The Skolney Blog

1991: JFK is simply one of the best movies ever made. I guess that's become a really controversial take over the years, cause of how controversial the film itself is.  Yes, Oliver Stone's film has some fictional stuff in it. I mean, even when I first saw this film I probably figured out that Mr. X was made up. Some other characters in the film are either made up or composites. But, sue me, I to this day buy into Stone's overall mission statement: That the JFK assassination was not as simple as one crazy nut deciding to kill the president. The magic bullet theory is complete horseshit. Doesn't mean there was a conspiracy as vast as the one presented in the film, but I don't think Oswald did it all by himself either. Whatever one's take is on the assassination, this film is an absolute masterpiece. The best film Stone has ever made. A dazzling 3 hour mix of docudrama, procedural, suspense thriller, and courtroom drama. The sheer amount of information c...

In theaters: C'MON C'MON A terrific, massively charming and thoughtful film in which Joaquin Phoenix winds up tasked with looking after his young nephew during a family emergency. The plot is somewhat secondary. What the film is built on is the interplay between Phoenix and young Woody Norman, and that material is simply a joy to watch. Phoenix again shows he is on the short list of the best actors on the planet, and for a change gets to show it in something lighter (in tone, not substance). Norman gives one of the most natural, engaging performances I have ever seen from a child. Also really good is Gaby Hoffman as the mother/sister, who really conveys the exasperation of parenthood.  WOLF A strange film set mostly in a medical facility dealing with patients who believe themselves to be animals. Rather than being a dark comedy or even having horror elements this thing is played almost completely straight. It only works sporadically. The performances are admirable given all the...

Everything about the first Matrix holds up. For a movie so of its time that is largely unheard of. But they really would have been better off stopping at one. The Matrix Reloaded to this day ranks as one of the most disappointing movies of.all time. I actually kind of.like The Matrix Revolutions, but that's primarily due to the incredible sentinel battle sequence in the middle of the movie. The bookends are weak.  Reloaded made money, but the poor response to it torpedoed Revolutions, and that was it for the franchise. Until now.  The Matrix Resurrections could have been an interesting sequel. Instead it mostly gives you all the worst aspects of the sequels, with little of the good. It is another of these franchise sequels lately that essentially negates the ending of the previous film. At the end of the original trilogy, Neo and the machines had reached a sort of truce. Neo sacrificed himself. Trinity got killed.  All that is tossed aside to justify the story here. Turns...

RAMS 30 VIKINGS 23 On the day after Christmas, the 2021 Vikings gave us all a big lump of coal, reducing their playoff odds into the realm of needing a miracle, and likely signaling the end of this era of Vikings football. Jobs are most definitely going to be lost in a couple weeks. Like all of the 8 losses this year, this was winnable. No, we never had it in our grasp. We never even led. But all throughout the game there were plays to be made....and we didn't make them. Coaching, players just not getting it done, officiating, luck, cruel fate. Mix it all up and you end up with just a dispiriting day. Maybe I'm the idiot. I saw the very bad offensive gameplan that Klint Kubiak rolled out there in Chicago. But even with Dalvin Cook on the COVID list I figured he couldn't possibly mail it in like that again this week with the season on the line. With his own career on the line. But he did. The offense was mostly terrible in the first half, but the story to that point was miss...

VIKINGS 17 BEARS 9 If you happen to be new to Vikings football in 2021, what you saw on Monday night was basically every Vikings at Bears game for 20 years. Every game is gross. It feels like they're all 17-9. Smart observers have come to just expect this. For the 2nd time in 3 weeks, this was the Vikings going on the road in the division to play a bad team they had to beat. But unlike the Detroit debacle, this time the Vikings did what they had to do to keep themselves in the thick of the wild card race. Going in many expected the Vikings to finally blow somebody out. The Bears are not just bad, but riddled by COVID absences. Their whole secondary basically was out. But the 2021 Vikings couldn't blow out Rutgers. Just the way it is. Pretty quickly we saw that this was not going to be some aerial show. The Vikings 2nd drive got in the endzone on a Kirk pass to JJ. Then after Dantzler stripped Justin Fields on the following possession we were able to add a field goal. Just a 10 ...

MAJOR SPOILERS, since doing any sort of real discussion about this movie without getting spoilery is absurd. NWH arrives not just with the hype that any big new MCU film would, but with the unhidden secret that a big part of its plot involves the multiverse and bringing in villains from past pre-MCU Spiderman films. And there is also the slightly better concealed secret that the film also was bringing back both Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. It's a level of anticipation that no MCU film has touched since Endgame. But the movie lives up to it. NWH is a home run, delivering exactly what anyone would want, whether they just want a fun Spiderman adventure, or are more interested in the callback characters and the nostalgia for a character that, hell, even I have spent almost half my life watching in movies. So the last movie had the tag where J. Jonah Jameson revealed Peter Parker's identity and also accused him of murdering Mysterio. This movie picks up immediately after that....

VIKINGS 36 STEELERS 28 We saw the full Minnesota Vikings experience on Thursday night at US Bank Stadium against the Pittsburgh Steelers. 4 days after a crushing, humiliating last second loss in Detroit, the teetering Vikings came out in primetime against a playoff contender, with a QB and coach with rings, and for two quarters of football stomped the living daylights out of them. And then came within 1 final pass of possibly suffering the greatest blown lead in the entire regular season HISTORY of the NFL. Even in a historically tense and chaotic season, this game stands out as one of the most memorable. In fitting fashion for the usually sloppy TNF games, the game opened with a pair of drives ending in missed field goals. One apiece. The Vikings second drive was sparked by the night's biggest star, a star who nobody even really thought until Thursday was going to play at all. Dalvin Cook, just 11 days removed from a dislocated shoulder and torn labrum, improbably took the field. ...

LIONS 29 VIKINGS 27 20 years ago almost to the day, Dennis Green took a 5-7 Vikings team, clinging to playoff hopes, into Detroit to face a winless Lions team. And lost. And that was the death nail for Green's Vikings career. He was gone just a few weeks later.  Today, Mike Zimmer took a 5-6 Vikings team, clinging to playoff hopes, into Detroit to face a winless Lions team. And lost.  Will the rest of this play out the same? Will Mike Zimmer be a former coach soon? I don't know how you can see any other scenario playing out now. Not after the worst, most embarrassing, most thoroughly inexcusable loss of Zimmer's coaching career. This game made me fucking sick. Technically the game was lost at the last moment. But no, this game was lost in the first half. We all saw it on those early drives. It was blatantly apparent right away that the offensive gameplan was the same ultra conservative, vanilla bullshit that they ran out there in the previous Detroit game. No attempt to go ...