Steve Aoki is a world-famous EDM DJ. Mile for mile, he’s the most-traveled musician in the world (via his private jet, natch). He started a record label when he was 19 years old and turned it into a success, breaking Bloc Party among others. He parlayed that into a DJ gig, and attracted a cultural following. His energy kept driving him forward. Now he plays 
as many shows per year as there are days, or more. He’s ambitious. He never stops. He helped transform EDM into a personality-based business. On any given night there are thousands of voices chanting his name. But it’s not enough. It’s never enough.
Steve’s dad was the guy who invented Benihana. Success runs in the family. But Steve’s dad was never impressed, and never supported him financially. Steve’s dad is dead now, but Steve’s still trying to impress him.
This documentary forces Steve to sit still for maybe 6 minutes, total, in an attempt to be introspective for a damn minute. The film attempts tension and conflict, but there’s only so high-stakes you can make a dance music concert. Still, his family situation is sad and it’s clear that even as a man he’s still yearning for a validation that will never come. Can only come from himself, ultimately, but until he can sit down in earnest and look inward for it, he will be fated to repeat this pattern indefinitely.
reasons this movie fails is that it tries too hard. The script is just so stupidly earnest. It makes wonderful actresses say such flighty, cliched things. And everyone cries all the time, at the drop of a hat. It made me really wonder why the script writer has so many fucking hats, and why she’s always dropping them. Secure your hat to your head, lady.
want you to watch me abuse it! I’m going to write a trite little movie that wishes it was a pretentious little novel! Script writing 101 says I should put in a conflict here! [Insert conflict]. I wonder if Sharon Stone can do polysyllabics? Either way she’ll be impressed when I whip out this tired metaphor! And I’ll make it super relatable by including a variety of white women with down-to-earth jobs like bra designer, fashion icon, and celebrity photographer. And I wonder if I can work in cancer? Watch out, heart strings!
Because the plot necessitates it, he can’t call an ambulance in the name of “discretion.” I hate this movie less than 10 minutes in. I have 0% sympathy for 100% of the characters.
They own proton packs. They drive Ecto Ones. They horde merchandise to the extent that it threatens their marriages. Ghostheads is the 2016 documentary that takes a good hard look at these amped-up fans. Ghostheads is the new Trekkies.
Suddenly shy geeks who rarely interact with the human species don these alter-egos and strut around like heroes. In Ghostheads you’ll encounter one painfully shy man who doesn’t hesitate to walk up to total strangers to spout any of dozens of lines of dialogue memorized from his favourite movie. He’s happy to pose for pictures and merrily draws attention by flipping on the siren on his Ghostbusters car (his only car. He drives his daughter to school in it). Fandom has really kicked into high gear these past few years (we discussed FANdementalists on a prior podcast) but I think the Ghostheads embody the very best of it: a sense of community. Just like-minded people sharing something they love, a movie that happens to be about camaraderie and helping others (and mutant marshmallows).
Frank, the dashing and charismatic reporter while Ricky Gervais plays his lackey, Finch. Finch is a clumsy and oblivious guy with a beautiful but disloyal wife (Vera Farmiga) whose ineptitude causes he and Frank to miss their career-making flight to Ecuador just as a war is breaking out.
anything intelligent or funny or worthwhile or clever. It’s flimsy. Like, paper-thin. And the characters are so one-dimensional that while we can’t really believe that there is not one but two Hottie McHottersons willing to bed Finch, we also don’t really care. This feels lazy and phoned-in and at times it also looks downright cheap, and I don’t just mean that it was filmed in pretend-NY Toronto (although it was. Sidebar: Gervais’s father is Ontario-born and French-Canadian).
This film is actually a dramatic reenactment of a documentary of the same name, by G.J. Echternkamp. And his parents are undoubtedly larger than life, which in this case is a kind euphemism for colourfully pathetic, hopeless losers. Rene Russo and Oliver Platt play the titular characters and you’ve got to admire their abandon. They each give strong performances, and you’ve got to give props to Russo in particular for her willingness to throw herself into such an unflattering role.
to stick to the source material means this movie has no real backbone. It ambles but doesn’t amount to much. And weirdly, GJ seems to be the least developed character – it’s his story but he’s a pretty passive player. And that feels ironic since Echternkamp himself helped bring this script to life, and he’s also sitting in the director’s seat, although at times he seems to forget about the advantages of feature vs documentary – he could make the scenes look amazing yet seems to enjoy filming in dank little corners.
him. But as quickly as his star rose, so began his descent. The very next year he was arrested on a DUI at the scene of an accident where luckily the only injury was his own (he required extensive hand surgery which forced a pause in production of Transformers 2). And then: bar fights, drunkenness, badmouthing movies and costars, boasting about conquests that put other people’s relationships in jeopardy, headbutting strangers, chasing the homeless, making fans cry, live-tweeting LSD trips. He dropped out of a Broadway play starring Alec Baldwin and then trolled him from the front row during a performance. I mean, who else would even try to out-Baldwin a Baldwin? He got caught plagiarizing, then attempted to apologize for it by hiring a skywriter far away from where the victim lived. These were bad years, and there wasn’t a single person who didn’t distance themselves from him. Heck, even the 
Transformers franchise was handed over to Marky Mark, and Indiana Jones given back to a septuagenarian. But then came even worse years,the paper bag years. In an effort to insist he “wasn’t famous anymore”, he wore paper bags over his head to red carpet events and on talk shows. In an effort to reframe his erratic behaviour as “performance art”, he staged increasingly bizarre events – during one “show” he lived in an art gallery for 5 days during which people lined up to spend 1 hour alone in a room with him while he sat in perfect silence, often soaking the paper bag on his head with tears. He would later claim that a woman raped him during her hour and he did nothing to stop it in order to preserve the integrity of the piece. Then he live-streamed himself watching 
all 29 of his movies back to back in a Manhattan theatre (he cried then too). And just this February he spent 24 hours in an elevator. Because, duh, it’s art. Meanwhile, I’m wondering where the hell his mother is. This man is clearly suffering and Hollywood is not known for coming to anyone’s rescue. In fact, this tabloid culture in which we are living feeds off of young people’s breakdowns.
grieving guy who flies to Bucharest to shakes his blues but instead finds himself drawn to a woman with an intoxicating accent. She’s bad news, as evidenced by the many iterations of the film’s title – you may find it called Kill Charlie Countryman, or The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman. Either way, you know she’s going to get him killed, but she’s beautiful, aloof, and dangerous, so how can he resist?
Countryman is watchable, but it would be hard to mistake it as good.
It was 1991 when Paul Reubens, the man behind the tiny red bowtie and obnoxious laugh who streamed his playhouse antics directly into your family room to mesmerized kids, was arrested for masturbating in an “adult movie theatre.” His arrest was widely covered, Reubens terribly ridiculed, even when wholesome famous friends like Bill Cosby spoke up on his behalf, saying “Whatever (Reubens has) done, this is being blown all out of 
proportion” (I guess he was hoping people would remember this sentiment when it came turn for his own shit to hit the fan).
doing a skit on SNL. Since nobody showed up to burn him on a stake, it seemed the way was clear for Netflix to greenlight a movie he’d been waiting a quarter century to make.
Hartman created the anti-comic character, a weird, manic, effeminate,ambiguous “boy” who got by on enthusiasm and catchphrases like “I know you are but what am I?” Pee-wee Herman was born, but was initially aimed at adults, appearing on The Dating Game, and in a Cheech and Chong movie. Eventually Reubens toned down the 
innuendo and became a childhood icon (although you only have to look as far as Cowboy Curtis, played by a young Laurence Fishburne, to know it was still there).
wish-fulfillment. A longtime Pee-wee fan, this was a film he thought people wanted to see. “I just think there are very few characters in comedy history as strong and hilarious as Pee-wee Herman. The first moment you’re sitting in a room with Paul Reubens and he starts pitching you things Pee-wee might say or do, you think to yourself, ‘This can’t be happening.’ The first time he put on the suit, I thought I was going to pass out.”
Pee-wee’s Big Holiday, which is nearly plotless, is this: Pee-wee has never left the small town he lives in, but one day a big, handsome movie star named Joe Manganiello drives through town on his sexy hog and the two hit it off as only two rootbeer-barrel-loving-boys can. Joe invites Pee-wee to his birthday party in NYC, and Pee-wee embarks on an epic adventure across the country. Or something like that.
Reubens, now 63, hardly looks as though he’s aged a day underneath the familiar pancake makeup. Pee-wee’s Big Holiday isn’t likely to win any new converts though. It’s a silly little thing, a very small fluff on some pretty major wind, but yes: it is in fact a movie. And you can watch it now on Netflix.
ASSHOLES WATCHING MOVIES 