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jprr.bsky.social
You’d think that a movie called A Karate Christmas Miracle (would be schizophrenic enough. This one also has a killer clown, a psychic law professor, and an obsessive-compulsive, self-taught karate kid.
#AKarateChristmasMiracle #EricRoberts #MovieReview
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/11/11/a...
A Karate Christmas Miracle: Schizo-Holiday Cinema for the Whole Family
You’d think that a movie called A Karate Christmas Miracle (2019) would be schizophrenic enough. In addition to its ill-advised mismatch of martial arts and holiday cheer, this one has a killer clo…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
November 11, 2025 at 9:35 PM
jprr.bsky.social
Instead of deconstructing the Macbeth "curse", The Scottish Play doubles down on it, turning Shakespeare’s ghost into a literal poltergeist of authorial discontent.
#FilmCriticism #Shakespeare #Adaptation #Macbeth #TheScottishPlay #Cinema #MovieReview
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/11/10/f...
Fixing Shakespeare: The Folly of The Scottish Play (2020)
If all’s well that ends well, then The Scottish Play (2020) is not well at all. It’s a shame, because it starts rather well. “It seems to me that when people direct Shakespeare,” theater director A…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
November 10, 2025 at 6:38 PM
jprr.bsky.social
Leslie Nielsen made stupidity an art form; Liam Neeson just makes it sad. You can reboot a franchise, but you can’t reboot sincerity.
#TheNakedGun #MovieReview #FilmCriticism #ComedyMovies #Reboots #Cinema
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/11/09/t...
The Naked Gun and the Death of Straight-Faced Comedy
There’s nothing wrong with The Naked Gun (2025) that can’t be remedied by pretending it doesn’t exist and watching any of the three original David Zucker-Jim Abrahams-Jerry Zucker (ZAZ) films inste…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
November 9, 2025 at 9:29 PM
jprr.bsky.social
Phantom Punch promises to reveal the mystery of Sonny Liston, but all it lands is a glancing blow. A biopic too afraid of its own subject to tell the truth
#SonnyListon #PhantomPunch #FilmReview #Biopic #Boxing #CinemaHistory #SportsMovies #FilmCriticism
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/11/08/p...
Phantom Punch (2008)
Phantom Punch is the tale of the oldest boxing world heavyweight champion. Wait, scratch that. It’s actually a Sonny Liston biopic starring a 49-year-old Ving Rhames. That’s nine years older than L…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
November 8, 2025 at 10:55 PM
jprr.bsky.social
The Poltergeist Diaries tries to pass as American found footage and ends up haunted by its own accents.
#FilmCriticism #FoundFootage #HorrorMovies #IndieFilm #ThePoltergeistDiaries #EricRoberts #MovieReview
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/11/07/t...
The Poltergeist Diaries (2021)
The Poltergeist Diaries finds very idiosyncratic ways to shoot itself in the foot, in addition to the usual impediments to suspension of disbelief inherent to the found footage/fauxcumentary genre.…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
November 7, 2025 at 10:17 PM
jprr.bsky.social
Reap (2020) quotes Lovecraft, name-drops Nietzsche, and still manages to miss the point of both.
#FilmCriticism #HorrorCinema #Lovecraftian #IndieHorror #MovieReview #Reap2020 #CosmicHorror #BadMovies #FilmAnalysis
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/11/06/r...
Reap: The Devil You Know Isn’t Lovecraftian
Reap (2020) opens with an intertitle quoting Lovecraft on mankind’s oldest and strongest emotion being fear and the oldest and strongest fear being that of the unknown, a philosophical promise the …
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
November 6, 2025 at 7:16 PM
jprr.bsky.social
A vampire, a stripper, one night, one room. Katt Shea’s Dance of the Damned (1989) turns exploitation into existentialism.
#DanceOfTheDamned #KattShea #VampireFilm #RogerCorman
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/11/05/d...
Dance of the Damned: From Exploitation to Introspection
Dance of the Damned (1989) is an intriguing little artifact. The late 1980s horror landscape saw major studio genre films, such as Near Dark (1987) and The Lost Boys (1987), define the vampire trop…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
November 5, 2025 at 10:10 PM
jprr.bsky.social
Day of Wrath invents the world’s least self-aware conspiracy theory: a Spain where everyone’s secretly Jewish and the Inquisition was their idea.
#FilmCriticism #MovieReview #DayOfWrath #AdrianRudomin #ChristopherLambert #HistoricalCinema #Inquisition
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/11/04/d...
Day of Wrath: With Friends Like These, Jew Needs Enemies?
Day of Wrath (2006) is pro-Semitic in the most backhanded way possible — the cinematic equivalent of someone saying, “Them kikes are alright with me, I tell you what.” The opening intertitles claim…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
November 4, 2025 at 9:44 PM
jprr.bsky.social
I’ve always thought that Jodie Foster is either very smart or endowed with the uncanny ability to project intelligence. The Beaver (2011) is neither of those things, but its problem is not so much that it’s dumb as that it’s lazy
#FilmCriticism #TheBeaver
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/11/03/t...
The Beaver: A Study in Cinematic Laziness
I’ve always thought that Jodie Foster is either very smart or endowed with the uncanny ability to project intelligence. The Beaver (2011) is neither of those things, but its problem is not so much …
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
November 4, 2025 at 3:10 AM
jprr.bsky.social
Damian Chapa’s Bad Cop (2009) isn’t just a bad movie — it’s a cinematic cry for help disguised as a cop thriller. A film so personal it should’ve been sealed in therapy notes.
#BadCop #DamianChapa #MovieReview #FilmCriticism
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/11/02/b...
Bad Cop, Worse Filmmaker
Damian Chapa’s Bad Cop (2009) opens with the dedication, “for my son Peter “foell” Chapa who lives in Munich.” There’s more pathos in that passive-aggressive broadcast of grievance than in the enti…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
November 2, 2025 at 7:26 PM
jprr.bsky.social
There is an idea of a Veronica Sawyer. But there is no real her. Only an entity. Something illusory. She simply is not there.
#Heathers #WinonaRyder #DarkComedy #FilmAnalysis #Satire #FilmCritique #PopCultureAnalysis #TeenMovies
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/11/01/g...
Greetings and Salutations from the Moral Abyss
In a vacuum, I would be all over the cow-tipping scene in Heathers (cows don’t sleep standing up, and a wide-awake cow wouldn’t hold still to oblige the several people — i.e., more than two — it wo…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
November 1, 2025 at 9:52 PM
jprr.bsky.social
Like many a shoestring, found-footage horror flick, Name the Demon (2024) exists somewhere between genuine boredom and contrived coincidence.
#NameTheDemon #FilmEssay #HorrorMovies #ExorcismFilm #CinemaAnalysis #FoundFootage
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/10/31/n...
Name the Demon and the Aesthetics of Boredom
Like many a shoestring, found-footage horror flick, Name the Demon (2024) exists somewhere between genuine boredom and contrived coincidence. I’ll buy that due to an increase in both the demand for…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
October 31, 2025 at 9:22 PM
jprr.bsky.social
I don’t think you’re supposed to laugh with, let alone at, a film about Jesus Christ. Jesus (1999) didn’t just make me chuckle; it made me snigger, which feels even more wrong.
#FilmCriticism #Jesus1999 #MovieReview #TVMiniseries #PopCulture
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/10/30/j...
Jesus: Apocrypha for the Small Screen
I don’t think you’re supposed to laugh with, let alone at, a film about Jesus Christ. Jesus (1999) didn’t just make me chuckle; it made me snigger, which feels even more wrong. Maybe something was …
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
October 31, 2025 at 2:24 AM
jprr.bsky.social
Iron Maiden’s “Aces High” never lands—it lives in the loop between story and song. A four-minute dogfight where tension replaces resolution, and history becomes adrenaline. ✈️⚡️
#IronMaiden #AcesHigh #Powerslave #HeavyMetalHistory #MusicAnalysis
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/10/28/t...
The Loop of Combat: Form and Function in Iron Maiden’s Aerial Anthem
Iron Maiden’s “Aces High” (1984) is what happens when a songwriter is caught between the desire to tell a complete story with a beginning, a middle, and an ending and the compulsion to stay within …
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
October 29, 2025 at 12:25 AM
jprr.bsky.social
One-Eyed Jacks (1961) is as thematically uneven as its director-star Marlon Brando’s range was wide.
#MarlonBrando #OneEyedJacks #FilmAnalysis #ClassicCinema #WesternMovies #CinemaStudies #FilmCriticism
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/10/27/o...
One-Eyed Jacks: Brando, da Vinci, and Freud
One-Eyed Jacks (1961) is as thematically uneven as its director-star Marlon Brando’s range was wide. Alternately blunt and subtle, the film’s irregular approach achieves a precarious balance in a n…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
October 28, 2025 at 3:16 AM
jprr.bsky.social
Sasha Sloan’s Only Child simulates codependence, autophobia, regression, arrested development, and an inferiority complex and passes it off as vulnerability and childlike wonder.
#SadGirlPop #MusicCritique #SashaSloan #OnlyChild #PopCulture
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/10/26/t...
The Sad-Girl Industrial Complex: Sasha Sloan and the Business of Melancholy
Sasha Sloan’s Only Child (2020) is an attempt to simulate codependence, autophobia, regression, arrested development, and an inferiority complex and pass it all off as vulnerability and childlike w…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
October 27, 2025 at 1:45 AM
jprr.bsky.social
A Bet with the Matchmaker is not a failure per se because mediocrity is what it aspires and caters to. It is a product optimized for industrial efficiency and maximum content deliverability.
#RomCom #MovieReview #FilmCriticism #ABetWithTheMatchmaker
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/10/26/s...
Swipe Left on A Bet with the Matchmaker
A Bet with the Matchmaker (2023) is a by-the-numbers romantic comedy, and sometimes it’s the wrong number. The movie starts out conventionally enough, with plenty of clunky, as-you-know exposition …
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
October 26, 2025 at 7:31 PM
jprr.bsky.social
“Girl Next Door” functions as a continuation of Clark’s commitment to “hillbilly feminism,” but it is forced into a glossy, consumable package.
#BrandyClark #GirlNextDoor #CountryMusic #SongAnalysis #MusicCriticism #LyricsMatter #Authenticity
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/10/24/g...
“Girl Next Door”: Brandy Clark’s Outlaw Woman Lite
In “Girl Next Door” (2016), Brandy Clark warns a suitor that if he’s looking for “Some Virgin Mary metaphor/Your cardboard cutout on the wall/Your paper or your Barbie doll/With perfect hair and a …
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
October 24, 2025 at 10:31 PM
jprr.bsky.social
A queer documentary about a not-so-queer film, and a filmmaker chasing his hero instead of the truth.
#ChasingChasingAmy #ChasingAmy #QueerCinema #FilmCriticism #LGBTQRepresentation #KevinSmith
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/10/24/q...
Queerness by Proximity: Chasing the Myth of Chasing Amy
Writer-director Sav Rodgers describes Chasing Chasing Amy (2023) as “a project about the legacy of Chasing Amy as an LGBTQ film.” There is a tooth fairy science kind of thing going on here. Before …
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
October 24, 2025 at 6:45 AM
jprr.bsky.social
What happens when a game of intellect becomes a game of desire? In Annihilator’s “Knight Jumps Queen,” chess turns erotic, violent, absurd — a metal fantasia of brains and bodies in motion.
#Annihilator #KnightJumpsQueen #MetalAnalysis #RockWriting
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/10/22/t...
The Erotic Endgame: Annihilator’s “Knight Jumps Queen”
In a world where the answer to the question “What do Led Zeppelin and Warrant have in common?” is “They both have songs where pastry stands in for the female genitalia,” the high-concept ambiguity …
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
October 23, 2025 at 3:59 AM
jprr.bsky.social
What happens when tragedy is rewritten as empowerment? Ophelia answers by draining meaning along with poetry.
#FilmCriticism #Shakespeare #Ophelia #Hamlet #Adaptation #Cinema #Tragedy #MovieReview
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/10/22/o...
Ophelia (2018); or, A Girlboss in Elsinore
Ophelia feels like someone watched Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead and thought, “I can come up with a worse idea than that.” Well, mission accomplished. In addition to giving the heroine an…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
October 22, 2025 at 7:25 AM
jprr.bsky.social
If "Custard Pie" is what Page and Plant stole from American blues, they can keep it.
#LedZeppelin #PhysicalGraffiti #RockCriticism #MusicWriting #ClassicRock #RobertPlant #JimmyPage #RockHistory #MusicAnalysis #Essay
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/10/20/b...
Bakers of the Blues: How “Custard Pie” Spoils Physical Graffiti
It’s sort of ironic for Led Zeppelin, a band that was accused of hiding subliminal messages in their songs, often made meaning elusive through arcane, fantastical lyrics, and at least once broke th…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
October 20, 2025 at 10:14 PM
jprr.bsky.social
What heals a divided America? According to The Undefeated, it’s not justice or memory — it’s shared firepower.
#TheUndefeated #FilmCritique #HollywoodHistory #LostCauseMyth #FilmHistory #CivilWarCinema #JohnWayne
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/10/19/t...
The Undefeated Myth of Redemption Without Reckoning
The Undefeated (1969) is about the healing process of a divided nation following years of bloody internecine conflict. How do two long-opposing warring factions come together again? In this case, Y…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
October 19, 2025 at 9:20 PM
jprr.bsky.social
The Toni Braxton duology, comprising "Breathe Again" and "I’m Still Breathing," provides a compelling case study of evolving gendered scripts within R&B pop music between 1993 and 2000.
#ToniBraxton #MusicAnalysis #LoveSongs #BreatheAgain #MusicCriticism
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/10/18/o...
Oxygen Optional: Toni Braxton’s Guide to Codependent Romance
Toni Braxton’s “Breathe Again” (1993) has been called “delicate,” “yearning,” “melancholy,” “pretty,” and “haunting.” The song does sound like all those things, which I guess could make it hard to …
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
October 18, 2025 at 9:05 PM
jprr.bsky.social
Guys and Dolls is a better film whenever it forgets it’s a musical. Brando charms, Sinatra cracks wise, and the songs mostly get in the way.
#GuysAndDolls #MarlonBrando #FrankSinatra #ClassicHollywood #FilmAnalysis #Musicals
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/10/17/t...
The Quiet Virtues of Guys and Dolls
Guys and Dolls (1955) would be a great film, not to mention a whole lot shorter, if it weren’t for all those songs. I’m serious. I know it’s a musical, which is why it’s somewhat ironic that the mo…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
October 17, 2025 at 8:53 PM