Author Archives: jjcwn

Movie Review: Emily The Criminal

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Student Loan debt, getting ripped off living in a bad apartment, having to take a bad job due to circumstances and mistakes you have made in the past. Your job is delivering food and is depressing with a boss who treats you badly. This is the real life story of millions of people in their 20’s, who through no fault of their own, were born at the wrong time and now realize that apartment living, with constantly rising rents, student loan debt that include outrageous interest payments, all add up to probably never being able to realize the American dream and owning their own home. In Emily’s unfortunate case, her luck has been mostly all bad, including a criminal record, with a good part of this not her fault.

The new movie “Emily The Criminal” is about a very challenged young women named Emily, played extremely well by Aubrey Plaza – who just might get an Academy Award nomination for this role. For many years Aubrey Plaza has been one of the best natural comedians. Her appearances on Talk Shows have demonstrated that with a subtle look with her eyes and a small comment she can make people laugh with what seems like no effort. This is an extremely rare talent that I have only seen with Johnny Carson, John Candy, Will Ferrell and Chelsea Handler.

With this well made film, Plaza is 100% dead serious, playing a desperate and very depressed young woman trying to find herself out of debt and a very bad job. This film is very effective at showing Emily’s bleak existence and her desperation to no matter what, save her own life. The following downward spiral is not only extremely well told and well acted, but most importantly believable – with the possible exception of the ending, that I thought had some glaring holes.

As this story, unfolds, Emily falls into working for a credit card fraud gang, where a group of criminals are able to create fake credit cards and buy merchandise (mainly flat screen TV’s) from stores. As the merchandise is taken from the store, it is immediately taken away in a van and then sold as stolen merchandise. This is a very dangerous racket that if caught, would result in many years in prison. This is the fundamental conflict within this story as Emily’s anger over a horrible existence becomes greater than the fear of spending many years in prison. This is the main idea behind the great TV series “Breaking Bad”.

It turns out that Emily, mainly due to her bad life, is very angry and is able to leverage her anger to be a brave fighter against some very dangerous people throughout this story. There is a relationship between Emily and Youcef played by Theo Rossi, who is one of the leaders of this credit card fraud gang. This relationship is also very well portrayed within this solid screenplay.

I mostly agreed with the final end to this story, that I thought was also believable based on Emily’s extreme circumstances that was leading her into an extremely difficult life of desperation and poverty that she would do almost anything to escape.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for Emily The Criminal is a very high 93%, with my rating in the 88% range and a strong recommendation.

A Tribute to Olivia Newton John

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For the world and right now for me, it is difficult to realize or to even type, “Olivia Newton John passed away on August 8, 2022”. She lived to be 73, almost 74. Her next birthday would have been September 26.

In the history of world-famous singers or actors there has never been anyone who did it better than Olivia Newton John. She was never a diva, there were never any embarrassing incidents throughout her entire career or anything that was controversial. She devoted her life to helping animals, to saving the planet, to global warming and ultimately to curing Cancer. Oliva has a Cancer research hospital in Australia named after her: The Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute, due to her tireless work with Cancer research.

Olivia was married twice, divorced once. She tried to start her own franchise business called Koala Blue in the 1990s that failed after a strong start due to the recession. In 1992, like so many millions of women, Olivia was diagnosed with breast Cancer and I remember thinking at the time, she is too beautiful, too cute, too kind, too good to animals, too nice a person to have anything bad happen to her. Not ever. Unfortunately, this is not how real life works — but it should.

In her lifetime, Oliva contracted Cancer 3 times, this last time was stage 4 and this is what eventually ended her life after living with Cancer in one form or another for 30 long years. Someone this nice, who has done so much good for the world should not have to go through something like this for so long. Just like Christopher Reeve with spinal injuries and Michael J. Fox with Parkinson’s Olivia’s huge world-wide celebrity put a giant spotlight on the never ending human health scourge of Cancer – much more than it would ever been without her. Olivia put her suffering with chemo, and fear of death for so long to good use – just like she always did – to help other people. In the long run, maybe one day we will all realize that Olivia’s main purpose was to become famous and beloved around the world, less so for her music and more for helping man kind to finally eliminate the disease of Cancer, forever. Too many millions still die of this horrendous disease every year despite billions and billions of dollars invested for research for many decades.

For many years Olivia lived with Cancer and endured this disease with so much courage and dignity that it surpassed any other celebrity we have ever seen go through something like this. Olivia Newton John not only showed the world how to live, she also showed all of us how to die.

When the news about Olivia was announced yesterday, many of her fans, starting with me, have already known for years that this day would come eventually. Some two years ago, there was a news report that Olivia had died that turned out to be fake, but it was this kind of a reminder and realization for so long that made yesterday just a little easier to accept.

Now we all have to move on, as we all always try to do, But this time, without Olivia Newton John. How do we do that? For me, things already seem to be off, not right and skewed in some unidentifiable way.

For her whole incredible career that peaked in the 1980’s Olivia never knew the value of her singing career to so many average depressed people like me, trapped in their cars, trying to survive another bad day, another bad job, another horrible commute. Then with the random turn of radio dial to another station playing one of her songs, for those few minutes, life just seemed to be a little better.

Gone way too soon. Life will never be the same again without her.

Movie Review: Easter Sunday

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The story of standup comedian Jo Koy is about a long and hard trek through the pitfalls and hardships of trying to make it as a standup comedian. We all know about the few who make it big, like Kevin Hart, Amy Schumer, and Chris Rock. Two of them, Hart and Schumer, have written books about how hard it is to break into an almost impossible future that would include fame and fortune traveling the country, performing standup. This dream includes filling up stadiums, fame and making a huge amount of money. How many of us would be willing or able to pay the dues that the very few who have made it in comedy – even if you knew in advance that you would succeed? Based on how hard it is to make it by working in bad venues, living in bad hotels non stop for years, how many would be willing to even try?

I remember Jo Koy from his frequent appearances on the Chelsea Lately show several years ago. Chelsea Handler is another example of a miracle career of someone who grew up in Livingston New Jersey and then hit it big on the road as a female standup comedian. The odds of success like hers, considering how difficult it was to make it, is amazing. It is the same unlikely miracle for someone like Jo Koy, who grew up poor as a Philipino American and toiled for years before his recent success. About a month ago, Koy and Handler ended their 1 year relationship in front of the entire entertainment world but continue their 20 year friendship. One of the downsides of being famous is that your personal life is broadcast in front of the whole world.

Some time ago, Jo Koy, based on the fact that he has two high rated Netflix standup specials, was called into the office of Amblin Entertainment, the production company owned by of all people, Steven Speilberg. It turns out that Speilberg is a big fan of Jo Koy’s standup act and because of this, he decided to back a new movie idea, based on Koy’s family life. The movie is “Easter Sunday” and has been released this weekend. Having a meeting in the production studio of Amblin Entertainment is a dream of every aspiring screenwriter or actor. It had to feel for Jo Koy that his ship had finally come in and he had finally made it after so many years of hard times and standup gigs. Steven Speilberg likes your standup act and wants to make a movie about your life? It does not get better than that.

Unfortunately the new movie “Easter Sunday” which is about Koy’s extremely hectic professional and family life – included a screenplay that is both not good enough, and more importantly not funny enough. Considering the resources and talent pool that someone as powerful as Steven Spielberg controls, I was rather amazed at the relatively low quality of this film. This entire story is about the high stress and constant lack of time the main character Joe Valencia, played by Koy has to spend time with his son, his x-wife and most importantly his overbearing mother, who is a major part of Koy’s standup act. This story degrades into chase scenes and some gunplay involving a ganster and of all things the boxing gloves of Mannie Pacquiao when he fought Oscar Dela Hoya. This rapid fire manic non stop story does not work in so many areas and fails in too many attempts to be funny to ever recommend.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings are a too low 33%, with my rating around 50% and a solid pass. In this case, I am most amazed at the low quality script of a Spielberg backed production. Hopefully Koy will bounce back with something much better.