The Skolney Blog

1983: I actually just recently watched this film for the first time. I knew the premise, where aspiring comic Robert Deniro gets fixated on late night host Jerry Lewis. It's very good. Watching it for the first time now I couldn't even come close to missing how much Joker paralleled this. I was surprised though that this was a lighter film than I thought it would be. The Deniro character is more of a relentless pest than dangerous, at least most of the way. The real crazy is his accomplice, played by Sandra Bernhard, who I only knew from a couple annoying performances, but who is actually really good.    1993: The last good movie to come with the National Lampoon imprint, Loaded Weapon 1 is one of the real underrated spoof movies of all time. It's mostly just a cop buddy movie spoof, sticking somewhat closely to the Lethal Weapon movies (which themselves had turned rather comedic by this point), with a handful of other wide ranging parodies thrown in there.  The movie sta...

In theaters: KNOCK AT THE CABIN This one goes in the good Shyamalan pile. The trailer unwisely gave away whether or not this "apocalypse" threat driving the story is real or not, but there is still a great deal of suspense and some fine performances, particularly from a never better Dave Bautista.    INFINITY POOL God I am so tired of these movies that just put inexplicable, bizarre crap up onscreen and we are just supposed to automatically accept it as brilliant art because reasons. Even with a hallucinogenic orgy involving Mia Goth this movie is a crushing bore. The "plot" if you can call it that involves rich people cloning themselves, only to kill the clones for sport. But it's just a pretense for the director (David Cronenberg's kid) to show a collection of gross images. I hate this shit. See you in December high on the 10 worst list.  WOMEN TALKING Well, this is an accurate title. It pretty much is just a film with a bunch of women having conversations...

I hated Titanic once. I just hadn't seen it yet.  I don't really know why. I know that leading up to its release I wasn't into it. Some big romance movie was not something that I was likely to be into at the time. But I genuinely do not remember why I had real hatred for this thing. It's not like I wasn't a James Cameron fan. I had liked Leonardo DiCaprio in things already.  Anyway, I blew the movie off. This thing was out for like a month and a half before I ended up seeing it. The circumstances of when and with who I saw it have something to do with the film's importance in my life, but I'm sticking to the film here. By the time I did see Titanic it had already become a huge sensation and one of the biggest films of all time. It opened well, but not huge, and just stayed at the top of the box office. Week after week after week. It wasn't dethroned until April, so that's over 3 months at the top. That will NEVER happen again. Par...

I am so very bored of the agenda driven backlash against the MCU the last couple years. And yeah, a whole lot of it is fake, agenda driven bullshit. After all, saying that Marvel product is almost always on the solid to excellent spectrum isn't juicy enough to get the requisite clicks or views. Gotta treat each new movie or show as if it a travesty of epic proportions. I mean, jesus, Thor: Love and Thunder was a fucking blast, but if you go anywhere online people act like it was Batman and Robin. The latest MCU entry, Ant Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, is also getting absolutely savaged by people who I am fully convinced either did not watch the movie or are lying to push an agenda. Maybe there are too many women in the movie. Or too many POC (do aliens count?). You know how woke things get in the quantum realm.  Fuck these people. Quantumania is a lot of fun. The official Phase 5 kickoff, the movie takes place what appears to be a short time after Endgame. Scott has written a book...

CHIEFS 38 EAGLES 35 In Super Bowl 57 we were taught once more that there is no greater cheat code in the NFL than Patrick Mahomes. When he is playing his best, you can not beat him. Took us a while to get there though. By halftime this game looked headed for a disappointing ending, with the true fraud Eagles winning their 2nd title in 6 years. The Chiefs defense looked like it was being run by Ed Donatell in the first half. Jalen Hurts was allowed to run all over the place. The Chiefs secondary blew coverages and allowed easy completions. Hurts fumbled once without being touched and it was picked up and run back for a touchdown, but that was it for any sort of defense. The time of possession at the half was like 22 minutes to 8.  Making matters worse, on his last snap of the half, Mahomes seemed to have re-aggravated that ankle injury. The Eagles were able to push the lead to 10. Rihanna came out. Did her thing. Barely did any of her pre-2010s songs though. #JusticeForSOS Then the ...

No, I'm still not fully over the heartbreak of the playoff loss. But I am unbowed in my belief that this Vikings team is going in the right direction. This is a preview (aka a bunch of random thoughts) of the offseason, but it's possible that the Vikings have already made their best move of the offseason. Within a few days of the loss to the Giants, they sent Ed Donatell packing. And then after a process that maybe took a little longer than expected, they scored a huge win by replacing Donatell with Brian Flores. Flores is off the Belichick tree, and had some success turning around Miami before he got fired for not tanking. (Anti-tanking? My kind of guy!) Flores isn't a miracle worker. He won't take the 31st ranked defense.and make them top 5 in a year. But hiring him shows the leadership here recognized the importance of making a major change. This defense will look dramatically different in style in 2023. And just an adequate defense should make the Vikings decided fa...

(Okay, we have been through this once before. Exactly one year ago in fact. And I now know that a Brady retirement means nothing. He could be back again in a month, or over the summer, whatever timing could feed this narcissist's massive ego the most. So I'm just going to re-post my blog from a year ago, with one little addition)  It is finally official, the overrated LOAT is finally FINALLY gone! No more of the one guy whose existence did more to trash my NFL fandom than any other figure ever could. I see there was some talk about him not thanking anybody from the Patriots in his retirement statement. But, nice guy that I am, I am going to offer up a bunch of thanks on his behalf, to the people who really helped Brady along the way. So, on behalf of The LOAT, thank you to... To whoever thought up the Tuck Rule to begin with, and then also the officials who wrongly interpreted the rule to overturn the clear fumble in his 1st playoff game. To Drew Bledsoe and the Patriots specia...