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THE EMPTY MAN (2020) This is a horror movie that I originally gave two stars out of four. A weak recommend with caveats. It was released during Covid to almost no fanfare, and I don't even know why I watched it in the first place. One Candyman is fine, two's a crowd. In the end, there were three reasons I gave it only two stars: 1. The first 20 minutes constitute a mini-movie that is absolutely perfect. Horrifyingly perfect. 2. It is long. Bloated. Over two hours. 3. There's a special mechanical way the cult in the movie goes about summoning their demon, and it is laughable. But the movie stuck with me. I ended up giving it a much stronger recommendation. I changed my mind! Yes, there were flaws. But the underlying story was strong, and the scares and tension were real. What follows is my thought process in changing my mind. Maybe I shouldn't punish a movie for starting well? Even exceedingly well. It's not like a 1600m race in which the runner goes out at :45 for the first lap, collapses and finishes last. I needed to review the movie in toto. It should get credit for the great start. I think it is still a fair criticism that the movie is overly long. That critique is emphasized by how well it starts. I wanted to see that first-twenty-minute quality during the length of the movie. My third original criticism involves SPOILERS. Folks in the movie get trapped by, and later communicate with, their demon/alien/supernatural being by blowing into an empty soda bottle. In one scene, you see what amounts to a soda bottle band holding a rally by blowing into their pop bottles in unison. I laughed out loud at that. It reminded me of how guys in our fraternity, back in the day, would sit around and watch teenage slasher movies and come up with one-liners about the murders. For example, there was a movie in which the murderer snuck up behind a guy who was crouched next to his motorcycle, working on it. The murderer took the end of the victim's scarf and threw it into the running back wheel causing him to strangle. I said, "He was adjusting the choke." I won that movie. But years later, I decided to give The Empty Man the benefit of the doubt. Cults do weird things. They might bang on drums, chant or dance around in naked and erotic ways. They might sacrifice animals or even people. So, was blowing into a pop bottle that strange? Yes. Yes it is. But I still gave it the benefit of the doubt. Anyway, here's a movie reviewer with 2.03 million subs who came to the same conclusion:

LOL! And yet, I still like to watch him. Has he just gotten lucky with good parts in iconic movies? I don't know. But he is interesting to watch.

Did you ever watch Constantine for free during the afternoon on September 25, 2024 and make popcorn, and when you got to the bottom of the bowl of popcorn, you saw the stragglers, the strays, the unpopped, and you thought: "Should I try to pop these leftover kernels," and you did, even though the stragglers had been caught between two worlds, the world of the eaten and the world of the not eaten but not yet thrown away, and what happened when you popped them is that they popped just fine though they looked a little twisted, smaller, darker, different, bereft of any popcorn soul, if there is such a thing, but you ate them anyway because you'll eat just about anything that isn't a vegetable, and while you consider the hypocrisy of that last thought, you wonder if anybody has an opinion on the movie Constantine, which can be watched for free here: I will say this: Keanu Reeves acting chops were better in this movie. Constantine now goes into the category of movies that I have seen twice.

Fun stuff! Had to use the old memory hole and throw in some logic to fill in the gaps. Usually dangerous stuff, but my 190/197 pick wasn't too far off.

On another topic, would you go see this movie?

MOST UNDERRATED AND OVERRATED MOVIES OF ALL TIME CASINO ROYALE (1967) This movie is madcap. It's parody. It is so stupid in places, it is genius. It is so genius in places, it is stupid. It has a 26% rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes and a 34% on their Popcorn meter. Sure, it's not Gone with the Wind, but it deserves much better than that. The theme song and score from Burt Bacharach and Herb Albert make it a must-watch movie. The climax of the movie was stolen by Mel Brooks seven years later for his Blazing Saddles. The cast includes Orson Welles, David Niven, William Holden, Peter Sellers, Charles Boyer, John Huston, George Raft, Jacqueline Bisset and Ursula Andress. It introduced Fembots to the world. I blame Weed, LSD and James Bond for its reception by audiences. The director and cast were probably already smoking Weed and taking LSD, and the audiences and critics hadn't been turned on yet. As for James Bond, that franchise was already into its third installment, and the British were pissed that a movie would make fun of it. Don't you dare **** with the Queen, the Royal Navy, the Beatles or James Bond. DR. STRANGELOVE Or: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964) How you view a movie is very subjective. But the nearly unanimous view from critics is that this movie is wunderbar. It has a 98% rating from Rotten Tomatoes, while the Popcorn meter is at 94%. Dr. Strangelove makes a lot of top 100 movies of all time lists. I don't get that. I hated it. I know, I know, don't ever say anything bad about boy genius Stanley Kubrick. Interestingly, both Dr. Strangelove and Casino Royale starred Peter Sellers, and he was much wackier in the former. I'm not pro nuclear holocaust, I just didn't like the movie. Okay?

Our promise to you as a consumer-friendly media corporation is that we won't do fart jokes, we won't use the Harvard comma and we won't mention Iowa's performance at the most recent WTT. In light of that consumer-friendly promise from us, here's this week's JOMBO™ comic:

Thanks, folks! I enjoyed reading all of your choices and comments! Y'all have reminded me that Caddyshack, Talladega Nights and Austin Powers should be on my Honorable Mention list. Maybe Caddyshack is top-ten worthy? Also, I need to very seriously reconsider The Deer Hunter. At the old ILLINOISMatmen.com, we used to have a thread about movies. Only movies. Top ten lists, reviews, re-reviews, trivia. Good times. I hope we can do that here. Cheers!

Below is my top ten list. What do you have in yours? These should be movies that you have or would watch multiple times, and not movies you’d bring up at a dinner party to impress the boss. In other words, the movies that you actually like the best. 1. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD I became a lawyer because of this movie. It was based on the Great American Novel written by Harper Lee, and it is a very rare bird: A movie that lived up to the book. Extraordinary events, and also mundane events that later turn out to be extraordinary events, happen to ordinary people who end up doing extraordinary things while getting judged based on the content of their character. Gregory Peck, man. 2. THE GODFATHER I blame The Godfather and Marvel Comics for turning America into a country that lionizes anti-heroes. There is nothing good about the Mafia, and we shouldn’t be rooting for Michael and Don Corleone by the end of the film, but the movie is so **** good that we do. Curse you, Francis Ford Coppola! Also, the movie insists upon itself. 3. MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL The best comedy ever made. My favorite movie scene from the best comedy ever made involves this genius bit: Roger the Shrubber: “Yes, shrubberies are my trade. I am a shrubber. My name is Roger the Shrubber. I arrange, design, and sell shrubberies.” I was a fan of the tv series as well. There has been nothing better on tv except the Moon landing. The movie is a 92-minute rendition of the Fish-Slapping Dance in armor. 4. THE WIZARD OF OZ That’s right, I like me some fairy tales. And this is the best of the lot. Judy Garland treated this like a stage performance, and what a stage performance! Her perfect voice tears a hole in me. She was only 16 at the time, which doesn’t mean I’m a perv. She was way older than me when I first saw the movie, and anyway, her ID card said she was 18. The Tin Man, the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion and the Munchkins. What’s not to love? As for it only being a dream, that seemed original at the time and not a cinematic rug pull. 5. RAISING ARIZONA Another fairy tale or fable but done up in “modern” America. I always like to make fun of Southern accents, and the Coen Brothers put big words in the mouths of their Southern actors for comedic effect. Nearly every scene is perfect, the cast is perfectly suited for their roles (Nicholas Cage and Holly Hunter are deadpan dynamite), and the dialogue is the best in any comedy ever produced besides Holy Grail. 6. WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCLATE FACTORY (1971) Still another fairy tale with munchkins that sing. Gene Wilder was perfect as Willy Wonka, and I don’t want to hear about any remakes because you don’t paint over the Mona Lisa. The world-building was incredible, the songs ingenious and again we have what amounts to a fable with some hard lessons that had to be learned but were learned in a most delightful way. 7. STAR WARS (1977) An interstellar fairy tale. When I saw this in the theater back in 1977, I was blown away. Original characters doing original things. Yes, I know, it was a space western, but, hey, they were in space! Excellent world-building, and then George Lucas made the same movie six times in a row. Ugh! 8. THE MATRIX Again, blown away in the movie theater. Original ideas and original characters in a spectacular movie with big ideas that somehow survived Keanu Reeves’ acting chops, which entail the following: (1) Look at the person talking to you; (2) Then, look down at your feet. Watch for it! It happens all the time in that movie. 9. THE EXORCIST I saw this movie as a little kid on tv while my parents were asleep. It scared the jammies offa me. By far the best horror movie ever made. No other horror movie is in my top one hundred, although Silence of the Lambs might be close. Is it really that good of a movie? I can’t say because my personal viewing experience was so visceral. I’ll hazard to say it is, though, as I’ve read the book, and it too scared the jammies offa me. Completely outrageous at times, and then, in turn, incredibly subtle. 10. INTERSTELLAR Another fairy tale/fable that has a message built compactly inside a fantastic movie. In my opinion, the scene with the tidal wave on the possibly habitable planet is one of the best in an action movie. I absolutely hate cutesy robot sidekicks, but this movie and the original Star Wars made the list despite me holding this grudge. Maybe because the bots were earnest? This may be a recency bias pick, as Goodfellas may return one day to this slot. Honorable Mention: Goodfellas (next on the list), Vision Quest (next after that with the rest in random order), Tenet, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Pulp Fiction, The Godfather, Part II, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas (animated), Raiders of the Lost Ark, Casino, Kill Bill Vol. 1, Roots, The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and It’s a Wonderful Life.

Is there a pool yet? If not, I got January 22, 2025. That's the first day of classes after their winter break. DYR, suckers! I kind of feel like we are the caddies in Caddyshack: 50 bucks the Smails kid picks his nose. Ok, you got it. Come on, buddy. Here he comes. Alright kid, take your time now. Come on, come on!!! Yeah!!!!!! 50 bucks more says he eats it. You're on. Don't do it kid, don't don't don't! Come on!! You want it! There he goes!! He's going for it! Yeah!!!!! What a PIG!!!! Man, that kid'll eat anything. He . . . He was hungry.

******* HILARIOUS! Hat's off.

The comic above is Issue #1 of Teenage Mutant Ninja Hoosiers. Someday it will be worth a fortune in mint condition. That's because this is the first appearance of Edmond Ruth's leg in the JOMBO™ Comic Universe!