The Skolney Blog

"Marvel is cooked," they said. Idiots. The 4th MCU Spiderman entry, Brand New Day picks up shortly after the end of No Way Home, where everybody forgot who Peter Parker is. Peter is still Spiderman, and still fighting bad guys, and working with the police. Good. It's a tired trope to have the cops hate Spiderman. But he has no friends, and still stalks MJ and Ned on social media (not in a weird way). The only people he sort of has are a friendly police chief, and Frank Castle! Yes! Jon Bernthal's Punisher is in this, and quite a bit. Obviously, he is toned down from his show, and there's a lot more comedy in his testy relationship with Peter.  The early part of the movie is kind of an extended montage, pushing through about 4 years, just long enough for MJ and Ned to finish college, return to NY, and be involved in the plot. The main plot involves a mystery figure or entity or something taking people over, and going after Damage Control, the government...

THE INVITE I strongly dislike Olivia Wilde as an actress, but she has proven a solid director. Booksmart is one of the best comedies of the last 20 years. I was even softer on Don't Worry Darling than most. The Invite is in between. A chamber piece, taking place almost entirely inside an apartment, it's the kind of comedy where some of the jokes hurt. 3/4 of the cast is great, with Seth Rogen on absolute fire, and Penelope Cruz giving her most captivating performance in years. And Edward Norton again shows a flair for awkward comedy. Too bad the 4th role is Wilde herself, who is totally out of her league. Not enough so to ruin the movie, but a better actress there makes this a classic.  THE ODYSSEY The Odyssey will probably make at least another million just in the time it takes to read this review. Deserved. Look, stupid internet controversies aside, there was never the slightest doubt that Christopher Nolan was going to hit it out of the park with this. He can handle the scal...

1996: Here is where we would have Independence Day, but I already did this one for the  25th anniversary No great 90s movie summer was complete without that great drama, the counter programming to all the big blockbusters. In 1996, that was A Time To Kill, the 3rd time in 4 summers that a John Grisham book became a movie adaptation. And I think this was the best of the bunch.  It's kind of striking to know that this movie with this plot was a big mainstream hit. Set in Mississippi, a couple of rednecks rape a young black girl. The father carries out a revenge killing of the 2 men, and then HIS murder trial makes up the majority of the movie. Mixed in is a KKK uprising. Can you imagine a mainstream, star packed movie like this being made now? The film is directed with absolutely zero subtlety by Joel Schumacher, in his mid-90s commercial peak, where for 4 straight summers, he alternated Grisham movies (1994 brought The Client) and Batman movies. But pitching this at...

TWINS 11 ATHLETICS 8 The 2026 Twins are becoming a rollercoaster. As soon as they seem to have figured it out, they fall apart. As soon as they appear finished, they bounce back.  Sunday's game against the Homeless A's on a blazingly hot day at Target Field (official high of 99°) has them back on an upswing. Joe Ryan was supposed to start, but got scratched. In his place was Connor Prielipp, a rookie who has shown some flashes. He really flashed today, allowing just 2 baserunners through 5, and facing the minimum. The Twins lineup, which has largely struggled since the break, jumped on the A's quickly, plating 3 each in the 1st 2 innings with a fun combo of clutch 2 out hitting and sharp baserunning. In the 2nd, with the bases loaded, it looked like Byron Buxton had lined into an inning ending double play. But on review, Brooks Lee's heads up dive back into 2nd was in time, keeping that inning alive. It proved a huge play, cause right after the A's balked in a run, ...

Twins 4 Angels 2 I made it out to Target Field for my 1st Twins game in nearly 3 months, a gap caused by an assortment of reasons. It was the last game before the all-star break, a sweltering hot day for a ballgame. It was the rubber game against the Angels, the worst team in the AL. The game itself was a little nondescript. Taj Bradley started for the Twins, and went 7 very strong innings. The only blemishes were a pair of solo homeruns, but he wiggled out of a 1st and 3rd, nobody out jam in the 6th.  The Twins didn't get a lot of offense, but 4 straight hits in the 3rd inning gave them 3 runs, and Trevor Larnach homered for a late insurance run. Andrew Morris pitched a 2 inning save, and the Twins had their 8th series win in the last 9, which included the exceptionally rare 2 of 3 at Yankee Stadium.  They hit the break just 48-49, but have been playing pretty well for the last month, and even with a still sub-.500 record are tied for the final wild card and are just a few ga...

1986: John Hughes owned the 1980s, with revered teen classics one after another. For me, his magnum opus, and best movie, is Ferris Bueller's Day Off.  Like virtually every movie I liked prior to the 90s, I came to this movie through cable. I got into movie watching on cable around 1988, which would have been right around the time this was getting shown constantly.  We all know the story. That rascal Ferris fakes sick to get out of school, and goes on an adventure in Chicago with his best friend Cameron and girlfriend Sloane.  Whereas most of the Hughes movies at some point aim for some depth and sentiment, Ferris Bueller is just a great time. Hey, we're skipping school for this day, and we are going to have the most fun day imaginable. I suppose enough years have passed to admit that this movie absolutely inspired me to skip school on multiple occasions. Ferris fakes a fever. I think my go-to was a fake headache. I never had grand adventures like this. I did ...

In theaters: DISCLOSURE DAY Steven Spielberg's latest alien movie, this one about a whistle-blower trying to expose the existence of alien life. Like many movies these days, this was picked apart for largely stupid reasons. It has some flaws, sure, like a somewhat unsatisfying finale, and the way those crystal-type things can do whatever the plot needs from them at any given moment. But purely as a conspiracy/chase thriller, it's pretty good. Excellent performances from Emily Blunt and Josh O'Connor.  TOY STORY 5 Do they need to keep making these? Well, they still haven't made a bad one. This isn't on the level of those first 3, which are all pretty much unquestioned classics, but it's at least as good as 4. I didn't laugh that much at this, and some characters get sidelined, but it's another sweet movie with something to say about modern tech and screens and all that. It's fun. Good year for Pixar.  SUPERGIRL (2026) Stop me if you've heard this ...

1986: I'm not sure there is another film quite as quintessentially 80s as Top Gun. This film made a superstar, launched a major directing career, and added to one of the great producer runs of all time. I personally was very late in ever getting around to watching Top Gun. By the time I did, probably a good decade after it came out, I largely knew the movie through its brilliant parody Hot Shots. I mean, I still can't watch Top Gun without chuckling at some of the moments directly spoofed.  Tom Cruise had already had a couple of notable movies, but this was his first blockbuster smash, that cemented him as a major movie star. He's certainly given better performances, but he's so effortlessly good here as the cocky flyboy that it stuck as his screen persona for a long time. Tony Scott was almost a total unknown as a director, having made only 1 film to that point, but he was a perfect choice by producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. Scott's style wa...

In theaters: MICHAEL Like almost every "controversial" movie these days that riles up the internet, Michael is really neither good enough nor bad enough to be worth all the fuss. The good: Both actors playing Michael are good. Some of the recreations of performances are enjoyable. A handful of scenes actually try to make us understand Michael as a person. The bad: Even if you don't know anything about the production, it has a veneer of inauthenticity. And it's so uncreative, just following the biopic formula every step of the way. MORTAL KOMBAT 2 I remembered virtually nothing about the original of this rebooted franchise from a few years ago, but I don't think that mattered much. This is a to the point movie that delivers a bunch of crazy fights and some wild kills.  IN THE GREY The ever prolific Guy Ritchie's latest, a way too convoluted thriller about covert ops and Middle Eastern bad guys and a bunch of stuff that I didn't follow. Worth it mostly for a...

Guess what, everyone! A new Star Wars movie is here! Which means only one thing anymore: CULTURE WAR!!!! Yes, because no franchise (not even Marvel) has become more of an object for internet fandoms to whine and argue about incessantly, often for political reasons. Yes, how DARE a franchise that began as a Vietnam allegory and featured bad guys called "stormtroopers" insert anything even vaguely political into its product! I loathed the discourse around the prequels back in the day, but at least that was mostly left to the films themselves. The Disney Star Wars era has proven that the prequel era was not an outlier. Star Wars fans exist to bitch. They hate everything. If it came out after 1980, it is shit. And now in this era we have all the added whining from the deplorables, the ones who hold extra disdain for all things Star Wars now that there were projects fronted by women, or prominently featuring any non-straight white male 100% of the time. And when the overseer of al...

Just over 2 weeks ago, Minnesota sports had one of the coolest nights we have ever had, a truly unique convergence of teams and stakes, with the Timberwolves and Wild both clinching 1st round playoff series wins at home. But the problem with winning in the 1st round is that you then have a 2nd round. Never before had the Wolves and Wild both advanced in the same year. Could they do it again and against superior competition?  Well, this IS Minnesota sports. Even when we DO get some playoff success (Minneapolis Miracle, the Twins 2023 wild card win), it doesn't sustain itself. And in the span of 3 days this week, the championship-less (hell, finals appearance-less) Wolves and Wild were once again brushed aside, so some other team that isn't from Minnesota can win a championship. Each found their own way to add to our state's big 4 misery. The Wild, in the 2nd round for the first time since 2015, faced the Colorado Avalanche, league leaders in points, and generally believed to...

Every other major sports market gets these days at least somewhat regularly. Forget titles, just advancing in the playoffs. Many get this joy through multiple teams.  Not us.  Minnesota is a cursed sports market, a reality that becomes more and more of a burden through every season of unfulfilled expectations and misplaced hope, and absurd circumstances that lead to losses. There was little reason to think the last night of April would be any different. But there was a wrinkle this time, a very rare coincidence of scheduling that had both the Timberwolvea and the Wild at home, both playing a game 6 up 3-2, and thus both in position to advance to round 2 in their respective marathon playoffs. The Wild had the more hopeful situation, since they were healthy. The Wolves, man, they were already down Anthony Edwards and Donte DiVincenzo, and then we found out Ayo Dosunmu was going to be out too. How were the Wolves possibly going to get this done? The Wolves game had some reasonabl...

1996: The 80s and 90s were the glory days of the pulpy, often sleazy studio thriller. But they were all starring adults and dealing with adult things. We youths needed our own version, and we got it with Fear, a real blast of a movie. This is teen Fatal Attraction. Innocent high school girl Reese Witherspoon falls for the initially nice older guy, Mark Wahlberg, but then to the surprise of no one he turns out to be a total psycho, in those ways that only movie villains ever are. This movie could easily veer into total trash, but it has a lot going for it. It was made by a legitimate director, James Foley, who had made Glengarry Glen Ross just a few years earlier. I really like the Pacific Northwest setting. I really like how the parents (William Petersen and Amy Brenneman) are fleshed out as actual people.  The casting was really canny. Wahlberg had begun to get into acting, but was still mostly known as Marky Mark, and we had a year to go before Boogie Nights. His care...