The Skolney Blog

2004: (cause I want this one on top) The 2nd of Natalie Portman's pantheon films of 2004, Closer brought her her 1st Oscar nomination.  The trailer for this hit right around the time Garden State came out, and I was blown away by how she looked in this and her acting. The brief shot of her as a stripper was stunning.  In one of those crazy coincidences that I may have once thought meant more, the film opened ten years to the day of the first time I saw The Professional.  The film is directed by Mike Nichols, who worked with Natalie on stage a few years earlier, and is based on a play. It's maybe my favorite film based on a play. It's really just 4 actors with speaking roles. Natalie, Julia Roberts, Jude Law, and Clive Owen. Closer is like the worst date movie of all time. Most of the film is structured around showing relationships ending. Often in brutal fashion. The 4 characters meet, get together, cheat, and break up.  The film has one of the great open...

In theaters: Y2K Kind of disappointed in this comedy directed by SNL alum Kyle Mooney. Set at New Year's Eve 1999, when the Y2K bug actually happens, turning all electronic devices into bloodthirsty killing machines. Before the shit goes down, it's a pretty run of the mill teen comedy where the nerdy guy pines for the pretty girl (Rachel Zegler, one of the prettiest, no doubt). The energy perks up when the action does, although at no point was I ever more than just kind of amused. I'm a real target audience for this, since man do I have endless nostalgia for this time period, and early on, the film is drenched in references and needle drops. It has moments of inspired silliness, and the cast is likable. It also has a 3rd act cameo from one of the biggest douchebags in music history, which for some reason takes over the film.  VENOM: THE LAST DANCE Oh please do be the last one. For some reason, the first 2 Venoms, despite not being above deeply mediocre, were massive hits. T...

VIKINGS 27 PACKERS 25 The Vikings closed out the calendar year of 2024 on Sunday with their home finale against the hated Packers. Nobody could have guessed what importance this game would hold when the schedule came out last spring.  This most unexpected of seasons reached a new crescendo, as the Vikings swept the Packers for the first time since 2017, won their 9th game in a row for the first time since 1975, and took their last necessary step to set up a week 18 showdown in Detroit for the ages. The stakes for today were clear. Win and stay alive in the division and #1 seed race. Lose and be almost certainly relegated to not just a wild card, but maybe even drop to the 6 seed. The Packers entered on a 9-2 run since our win at Lambeau, the only 2 losses to the Lions. And insultingly, the Vikings, despite having won 8 straight, were home underdogs. The first break went to the Vikings, as on the opening drive Josh Jacobs fumbled. We have a turnover forced in every game this season....

Well, here we are. The mother of all throwbacks. Probably why this has taken so long to post.  Because only one movie sits atop the thousands and thousands of movies that I have seen in my life as the absolute #1. Leon aka The Professional aka Leon: The Professional. Whichever title you wanna use. I can't dare go any further without mentioning that this was the debut film for Natalie Portman, which pretty much makes it probably also the most IMPORTANT film of my movie fan existence. This was not a film that had been on my radar. 1994 was this incredible year for movies, and as I think I have said before, the year when movies became a true obsession for me. And it was probably the first year I was getting into the movie magazines, and kind of following movies from the time they went into production until they came out. And the fall of 1994 had already been formative with the release of Pulp Fiction. But The Professional was not a film I had among my big anticipated late ...

VIKINGS 27 SEAHAWKS 24 October 2006. America was watching The Departed, and for some reason, listening to Justin Timberlake. And that was the last time the Vikings won a game in Seattle, led by the decaying corpse of Brad Johnson, and sparked by a 90-yard Chester Taylor TD run.  Since then, Seattle had probably jumped Chicago as the Vikings' most cursed destination. We kept having to play there, and kept losing.  But maybe this is a Vikings team in the mood to break curses, and they finally broke through on Sunday, with a jolting 4th quarter rally to pull of a huge win that keeps open some amazing possibilities. Since these are the Vikings, they insisted on making it a little harder than they needed it to be.  Playing in wet conditions, the Vikings made a statement on the opening drive. They ate almost half the quarter, and TJ Hockenson made a fantastic catch to convert a 4th down, finishing with a Darnold to Addison TD. Addison had a 3rd down drop on the next series that...

VIKINGS 30 BEARS 12 Week 15 was very good to the Minnesota Vikings. On Sunday, the Lions finally lost a game, getting 48 dropped on them at home by the Bills. Then, later in the day, the Packers won, which normally would be a bad thing, but in this case, them beating Seattle officially clinched the Vikings a playoff berth. So the Vikings entered Monday night against the collapsing Bears not only a playoff team, but also a win away from tying the Lions for the best record in the division and conference (along with the Eagles). Many Vikings teams of the past would lay an egg in such a spot, but not this time. These Vikings made fairly easy work of the Bears, and took their place among the NFL's elite.  The Bears were very willing accomplices. For no reason, they went for a 4th and 1 on their own 39 on the opening drive. We stuffed em, and even though we went 3 and out, we were close enough for Will Reichard to bang in a long field goal. The Bears 2nd drive ended when Jonathan Greenar...

VIKINGS 42 FALCONS 21 Sunday's game at the purple palace turned into a celebratory atmosphere, as the Vikings turned a close game into a 4th quarter runaway, and moved to a stunning 11-2. But the fact they did this at the expense of Kirk Cousins, in his much anticipated return to Minnesota, did add a tinge of bittersweetness to the proceedings. The first mystery of the day was answered quickly. Would Kirk get booed. The answer was yes, and a lot. Worse than any opposing QB that I have ever seen. As long as I live, I will never understand why so many Vikings fans bought into all the bullshit narratives surrounding this guy. He was mostly a very good QB here for his 5 1/2 healthy seasons, and while it didn't translate to enough playoff success to satisfy the "if you don't win a super bowl you're a bum" crowd, we had some great times. Plus....these same fans are the ones who wanted him gone the whole time. So why are you neanderthals mad that he left, especially ...

VIKINGS 23 CARDINALS 22 Returning home to the purple palace after nearly a month away, the Vikings spent the first 40 minutes of their game against the Arizona Cardinals as if in a catatonic state. I mean, they had NOTHING. They were a dead team trudging towards a disappointing loss. And then a switch flipped, the team snapped out of their stupor, and with a couple of key breaks, they managed to pull off their least likely and most thrilling win of the year. But oh, those first 40. Did the Vikings have a late Thanksgiving meal, and were still feeling the tryptophan? They came out flat on both sides of the ball. On offense, we were getting the bad version of Sam Darnold, the one who stands there holding the ball far too long. Add to that an OL that was getting crushed, often by Cardinal blitzing. Aaron Jones fumbled twice, losing one deep in Vikings territory. The offense was getting killed on time of possession, cause they couldn't stay on the field. On defense, we were struggling ...

1999: Of all the great, iconic, formative movies of the 1990s, many of which I know the opening day by heart, few of those days stick in the brain like the single most important DUAL opening day of the decade. November 12, 1999 As we neared the end of one of the greatest movie years of my life, two of the biggest releases of the year (at least for me) beckoned. The headliner was clearly Anywhere But Here, because in 1999, there was nothing on earth that mattered more (in a movie sense) than a new Natalie Portman movie. The undercarriage was Dogma, the 4th movie from Kevin Smith, whose first 3 movies had established him as one of my absolute favorite filmmakers. I saw both on day one, of course.  Anywhere But Here, well, it was a new Natalie movie at basically the peak of my head in the clouds fandom. It blew me away. There are some embarrassing writings about my feelings about the film. By comparison, Dogma had no chance. And on first viewing it definitely w...

In Theaters: ANORA One of the year's awards frontrunners, and I think it would be very deserving of it. Billed as a darker Pretty Woman, the film kind of fits that but is way better, starting out as a wild fever dream romance before turning into a farcical comedy for a while and then hitting you with a gut punch ending you don't see coming. Throughout, the film rests on the shoulders of the absolutely ravishing and vibrant Mikey Madison, who might even walk home with the best actress Oscar in a few months.  YOUR MONSTER Look, Melissa Barrera possibly CAN do wrong, but I have yet to see it. Once again, she is impossibly cute (she even gets adorable socks) and captivating in this silly little romcom where a woman gets dumped and then falls for the monster that used to live in her closet. That old yarn. It's not a great movie, but Barrera makes it a fun watch.  HERE Robert Zemeckis' gimmicky film in which the camera is fixated on a single space in time, spanning hundreds o...

VIKINGS 30 BEARS 27 OT Every single year, the Vikings trip to Soldier Field winds up being a grind, and getting out of there with a win is like pulling teeth. But this year's edition managed to carve out its own unique memory, a loony game that went, in a blink, from a solid win to a potentially unfathomable and embarrassing loss, and ultimately a gutty win. Right off the bat, the goofy Soldier Field crap got going. Aaron Jones ripped off a couple of long runs to get the Vikings close to an opening drive touchdown, but that score never came as Jones was stripped of the ball at the 1. The Bears later drew first blood, after a preposterous play where Caleb Williams looked to be being pressured into a throwaway became a huge completion. It set up a short TD run, and the Bears led 7-0. The quarter also ended with us down 2 starters due to injury, Ivan Pace and Cam Robinson. But the resilient Vikings responded quickly to the Bears score. Sam Darnold launched a deep shot that hit to Jord...

VIKINGS 23 TITANS 13 The Vikings won 7 games last year. A whole lot of people, including me, picked them to win about 7 again this year. They won their 8th game out of 10 on Sunday, a third straight triumph over an inferior opponent from the woeful AFC South. The victims this time were the Tennessee Titans, bumbling their way to another losing season, with a rookie head coach and a young QB who looks like a bust. And the Vikings got it done, behind good games by the quarterback and defense, and that rarest of help from the officials.  The Vikings 1st series ended ominously, where Sam Darnold pitched the ball to Aaron Jones, who couldn't corral the ball, and the Titans recovered. It led to a field goal. The offense quickly responded, as Darnold hit a wide open Jordan Addison on a crossing route for a long touchdown. The next drive was an 89-yard marathon. It concluded with a Darnold TD sneak, but this only came after the previous 4th and goal play, where Darnold fired incomplete to ...

It wasn't just Pulp Fiction that arrived in the fall of 1994 that re-wired the way I looked at movies. There was also, crucially, Clerks, the debut from Kevin Smith. And this one may have proved more personally influential.  The story behind the making of this film is well known. Smith scraped together roughly 30k to make Clerks, shot almost entirely at the little convenience store that he himself worked at. He took it to festivals, and through one of those lucky breaks got it seen by, uh, Harvey Weinsten(😬) who picked it up for Miramax. The movie did get released in theaters, albeit a tiny release that never made it to the multiplexes that were my sole moviegoing destinations at the time. I knew it existed, but it wasn't really on my radar that much. I actually knew about Mallrats coming out before I ever saw Clerks. I looked it up, and Clerks actually hit video right at the end of my sophomore year of high school. So that is roughly when I saw it for the first ti...

VIKINGS 12 JAGUARS 7 The Vikings improved to 7-2 with their win in Jacksonville in Sunday, due to the contributions of many, and in spite of the near sabotage of their own quarterback. In my many years of watching the Vikings, I can't think of any other games they won despite such a pitiful performance by the starting quarterback. Usually, an effort like the one by Sam Darnold in this game dooms you to not just a loss, but an ugly one. As with last week against the Colts, the Vikings played a first half marred by squandered scoring opportunities.  The first drive ended with a Darnold misfire in the redzone. We settled for a field goal from Parker Romo, our temporary kicker with Will Reichard on IR. The Jaguars, led by Mac Jones instead of Trevor Lawrence, delivered their one good drive of the day to go take a 7-3 lead.  Then the Vikings quickly moved into Jaguars territory before Darnold stared down Justin Jefferson on a throw, and his pass was picked off. The next drive was a...