In 1978 former San Francisco supervisor Dan White assassinated mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk. There’s a movie starring Sean Penn about it.
What some may not know is the hyper violent comedy movie RoboCop from 1987 contains a sequence parodying this event.
The movie technically takes place in Detroit, renamed Delta City (“The future has a silver lining”) which is now owned by an evil mega corporation called Omni Consumer Products. In an effort to reduce crime they revived a dying police officer and stuffed him into a metal suit, aka RoboCop.
It’s largely a parody of the Reagan era, with moronic CNN style news anchors interviewing RoboCop at “Lee Iacocca Elementary School” to a series of escalating incidents on the “Star Wars Orbiting Peace Platform” that somehow results in a space laser burning down the city of Santa Barbara.
The above clip is clearly a parody of Dan White with an armed former city official holding the mayor hostage and demanding his old job back. And a cup of coffee, and a car that goes really fast and gets really shitty gas mileage.
It should be noted, however, that the way RoboCop handled the situation may not have followed proper police procedures.
Tucked away in the corner of SFO’s International Terminal ticketing area between the food court and the Terminal A entrance sits the SFO Museum and Library. It’s built to look like a scale model of the SFO entrance hall from the past. Few seem to even know about this museum, yet they have small exhibits throughout the airport you’ve probably looked over while waiting for your flight.
The upper level of the museum is mostly a research library with books locked away behind glass; you need special permission to access them. Everything else is completely free to wander around and browse.
I should point out that despite the small size of the museum, their collection is enormous and rotates frequently. So what was on display during my visit may have been swapped out for another exhibit if you visit the museum in the not-so distant future.
Two of the oldest artifacts on display are a propeller made of wood and an airplane engine from the Wright Brothers’ eponymous company. It’s hard to imagine either of these being airworthy but then again I did fly around in a wicker basket that one time…
Not sure if this is commonly known but one of the business types involved with the Wright Brothers was a certain Glenn L. Martin, and yes that’s the same Mr. Martin who Lockheed-Martin is named after.
I found myself surprisingly intrigued by an exhibit on Pan Am executive Harold Bixby, who established their expansion into Asia back in the 1930’s. Through his personal letters and photos you get a sense of what travel was like back then — especially air travel. Ever wonder which came first, the airport or the airplane?
The answer, of course, is boats. Boats with wings on them, or “flying boats” could take off and land on any reasonably large and still body of water (such as the San Francisco Bay) instead of a paved runway. Sounds pretty wild today but the age of modern air travel didn’t really take off, so to speak, until after World War II.
All of this is a roundabout way of saying that the Bixby Collection ought to make you appreciate how much easier travel has become over the past century.
A small display of historic airline posters touting various destinations displayed in the museum gave off Mad Men vibes. I could see Don Draper presenting these as he puffed away at a cigarette.
Come to think of it, the American Airlines poster for San Francisco on the right almost looks like it could be on the cover of San Francisco Magazine.
For those of us who flew to or from SFO during a certain era the lyrics to Virgin America’s safety music video are seared into our brains. Whether or not you found the song catchy or annoying it’s very memorable — which is what matters for safety instructions.
Fly away with me, yeah.
The current Virgin America exhibit unfortunately misses the point. We all liked Virgin America not so much because of their unique amenities, but because they were the one airline with the audacity to offer amazing customer service instead of treating passengers like cattle. In fairness I don’t know how that could be encapsulated into a museum exhibit. It does show off how stylish the airline was, though without the purple/pink mood lighting.
Wikipedia says the name was originally Virgin USA although the way the logo is blurred out in certain scenes of the video seemingly contradicts this — it looks more like USA Virgin, maybe? I’m not great at reading lips but the only scene in the video that mentions the airline by name where their lips sync up is the “Thank you for flying Virgin America” sequence.
My recommendation: If you have time to spare at SFO and are interested in aviation it’s worth checking out. While it’s free the museum hours are limited. Most of the exhibits are temporary (the Virgin America exhibit ends in November 2024) so unless you’re a very frequent flyer there will probably be a new exhibit each time you’re there. The main level of the museum is on the same level as the BART platforms: if you exit forward through the faregates and go past the international check in counters, turn right and the museum is at the end of the hallway next to the A gates.
Much has already been said about the downfall of the San Francisco Centre mall, but those of us who remember its most recent incarnation will recall the basement in the east half of the building (the former Emporium) at one time had the most upscale food court in the city.
Westfield, the mall’s operator at the time, was so proud of this that they engraved their logo into every table.
It’s not a Westfield anymore.
The mall’s current operator could have fixed this by selling off the old tables, putting tablecloths over them, grinding out the logo, or… they could put grey masking tape over it.
So they went with the grey masking tape.
To be fair I took a close look at several tables and it and it doesn’t appear to be duct tape. But it’s still so cheap that it seems like the kind of thing Gordon Ramsey would yell at a restaurant owner about on Kitchen Nightmares.
This mall has so much empty space that it needs something to draw people back. Pickleball courts? A museum? A pinball arcade? A Meow Wolf installation? Or remember that Where the Wild Things Are exhibit they used to have next door at the Metreon?
Pretty much anything would be better than nothing.
Things aren’t going great in California right now for the poor. Instead of being taken care of they’re being treated like prisoners, which is exactly what happened in the 1995 episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine“Past Tense.”
In the episode, Commander Sisko, Lieutenant Dax, and Doctor Bashir get into some sci-fi nonsense and yadda yadda yadda… they accidentally wind up stuck in San Francisco during an event called the Bell Riots on the last weekend of August 2024.
Does that date seem familiar?
I should confess that I probably don’t count as a Trekkie and have never been to a convention. I’m mostly a fan of The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, although I think I’ve seen most of The Original Series with Shatner and Nimoy. Anyone who’s encountered someone annoying on Muni has wished they could do the Vulcan nerve pinch like Spock did to that punk guy in 1984, am I right?
While the plot of Past Tense may not exactly apply to today, the general message of punishing the poor for being poor is spot on. Perhaps things would be different if BART had built the second Transbay Tube that appears on a subway map in the episode. Or not.
Oh and the episode involves a massive violation of the Prime Directive, but it wouldn’t be a good story without that, would it?
Say what you will about Star Trek but modern day San Francisco could learn a thing or two about its overall hopeful and progressive politics.
Situated roughly between downtown Mountain View and Google’s corporate campus is the Computer History Museum. I had a chance to visit for the first time the other day.
The museum’s main gallery — which is quite large — begins with the abacus, and ends more or less at the modern day. As if to drive the latter home there’s a self-driving car parked inside the lobby.
Where the museum’s collection starts to feel like a good fit for its Silicon Valley locale (more on this in a moment) is when it gets into the early electronic computers: punch cards, vacuum tubes, magnetic core memory, etc. These early machines were used for processing large volumes of data for banks, tracking census data, you name it.
Then World War II came along, and with it the need for even more powerful machines.
Interestingly the jump from mechanical to electronic computing didn’t happen in one fell swoop. There were machines that bridged the gap between the two, much like how most 64-bit computers can still run 32-bit software today.
At the tail end of the 1960’s something interesting happens: computers become a consumer product for the first time. Specifically the first ever home computer, the Honeywell Kitchen Computer (see above) was released as a pricey gimmick gift for $10,000 (~$83,000 adjusted for inflation today) via Neiman Marcus. According to Wikipedia it could be used to store recipes; assuming you were willing to take the two week training course to learn to use it.
Or that was the concept at least; none were ever sold. The real purpose was to get people talking about Neiman Marcus.
Around the same time, research labs were developing not only more powerful computers but operating systems like Unix (see above) and programming languages like Fortran, BASIC, and C that made them far easier to use for engineers. It also introduced the concept of running multiple processes in isolation from one another, something we take for granted today.
From this point there’s a fairly straight trajectory to modern day computing though it would take a multi-decade long meandering path for consumer PCs to catch up.
Computers aimed at home users began to appear in the late 1970’s in basically two formats: desktop computers from companies like Apple and Commodore, and video game consoles most notably from Atari. The museum includes many such systems as well as some early arcade games.
Some of the electronics from this era are truly wacky like the short-lived fad of “robots” which were at best slow, oversized RC cars. (Side note: check out this modern review of 1985’s Omnibot 2000.) The display with these oddball toys ends appropriately enough with a Furby.
The main collection ends on the late 90’s dot-com bubble, when online businesses like Pets.com and Webvan launched to much fanfare but without any realistic business plans. The only thing these companies really had to show for their efforts is how quickly they burned through their investors’ money.
Maybe it’s simply because I lived through this era and remember it well but I think it could almost fill an entire museum. Or it could fit in nicely with the Museum of Failure.
Observations that didn’t quite fit anywhere else:
The museum itself is located in an office building that was originally built for Silicon Graphics Inc., aka SGI. It has that in common with Google’s nearby Googleplex campus. If you’re wondering what happened to SGI, the tl;dr version is they made fancy workstations for 3D computer graphics but eventually you could do the same thing with an off-the-shelf PC, rendering (pun intended) their business obsolete.
This is a fairly traditional museum in terms of displays and explanations, unlike The Tech Interactive in San Jose which is more focused on hands-on education for kids.
In early photos of the first computers in use, the programmers are all women, overseen by a man — and everyone is white. These kinds of things are so strange in retrospect. Who decided to segregate it this way and why?
My recommendation: There’s a certain type of person who will be interested in this museum, and if it’s not obvious from the above I’m one of them. I think if the idea of computer history appeals to you, this museum is certainly worth checking out if you’re in the Silicon Valley area.
Now that The Onion has been acquired by Global Tetrahedron I’d love to see them bring back their best content. For those who don’t remember here’s the quick summary: the glory days of The Onion were before it was acquired by Univision, merged with the decrypt remains of Gawker after that Hulk Hogan/Peter Thiel mess, and sold off to some hedge fund as G/O Media. It wasn’t their best era. So far the new owners seem on board with their brand of humor at least, so there’s reason to be hopeful.
“In The Know with Clifford Banes” was their CNN Crossfire-style debate show parody that somehow managed to mock the format in every conceivable way. The alleged host Clifford Banes was never seen due to various implausible excuses.
We need this show to come back. Here are some of the greatest episodes.
Are Tests Biased Against Students Who Don’t Give A Shit?
Premise: Testing is pointless because everybody is a lazy moron.
Excuse for Clifford Banes’ absence: He’s fighting his nemesis atop an abandoned clock tower.
Best quote: “What about all the historical figures who didn’t give a fuck about anything?”
Should More Americans Get In On The EZ-Go Juicer Craze?
Premise: It’s a commercial for a juicer.
Excuse for Clifford Banes’ absence: He ran someone over in the parking lot about an hour ago.
Best quote: “If I understand correctly, you’re saying that if customers act now they can have all this for four easy payments of $29.99?”
AA Destroying The Social Lives Of Thousands Of Once-Fun Americans
Premise: Alcoholic’s Anonymous is a dangerous addiction that destroys people’s lives.
Excuse for Clifford Banes’ absence: He’s slowly counting backwards from 100.
Best quote: “What’s in your cup? What’s the matter? Why aren’t you drinking?!”
Growing Ranks Of Nouveau Poor Facing Discrimination From Old Poor
Premise: There’s a problematic class divide between various levels of poverty.
Excuse for Clifford Banes’ absence: He’s being fitted for a sarcophagus.
Best quote: “Sounds like mansion trash.”
Should Adults Be Allowed To Bring Kids To R-Rated Movies Where We Masturbate?
Premise: All adults are uncontrollable sex addicts.
Excuse for Clifford Banes’ absence: This is the only episode he’s in… supposedly.
Best quote: “Nowadays you go to a film with Frances McDormand, you’re almost guaranteed to see me ejaculating all over the armrests.”
Is The Government Spying On Schizophrenics Enough?
Premise: The best way to treat people suffering from paranoid schizophrenia is with secret invasive technology.
Excuse for Clifford Banes’ absence: Unmentioned.
Best quote: “I think what would be great would be a recorded voice on a loop saying everyone around you wants to get you… in reference to help.”
Are Reality Shows Setting Unrealistic Standards For Skanks?
Premise: It devolves into a reality show with shaky handheld cameras.
Excuse for Clifford Banes’ absence: He’s regaling the interns with tales of his days at sea.
Best quote: “When I would turn on the TV and see a skank on a dirtbike in a tube top, miniskirt, no underwear, trying to win an exclusive date with a C-list celebrity who wouldn’t even remember her name it hurt because I knew that I could never reach that level of skankiness myself.”
Has Halloween Become Overcommercialized?
Premise: Americans have lost touch with the true origins of Halloween.
Excuse for Clifford Banes’ absence: He’s staying off the grid until things cool down.
As someone who gets easily dehydrated during the hot summer months in a good year, I found myself struggling to get enough fluids after a recent illness. No amount of water, herbal tea, Gatorade, etc. seemed to be cutting it. I needed something stronger — and I needed it fast.
So I went to an IV therapy “spa” (or clinic, really) to get my blood supply topped off with a liter of saline.
Now if you’re unfamiliar with IV therapy, this type of treatment was starting to become trendy shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic began, so it never truly had a chance to catch on.
I know for many people this sounds like their worst nightmare because they hate needles, or at the very least seems like something questionable that warrants immediate skepticism.
I went to Ivy En Rose (try saying it out loud if you don’t get it) over on West Portal. On the inside the layout is kind of like a barber shop; a strange irony considering that barber shops once relieved people of their “bad” blood.
After a check in and medical evaluation that focused on my blood pressure, the nurse brought out the IV bag, the needle, etc. and hooked me up. This took maybe five to ten minutes.
Next came the waiting game, as in waiting for that saline solution to drip its way into me. This was a little under 45 minutes for a one liter bag which left plenty of time to peruse some magazines.
So based on my extremely limited experience it’s not as though anyone can walk in the door and demand that stuff be injected into their veins, no questions asked. Of course this assumes you go to a place that’s actually licensed.
However there is one big reason to be skeptical: the primary business of IV therapy spas is not to cure dehydration, but rather to supplement your blood directly with vitamins, minerals, etc. These treatments can be quite pricey and I’m not sure how medically necessary they are for most people. That said, I could see someone with a liver malfunction, or an iron deficiency, etc. getting a quick boost from some of these IV therapies; I’m far less sold on mainlining vitamin C for an immunity boost or an entire cocktail of supplements for post-workout recovery.
In my case I’m pleased to say that one liter of saline drip was exactly what I needed.
Today in our modern era of on-demand convenience, there are mobile IV therapy nurses who can come directly to your home or office. There’s not much equipment involved so this could be an option for someone who’s either bedridden or is busy with work.
Is IV therapy right for you? Well, if you’re a biohacker type or if you’ve undergone similar treatments under the supervision of a doctor, you’ll be fine. On the other extreme end I can’t see anyone who’s terrified of needles opting in to an IV under any circumstance. As for everyone in between, it’s ultimately your call — assuming you even have a reason you’d even need IV therapy, of course.
Once again I’m here to provide my takes on the latest On Cinema Oscar Special. Except this year it’s called AmatoCon and it’s a business conference with a special presentation about The Power of Mercy from G. Amato. He believes in the power of mercy… or so he says.
Spoilers follow!
Describing the events that led to AmatoCon is no easy task due to everything that happened since the previous Oscar Special. To quickly summarize, in season 14 Tim Heidecker accepted the questionable businessman G. Amato as his new father. Tim allegedly developed a medical condition that prevents him from seeing movies, so he changed the format of the show to a Joe Rogan style podcast and invited a muscular man known as Joey P. to review movies on his behalf. But as usual, the movie reviews between Tim or his proxy Joey P. and Gregg Turkington add nothing of value.
Meanwhile Tim has renamed himself “T. Amato” in honor of his new dad. He’s also been treating his nonsensical medical condition with sunlight and has become so sunburned that he looks like, well… a tomato.
The latest business venture from the mysterious G. Amato this season is his personal brand of bottled “Argentine style water,” a concept Gregg rejects as it doesn’t even claim to be from Argentina and is entirely meaningless.
Tim reconnected with his ex-wife Toni Newman over the death of her son, Matt Newman. RIP Matt, we’ll miss ya son.
This year’s Oscar Special was presented as the last presentation of the three-day AmatoCon held at a hotel in Rialto, California. As always it was broadcast live online.
And of course it’s not On Cinema unless everything goes horribly wrong.
6. Tim’s keynote speech
This confusing keynote speech was supposedly about business, but it seems to promote Tim’s obviously fake medical condition that allegedly lets him convert sunlight into lithium with his mind? To say it’s unclear would be an understatement. He didn’t even finish his presentation and claimed the PowerPoint file was corrupted.
Making matters worse, the presentation seems to be a promotion for Tim’s upcoming book “The Hei Way System,” which he was supposed to finish writing before this conference but he was too busy. What a shame.
5. Gregg’s cringey advance towards Kaili
Gregg has expressed interest in Kaili’s movie trivia segments from the moment she was introduced to On Cinema, but when she mentioned the Harry Potter movies in season 14 it seemed to trigger an unrequited love, with Gregg unsuccessfully asking her out on camera.
During the special Gregg asked Kaili to figure out the “movie links” between a series of VHS tapes he handed her, all of which clearly amounted to a marriage proposal. She quickly excused herself and ran away, while Gregg quietly accepted his defeat and hid behind a stack of VHS tapes. I’ll admit I had a hard time watching this.
Eagle eyed viewers might have noticed that Gregg had no chance with Kaili anyway as a photo of Joey and her in Mexico briefly flashed on the screen earlier in the special when Tim was looking at Joey’s vacation photos.
4. The assassination of Matt Newman
Tim missed a day of his own business development conference to attempt to attend the funeral of his deceased “stepson” only to find he wasn’t welcome. I’ll get to it later but this was hardly the biggest surprise in this plot point.
In an episode this season Tim kept replaying the doorbell camera footage of a man allegedly shooting Matt, though he’s nearly impossible to identify as he’s wearing a hoodie and a face mask. Fortunately Tim’s yes-man investigator Roy St. Charlemagne LaRoux, or whatever his name is, used AI to generate an image of the killer as seen above. Definitely some of LaRoux’s best work yet.
Perhaps the best part is “Bang Bang,” another one of Tim’s terrible and misguided songs.
3. Baboon: A Pep-Boys Movie
G. Amato promised funding for two new movies, one of which would star Mark as a baboon and the other would somehow be about the Pep Boys, the mascots of an American auto parts chain of the same name. This ran into difficulties when Gregg spent all the money on dubious movie memorabilia.
Somehow these two movie concepts have now been converted into one which mostly consists of b-roll jungle footage and shots of Tim, Gregg, and Mark dressed up as the Pep Boys with Tim beating up Mark with a wrench.
Tim hired a powerhouse of talented session musicians to back him up, only to become visibly frustrated when they started to outshine him with guitar and saxophone solos. (The livestream chat absolutely exploded when viewers recognized the saxophone player.)
At the end of the contest Tim forced the original band to reunite by threatening not to renew Axiom and Manuel’s work visas, rendering the outcome moot.
1. The Power of Mercy / It’s the knockout
This is the biggest spoiler.
AmatoCon ends with G. Amato’s “The Power of Mercy” speech, followed by Tim asking his “dad” for the keys to the 2018 Dodge Charger he was promised. G. Amato points out that it was conditional on AmatoCon’s success, and the event clearly failed. Tim gets into a rage, snatches the keys and runs out the door to the car.
But of course, it’s not On Cinema if it doesn’t end in utter chaos. And wouldn’t you know it, there were two Chekhov’s guns right in front of us this entire season:
The muscular Joey P. has been verbally bullied by both Tim and Gregg the whole season and is sick of their shit.
So naturally this plays out with Joey grabbing the car keys back from Tim and punching him out. When Gregg surprisingly comes to Tim’s defense, Joey tosses Gregg into this bushes and walks off camera.
Oh and during this altercation, we also learn that the gunman who killed Matt was hired by G. Amato — and he was there for Toni.
Meanwhile, this is all intercut with Tim’s hired band performing a jam session with “The Power of Mercy” graphic behind them.
Honorable mentions
Whenever the camera zooms out, we see that most of the seats are empty.
Joe Estevez keeps talking loudly while signing autographs to the perpetual annoyance of Tim. But somehow all the publicity Joe is doing is for the 1990 box office bomb Soultaker, co-starring Robert Z’Dar. If you’re familiar with this movie it’s probably because you watched it on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
The callously indifferent revelation that Mark Proksch couldn’t be there because he’d just been hit by a bus.
The ever complicated situation with the food vendor continues with Hank having regained control of the name Chaplin’s Chili following the death of Tom Chaplin. Unfortunately Hank couldn’t join in person because he’s launching new locations in Germany. Also, their logo is now a drawing of Charlie Chaplin but without his signature mustache — a subtle joke about marketing in Germany that took me far too long to get.
Gregg visits the Harry Potter world at Universal Studios Hollywood Park to make the seemingly baseless claim that it’s the same location where the Ma and Pa Kettle movies were filmed. Even if it were true, I can’t imagine even the most bored person in the world caring about this.
Tim had someone in a third rate Big Bird costume from Sesame Street show up, only to be waved away by G. Amato with the phrase “I do not like this bird.” Somehow that didn’t stop Big Bird from returning to witness the madness at the end.
There’s been some criticism online that On Cinema is too expensive, which I think is fair. Personally I subscribe annually to support the show and two of my favorite comedians. And I do commend them for refunding us for the time they didn’t work during the recent Hollywood strike. But if you’re concerned about cost you can pretty easily catch up on the last season or two with a one month membership and buy the Oscar Specials as you go along.
This year’s livestream unfortunately suffered a major glitch that required refreshing the page as they switched services. Fortunately no major plot points happened during this time but there was a funny exchange between Gregg and Joe Estevez that live viewers missed.
For me this season and particularly the Oscar Special that capped it off was so funny that I was laughing so hard I was crying a little by the end. Now I know On Cinema’s style of comedy isn’t for everyone — it’s extremely dark and outrageously cringey — but if I can provide any general takeaway here it’s that you’ve got to find comedy that brings you joy and embrace it.
Right as it seemed the movies were back in a big way, the powers that be in Hollywood screwed up with yet even more poor business decisions and a lengthy strike with two major unions. So even though I’m still going to call this one “second half of 2023” for consistency, most of these movies were released in the first quarter. Which means I’m extra late to getting around to this post.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
As the film opens we’ve skipped back to the past with Indiana Jones and his fellow archeologist Basil tracking down the Holy Lance. Instead, they come across half of a dial built by Archimedes which when completed with the other half is said to have the power of predicting “fractures in time.” They nearly lose the dial when chased down by Nazi physicist Jurgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen.)
When the extended flashback ends we’re in present-day 1969 as Jones announces his retirement while the streets outside are preparing for a big parade to celebrate the moon landing. One of the scientists who helped get the rockets to the moon? A certain Jurgen Voller. And what do you know, that very same day Voller is ready to reclaim his Archimedes dial.
There’s something about banking on nostalgia that can make an already dated series feel even more dated. This is a feat that seems almost impossible, since the first film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, was very much intended as a throwback to the classic adventure films of yesteryear.
Part of the problem with nostalgia is it’s difficult to break new ground when you keep dwelling on the past. Dial of Destiny keeps running into this problem and solves it the same way: by distracting you with another chase scene. There are so many chase scenes in this movie that even the James Bond writers would balk.
One of the criticisms of this film is the heavy use of de-aging for the flashback scenes. While I didn’t find it particularly distracting, it’s not quite perfect. Makes you wonder why they didn’t just cast a younger actor to play a young Indiana Jones like they did before in Last Crusade or in the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles TV series. Don’t get me wrong, what they did here was impressive — but unnecessary. Which basically sums up this entire film.
Best moment: Without spoiling anything I thought this one had a fun and unexpected ending.
Rating: 6/10
Past Lives
Whether we want to or not, most of us can’t help but to reminisce about “what if” moments in our past. What if I’d gotten into Oxford? What if I’d been in the car crash that killed my best friend? In the case of this movie, the question is what if I’d married this person instead of that one?
This subtle drama lives in that headspace where we can never truly be certain. In life you either take advantage of an opportunity or you don’t — and there’s no way of really knowing what would have happened if you’d chosen a different path.
Nora aka Na Young (Greta Lee) and her childhood best friend Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) grew up together in Korea. Years later, they reconnect online as Nora has a new life for herself after moving to the US and settling in New York City. Fast forward again and Hae Sung visits Nora and meets her and her (white, Jewish) husband Arthur (John Magaro.)
Although this film has a romance of sorts and quite a few moments of awkward humor, I would not call it a romcom as it doesn’t fit that format at all. I would categorize it as a drama and a sharply written one at that. This is the most original movie I’ve seen in a long time; it captures a feeling that I think we can all understand but is difficult to explain in words alone.
Best moment: Even though I’ve never been to the country, the depiction of childhood in South Korea felt authentic and somehow familiar.
Rating: 10/10
Tunnel Vision: An Unauthorized BART Ride
What is a movie? Is this one? It kind of seems more like one of those podcasts with video footage. But again, what even is a movie?
Local aspiring filmmaker Vincent Woo (creator of CoderPad.io) attached a camera to the front of a BART train and then sort of shoehorned that into a movie with voiceovers. The footage is surprisingly mesmerizing as it’s a view that you’d normally never see unless you work as a BART train operator. Turns out much of the system is oddly hypnotic from that perspective, especially if you appreciate symmetrical modern architecture.
Johannes Vermeer was a 17th century Baroque painter, best known for Girl with a Pearl Earring. Although he’s a widely appreciated artist today and often mentioned in the same breath with his contemporaries such as Rembrandt, in his time he was relatively obscure. He’s thought to have had no formal training and it’s believed only 34 of his paintings still exist, though a dozen or so more are in dispute.
Closer to Vermeer is a documentary about experts at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum traveling to other museums to borrow their Vermeer works to create an exposition of his paintings. Along the way we meet many other experts — one gets the feeling there are more Vermeer experts than actual paintings — who use both science along with analysis of technique and composition to pick out which paintings are his and which are forgeries.
Despite all the theories explored in the film, a large part of the attraction is looking at his paintings up close on the big screen. In real life his paintings are about the size of an iPad yet they still appear detailed when blown up larger than life on a movie screen.
At merely 80 minutes this documentary goes by surprisingly fast. If I had one small gripe it’s that I would have liked to know more about how disagreements of authorship of a painting typically work in the art world. From this movie alone it seems based primarily on hunches and shaky evidence, but is that normal, or is that simply because we know so little about Vermeer himself?
Best moment: The behind the scenes moments where we get an inside look at how museum exhibits are laid out and physically assembled.
Rating: 8/10
Asteroid City
There’s a big movie recently from a famous director about a nuclear bomb, and somehow this isn’t that one. No, this is the Wes Anderson movie that is certainly about a nuclear bomb, or maybe a science fair, or an alien encounter. Or maybe it’s about car repair?
Somehow Wes Anderson’s “pop-up book” style has become almost a parody of itself, with every shot being a tracking or crane shot, or a miniature. Or all of the above. Asteroid City leans pretty heavily into this style.
I want to say Wes Anderson is “the NPR of movies” but I’m not really sure what that means. It feels right, though.
Now I have to rank on a curve here, but I will say that this is easily one of the funniest movies from Wes Anderson despite an uneven story. The scenes with Jeffrey Wright in particular both feel like they’re too ridiculous to work, and yet they’re too ridiculous for me to care. I guess I laughed either way.
Maybe the silliest moment was Bryan Cranston showing up in a scene only to forget if he was supposed to be there or not.
Best moment: “Let’s say she’s in Heaven… which doesn’t exist for me, of course, but you’re Episcopalian.”
Rating: 6/10
Oppenheimer
The biggest, longest, and loudest movie of the year, Oppenheimer tells the story of the “father of the atomic bomb,” Robert Oppenheimer. Recruited based on his experience with quantum theory, he was put in charge of the project and given enormous leeway to finish the project before the Nazis or Soviets built one of their own. After the war he was practically blacklisted due to his alleged communist sympathies.
We see and hear in a very abstract sense what Oppenheimer is thinking and feeling throughout the movie, both from close up shots of his face and a sort of “bubble field” that seemingly also represents the quantum world.
If ever there was a movie that made sense being big and loud it’s this one; ideally in a giant IMAX theater with its earthquake-inducing sound system. Yet at the same time, the movie completely hinges on Cillian Murphy’s nuanced performance as Oppenheimer.
I think at three hours, if I was going to cut something down it would be the scenes about his rather chaotic love life, which don’t add much to the movie. If the point of those scenes is to make the audience feel a sense of humanity in the guy it falls flat. But you know what this lengthy movie really needs? An intermission — especially when theaters insist on selling bucket-sized sodas.
Best moment: Niels Bohr: “We have to make the politicians understand, this isn’t a new weapon, it is a new world.”
Rating: 8/10
Barbie
As a boy growing up, when I played with girls sometimes I had to play with the Ken doll. Which was always boring because it was clear he was a side character; Barbie was the one with the different jobs and playhouses. Ken was just… well Ken, with his blank empty expression.
There’s been some discussion as to how this movie relates to feminism, but I think that’s irrelevant to the greater point: it’s a comic send up about the way we perceived these dolls as children. Our knowledge of sex and gender at around four years old was so limited the only thing we really understood was that these dolls were missing some parts between their legs.
The cast of Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken might not seem like the most obvious choices but when pitted against veteran comedy actors like Rhea Perlman, Will Ferrell, Kate McKinnon, etc. they rise to the occasion as the sort of sketch comedy “guest stars” that the script calls for. And who knew that Ryan Gosling could sing and dance?!
This film is a masterclass in trolling its audience. Perhaps its greatest achievement is its production design, which takes Hollywood’s default plasticky fake look and simply dials it up a notch to make everything look like Barbie doll houses.
Best moment: “I’m just Ken and I’m enough, and I’m great at doing stuff.”
Rating: 9/10
Glitch: The Rise and Fall of HQ Trivia
HQ Trivia was the live game show you played on your phone. It came out of the ashes of short video app Vine, which was acquired and then shut down by Twitter.
This documentary from CNN chronicles the rise and fall of the company, with a much greater emphasis on its fall — a shock considering the games were regularly attracting millions of players. Self included: I made a total of around $25 from the dozen or so games I won.
A surprising amount of insight comes not from the behind-the-scenes people, but from the show’s original main host Scott Rogowsky.
I think the main issue with this documentary is that it won’t appeal to those who weren’t fans, or at least those who never tried playing HQ Trivia. But the almost unforgivable problem is we never hear from HQ founders Rus Yusupov and Colin Kroll. (Kroll died of a drug overdose in 2018.) This seems unfair as there’s nobody to respond to the allegations lobbed against them.
The documentary addresses the constant glitching of the app, the numerous HQ Trivia copycats, and the repeated falling out between the founders. Unfortunately it ends before explaining what happened when Yusupov briefly re-launched the app before shutting it down for good.
Best moment: The clip of a woman jumping up and down and screaming after winning a comically small amount of money.
Rating: 4/10
CatVideoFest 2023
Everyone loves cat videos, which is not only why this annual festival exists, it’s also (allegedly) why the internet exists.
While these short video festivals are only available in theaters, that’s also kind of the point: it exists to raise money for local animal shelters. You could donate some money to your local cat rescue organization and spend an hour or two watching cat videos on YouTube and get almost exactly the same experience, but this is curated and you’re watching along with other people.
So if this piques your interest and it’s available in your area, why not check it out? It will probably be back next summer as usual.
Best moment: If I have to pick just one, it would have to be the loud and obnoxious music video from a guy who simply wants to hug his cat. Cats of course notoriously hate being hugged.
Rating: 10/10
Fremont
Donya, a young Afghan refugee moved to Fremont, California and has a job writing fortunes for a fortune cookie factory in San Francisco. She consults a psychiatrist (Gregg Turkington) to help with her insomnia, but he’s too easily distracted to offer meaningful help.
Meanwhile, egged on by a friendly co-worker and an older man who works at a restaurant, she tries dating and winds up driving all the way to Bakersfield in an attempt to go on a blind date.
This unusual indie comedy takes place here in the Bay Area, but it’s not about the Bay Area. It’s more about the absurdity of life itself. With unusual characters and plenty of long, awkward pauses, this is the kind of film that will appeal to anyone who likes comedy that tends more towards the understated than the abrasive.
I’m told the interior shots of the fortune cookie factory were filmed at a real fortune cookie factory across the bay in Oakland.
Best moment: The psychiatrist casually implying that he doesn’t have any friends.
Rating: 6/10
Cade: The Tortured Crossing
I watched this movie at an Alamo Drafthouse, where the defining feature is that the audience is supposed to be quiet. In spite of that, I couldn’t help myself from shouting “what the fuck?” numerous times during this insanely insipid movie.
This is a Neil Breen film. And the strangest thing about Neil Breen films is that he’s been making these movies for almost 20 years while seemingly learning absolutely nothing about the filmmaking process. They all look like those full motion video games from the mid 90’s.
The plot of this movie allegedly has something to do with a humanoid AI rescuing people from a corrupt mental hospital. But if you somehow watched this movie and didn’t figure that out, I couldn’t blame you.
Perhaps the most baffling thing about this movie is that it was shown in theaters at all.
As terrible as the trailer above may seem it doesn’t include the most ridiculous scene in the movie in which Breen gets into a fight with a poorly rendered CGI tiger — and wins.
Best moment: “The only way to find out what is possible is to go beyond what is impossible.”
Rating: 0/10, but in a funny way
Dream Scenario
Biology professor Paul Matthews (Nic Cage) isn’t a particularly memorable person… until he starts appearing in people’s dreams. Unprepared for his sudden fame he hires a questionable PR agent (Michael Cera) who offers vague promises of a Sprite sponsorship. Yet ultimately Matthews’ inability to control his fame becomes his downfall. These are other people’s dreams, after all.
Or at least that’s the surface level plot. I’m not sure I could even explain all the twists and turns the story takes but the movie is more interested in the increasing absurdity of the situation than filling in all the details.
Although this is a very funny movie, it’s also a bit uneven and some of the humor maybe goes a bit over the top by the end. Still, if you’re looking for something off kilter it may be just for you.
Oh and if any of this sounds familiar, it’s not from your dreams — the story is loosely based on a viral internet hoax.
Best moment: The awkward, lingering smile between Cage’s and Cera’s characters is somehow funnier than any line of dialog could ever be.
Remember oxygen bars? No? Well prepare to let me save you money on your, uh… time machine bills, because I’m about to explain this health fad that had run its course by the early 2000’s.
Somehow there’s still an oxygen bar in San Francisco at — where else? — Pier 39. So of course I had to go try it.
Now obviously there’s something a little sketchy about anything at a tourist trap like Pier 39, and last I checked it was still perfectly legal to breathe oxygen for free. So what’s the point?
Brad Pitt: Oxygen gets you high
Despite what Brad Pitt’s character claims in the movie Fight Club, no, oxygen does not get you high. In healthy humans we should have a blood oxygen level of at least 95% at all times. So if oxygen could get you high then we’d all be high all the time. If your blood oxygen level is low you need to see a doctor, not go to an oxygen bar for some kind of quick fix.
As far as I can tell the real point of oxygen bars isn’t so much the oxygen, but the vials of scented oil that the oxygen bubbles through — basically a type of aromatherapy.
For me the best part of the experience had nothing to do with the oxygen at all. The employee working there handed me a massage gun and told me to try it out. I’d always thought those were gimmicky, like most of the stuff they sold at Sharper Image back in the day. But it honestly felt great on several stiff spots on my lower back.
And that’s when the real purpose of the “oxygen bar” kicked in as the employee tried to sell me a massage gun for a price which could have easily paid for several actual massages at a nice spa. She offered me a few other products and discounts all of which I declined as quickly and politely as possible.
In the end it cost around $25 including a decent tip. Would I do it again? Probably not, but if someone wanted to go I wouldn’t be opposed to joining them either.
At the same time it’s easy to see why this fad was so short lived, and why it’s been relegated to this strange economy of tourist traps.
