The Skolney Blog

I don't know why, but we still don't have that great big budget Godzilla movie. Godzilla 1998 had the fresh off of Independence Day Roland Emmerich, yet was a total dud. Godzilla 2014 was quite a bit better, but still was kind of dull and didn't feature very much of Godzilla. This new Godzilla looked absolutely great from the trailers. Good cast, a lot more monsters, and coming after the very good Kong: Skull Island in the same cinematic universe. But damn is it disappointing, and in a lot of the same ways the other films were letdowns. In this one the world has discovered that not only is there Godzilla, but there are 17 other dormant "titans" around the globe, all more or less buried in a sort of hibernation. But then, through a very convoluted and stupid plot, they start to wake up, and tear the world to pieces, and only Godzilla (and possibly Mothra?) can save us. I don't know why Godzilla would bother tbh. Some of these human characters are just bey...

Booksmart It's not at all inaccurate to stick this with the label of "female Superbad." They don't even seem to hide it. The plot is nearly identical in many places. What elevates this into its own really good movie is a lot of sharp dialogue, some fun side characters(Billie Lourd channeling her Scream Queens deadpan to tremendous effect) and a great pair of lead performances by Kaitlin Dever and the irresistible Beanie Feldstein. Brightburn This movie too can be summed up rather easily: the Superman origin story, except this time Superman is a sociopath and budding serial killer. It's an impressive movie considering the tiny budget, but it's never as good as you want it to be. I have a pretty low tolerance for horror movie characters doing blatantly stupid shit, and this movie has a ton of it, especially with the Elizabeth Banks character. The kid is sufficiently creepy. Pokemon Detective Pikachu I was surprised how good this looked from the trailer, so ...

Twins 5 Brewers 3 Twins game #3 of the season was the story of Devin Smeltzer, a rookie up from AA to face the imposing Brewers, and hopefully avoid a 2 game home sweep to the obnoxious border rivals(who wears a fucking cheesehead to a baseball game?). Smeltzer threw 6 mostly dominant innings. He made a really good Brewers lineup look feeble. I didn't understand at all why Baldelli pulled him after 6. The Twins bats however looked equally feeble until the 7th. They never even really had a good scoring chance. But in the 7th they exploded. A Castro single. A would be Tortuga double play turned two base error. Then Kepler drives a double, Cron follows with a double, and, serenaded by a loud chorus of "ED-DIE" chants, Rosario lasers a 2 run bomba. 5-0 in a matter of a few minutes! Now, of course, the bullpen had to make it dangerous. Parker comes in after the 5 run burst and immediately gives up a single and homerun. But no more damage. Then Taylor Rogers gives up a sol...

The Twins will head to the ballpark on Memorial Day with the best record in all of baseball. 20 games over. 500. 10 games ahead of Cleveland. The highest scoring team. The most homeruns. Players scattered all over various statistical leader boards. My Minnesota sports fandom demands this be a situation to fear. It cannot ever be like this, and if it is, that just means the other shoe is going to drop that much harder. But honestly, if it does, that shit ain't happening til October. It's not even June yet. This Twins team could truly be set up to finally awaken the echoes of 87 and 91. Or they could just be another Gardy era-esque club that gives us a nice summer before puking all over themselves once the postseason arrives. It's hard to not feel this is more of an 87 or 91 thing though. This team simply does not feel at all like one of those 2000s clubs. They don't just play plucky small ball and scrape by 4-3 every game. They beat the hell out of teams. Some are put...

Have no idea what to really expect from this new revamped Lynx club. I guess the outside expectations are pretty low. Makes sense. Almost the entire roster has been turned over. Maya is gone. Lindsay is gone. The Machine is gone. Fagbenle and Ceci my gal are not back til midseason sometime. The offseason moves uniformly looked great, but losing what this team lost, how could they contend? Well, the opening win over the admittedly pretty weak Chicago Sky offered some hope. The one thing the Lynx have not done since Maya arrived is draft an impact player. 7 years of really next to nothing from the draft. Some of those picks were dealt for veterans who helped win titles, but probably their most impactful draft pick in those 7 years was, what, Deveraux Peters maybe? But with all this upheaval, and with the 4 title core members all getting older, they HAD to nail this draft. And after one game it sure looks like they did. Napheesa Collier had one of the best rookie debuts in Minnesota sp...

I really have to do these more frequently. Missing Link: A mildly entertaining animated flick.  Little: This was actually a bit of a hit, and it was legitimately pretty funny. Issa Rae was especially great. Teen Spirit: Elle Fanning plays an aspiring pop star. The music was good, but a lot of this movie was pretty boring. I actually fell asleep. Oh well, it was better than Vox Lux at least. High Life: A cool, moody space sci-fi film. Robert Pattinson is very good. Dumbo: So dull. So uninspired. And Michael Keaton is just about the worst he has ever been. The Intruder: I wish studios still knew how to make thrillers that were actually good, but this one is at least enjoyably bad. Dennis Quaid goes way over the top in all the right ways, and Meagan Good is scrumptious. Long Shot: It sells the Theron-Rogen pairing well. And it has some big laughs. The Hustle: I really like Anne Hathaway. I really like Rebel Wilson. But nothing in this movie worked. Tolkien: Pretty dull. bio...

Twins 8 Angels 7 My 2nd Twins game of the season took place on just about the most perfect weather day I've ever seen at Target Field. Funny how I didn't hear anyone bitching about a lack of a roof today. 🤔 It was a pretty big swing game too. Rubber game of a 3 gamer with the Angels, and the last of a 7 game homestand that came in a rather disappointing 3-3. Losing today would have made this homestand a real flop. But the bats that had been very inconsistent and un-clutch of late snapped out of it. It was a very well balanced 1-9 today  as everyone but Kepler either scored or drove in a run. Buxton and Castro went deep. Adrianza of all people had a big 2 run double to kickstart things. And they needed all 8 runs. Jake Ororizzi was solid through 5 but then had a Gibson-like 6th inning collapse. At least Baldelli's hook was a little quicker this time to keep the lead 6-3. Then after Castro's blast it seemed a pretty safe lead. When will I learn that no l...

It's no secret that the right despises women. I think they might hate women more than any other group. Yes, even more than black people, gay people, immigrants or Muslims. People from those groups aren't necessarily a part of a MAGAt's daily life. Women are, so there's even less of an excuse, if you will, to hate them. And I'm under no delusions that conservatives are anything but demonic subhuman pieces of shit. But even still, the shit they are now pulling with regards to taking away a woman's basic rights is ghastly. These insane bills and new laws being proposed and in some cases passed in various states recently are just astonishing in their evilness. I watched the movie Reversing Roe on Netflix a while back, one of the most depressing films ever, and it discussed a lot of this exact stuff. Roe v Wade has been used for decades as a political tool for the right. They run on overturning it. They get gobs of money. They get power....but then they don't...

The Twins started off this season pretty well, but in mid-April they hit a speed bump and lost 3 of 4 at home to a pretty bad Toronto team to fall to a rather blah 9-7. This seemed especially damaging considering what lay ahead. Of the next 19 games, 13 would be the Astros(home and away), plus a road trip to the house of horrors Yankee Stadium, plus 3 more in Toronto, where at least in recent history the Twins have been almost as bad as New York. Now yes, they had 6 games against Baltimore in there too to lessen the blow, but again, this was a team that had just been embarrassed at home by a bad Toronto team. As a Minnesota sports fan I couldn't not go into worst case scenario territory. Would this Twins season implode just like 2018 did at almost the same time on the calendar? Instead of imploding though, the Twins held serve. In fact, they more than held serve. They finished this 19 game stretch 14-5. Even taking out the sweeps of the Orioles they went 9-5. They come out of a ...