Movie Review: Is This Thing On

Posted on January 10, 2026 by jjcwn • Posted in Drama • Tagged Bradley Cooper, Is This Thing On, Will Arnett • Leave a comment

The new movie “Is This Thing On” does an outstanding job of deeply analyzing the reality of love, separation, reconciliation, and divorce. This film is inspired by the real-life story of a British stand-up comedian, John Bishop, who stumbled into the world of stand-up comedy to distract himself from his depression over his recent divorce.

Is This Thing On, stars Will Arnett as Alex Novak, who is recently divorced and now living in a bad apartment, and still has to make mortgage payments on a house he no longer lives in. He has two sons with his wife Tess Novak, played by Laura Dern. Early in this story, Alex drives around New York City to escape the despair and loneliness of his apartment and stumbles into the famous comedy venue in Grenich Village, “The Comedy Cellar.” Fortunately, Alex did not have the 15-dollar cover fee, and instead took the option of “writing his name in the call sheet” so he could be called up to do stand-up in front of the brutal, rude crowd inside a late-night comedy venue. This reminded me that sometimes extreme despair and anger can sometimes be a catalyst for courage that you never knew you had. Alex, of course, did not have any comedy material and instead just started to talk about how bad his life is, his divorce, and all that went wrong to end his 20-year marriage. Over time and numerous appearances on the comedy stages in New York City, Alex improved and became a successful stand-up comedy headliner.

I was amazed at the extremely dangerous and crowded environment of the Comedy Cellar, where it seemed hard to breathe, and any emergency would make it almost impossible for everybody to get out of the building without being trampled. This movie also has several other comedians performing, and it has been a long time since I have seen any movie with this many recorded live stand-up comedy performances, since “Punchline (1988)” starring Sally Field, John Goodman, and Tom Hanks.

This story shows in flashbacks and interactions with friends what went wrong with the marriage of Tess and Alex Novak. Most of the problems are the common ones, including lack of communication and ongoing misunderstandings that over time become blown out of proportion and grow in importance, which are absurd. One telltale moment is that when Alex and Tess seem to be getting back together, Tess becomes extremely angry about a photograph Alex has in his apartment showing Tess playing Volleyball. Her reaction was, “This is not who I am now”. Her anger was extremely out of proportion over an innocuous photograph on a wall. Another glaring example of why this couple is divorced – making a huge mountain over nothing. This one argument caused Alex to go on an angry rant during his comedy act that had nothing to do with comedy and everything to do with his frustration and extreme anger over so many challenging years.

Bradley Cooper has a small role in this movie, playing a friend of Alex and Tess, and has the strange name of “Balls” for reasons that are never explained. Cooper also co-wrote and directed this film. Other actors in this movie are Christine Ebersole, who does an excellent job as Alex’s mother, and always seems to say the exact wrong thing. Ciarán Hinds plays Alex’s father in several well-played scenes. Sean Hayes plays Stephen, one of Alex and Tess’s friends. Amy Sedaris plays one of the comedians at the Comedy Cellar and former NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning plays one of Tess’s friends, who is also getting a divorce and bonds with Tess at a meeting at a restaurant near the Comedy Cellar that results in one of the better scenes in the Comedy Cellar after their date.

This well-written screenplay reminds everybody what we already know: problems and conflict are the expected output of any relationship or marriage. When you are married, you are no longer 100% in control of your own life; it is reduced to half, and when things go south, you are going along for the ride both emotionally and financially.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this film are a correct 85%. I agree with this rating and strongly recommend this film.

Greenland 2: Migration

Posted on January 9, 2026 by jjcwn • Posted in Drama • Tagged Gerard Butler, Greenland 2: Migration, Morena Baccarin • Leave a comment

The best parts of the first “Greenland” (2020)” film is that this is an asteroid movie that has a realistic perspective about what would happen in the case when an asteroid is too big there would be nothing humanity could ever do to stop it from hitting the earth. An asteroid too huge to stop would erase either the entire population of the planet or a large percentage of it either because of the heat blast after impact or the radiation that would follow. All humanity can do to continue is to select a group of people who might be able to bring humanity back from intinction by protecting them in deep caves, in locations like Greenland, which is essentially the plot of the first movie.

The sequel to Greenland is “Greenland 2 Migration”, and once again stars Gerard Butler and, and Morena Baccarin as John and Allison Garrity along with their son Nathan now five years older played by Roman Griffin Davis. This version of a destroyed planet earth is about as pessimistic as the first movie, with the air loaded with radiation, tectonic shifts in the earths crust, huge electrical storms, criminal marauders robbing and killing people, along with human beings spending 5 years in very close quarters, slowly running out of food and supplies.

The problem with this sequel is that it violates a fundamental rule of screenwriting. In order for a story to make sense the characters have to do things that not only make sense but are what a real person would do – especially in the case where John Garrity is constantly in charge of trying to rescue his family from certain death.

Early in this story there is talk of relatively good odds that the impact crater made by the comet Clarke has started to create new life. After the caves in Greenland are no longer habitable, the Garrity family makes a trek across Greenland to make their way to the Clarke crater, largely based on second hand rumor and speculation. In real life people would not risk their lives so many times based on this level of remote speculation. The good news is that there is a strong possibility that this will be the last Greenland movie, which is a shame because it means another possible movie franchise is once again lost, all because a good enough story idea was not created before making this below average B-level film.

This time around the Rotten Tomatoes ratings of 53% are correct based on the obvious logistical and human decisions that are too flawed, making this movie impossible to recommend.

Movie Review: We Bury the Dead

Posted on January 3, 2026 by jjcwn • Posted in Drama • Tagged Daisy Ridley • Leave a comment

The new movie “We Bury the Dead”, has a logline on IMDB that reads: “After a catastrophic military disaster, the dead don’t just rise – they hunt. Ava searches for her missing husband, but what she finds is far more terrifying.”

This movie will likely rank as one of the most boring and innocuous zombie movies of all time. Yes, this is yet another zombie movie; however, this one has an amazingly low count of violent zombie scenes or any zombie scenes, after a woman, Ava, played by Daisy Ridley, arrives in New Zealand, the site of this military accident, and tries to find her husband Mitch, played by Matt Whelan with the help of another man, Clay, played by Brenton Thwaites.

The rest of this film is nothing more than an unexpectedly long and boring trek with Ava and Clay through New Zealand to travel 300 miles south to the site of the resort where Ava’s husband was staying. The majority of the victims of this military accident are dead, but a small percentage of the victims become alive and, for reasons unknown, cause only very minor incidents as Clay and Ava travel south. I remember wondering at the time, is this a zombie movie or a travelogue of New Zealand? Also, this movie is so boring it was hard to believe this could ever be considered an action movie, or even a drama.

The high Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this bad movie are 84%, which is as crazy as this bad zombie movie. The audience rating is a more accurate 49%. Before it’s too late, the producer should change the title from “We Bury the Dead” to “We Bury this Movie”. This one is a huge miss and receives a 10% rating.