The wild boys are back on Episode 88 of the Cinephellas Podcast . They discuss the Dune trailer, Mulan, Tenet, remembering Chadwick Boseman, movies we can only watch once, and MORE!
#CinephellasPodcast #Dune #ChadwickBoseman #Tenet
armando vanegas
Cinephellas Podcast – Episode 85 (Lockdown With The Phellas)
The wild Phellas boys are back to discuss the DC FanDome event, The Batman trailer, Lovecraft Country on HBO, TV Shows that should get revived, movies that could benefit from a remake, and MORE!
#CinephellasPodcast #DCFanDome #TheBatman #LovecraftCountry #Podcast
Review – Wilder Napalm (1993)
Wilder Napalm was a movie that was probably always destined for limited appeal and it’s too bad because it’s quite a ride. I’m grateful that a streaming service like Amazon Prime is allowing older, obscure movies like this to be exposed to the public.
Review – I Know This Much Is True (2020)
HBO is back with another show to make people sad. If the coronavirus and the recent issues concerning racial inequality from law enforcement weren’t enough to make you feel sad about what’s going on in the world, then this should do the trick. I Know This Much is True is the latest HBO mini-series that stars Mark Ruffalo as a man named Dominick and his twin brother Thomas as they struggle to make a life together as a family in Three Rivers, Connecticut in 1990. It becomes such a struggle that it takes a toll on Dominick in devastating ways. Not only does he have that but there’s also an ex-wife who comes back into his life forcing him to face some demons, a tumultuous relationship with his new girlfriend and father, and a mission to translate his maternal great-grandfather’s diary entries with some roadblocks set up by the eccentric woman he’s hired to translate it. So like most HBO shows, a barrel of laughs.
Review – Da 5 Bloods (2020)
Contemplative and uncompromising, Spike Lee’s latest movie, Da 5 Bloods, offers a look at four black Vietnam vets and long time friends who return to Vietnam to retrieve both the U.S. gold they hid during a mission and the body of a fellow fallen soldier, Stormin’ Norman. Things get complicated when one of the vets, played by Delroy Lindo, goes his own way and manages to complicate things for the crew. It also doesn’t help that his son, played by Jonathan Majors, has shown up to get a share of the gold.
Review- Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
To begin, I’m a casual Star Wars fan. I enjoy them enough to say that I have fun just going along for the ride with the characters. I can’t say that I know all the minor characters and can name all the different ships and the droids. I don’t watch the cartoons or read the Extended Universe books. I will say though that The Mandalorian is doing a nice job at being a fun Western story that just happens to take place in the Star Wars universe. Star Wars is just a thing to me that exists that I have no ownership to and that doesn’t owe it to me to give me what I want. But in this day and age, the internet has allowed people to complain about many things, including movies. We can’t even go through watching sci-fi action movies made for the family without causing controversy these days. The Last Jedi wasn’t amazing to me, but it was a movie that made some interesting choices. I liked what it was doing with the universe and director Rian Johnson gave the franchise a chance to go in a new direction. But, no one can be happy with what they have and Disney decided to bring back J.J. Abrams to direct the last movie of the Skywalker Saga, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Let’s see if this movie was willing to continue on the path that TLJ laid out or they were going to backtrack and attempt to correct what never needed correcting. Spoiler alert: they end up doing the latter. Continue reading
Review – Marriage Story (2019)
After watching this movie, I’ve decided to retire from being a fan of movies because Noah Baumbach’s latest movie Marriage Story finally did what I’ve wanted from movies and nothing else will compare. The Squid and the Whale was one of the movies that made me a fan of movies because it made me realize you can talk about real things like marital issues onscreen and it can impact the audience talking about those things. It doesn’t have to make you laugh, be scared, or excite you. It can also stick with you on a more personal level. Writer/director Noah Baumbach had that special touch, even back then. I think since Squid, I’ve wanted Baumbach to keep going into that well. Perhaps, I have personal things that made me want this. It also was helpful to learn that he was a child of divorce and that it was a semi-autobiographical look at his parents’ marriage. How he touched on divorce in Squid made me feel like I was seen. Marriage Story didn’t exactly fulfill those satisfactions if only because I didn’t need that itch scratched anymore. I’m young and I just want to enjoy whatever’s out there. When I saw Squid, I wanted more time in that world with these characters because it was so engrossing to me. Logically, there’s no way for this to continue because it felt complete enough even though the ending could be stronger. The movie gods have answered as this is essentially a spiritual sequel to The Squid and the Whale and it has that incredibly written Baumbach dialogue to listen to for 2 hours. It seems that he’s gotten his takes on how divorce sucks out of his system and I did as well. As far as I can tell, movies are now dead and I will leave this movie life and become a cobbler. But before I do, I’ll talk about Marriage Story. Semi-based on Baumbach’s previous relationship, the movie deals with a theater couple who decide to go through with a divorce. As they realize, this process is extremely difficult and rough as they deal with ruthless lawyers and surprise reveals about each other. If The Squid and the Whale was the breakthrough EP, then Marriage Story is the mic drop and the surefire hit that defines Baumbach as one of the great American directors of his time.
Review – Waves (2019)
Waves is the new epic family drama from every millennial’s favorite movie studio A24 and writer/director, Trey Edward Shults. Going into it, I was excited. Mainly because it was Sterling K. Brown aka Randall from This is Us in what looked like a lead role. Also, the trailer, like any for an A24 movie, looked like this was another success in their long ring of successes. I don’t know anything about Shults as a filmmaker, although I heard very good things about his previous movies, It Comes at Night and Krisha. Look, as a black person, there’s not a lot of family dramas in the mold of Terence Malick and Punch Drunk Love coming our way, so the fact that was a movie about a successful black family having nothing to do with them being black in addition to some beautiful cinematography was exciting. I was getting The Place Beyond the Pines feelings as I was hearing about the details about it and the way people were being so elusive about what it specifically was about. It’s cool that movies like this or Sorry to Bother You or Moonlight are finally getting the chance to have a platform to tell stories featuring black centric casts, yet making the stories universal. Having seen the final product, I appreciate what Shults, who happens to be white, did with the ideas he had of telling this story about these very specific individuals and it paid off very well.
Review – A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019)
Having Tom Hanks as Mr. Rogers is a great idea for a movie. In fact, it’s a surprise that having America’s most loved and friendliest movie star playing one of the best human beings to ever exist took this long to even happen. But from there, the work should already be done for you and you don’t have to try that hard. Director Marielle Heller, though, knows a cool idea isn’t always enough to maintain a movie. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood wisely decides to use what we know about the children’s TV show host, Fred Rogers, to create a character study focusing on how the incredible power he had on people could affect real change, even in one person.
Review – Good Boys (2019)
Studio comedies are in a weird place right now. For some time, there was a time where every other week, there was a comedy coming out that looked good to me. Most of the time, I seemed pretty pleased with what I got. Even the worst ones had something to giggle at, for the most part. Perhaps the fact that Judd Apatow had smash hits with The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up made a lot of studios wake up for a bit and try harder for a little while. Nowadays, I barely see many come out and most of the recent ones that do underwhelm me. It could also be more that I changed or the movies changed or most likely, both. Whatever it was, Good Boys has come around to bring some much needed laughs to the movies. While it seemed like the kind of movie that was going to follow the trend of being forgettable, I heard some good buzz that indicated that this was going to be a fun time and it delivered on that. The trailer wasn’t much of an indicator of its quality since it wanted me to think it was funny solely because it featured kids using profanity. I wondered how much that could carry a movie. As it so happens, there is more to the movie than that. While it does follow a lot of the same beats as other coming-of age comedies like Superbad or even this year’s Booksmart, it’s a movie that’s concerned with just making you laugh. If you’re looking to have a hilarious time at the movies, Good Boys will do the trick.
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