Category Archives: Fashionably Late Reviews

Fashionably Late Reviews, Movies, Reviews

Fashionably Late Movie Reviews: Solo-A Star Wars Story

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INTRODUCTION: This is it! The movie that killed all future Star Wars stories. What was wrong with it exactly? Depends on the side of the fence you’re on. Some thing it was too soon past The Last Jedi and other blame the forced politics of this one. Regardless, we’re going to look at this objectively.

SYNOPSIS: Han Solo’s origin story.

CHARACTERS: All the new characters are 100% rememorable. Not a single one is worthless. All are distinctive and add a different dimension to this film.

ACTING: Not a single worthless actor. Everyone was excellent in this. Playing Han was a big challenge and boy did Alden Ehrenreich live up to it.

FX:On point and amazing!

SUBTEXT: None! Don’t listen to the idiots who hate this, it isn’t pro feminishm. This idiots, who bullshit ramblings have higher diminishing returns than this movie need to shut up and go away. All the same things that have always been Star Wars are in this movie and a droid leading a rebellion to free other droids is not subtext, it’s old hat in this series.

CONCLUSION:
This movie doesn’t break from convention, but it doesn’t need too. While the story has a few inconsistencies with continuity, like Han being part of the empire for a while, which he fails to mention in any of the “Holy” trilogy, it is still fun and very much a Star Wars movie. I don’t care if any of these scenes are considered “iconic” as it was fun and given the firing of Lord and Miller during the zero hour and being able to still complete a fun film, that says a lot about the ability of these actors, filmmakers, writers and all the rest. I for one wouldn’t mind a sequel!


4 out of 5 stars

Fashionably Late Reviews, Movies, Review, Writing

Fashionably Late Movie Reviews: Overlord.

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INTRODUCTION: Overlord, was a movie I wanted to see back in 2018, but opted to wait. I’m not sad that I waited, but at the same time, this would have been wicked to have seen. It’s one of the better WW2 flicks in a good long while and I think you’ll enjoy this one. It isn’t as good as Dead Snow and it isn’t about zombies, like the trailer made it out to be, but it is still the best WW2 movie I have seen since Saving Private Ryan.

SYNOPSIS: The day before D-Day and a group of soldiers are sent into Normandy with the task of disrupting a transmissions tower in order for ground troops to successfully make it to the beach.

CHARACTERS: Not bad! You don’t really feel bad for them, but each one is likable enough that they’re not overtly shallow. The “villain” is definitely weak as fuck. He is a want be Hans Lambda from Inglorious Bastards, but with none of the charm or anything remotely likable, making him just a cliché. Each one is unique enough that they’re memorable and you can tell them apart, but you aren’t going to see any iconic characters come out of this movie.

ACTING: All the actors did very well. None of them are going to win an award for this, but it was very good.

STYLE: Fantastic! I loved the visuals and the FX would pretty damn good!

MUSIC: Nothing iconic, but works with the flick.

HISTORICAL ACCURACY: Mostly true to the time period and very well done.

TENSION: Is there and you can feel it in spades. It’s a slow burn, but not that slow of a burn. Really well balanced.

SUBTEXT: None, except for the overt, don’t play God, but, whatever.

CONCLUSION: This is one fine movie. I don’t think it is one I would watch over and over again, but it was fun at least once. I could see myself watching it at least one more time, though. The acting is one point, the visuals are good, the tension is there, the characters aren’t bad and the acting is very good. It has a few errors and I wasn’t too fond of the censoring of the Nazi logo in exchange for a different logo entirely. I understand some people don’t want to accidentally up-sell Nazi Germany, but I don’t think censoring history is the way to go. Other than that and a couple of other small gripes, it was Sher Gut!

4 out of 5.

Fashionably Late Reviews, Non-fiction, Reviews, Writing

Fashionably Late Book Reviews: Being Logical by D.Q. McInerny.

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INTRODUCTION: I first read Being Logical when I was in my early 20’s. I absolutely loved it then, because it was a short and concise introduction to formal logic, which is sadly, no longer taught at the college level and hadn’t been for years by the time I was old enough to attend. This is the exact book that I thought was going to be a huge game changer if you could get enough people to read it. Sadly, I was unaware back then, that a majority of the United States was highly illiterate. So sadly, upon further inspection recently, I do not think as highly of this book, given this new data, as it would be closer to a collegiate textbook for the average American than I would hope, even though it was hugely inspired by Strunk&White Elements of Style, falls way short of that book and even invokes errors that the book would of warned against. So lets look at this book through a modern lens and see who the audience is and if it is worthwhile.

PROSE: The prose is fine, albeit a tad bit too complex for the average American reader. You can tell it is also heavily influenced by Aristole’s Oragaon, as McInerny’s expression of a quantification of a thing is nearly identical to Aristole’s. In fact, it was nearly verbatim. This is extremely confusing to the most readers who wouldn’t be able to discern such and why would they? If it was an attempt is to be a cheap collegiate text for those of us whom are autodidactic than it would be fantastic, but it was meant for the normal reader as an introductory text to formal logic and it fails miserably in that respect.

FORM: Book form is fantastic! It has a section on the formal fallacies, including their original Latin names and makes for a fantastic glossary. I’ve been using it for years, along with The Philosopher’s Toolkit as glossaries to look things up, should something slip my mind. I think the average reader is going to roll their eyes at the Latin and think of this as boring though and that is a negative for the book. Albeit, I and others of my ilk will find this to be a fantastic aspect, the intended audience would not concur with us.

CONCLUSION:
This book, which should be for everyone, falls short of the mark. I’ve been pitching it for years and well, few seem to care about formal logic and thinking correctly. Typical human hubris that makes them think they’re thinking correctly, because as well all know with stupid people, they’re always correct and perfect. So, even though the audience this was intended for, would have very little use for it, it makes one hell of an introduction to Logic for everyone else. I would highly recommend this book to someone creating a high school or adult ed course on Logic and if Universities ever bring formal logic courses back, this would be a great 101 text. The average American is most likely not going to put much thought into this and probably toss it before they finished chapter one and that is a downright crime. On the textbook merits, I give it 5 out of 5 stars, even if it is a tad bit stuffy for some people. For the average American, though, I have to give it a paltry 3 out of 5. At least he tried to bring logic to Americans, and that would be commended. Thank you for such a fantastic book, even if it isn’t as appreciated as it could be.

Fashionably Late Reviews, Review, Writing

Fashionably Late Movie Reviews:All the Presidents Men

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Writer’s Note: I know this review is diffrent from the others, but it is less of a review and more about the events the movie is based on, given the movie was so bare bones to work with.

I’m not quite sure how to review this movie, given it isn’t really a movie in the traditional sense. It seems more like liberal schadenfreude as opposed to a desire to create for prosperity a film that documents the 1972 Watergate incidence, where Richard M. Nixon had men break into the DNC headquarters, presumably to make sure the Democrats were keeping their documents neatly shredded in the appropriate folders.

I’ve never been the biggest history buff, but I do know and have room in my reading collection for history, but this is one I have to admit that I am not very well versed in. I know enough about to know it always seemed like a non issue for someone my age, yet people act like it was this major important historical event, which I highly disagree with and for one major reason, where were all these cocksuckers when the patriot act was passed during the George W. Bush era? Oh, they’ll bitch when they have to deal with an idiot who breaks into the DNC to help him in the 1972, but spy on the entire country under the guise of fighting terrorism and well fuck me silly, I’m ok with that. How about Obama taping Trump recently? It’s all a bunch of aggrandizing by overly hubristic baby boomers who felt like they did something, when they really did nothing. Now, this isn’t an endorsement of Richard M. Nixon, there is a reason why, until Trump, the political Lexington had only one word to describes such unscrupulous acts and that is “Nixonion”, but that alone doesn’t warrant a film on such a paltry and unimportant aspect of history. It is much like Bill Clinton in the 90s with his blow job. White water and his execution on the campaign trail in 92 are far worse things to detail in a movie, the bj, was not his finest hour, is a insufficient thing to focus on and so petty, yet we don’t get movies on Clinton getting head, so why did we need this? It is filled with solipsism by people writing, presuming and correctly in the year it was released at least, that you’re knowledgeable about the events. That’s all fine and good, but it makes for a lackluster film when you’re born in the 80’s and have no clue what the fuck is what and why Robert Redford seems intrigued about a name that is never mentioned or a character about him being introduced. This is purely and simply liberal propaganda, make to dig into the Nixon right and make them pay for just voting for a guy they didn’t like. Very petty and very babyboomeresque. The right got even in the 90s and now the right is making us all pay by electing a man that makes Nixion seem like a walk in the park. Mark my words, there will be more of these shit movies to follow on the heels of Trump. Most likely bet, Oliver Stone does one on him, like his 1994 flick, Nixon, which by the way, is way better than this shit. Dick from 1998, is another, albeit fictionalized version of these events that is a lot more fun. All the Presidents Men is nothing more than men gossiping on phones in the 70s, for 90 minutes and then typing about it. Literally nothing happens. There is nothing that makes this seem important. I would praise the lack of dramatization, except they tried to amp it up, but to utter failure. There was no sense of urgency to care. By today’s standards, this movie can be summed as “Richard Nixon tweets something dumb”. Where are all the movies on Regan’s Iran contra scandal? Now that was and is something worthwhile. Why not a movie on Obama being stupid and allowing Iran to have nuclear material? That is a horrible thing that he should be called out for. The acting is good, but it’s Mostly Hoffman and Redford playing themselves and not really acting. The rest of the cast is all right but it is nothing to write home about. Overall this movie is a paltry example of political pettiness at its worse and people wonder why we’re so polarized now a days

2 out of 5.

Fashionably Late Reviews, Movies, Reviews

Fashionably Late Movie Reviews: Friday The 13th Part 7

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Introduction
Another installation of fashionably late movie reviews. This time we’re reviewing Friday the 13th part 7:The New Blood. This is another of my favorites in this series. If you never seen this one, it’s the one were someone had a pair of balls in some shitty production meeting in 1987 and said “What if Jason fought Carrie White?” and in typical Hollywood fashion some rich asshole with more money than brains said “fucking brilliant, here is 20 million bucks, go make it!” That is pretty much how these things are app to go. So without further ado, I call this review, Friday the 13th part 7: The Search for More Money!

Synopsis
A plethora of cliché and shallow “teen” characters played by early 30 something actors are stranded in the woods of Crystal Lake for the billionth time, when PLOT TWIST, a psycho named Jason Vorhees shows up to kill them!

Characters
All the bullshit tropes are accounted for, nothing new here and all shallow as fuck!

Acting
Holy shit is it bad! I mean, the porn your parents made on their honeymoon was probably better acted then this shit. One of the worse acted of them all.

Dialogue
Fine, nothing that really stands out as absolute garbage.

Kills
Nothing over the top or interesting. This is one that could hold up well on TV, with minimum edits.

Conclusion
This is easily one of the more interesting entries in the series, if only for the psychic aspect. Had the characters been given more depth so we could care about them getting axed, along with developing the story a tad bit more, even with terrible acting, the seeds were there for a even better version of this flick. What we ultimately got was a mess of a movie that seemed to want to wade into unfamiliar territory but too scared to make those choices because it didn’t want to drop it’s successful formula in favor of originality. Had the film makers been less reticent, this might have spawned a whole slew of slashers straying from their A-B, horror by numbers. It is an ashame too, given Part 6 did just that and gave room with excellent box office numbers to get them to give different another go. Clearly, it wasn’t meant to be and it still turned out to be OK entry into the series and still one of my favorites, regardless.

3 out of 5

Fashionably Late Reviews, Horror, Reviews, Writing

Fashionably Late Movie Reviews:Jason Lives, Friday the 13th part VI.

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INTRODUCTION
Jason Lives is without a doubt my favorite of the Friday the 13th movies. It was Meta before Scream and I adore Scream, so this one was defiantly up my alley. This one holds up the best on television and it was not as over the top as some of the earlier and later sequels. So does it hold up 33 years after the fact?

SYNOPSIS
Tommy Jarvis, past victim of Jason, returns to Crystal Lake to burn Jason’s dead body. A lighting strike hits Jason, resurrecting him, ala old 1930-1950 style movies and Jason is back to kill a bunch of people with poor character development for our entertainment.

CHARACTERS
Tommy had been built for three movies and still he is a mediocre Nancy Thompson for this franchise, but he is acted much better in this flick. The rest of the characters are filler to see killed because it is a Friday the 13th and who the hell needs character development?

ACTING
Some of the stronger acting of the series. It really wanted to set itself apart from past sequels and do its own thing. Even the smallest role is very well acted in this movie. It’s not hokey, even 33 years later.

KILLS
Nothing over the top, just your quick machete to the gut or something else just as tame by this series standards but that is ok and one of the things that makes this flick hold up.

SUBTEXT
It’s Friday the 13th, for real tho!

CONCLUSION
Part 6 didn’t reinvent the wheel by any stretch of the imagination, but it did make the old structure fresh and fun, while giving birth to the meta genre. Its kills are banal and mediocre, there is no nudity and ultimately it seems like it should not satisfy gore hounds, yet it does and it looks really good to this day.

3.5/5

FUN FACT:
Jason Lives seems to take place in the future, given the fact that Jarvis is at least 30 something, as the actor himself was. If we are to use the chronical age of the actors, given that there is no real way of telling the age of the characters themselves, since Corey Feldman was a teenager in the former sequels, then Part 6 takes place in 2006/2007 and would technically be the final Friday before Jason X would come about.