The Skolney Blog

Hey! It's the official 5 year anniversary of me doing the throwbacks blogs. Will I make it the full 10?  1995: A very long time ago, an action comedy called Bad Boys was in development. This was going to be a buddy cop movie starring comedic stars...Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz. It's one of my favorite what ifs when it comes to casting. Now, tbh, I would have been damn curious to see that movie. But I'm very glad that things did not go as planned.  Bad Boys is a quintessential 90s action movie, one of my favorites in the buddy cop genre, and minted both a pair of movie stars and a new filmmaker who would soon prove to have no peer. What is the plot of Bad Boys? Oh, just some generic thing about a sneering euro bad guy stealing a bunch of drugs, and the cops trying to track him down. Doesn't matter. The legendary producing duo of Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, whose own dormant careers got supercharged that year (see you next month), did still cast a couple...

A WORKING MAN Last year, Jason Statham and director David Ayer teamed up for the thoroughly satisfying The Beekeeper. This is not as good. It's functional, but too slow and serious, with most of its action taking place in poorly shot night scenes.  THE AMATEUR The seemingly very odd casting of Rami Malek as the lead in a spy thriller really does pay off. He's no action star. He gets in one real fight in the movie, and has his ass kicked by a middle aged woman. But he's meant to be completely out of his element in that way, so it's very convincing. The rest of the movie is a solid, engrossing 2 hours of fairly generic spy thriller material. DROP This thriller about maybe the worst first date in history (even I can't compete) is reasonably well made and holds ones attention most of the way. But then it completely falls apart in a bombastic final 20 minutes.  A MINECRAFT MOVIE I'm glad that people went back to theaters in droves....but for THIS?  Look, I've nev...

Twins 5 Angels 0 The Twins are still bad. They're still one of the worst teams in baseball.  But they've at least eeked a little more into respectability, finishing up a 5-1 homestand,  the last of which was Sunday's blanking of the Angels, giving them their 1st sweep of the season and 1st back to back series wins since last August pre-implosion. Sunday's game was powered by a dominant start from Joe Ryan. 11 strikeouts over 7 innings, only one runner reaching 3rd base. The offense scratched across a run in the 1st, but then went into a coma for much of the game, making it look as though Ryan's gem would go for naught. They finally broke through in the 6th. Carlos Correa got his 3rd straight hit to start the rally. Ty France drove in a run, and Ryan Jeffers got a big 2 run double. That was easily all they needed. The Twins are still beat up. They're still undermanned. They have looked like garbage against basically every good team they've played. But you got...

Tigers 4 T ins 0 A free ticket and nice weather got me out to Target Field for the 1st time in 2025 on Saturday. It sure wasn't the ballclub. The Twins have spent the first 2+ weeks of the season confirming all the worst fears of the dwindling number of people who still genuinely care about the franchise as currently constituted. This particular game was started by Chris Paddack, who came in with an ERA of almost 18. Never a good sign when a starting pitcher has numbers like that after 2 starts. But he wasn't the issue today. He pitched 5 innings and gave up 2 runs. Not amazing, but fine.  The problem was, as usual, the absolutely horrible lineup. The Twins are near the bottom of the league in all variety of hitting categories. They don't hit for power or average or draw walks or do anything. This particular game was pitiful even for them. They never even advanced a single runner to 3rd base. Jose Miranda got caught mindlessly wandering off 2nd midway through the game, a mi...