Fool's Views (4/24 – 4/30)

"Is it safe to go out yet....? I need some Cheetos."

Hello again!

Hope everyone is staying healthy, staying hopeful, and staying at home as much as possible. With the exception of recent trips to the community garden to prep our plot for the summer (I swear, we’re not burying bodies!), we’ve been doing our best to flatten the curve without getting too curvy ourselves. Between the flicks, there have been push-ups, planks, squats, pull-ups, and crunches, at least 100 of each every day, in the hopes that once we’re allowed to re-enter this strange new world post-COVID, we’re not looking like total tubs of goo. So far, so good, building those good habits and trying to stay positive. After all, there are movie marathons on the horizon and we’ll need all our strength to see them through! THIS IS WHY WE TRAIN….

On that note, rediscovering the Chicago Public Library’s FREE streaming service Hoopla has been a total delight, stumbling across tons of films that I had been meaning to catch up with for months or even years. The “to-watch” stack just got a whole lot higher, for better or worse! For those in the Windy City area, I highly recommend it, and for those out-of-towners, try checking your own local library’s website and see what they have to offer. Despite all propaganda to the contrary, the world does not revolve around Amazon Prime and Netflix alone!

As always, feel free to leave your two cents worth – we’ll make sure you get some change back.

Enjoy!

VFW (2019) Blu-ray Review

VFW (2019) d. Joe Begos (USA) (92 min)

After attempting to stretch with his modern vampire flick Bliss, Begos crashes back to earth, seemingly content in being the worst kind of Tarantino imitator, i.e. interested only in serving up “tributes” of established tropes and subgenres under his own byline. Having done body snatcher (Almost Human) and psychokinetic (The Mind’s Eye) flicks, he now offers up a siege film (Assault on Precinct 13 is the obvious model and, yes, I know that John Carpenter was himself riffing off Rio Bravo, thank you very much) combined with Stallone’s The Expendables series by hiring over-the-hill cult actors (Stephen Lang, William Sadler, Martin Kove, Daniel Patrick Kelly, George Wendt, Fred Williamson) to play a group of retired soldiers defending their local watering hole from a horde of strung-out (and wildly ineffectual) druggies.