in After Hours. This was a dark comedy based on a stage monologue and Scorsese would come to explain that the film reflected his personal frustrations dealing with studios while trying to get The Passion of the Christ produced.

TV Review – The Best of Batman: The Animated Series Part 2

Perchance to Dream (Season 1, Episode 30)
Original airdate: October 19, 1992
Written by Laren Bright and Michael Reaves & Joe R. Lansdale
Directed by Boyd Kirkland

Batman chases a group of villains but is knocked unconscious after seeing a flash of light. He wakes up back home as Bruce Wayne, unsure of how he got back to Wayne Manor. He knows things are wrong when he goes to enter the Batcave but finds it’s not there. Testing his sanity even further is the revelation that Thomas & Martha Wayne are still alive. Bruce is engaged to Selina Kyle, and Batman is an entirely different person newly debuted in Gotham City. This is obviously not the series finale, so it’s clear that Bruce is caught in a dream state of some sort.

Movie Review – Raging Bull

Raging Bull (1980)
Written by Paul Schrader & Mardik Martin
Directed by Martin Scorsese

By 1979, Martin Scorsese wondered if he might die soon. The depression that hit after New York, New York’s box office and critical failure was tremendous. He entered into a period of wild partying, with cocaine being his self-medication of choice. Scorsese abused his body to the point that he was hospitalized for internal bleeding and was thoroughly addicted to cocaine. Robert De Niro is credited as one of the people vital in saving Scorsese’s life. He visited the filmmaker in the hospital and proposed that the two collaborate on adapting a book DeNiro had given Scorsese years earlier. The book was Raging Bull, a memoir by Bronx boxer Jake LaMotta. Scorsese had been reticent to make the film because he didn’t get it initially. Now, as he lay in a hospital bed, his body ravaged, he began to understand how people destroy themselves and climb to get back to where they started.

Movie Review – New York, New York

New York, New York (1977)
Written by Mardik Martin & Earl Mac Rauch
Music by John Kander & Fred Ebb
Directed by Martin Scorsese

If you were like me, growing up, you just assumed the song “New York, New York” was just some old song from back in the 1930s/1940s. However, I discovered that it was initially written for Martin Scorsese’s musical film of the same title in 1977. It makes sense that I might be tricked into thinking it was an older piece of music as it was written by Broadway legends Kander & Ebb (Cabaret, Chicago). They have a pitch-perfect ear for the sound of Broadway and a specific period, so the song feels like it’s just been around forever. The problems came from having the wrong mix of elements, Scorsese trying to blend ingredients of harsh realism with something that clearly made out of love for the golden age of Hollywood musicals.

Weekly Wonderings – February 8th, 2021

I started writing this last week. Now I write all the time because of this blog. And recently, I have been writing material to sell on the popular Teachers Pay Teachers. However, last week I really started to dig back into writing fiction. When I was an undergrad English major, I really got into writing but never really did much with it. I certainly enjoyed it at the time, but life’s circumstances got in the way, and I didn’t maintain the discipline needed. I’ve always admired those people who write no matter what, who make the time. It’s the only way someone can really be successful in the craft, making it an everyday priority.

Comic Book Review – The Flash by Geoff Johns Omnibus Volume 2

The Flash by Geoff Johnson Omnibus Volume 2 (2021)
Reprints The Flash v2 #192-225, Wonder Woman v2 #214, and excerpts from The Flash: The Secret of Barry Allen
Written by Geoff Johns (with Greg Rucka)
Art by Scott Kolins, Phil Winslade, Alberto Dose, Howard Porter, Steven Cummings, Justiniano, Drew Johnson, and Peter Snejbjerg

I was in college when these issues were rolling out, and I remember my roommate Keith, an even bigger comic book fan than me, having them around the dorm room. These are the height of Johns’s run and the last great Wally West comics we ever got. Infinite Crisis was looming right around the corner, and with it would be the end of Wally’s tenure as the Flash for a while. Even when he returned, it just wasn’t ever able to get back to the scope of these issues, which I argue make Wally West the Peter Parker of the DCU, both in personal crises and the scale of his rogues’ gallery.

Movie Review – Taxi Driver

Taxi Driver (1976)
Written by Paul Schrader
Directed by Martin Scorsese

There are a lot of movies that permeated the cultural zeitgeist, referenced endlessly even in children’s programming. These were the first memes that served as shorthand to indicate a connection between the creator and the audience’s knowledge of pop culture. “You talkin’ to me?” is one of those pieces of culture that almost every person has likely encountered in some form; most of them have probably never seen Taxi Driver. There is a reason why these films breakthrough so powerfully and lodge themselves in our collective reference banks. Taxi Driver is a movie masterpiece, a confluence of perfect writing, directing, acting, musical score, editing, and every other film production element. This is not an overhyped film but a piece of cinema that people assume they understand without watching it. In an age where the incel and toxic masculinity had reached a sort of chaotic peak, Taxi Driver delivers an examination on this type of warped individual with almost clinical neutrality.