Top 10 of 2025: 2. Sinners

★★★★★--One of three movies I watched this year where a single actor played twins. Most years this would have been my favorite film. There is a polarizing scene where past and present come together and time gets transcended. I thought this was genius. However, I could hear people laughing and mocking this in the theater on opening night. WTF? I’ve talked to people that felt both ways. Regardless, amazing music and story and an abrupt needle drop that flips the genre from a musical drama to horror. If it stuck with one genre, I still would have loved it.  Michael B. Jordan is incredible, as are Miles Caton, Hailee Steinfeld, Wunmi Mosaku, and Delroy Lindo. The guy that looks like Popeye Jones is pretty solid, too. Incredible flick. 

31 Days of Halloween: Blumhouse off key with country music horror flick

Torn Hearts - Brea Grant – 2022

 

★★-Day 9 of the Nightmare on Film Street 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge. Blumhouse night. This studio is pretty hit or miss. For me, this was definitely a miss. 

Set in Nashville’s country music scene, two rising musicians, Jordan and Leigh, seek out their idol, only to find themselves entangled in a twisted pursuit of fame. Good premise squandered by poor execution. 

 

Katey Sagal plays the idol with issues. Crazy how good she still looks. Strange familiar face in this one as well. Josh from The Blair Witch Project plays the manager/boyfriend of Leigh. Hard to recognize under all the facial hair though. 

 

Had a lot of hope for this. Loved director Brea Grant’s movie Lucky from 2020. But couldn’t get behind this movie at all. The writing was lazy as fuck. The reason all the killing and mind fuckery are going down is a mystery. 

 

My female companion grew up in Nashville. Her family was in the biz. She hated it, too, though she could relate better than myself. She mostly didn’t find the flick interesting. 

 

Biggest bright spot was the acting of Abby Quinn who plays the free-spirited Jordan. She was one of the profits or whatever in Knock at the Cabin. Playing the other half of the duo was Alexxis Lemire, who wasn’t great. The character, Leigh, is super lame and stupid. 

 

Overall, nothing special. Music industry horror has some potential, but movie phones it in. Acting is bad. Story is not only meh, but also confusing.

Trainwreck: Woodstock '99

Trainwreck: Woodstock '99. Dir Jamie Crawford in 2022. Love a documentary about a shitshow music festival. This one of two to come out in the last few years regarding Woodstock ’99. I order this on pay-per-view at the time and was extremely disappointed. I vividly remember the footage of things going to absolute shit during the Chili Peppers’ set. 

Tells the story of how corporate greed—rampant cost-cutting and overpricing food and water—, violence, sexual assault, and environmental hazards led to attendees setting fires and rioting after the final performance.

The lighting shit on fire portion of the show came about when a group anti-gun violence of peace promoters distributed candles for a candlelight vigil to be held during the Chili Peppers' performance of the song "Under the Bridge". Following said song, people used the candles to start bonfires, using the out-of-control mountains of trash to fuel them. 

The sexual violence stuff is super disturbing. Also disturbing is the way the main organizers put all the blame on the people attending the show. You can only push a crowd so far, and this crowd had had enough. 

Personally, I preferred The Ringer’s documentary, Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage along with their podcast Break Stuff: The Story of Woodstock '99, a little more.

Soundgarden - Superunknown

Saturday night listen. Have a habit of going out. Popping some Delta-8. Making a cocktail I chase with a beer. Firing up my kick ass JBL portable. Putting on something from my youth. Lighting up a C-gar. Putting the wheels up and rocking out. Did that shit this evening, let me tell ya.   

Universe was telling me to revisit Superunknown by Soundgarden. Bartender last night was wearing the shirt, then I caught Fear Street: 1994. So here we are…   

One of my first CDs. Got it back when the way you stole music was 12 CDs for a penny under a fake name. Columbia House was so fucking stupid. Had maybe five CDs before that. Those 12 were all classics. Didn’t care for the Aerosmith one though. Wasn’t my taste. I’ll maybe do the rest soon.   

Anyway, kicks off with “Let Me Drown,” which rocks the fuck out. The hits were incredibly solid. “My Wave.” “Spoonman.” “The Day I Tried to Live.” “Fell On Black Days” was a difficult listen with the way Chris Cornell eliminated his own map. Still a good song though. “Black Hole Sun,” fuck yeah. Used to playfully mock my sister with this diddy, “Summer stench,” I’d sing. She is a @girlnamedsummer.  

Deep cuts I loved but forgot about over the years include “Mailman,” “Half.” “Head Down” is a personal favorite.   

Overall, still really good shit. It’s grunge though so a major fucking downer. 

Musical: David Byrne's American Utopia is the greatest show of all time

David Byrne's American Utopia on HBO directed by Spike Lee, filmed from the Broadway show. Love the shit out of David Byrne. I saw the touring show live in Indy at a great venue with really good seats. Fucking sick. Seen over 100 bands in my life. This was by far the best show I've ever seen. American Utopia was more than a concert. It was performance art, something of a TED Talk, and people just stoked to be jamming together.

Really solid and optimistic set. Some of the best of The Talking Heads, minus "Psycho Killer," the show is too positive for that. Definitely the best of his solo work. Some powerful covers in there as well. Some of the setlist includes "Lazy," "I Zembra," "Everybody's Coming to My House," "This Must Be the Place," which is my favorite, "Once in a Lifetime," and so on and so forth. 

I'm obsessed with this show. Listen to it all the time and watched a copy on YouTube at least three or four times. Sooooo, when this dropped on HBO last night, I was stoked, but I'd been enjoying the fuck out of it for a while now. It was great, don't get me wrong. But at one point I sort of asked if this was the best use of Spike Lee at this point. I felt that sort of anyone could have done this, and I thought he sort of fucked up one of my favorite parts, when Byrne dances like a wildman to "I Should Watch TV." It's really fucking sick, but Spike cuts away and we don't see any of it. What the fuck, man? Is this amateur hour?

But there were some cool flourishes, like some cool overhead stuff. Couple of times I was pretty impressed seeing the movement from above like that. Then we got a standard Spike Lee shot at the end when the band rides home on their bikes, this to remind us it is Spike 'fucking' Lee doing this shit, I guess.

The use of space and light is incredible and has to be experienced first-hand to truly be appreciated. That's why this fell a flat, to me. But totally still worth watching. Also made me miss going to concerts and being with the people I went to that concert with, truly some of my favorites and some of the best. But can't be there now or see them, so might as well enjoy this, I suppose.