review Archives - Page 3 of 64 - Ramblin' with Roger

Movie: Materialists

Melanie and Don’s kid

The saga of seeing the movie Materialists began in late June. I went to see Sinners at the Madison Theatre, but my wife opted to see something presumably less intense, which started and ended a few minutes after my choice. I then went to vote at the nearby Primary Day voting site and came back.

When the theater door for Materialists opened, I waited more than five minutes before calling out to her. Yes, she was in there, and she came out, talking to two women, one of whom she vaguely had met before, still talking about the significance of the film they had just seen.

A week or so later, my wife and I went to the Spectrum 8 Theater in Albany. She was willing to see Materialists again, which is quite unusual. I saw and liked it, but I was having a dreadful time figuring out how to write about it. A part of it may have to do with personal biography.

Lucy (Dakota Johnson) is an excellent matchmaker at an upscale company. She is practically a human dating app. Nine of her matches led couples to the altar. She views relationships like transactions and uses that strategy to calm a skittish bride.

But she is taken aback when the perfect 10 unicorn of a guy, Harry (Pedro Pascal), whom she meets at a wedding she had put together, is interested in her. He seems to check all the boxes and would be the obvious choice.

Lucy even takes him to an Off-Off-Broadway production, where her ex John (Chris Evans) performs. He is the antithesis of a rich guy, working catering jobs between auditions while riding around in his barely roadworthy vehicle.

Not a rom-com

I came across an IMDb review: Materialists was not what I expected.

“It’s been marketed like a rom-com – but honestly? If you’re heading in expecting laughs, you’ll be disappointed. What you get instead is a sharp, quietly melancholic study on modern love, dating, and loneliness in the big city. It’s not so much about romance as it is about emotional bankruptcy – the way ambition, money, and appearances slowly chip away at real connection.” Melancholy, yeah.

So I understand why some folks, looking for a sweet rom-com, might be disappointed. I’ve read that Johnson’s performance was flat, but I think it was dead on. The “real tension[ is] in her. What does she actually want? Love, comfort, validation? Or just a life that looks good on paper?”

This is also why Lucy was so tone deaf when dealing with the bad date one of her clients experienced.

The funniest part of the movie was the clips of the clients noting their attributes and what they were looking for. (I was going to give an example, but it doesn’t read as funny.)

The Rotten Tomatoes reviews were 80% positive with critics and 67% with audiences. All I can say is that I believed these people, especially Lucy. Dakota Johnson, by the way, was the response to a recent JEOPARDY clue. HOLLYWOOD HODGEPODGE $400: She’s the actress seen here with mom Melanie Griffith and grandmother Tippi Hedren.

Oh, I liked the cave people, too, who appeared in the beginning and then the end credits.

Movie review: The Life Of Chuck

based on a Stephen King novella

The description of the movie The Life of Chuck on IMDb: “A life-affirming, genre-bending story based on Stephen King’s novella about three chapters in the life of an ordinary man named Charles Krantz.” The movie starts with Act Three, and the characters in the film wonder, Who IS this guy, Chuck?

One gets a sense of Chuck as portrayed by four actors: Tom Hiddleston, Jacob Tremblay, Benjamin Pajak, and Cody Flanagan. It also stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, Carl Lumbly, Mark Hamill, and Mia Sara as his grandparents, and Karen Gillan as perhaps his last dance partner, who also gave fine performances.

All that said, I don’t know how to review it without wrecking it utterly. One fan reviewer: “I want to leave my critique relatively vague as I believe the hook of the film works best going in without knowing much.” I did like it a lot.

Here’s a meh (5/10) fan review on IMDb that actually gets to the crux: “If you like movies that make you think about life, that make you contemplate existence, you will very much enjoy this. I personally don’t normally go for movies like that… but I would say The Life of Chuck is about as good as they come.”

Untidy

Diane Cameron, whom I know, wrote on Facebook: “Now, if you are the kind of person who needs to know what a work of art means, or what a poem means, or have a satisfying tidy feeling after a movie, skip ‘Chuck’. It will make you crazy. But if you like questions more than answers, and fabulous actors and some great dancing, and maybe to chew on a movie for a few days, then ‘Chuck’ is your next movie.” I’ll buy that.

Another reviewer wrote, “I left the film feeling a mix of joy and melancholy and appreciated the artistry that brought me there.” This is also true.

On Rotten Tomatoes, it received an 82% positive rating from critics and an 88% positive rating from fans. Mick LaSalle wrote, “The movie is maudlin and pessimistic and features a mildly sardonic voiceover narration by Nick Offerman that only serves to distance us from the action.” Well, no, on every count.

Ruth Maramis, by contrast, noted: “This poignant existential drama doesn’t just spoon-feed you everything but leaves room for interpretation as we connect its profound themes to our own experiences. Great seeing Hiddleston flaunt his killer dance moves.” Yeah, that.

See it if you’re not looking for tidiness. My wife and I saw The Life Of Chuck at the Spectrum 8 in Albany on the evening of June 27; the theater was 3/4 full.

Sunday Stealing is F.A.B. again

Ringo, Linda, Carlos, Alison, and Mick

Welcome to Sunday Stealing.

Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves!

Since it’s the 4th of July weekend, we’re going to keep this simple. We stole this from a blogger named Idzie, who called this the F.A.B. (film, audio, book) meme, so we’re F.A.B. again.

Movies

F. Film: What movie or TV show are you watching?

On Monday, my wife and I visited the Spectrum Theatre in Albany to see the comedy Caddyshack. Neither of us had ever seen it before, but we heard that it was very popular in 1980 when it came out. We were mostly unimpressed. Chevy Chase’s character was somewhat interesting, and Rodney Dangerfield was funny for a while, but Bill Murray seemed to be in another movie. I had to start looking at why so many find the film beloved.

The Wikipedia post was helpful: “The film was met with underwhelming reviews in its original release, with criticism towards the disorganized plot, though Dangerfield’s, Chase’s, and Murray’s comic performances were well received. Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote, ‘Caddyshack feels more like a movie that was written rather loosely, so that when shooting began, there was freedom—too much freedom—for it to wander off in all directions in search of comic inspiration.'” If you’ve ever talked with a person who’s stoned, you’re not, and they think everything is hysterical? That may be this movie.

Harold Ramis, a first-time film director, noted that “In the DVD documentary, TV Guide had originally given the film two stars (out of four) when it began showing on cable television in the early 1980s, but over time, the rating had gone up to three stars.” Maybe it’s better with repeated viewing.

Music

A. Audio: What are you listening to?

This being July, some of the birthdays are those of Ringo Starr, Linda Ronstadt, Carlos Santana, Alison Krauss, Mick Jagger, and Jim Stewart. So I’ll play Linda, Santana, and the Rolling Stones. Who’s Jim Stewart? He co-founded the legendary STAX Records with his sister Estelle Axton. I also play a lot of compilations of Beatles covers, and I have many of them.

Photograph – Ringo Starr

Telling Me Lies -The Trio (Ronstadt, Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris)

Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen – Santana

Maybe – Alison Krauss

I Am Waiting – The Rolling Stones

Green Onions – Booker T. and the MG’s

You Can’t Do That – Harry Nilsson

Text

B. Book: What are you reading?

My friend Fred Hembeck wrote so kindly about former Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter, who died recently at age 73, regarding Fred’s participation in the Fantastic Four Roast and Fred Hembeck Destroys the Marvel Universe, I thought I’d read the book The Marvel Universe According to Hembeck.

Please come back next week.

Movie review: SINNERS

Michael B. Jordan and Michael B. Jordan

Admittedly, I was wary about seeing the movie SINNERS. I can be a bit squeamish when it comes to a film described as vampire horror. My friend Steve Bissette had recommended it when he saw it in April, but that type of film is more in his wheelhouse.

Then my daughter, likewise squeamish, viewed it in Cape Town, South Africa, in June, just before returning to the States. She said I had to see it because it was about the black experience in America, and it was about music.

So I went to the Madison Theatre near my home on the hottest day of the year, Primary Day – they have $5 films on Tuesdays! – while my wife, the most squeamish of the three of us, saw another flick at the same venue.

How do I describe this film? The IMDb notes: “Trying to leave their troubled lives behind [in Chicago], twin brothers (Michael B. Jordan) return to their hometown [in 1930s Mississippi] to start again, only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back.”

That doesn’t tell you much. Bissette wrote: “A rip-roaring fusion of masterful visual storytelling and toe-tapping music, writer-director Ryan Coogler’s first original blockbuster reveals the full scope of his singular imagination.

“Wildly primal, big and bold, fueled by pain and rage, by community and family, throbbing with love and sex and joy, infused with magic. A sumptuously textured, unmissable howl of a passion project.”

It’s about time

Someone named Corey Creekmur commented on Bissette’s Facebook page: “It’s such a rich sequence. It seems to be drawing upon African models of time, occult notions of time (such as the way vampires move outside of human time and share memories), and rich notions of musical and cultural continuity across eras. (It seems evocative of Sun Ra and George Clinton’s mystical, time and space traveling visions.) It’s dazzling in any case.”

Oh, it’s Afrofuturism, at least in part, which does not become clear to me until near the end.

It was well-acted by all involved. The scenes with the twins, Smoke and Stack, looked realistic. Special kudos to Miles Caton, who is all of 20, for playing the pivotal role of Sammie. And the music is excellent; I have, of all things, Rocky Road to Dublin, stuck in my head.

The Rotten Tomatoes reviews were 97% positive among critics and 96% positive among audiences. Some suggested that at 137 minutes, it was about 15 minutes too long. But I think the time built up the tension and better established the characters.

An audience reviewer on a site thought the vampires were silly, rather than scary-looking. I thought that was the point. The vampire’s life was alluring at some level.

Bissette is right about this: “if (and oh, you should) you catch SINNERS in the theater, be advised NOT to leave when the first of the final credits appears…

“The real ending to the film is mid-way through the final credits” (at least three of the dozen and a half folks in my theater left too early and missed Buddy Guy!), “and after the credits crawl conclude, a sublime post-credits sequence that sent me out of my seat positively elated follows” (I was in an otherwise empty theater.)

60 Songs That Explain the ’90s

‘My muñequita/My Spanish Harlem Mona Lisa.’

I provided a review of the book “60 Songs That Explain the ’90s” by Rob Harvilla at the Albany Public Library on June 3. It was challenging on several fronts.

I had never listened to the podcasts, and at 90 minutes a pop, I wasn’t about to start. There were far more than sixty songs; it was closer to twice that.

Here was a mixed blessing: I was only familiar with some of the songs, so it was easier to narrow down what I might discuss. The ones with hyperlinks, I was familiar with enough to discuss. Still, do I play a sample, read from the book, or both? As it turns out, I got to very few of them in 45 minutes.

And it isn’t easy to talk about music. From Do You Believe In Music by the Lovin’ Spoonful, “It’s like trying to tell a stranger about rock and roll.” –

I described the book as “autobiography via music.” It is a concept I can totally relate to.

In the introduction, he acknowledged that he believed the songs of your teenage years are the ones that most imprint. I have a variation on that experience, which I will address someday if you ask.

The italicized items are generally chapter titles.

Chaos agents

Céline Dion: My Heart Will Go On – the moderator had never heard this song from Titanic, so before the program, I played a section of it.

Hole: Doll Parts

Madonna: Vogue

Spice Girls: Wannabe

Backstreet Boys: I Want It That Way

Eminem – My Name Is

Beck – Loser. I acknowledged that I had not known this song or Black Hole Sun until I heard both in a Weird Al Yankovic medley.

Master P – Make ‘Em Say Uhh!

Prodigy – Firestarter

The Chicks – Goodbye Earl – I did play a bit of this, which Harvilla described as a “gleeful domestic-violence revenge fantasy.” But he also declares that “the point of the song is that somebody helps her.”

Erica Badu – Tyrone

Sellouts (or not) (or maybe)

Metallica – Enter Sandman (30)

Pantera – Walk

Temple Of The Dog – Hunger Strike

Coolio – Gangsta’s Paradise. I played the Weird Al parody Amish Paradise, and explained the well-known dispute. Oh, here’s Pastime Paradise by Stevie Wonder from 1976, just because.

Ice Cube – It Was A Good Day

Reel Big Fish -Sell Out

Mighty Mighty Bosstones – The Impression That I Get

No Doubt – Just A Girl. I posted about this in a blog post, which I described to the audience.

Fugazi – Merchandise

Green Day – Longview

Women versus “women in rock”

The Sundays – I Kicked A Boy

The Cranberries – Zombie (56)

Garbage – Only Happy When It Rains

PJ Harvey – Man-Size

Alanis Morissette – You Oughta Know. I read the section where Rob’s girlfriend would play the Jagged Little Pill album, and would cough when the F-bomb came on, to hide it from her mom.

Tori Amos – Cornflake Girl

The Breeders – Cannonball (65)

TLC – No Scrubs

Sinead O’Connor – “Nothing Compares 2 U” – I had intended to play this, but I didn’t have time. Harvilla: “And she’s just singing: no explosions, no quick cuts, none of that ‘MTV-style editing’…Just the stillness, the gravity, the gorgeous severity of it.”

Fiona Apple – Criminal

Sheryl Crow –If It Makes You Happy

Vivid geography, or, everybody hates a tourist

Wu-Tang Clan -C.R.E.A.M.

Mob Deep -Shook Ones, Pt. II

Nas -N.Y. State of Mind

Pulp – Common People

Bjork – Hyperballad

Missy Elliott – The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)

Outkast – Elevators (Me & You)

Juvenile – Back That Azz Up

Jane’s Addiction – Been Caught Stealing

Soundgarden – Black Hole Sun

Luniz – I Got 5 On It

Villains + adversaries

Third Eye Blind – Semi-Charmed Life

Oasis – Wonderwall

Blur – Song 2

A Tribe Called Quest – Check The Rhyme

Pavement – Range Life

Smashing Pumpkins – Cherub Rock

Limp Bizkit -Nookie (Windows+h)

Offspring – Pretty Fly (for a white guy)

DMX – Ruff Ryder’s Anthem

Brandy + Monica – The Boy Is Mine

Flukes + comebacks + spectacular weirdos

Los Del Rio – “Macarena” (Bayside Boys Remix). I agree that anyone who started recording before the Beatles shouldn’t be dismissed as a “one-hit wonder.”

Billy Ray Cyrus – Achy Breaky Heart

The New Radicals- You Get What You Give

The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies – Zoot Suit Riot – I played a bit of this, but also explained the history of the topic

Cher – Believe. I wanted to explain autotuning, but no time.

Chumbawamba – Tubthumping. In 2025, I became oddly obsessed with this song. First, it’s mentioned on the CBS sitcom Ghosts by the guy with no pants as the best song of the decade. Then it was a clue on JEOPARDY! I read the beginning lyrics.

Tag Team – Whoomp! (There It Is)

Mark Morrison -Return of the Mack

Santana + Rob Thomas – Smooth. Harvilla: “The true greatness… lies in the whiplash pivot from the nonchalant generality of ‘Man it’s a hot one’ to the remarkable specificity of ‘My muñequita/My Spanish Harlem Mona Lisa.’ Rob Thomas wrote this song for his girlfriend [now wife] Marisol Maldonado.”

Vanilla Ice – Ice Ice Baby

Natalie Imbruglia – Torn

Teenage hijinks

Rage Against the Machine – Killing In The Name

Body Count – Cop Killer

Guns ‘N’ Roses – November Rain

Red Hot Chili Peppers – Under the Bridge

Alice In Chains – Would?

They Might Be Giants – Particle Man

Cake – The Distance

Weezer – Undone (The Sweater Song)

Beastie Boys – Sabotage

Radiohead – Creep

Pearl Jam – Yellow Ledbetter

Romance + sex + immaturity

Salt-N-Pepa – Shoop

Nine Inch Nails – Closer

Tool – Stinkfist

Prince – Gett Off

Boyz II Men – End Of The Road, #1 pop for 13 weeks. I would have played a snippet of this since I saw the group in 2024.

Liz Phair – F*** and Run (193)

Sunny Day Real Estate – In Circles

Bonnie Raitt – I Can’t Make You Love Me. Harvilla writes that this is a song that you shouldn’t sing at open-mic night or even listen to “until you’ve a little silver white in your hair.”

Dave Matthews Band – Crash Into Me

Blink-182 – What’s My Age Again?

Myths versus mortals

Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit – I would have played this and/or Weird Al’s Smells Like Nirvana

The Notorious B.I.G – Juicy

Selena – Que Creias?

Dr. Dre – Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang

Whitney Houston – I Will Always Love You , #1 pop for 14 weeks

Britney Spears – Baby One More Time

Aaliyah – One In A Million

Tupac – California Love

Geto Boys – Mind Playing Tricks On Me

Lauryn Hill – Ex-Factor

Shania Twain – Man! I Feel Like A Woman

Big feelings

This chapter, as described, is a bit more substantial.

Tom Petty – It’s Good To Be King

Janet Jackson – Together Again (244)

Black Box – Everybody Everybody

Mariah Carey – All I Want For Christmas Is You

The Verve – Bittersweet Symphony (251)

Gin Blossoms – Hey Jealousy

Counting Crows – A Long December

Mary J. Blige -Real Love

Bone Thugs-N-Harmony – Tha Crossroads

Lisa Loeb – Stay (I Missed You) . Rob was a pallbearer for a friend younger than he was who loved the song

I liked the book, mostly. He was a bit too glib on occasion, but it didn’t destroy my enjoyment.