The Skolney Blog

In theaters: THE GREEN KNIGHT Well, this is definitely an A24 version of a medieval epic. Some people fucking loved this movie. I'm more in the middle on it. The cinematography is stellar, Dev Patel is a terrific lead, and Alicia Vikander is great as always (and super cute with short hair). But the middle third of this movie is especially boring and slow (I nodded off once or twice). STILLWATER Great movie, one of the year's best so far. Matt Damon is a US southerner in France trying to get his daughter out of prison. This could have gone the Taken route but it has so much more going on. It's part procedural, part mystery, part fish out of water, part romance even. It all works. I was particularly fond of the storyline involving Damon, the French woman who helps him out, and her adorable and charming daughter. I really got invested in this, to the point that there is a moment where you know things are about to turn bad and I got the biggest "oh no" feeling I'v...

2001: Ghost World was and is one of my favorite movies of 2001. It's also actually one of the best comic book movies of the pre-MCU era, cause yes it was based on a graphic novel.  Like a lot of indies in that era, it threw a bunch of quirky,.oddball characters into a somewhat plotless story. But few of them ever had such a consistently funny result.  Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson are best friends who have just graduated high school and are starting to grow apart, even though they share the same deeply sardonic approach to the world around them.  At the time Birch was better known than Johansson, and it really is her movie. She is just awesome in this. I have no explanation for how she went from a successful child career to American Beauty to this, and then it was just over. Johansson is very unlikable in this, although it's on purpose.  I still wouldn't call it one of her better performances.  Steve Buscemi is fantastic as the weird older guy B...

Chiefs 28 Vikings 25 I don't know how many more times I can say these words: It's only preseason.  It's as if every football fan or media member gets their mind wiped after every August. Because every year preseason  performances prove to not be at all predictive about what happens in games that matter. But then another August arrives, we get preseason games, and people overreact.  The Vikings completed their first winless preseason since 1979 on Friday in KC. But that does not mean a thing. I watched these games to see the little things, to see standout individuals. And I got some more on Friday. Yeah we got lit up for a couple drives by Patrick Mahomes. So does everybody for the last 3 years, other than that fraud of a super bowl last February. And even here we only had about half the starting defense out there. Kirk started again with the week 1 OL. The opening drive was really good til it bogged down inside the 10...as things tend to do when your 3 best weapons aren...

COLTS 12 VIKINGS 10 With the vibes of training camp and a 33-6 drubbing by Denver last week all casting a shadow of doom over this upcoming season, all I wanted from the home preseason finale was some positivity. Some good things to latch onto. And I got that.  Zimmer still sat some starters (Hunter, Pat P, Hitman, Jefferson, Dalvin) but a lot played. Most of the first team defense got out there, and looked very good. The big beef in the middle (Pierce and Tomlinson) and Bashaud Breeland were the standouts. I am fully in on this defense being a force again.  The defensive depth had some standouts. Troy Dye had a pick six and nearly picked another. Chazz Surrat, Blake Lynch and DJ Wonnum had splashy plays. Kris Boyd stood out again, and has seemingly supplanted the mysteriously plummeting Cam Dantzler.  We got to see the first team OL in action. Rashod Hill got beat badly for 1 sack but excluding that one miscues the unit looked excellent. The offense was again pure vanill...

BRONCOS 33 VIKINGS 6 Nice try, Vikings, but I'm still happy to get back in the purple palace. The Vikings opened their 3 game preseason today by playing their 4th preseason game. Even though that 4th preseason game, the one in which ALL starters sit and the only players to see action are bubble guys, no longer exists. Denver played this game like you normally would, however, so most of the 1st half was their A squad against our C squad (with a few Bs sprinkled in). And that paced a 33-6 drubbing. The late decision to sit over a third of the current roster meant Jake Browning started under center. He had been much hyped during camp, and as the lone vaxxed QB was also seen as a real leader. And he was awful today. He threw an ugly pick six. He missed throws. An ill-conceived scramble led to a holding call safety. But in his defense, when he was a camp star he wasn't playing 1s on 3s, with Blake Brandel and Zack Bailey as his tackles. Surprisingly we ended up seeing a lot of Kelle...

The DCEU's rather disastrous 2016 was largely the fault of Batman v Superman. But Suicide Squad wasn't received that much better. It did better box office but nobody really liked it much. I was lukewarm on it. Never saw it again until just before this new movie came out, and tbh it was better than I remembered. THE Suicide Squad is better though. During James Gunn's brief ousting at Marvel, DC snatched him up to do this movie. And they let him loose. For better and sometimes worse, this movie is James Gunn unleashed on a grand scale. It doesn't always work, but it's a ton of fun when it does. This movie is sort of half sequel, half reboot. The first movie happened, but this one doesn't really do much in the way of callbacks. Most of the cast is new. The most significant returnees are Margot Robbie, Joel Kinnaman and Viola Davis. But a few others from the first movie do pop up. Idris Elba more or less takes over for Will Smith, playing a different chara...

Heartbreaking defeats. Devastating injuries. Poor draft picks or trades.  The Vikings have had them all. I've been sad or disappointed or upset about many of them. But they are football things that can happen to a football team. This is the dawn of my 34th season as a Vikings fan. I have never been more disappointed in this team than I am right now. Today we learned that the Vikings are the least vaccinated team in the NFL. In a league with roughly 90% of its players vaccinated, the Vikings sit at about 70% (at least partially vaccinated). Of course. Of course we have to be the dumbest team. And yes, refusal to get vaccinated is unquestionably a reflection of intelligence. It's August. If you are still refusing to get vaccinated you are dumb. And you are an asshole. Given those numbers, there are roughly 30 players in camp who are unvaccinated. Most notable is Kirk Cousins, and my disappointment in him is immense. But it's wrong to single him out amidst all the other morons...