Review – Oppenheimer

The story of one of the fathers of the atomic bomb gets thoroughly Christopher-Nolan-ized. The director’s various conceits – particularly his love of ping-ponging back and forth in the timeline – transform the fascinating story of one of the most important moments in 20th century history into a dull, three-hour trudge. See if desperate

Review – Downwind

This documentary about nuclear fallout takes an excellent first step and then falls flat on its face. Obviously the real tragedy of the government’s testing of atomic weapons is its deadly effect on anyone unfortunate enough to be downwind when radioactive debris falls back to earth. If they had to pick just one group of victims, it makes perfect sense to start with the indigenous people who were removed from their own land and then irradiated where they were forced to settle. But from there the production moves on to other casualties – particularly the Hollywood folk who worked on The Conqueror – who the producers must have thought would be more relatable to white audiences. The story also largely omits key elements of the lethal farce, particularly the sheer uselessness of the testing. This isn’t a bad movie, but it could have been a lot better. Mildly amusing

Review – Call Me Miss Cleo

As I imagine a lot of audience members will, I went into this experience with a “ho ho that fake psychic on TV met a bad end” attitude. But the real behind-the-scenes story paints a much different picture. Youree Dell Harris, the actor who played Miss Cleo, got a super raw deal from the scam artists running the psychic 900 number. In addition to getting screwed over financially, the gig pretty much ruined her life. So this wasn’t as funny as I thought it would be. Mildly amusing

Review – Poisoned Ground

American Experience takes us back to the Love Canal, complete with the full parade of terrible decision-making that led to so many people dead or seriously ill. I was particularly taken with the point at which the angry families took EPA officers hostage. It seems so extreme now, though I guess in the shadow of the Iranian hostage crisis that it must have been more in keeping with the times. If you don’t know much about the whole mess, this is an excellent introduction. Worth seeing

Review – Brandy Hellville

This documentary does a good job of criticizing fashion trend op Brandy Melville for being exploitative, environmentally destructive and extremely prejudiced. What it fails to do is distinguish its subject from other, larger clothing manufacturers that use the same terrible labor practices, lead to the same waste and encourage the same despicable body shaming. Though there are plenty of important points here, please don’t go into the viewing experience (or leave it) thinking that it’s about some isolated rogue element in an otherwise squeaky clean industry. Mildly amusing

Review – Weird Al: Never Off Beat

If you’ve read Weird Al’s Wikipedia page, you probably already know most of this. And if you do a Youtube search for the artist, you’ll get most of the clips too. So all this really does is collect them in one place. Mildly amusing

Review – The Last Witch Hunter

Vin Diesel once again proves that the best use of his talents are voice-over roles that require only three words. When he has to play a multi-dimensional character, even the hero of a supernatural action movie, he’s just too flat-footed to pull it off. Beyond that, this is a fairly average tale of immortal hero versus magical evil. Mildly amusing

Review – Dune Part 2

So am I to take from the ending that they’re planning a third one? That seems like a strange decision, given that (spoiler alert) they did away with all the bad guys at the end of this episode. The only unresolved question was how the witless protagonist would reunite with his scowling girlfriend, which I don’t even vaguely care enough about to endure another three hours of this. As with the first episode, the effects were impressive but the story was convoluted and dull. Mildly amusing