The Skolney Blog

1995: Serial killers were big in the 90s. After The Silence of the Lambs was a massive hit and won Oscars, it spawned a ton of movies about cops tracking down serial killers. Some were okay, but the absolute best of the bunch, and one of the best films of the entire 90s, was David Fincher's impossibly brilliant Seven. One of the decade's best films was birthed by one of the best screenplays of all time. Credit to Andrew Kevin Waller for that one. Fincher was not the well established directing icon yet. He had done music videos, and the somewhat reviled Alien 3. But he certainly had the visual style down, and Seven, grimy and gross as it is, is one of the most impeccably designed films ever. It creates an unending feeling of dread. Morgan Freeman is William, the grizzled old detective nearing retirement. Brad Pitt is David, the hotshot young cop. It's kind of an in-joke that the film is premised off such cliches. It makes you think you know how things will go in ...

In theaters: THE LONG WALK Based on a Stephen King story and directed by Francis Lawrence, the simple premise has a group of young men walking. But if they slow down too much, they die. Somehow, this isn't tedious. Most of the film is dialogue heavy, and it is very well written, and the cast is very good, including Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson, two of the best young actors out there. Mark Hamill is also the main bad guy.  ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER The kind of film that when you see it, you know you've seen a new classic. The new film from one of our greatest filmmakers, Paul Thomas Anderson, combines all his skill, his ear for rich dialogue, and ability to draw out peak work from actors, and this time also has palpable passion and real sweetness. This film takes on current issues in America in a way I never expected from him. I guess if we have to live in an increasingly authoritarian shithole country, we might as well get some great films out of it.  Another fantastic ense...

For 15 years, even through years that didn't end in championships, the Lynx have been the shining light of Minnesota sports, the one franchise that could never hurt me. Well, welcome to true Minnesota sports, I guess.  Ever since the Lynx were robbed of their championship last year, it was all about using that injustice as fuel to get back to the finals and win it. It was the revenge tour, and the Lynx did use it as fuel to storm to the league's best record. They were so far and away better than everybody else that they clinched with many games to play, and the injury that knocked out Napheesa Collier for some games didn't even matter. They did seem to lose some of their edge late in the season. I didn't think too much of it. No reason to think they weren't going to make a deep playoff run again. But the Lynx never did seem like themselves in the playoffs. The first round against the Valkyries was a 2 game sweep, but they needed a massive comeback to win game 2, and...

STEELERS 24 VIKINGS 21 Something happened on Sunday that has never happened before: the Vikings lost a game in Europe, this time specifically Dublin, Ireland. It happened because something else happened that is happening far too often: the Vikings being badly outcoached in a game in which their offensive line was a serious problem. The 3 point margin of defeat is incredibly misleading. This was every bit as ugly as the home opener, or the first 3 quarters in Chicago. Or, for that matter, the debacle against the Lions and Rams that ended the 2024 season. If you're scoring at home, that's 5 terrible performances by the Vikings in the last 6 games. I certainly didn't expect a repeat of last week's demolition of the Bengals. That's the kind of game you're lucky to see once a year. But the Steelers aren't a great team. They needed a ton of turnovers just to squeak by the Patriots last week. The first play of the game was a Jalen Redmond sack of Aaron Rodgers. The...

VIKINGS 48 BENGALS 10 Sunday's game felt like a pivot point in this young Vikings season. Win and we could keep up optimism that this season can still be something fun. Lose, and we might be sinking towards oblivion. Well then! Not only did the Vikings win, but they won by the largest margin they have since 1998. And dropped the all-time most lopsided loss for the Bengals. It was 48-3 after 3 quarters! Coming in it was the battle of the backups. The Bengals lost Joe Burrow last week to another major injury, and were starting ex-Viking Jake Browning. And the Vikings lost JJ McCarthy to an ankle sprain suffered late in last week's debacle, and were turning to Carson Wentz, who has barely been here a month and would start for his 6th different team in 6 years. Browning orchestrated a big comeback on us 2 years ago, and Wentz hasn't been relied on as a regular starter in 3 years, so this figured to be a close one. I was just hoping for a little stability, and let the defense do...

Guardians 6 Twins 0 My Target Field season ended with game 1 of the Twins Saturday doubleheader against the red hot Guardians. There were not many people there. The people who made noise were all Cleveland fans. The Twins went down to defeat listlessly, falling 6-0. Haha suckers, I still saw the better game of the day (they lose the nightcap 8-0). Not much to say about the game. The Twins had only 3 hits, and only one after the 2nd inning. Joe Ryan gave up 4 of Cleveland's 5 solo homeruns. This was my 1st trip to Target Field since just before the abomination of a trade deadline that decimated the franchise. The Twins have MLB's worst record since the deadline, and are going to lose 90+ games in a season in which they once had a 13 game winning streak and were within 3 games of first as late as Memorial Day weekend. Being a Twins fan has never felt more hopeless. Another hyped core of players has come and largely gone without living up to the hype. The deadline deals gutted the...

FALCONS 22 VIKINGS 6 Oh boy. As much as that 4th quarter comeback in Chicago energized a fanbase desperate to believe their young QB could be a franchise player, their home opener on Sunday night did an equal amount to drain all that enthusiasm, all that hope, and sows serious doubt about not only the rest of this season but the future.  Overreaction? I hope so, but you must forgive me after witnessing easily one of the worst in-person Vikings games of my life.  This game was absolutely revolting. The vibes right away were off. Atlanta's 1st 2 offensive plays were chunk runs by Bijan Robinson. The packed crowd actually assisted in holding the Falcons to just a field goal, who had a false start, a delay, and had to burn a timeout. So then we get the encore. JJ McCarthy was named NFC offensive player of the week off that Chicago comeback. The hope was that things had been figured out, and we were ready to roll.  That hope was gone quickly. The Vikings quickly went 3 and out...

VIKINGS 27 BEARS 24 That was a rough way to start a season...for 3 quarters. The official dawn of the JJ McCarthy era on Monday Night Football in Chicago, at the still-dreaded Soldier Field, could not have started out worse. It looked like, at best, a new chapter in the annals of ugly football played in that stadium. At worst, it looked like the kind of game that would obliterate the enthusiasm for a promising season and sow serious doubts about the viability of hitching the wagon to the new QB.  But boy did it flip, and now the enthusiasm is sky high. Nobody thought this was coming after 3 quarters. While the Vikings' defense had settled down after early struggles, and despite issues containing Caleb Williams scrambles, Chicago only had 3 points since their opening drive.  But that offense...yeesh. Immediately, there were obvious jitters with McCarthy, and the poor OL performance (we were without Darrisaw, wisely held out given the shirts turf), and a few dropped passes didn'...

We shall start in the AFC. Buffalo remains the clear class in the east, and will contend again for the Super Bowl.  The Patriots, with a little more stable coaching and an improving Drake Maye, are one of my wild card picks. The Jets will be competitive with the douchebag Rodgers gone, but don't have the juice to really contend. And Miami is just adrift, basically, playing out the string of the Tua era. Dangerous on a game by game basis, but not contenders. Baltimore again takes the north, and once again, the story will be can they win in the playoffs. The Bengals have all the offense they need to be a threat, and even just a slight improvement in the defense gets them back to the playoffs. Sorry, Pittsburgh. I usually root for them, but not this year with the douchebag Aaron Rodgers there. He's washed up. But the Tomlin rules all but guarantee 9 wins and at least fringe contention. Cleveland will stink, unless Joe Flacco pulls off another miracle. The south is easily the worst...

1995: The Usual Suspects is on every list of all-time great movie endings. I mean, spoiler alert for a 30 year old movie, but when it is revealed that our film's ostensible narrator, the meek cripple Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey) was actually the story's unseen boogeyman uber villain Keyser Soze all along, it is stunning. I saw this in theaters, and there were literal gasps. It weirdly has come to overshadow the movie as a whole. People kind of forget what an absolute banger of a film this is, with an airtight screenplay and a terrific ensemble of largely character actors all in career peaks. A seemingly random collection of rather small-time criminals get thrown into a police lineup together. They wind up teaming up to do some higher profile crimes, which bring them across the aforementioned Soze. Everything that happened is recounted in the police station by Spacey to a police detective (Chazz Palminteri). We know that basically every character that we meet early in ...

In theaters: THE NAKED GUN Did we need a reboot/legacy sequel to one of the absolute all-time classic comedies? No. But as a joke delivery machine, this still delivers a lot of laughs. Liam Neeson is fun, and Pamela Anderson's career resurgence continues with a game comedic performance.  WEAPONS The summer's biggest sleeper hit, this one hooks you with a terrific, mysterious premise involving missing children. And the mystery carries the film far. But oftentimes it's when the mystery is revealed that these films lose their oomph. Here, however, once we know the truth it actually gets arguably MORE fun, and climaxes with a finale that is genuinely hilarious.  HONEY DON'T A very frustrating film. The 2nd collaboration between Ethan Coen and his wife Tricia Cooke, after the pretty entertaining Drive Away Dolls, seems to have all the pieces in place to be another snappy fun crime caper. Quirky characters, a good cast (Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza, Chris Evans), talent beh...

1985: I'm not sure what movie held the title of my favorite prior to the 90s. But Back To The Future would have definitely been in the discussion. It was for sure one of the movies I had watched the most.  I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said before, but BTTF is pretty close to a perfectly constructed film. Premise and execution are just in peak form.  Marty McFly (Michael J Fox) time travels back to 1955 and has to make sure his parents still meet and fall in love or he'll never be born. But his teenage mom (Lea Thompson) has the hots for him. And when 80s Lea Thompson is there, I mean, I would have conflicts.  BTTF is a great sci-fi movie, and a great comedy. It's loaded with iconic quotes. For 1985, the fx work really holds up. The score is one of the best of all time.  Perfectly cast. I was recently horrified to find out I am nearly the same age as Christopher Lloyd was when he made this movie.  The movie taught me what a sequel was. I w...

In theaters: JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH Well I'll be!  After more than 30 years, and various failed sequels and a shaky reboot, we at long last have a Jurassic franchise movie that is genuinely very good again. No qualifiers are needed. Why does this one work? Well, for one thing it at least some of the time treats the dinosaurs again as objects of awe and wonder, and not just as scary monsters. But it really nails the big set pieces, including an absolute dandy involving a T-Rex and a raft.  The movie definitely follows a lot of the beats of the 1993 film, but does so extremely well. Cast is pretty good, led by a charismatic and, yeah, super hot Scarlett Johansson, who gets a rare chance to just be a fun movie star.  Great job, Gareth Edwards.  MATERIALISTS I'm not sure what happened here. Director Celine Song made the sensitive, moving Past Lives a couple of years ago, and now returns with another romance-based film that is anything but sensitive, and only moves me to...