The Skolney Blog

1975: Alright, so this is the film that many would say was the start of the modern movie landscape. You ever looked at old movie release schedules? I do it all the time for this blog, and it's wild to see the old time schedules. The summer was just barren as far as big movies go. What the hell did people do before this? Be outside, I guess. Crazy.  Jaws changed things in a number of ways. The biggest thing was just how movies were released. In the old days, even the marquee films would get slow rollouts. They would get shown in a few big cities, then gradually make their way around the country. It could take a long time for things to get seen everywhere. Not Jaws. Jaws got tons of marketing dollars behind its release, and came out in hundreds of theaters at once. Nowadays, every big movie gets easily 4,000 screens minimum. Back then, there really weren't even multiplexes either, so Jaws flooded the marketplace in a way that had never happened. And it paid off histor...

In theaters: KARATE KID: LEGENDS This movie is a little bit of a bait and switch. It's marketed as being a merging of new and old KK movies, with Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio teaming up to help teach a kid to fight. But it only becomes that late in the film. The rest of the movie is unceasingly formulaic but charming enough. Made me very hungry for pizza, too.  BALLERINA Do we need a John Wick spinoff? Not really. But do we need Ana de Armas in everything? Oh yes! This movie is more of the same from this franchise, so it's more elaborate action scenes with lots of gun-fu. More assassin underworld world building. And like the 1st Wick, it's a straight-up revenge story. I would say that the freshness isn't there, but the action delivers big time, including a glorious finale involving flamethrowers. And de Armas is a fucking star. I don't know how that could be disputed. I'm not quite sure this did well enough to keep it going, but I need more of her in action mov...