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Absolutely awful. The plot makes no sense and careens from one scene to another without bothering to explain how or why it got there, Hathaway is a wet mop with no charisma, the ending pretty much smashes the half-assed “yay women” marketing conceit to bits, and all of the characters are either paper-thin plot devices or exceedingly unlikeable caricatures without a single redeeming quality among them.

It’s an absolute disaster and the worst movie I’ve seen in a theatre since The Happening. This is a comedy in name only. I chuckled at a few of Rebel Wilson’s lines (“I’m salad-intolerant” to a waiter) and nothing else. One review said they laughed out loud at a wordplay joke involving a hotel room so I’ll save you the $17: we briefly see a placard on the door of a hotel room in France that says “Suite Caroline.” That’s it. That’s the joke. The Hustle, everyone!

Luis Valbuena, 33, is now bat flipping in heaven.

Can someone please check on Andy?

Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft (and owner of the Seahawks and Trail Blazers), 65.

FIRE SOME

TRADE OTHERS

LAUNCH DANIEL MURPHY AND ADDISON RUSSELL DIRECTLY INTO THE SUN

SIGN GOOD PLAYERS

WIN THE WORLD SERIES

LET'S DO THIS

John McCain, 81

Assume the Cubs would sign each player to the same contract.  Same money, same years, same opt-out.  But they can only sign one.  So who would you rather: Manny Machado or Bryce Harper?

Kid just cannot stay on the field. Another season-ending surgery.

That was fucking nasty shit today.

Rose Marie, 94

An unenthusiastic meh from me on this.

Roman J. Israel, Esq. is a middle-aged attorney whose wardrobe never left the 1970s and who works at a two-man criminal defense firm. One day he learns that his law partner is in a coma. The law partner is the face of the firm: he makes all court appearances and is locally famous in Los Angeles as a champion of defendants’ rights. Roman, however, practices criminal law by necessity. His real passion is civil rights activist litigation. He has worked in the shadows for decades writing briefs and researching while his partner gets the glory.

The film follows Roman as he comes to learn something about his partner that causes Roman to question his decades of selfless public service. “I’m tired of doing the impossible for the ungrateful,” he laments at one point. Roman finds himself confronted with his new boss, a high-powered managing partner, whose interest lies in money and charging ever-higher fees, and we see the conflict with Roman’s own selfless values as he starts to give in to the powerful forces of one’s own pecuniary interest. Roman goes on a journey of self-doubt, self-indulgence, and, eventually, potential redemption and revitalization. It’s the way we get there, though, that makes this film hard to like.

Roman is quirky for no apparent reason. He appears to be somewhere on the spectrum, which according to the director (I attended a screening and Q-and-A) was done for no reason except the character needed to have an excellent legal memory. I spent most of the film thinking I was watching a man’s descent into total madness, but apparently that wasn’t the goal. The pacing is slow for most of the running time and Denzel Washington does his best, playing against type, to make it interesting but I thought the film fell flat.

This film is trying really hard to be Deep and Meaningful and Inspiring and Challenging but it just ends up looking like other, more successful movies that were all those things. It’s hard to put my finger on it, exactly, but I just couldn’t get into the story and left feeling more confused than satisfied. The closest I can come to explaining my reaction is to say that the message of Roman J. Israel, Esq. is too muddled to figure out what the message is, exactly: is this a commentary on people suffering from developmental disabilities? Is this a commentary on victims of mental illness? Is this a commentary on antisocial outcasts? Is this a commentary on legal ethics? Is this a commentary on the criminal justice system? Is this a commentary on greed? Is this a commentary on what it means to be an activist in today’s political climate? It seems, on some level, to want to be all of these things, but it realized that would be too much work so it just hit a couple bullet points instead.

The ridiculous, unbelievable romance between a middle-aged Roman and a burned-out younger activist doesn’t help.

Why Roman J. Israel? According to the director, he wanted the idea of conflict in the character’s name, and he couldn’t think of two things more in conflict in history than the Roman Empire and Israel. Okay then.

By the way, this film was highly anticipated in certain circles as the sophomore effort from the director of Nightcrawler. This film shares its fascination with Los Angeles, but most are going to see this as a disappointing step back.

Otani please.

Can James Corden just stop? Look at this:



What the fuck is that? And who asked for this? Aside from the obvious racial problems with a white Englishman cosplaying a pimp and taking a giant shit on the entire genre of rap, who keeps giving this fatass no-talent assclown money? Fuck off back to England already, you Iggy Azalea wannabe hack.

It’s hard not to compare American Made to Narcos. Wagner Moura is so firmly established in my mind as Pablo Escobar that I found it jarring to see another one. Like Narcos, it spends much of its running time critiquing, if not downright mocking, Reagan-era foreign policy. Unlike Narcos, we see very little of the cartel’s violence: it’s introduced in a tongue-in-cheek manner as “Pablo Escobar’s management style.” We don’t even actually see the death you should be expecting if you’re familiar with the subject of the film. Approximately three fourths of the way through the violence appears with a bang, but it’s not graphic and such spectacle isn’t revisited.  Also unlike Narcos, the film spends little to no time examining its prototanist’s motives. Somewhat understandable given this is a feature film and Narcos has multiple episodes to dive into the motivations and backgrounds of Javi Pena and Steve Murphy, but Barry Seal’s motivations and backstory get no more than passing treatment, almost an afterthought. Evidently Barry has a bit of a risk-seeking streak in him, and he’s not being paid enough. That’s it. That’s more than enough to recruit the film’s Barry Seal to start flying for the CIA buzzing compounds full of armed insurgents and dodging law enforcement aircraft.

There’s also a bit of controversy overhanging the film, given the crash of an Aerostar in Colombia while the production was based there. The crash didn’t occur during the actual filming and Tom Cruise was not aboard, but a wrongful death lawsuit has been filed alleging the director and Cruise were essentially adrenaline-addled psychos pushing for ever more dangerous stunts for their airplane porno. I didn’t see much to support that in the final cut. Maybe they left the hairy stuff out to avoid adding weight to the allegations in the lawsuit (although that’s inconsistent with the lawsuit’s claims that they were trying to make the most action-packed movie they could). There is one scene where Cruise’s Aerostar nudges wingtips with a Bonanza in flight, which I seriously doubt was actually filmed in real life. There was also Cruise’s forced landing shown in all the trailers, which again I seriously doubt was actually filmed in a real life neighborhood. Some reviewers have mentioned the lawsuit, others haven’t, but there’s no real way to know what actually happened based on one-sided pleadings. If it keeps you from enjoying the film knowing what happened when it was being made, I thought I should mention it.

With all that said, I liked the film and enjoyed it. I just don’t know how rewatchable it’s going to be. Tom Cruise gives his usual likable Tom Cruise performance. Some of the aviation action is thrilling, although I was left wondering whether there were more escapades left out: Did Seal ever run low on fuel and have to improvise? Did he ever get lost? As far as the film is concerned, he’s a perfect pilot. As long as you go in to see it expecting a fun, fast-moving version of the Barry Seal Wikipedia entry, and not an in-depth character study or even much of a drama (it’s more of a series of action scenes), you’ll probably enjoy it.

That game was nuts.

Boys, the National Suicide Hotline is 1-800-273-8255.

I think what makes Joey Votto so annoying is how damn good he is. Good thing the rest of his team is dogshit.

John Arguello, @CubsDen, has passed. The news was tweeted by the Cubs account and even Jason McLeod. Another person who wasn't Al Yellon bringing us all the Cubs news our stupid stupid brains can take. RIP.

Linkin Park's Chester Bennington, 41. Suicide by hanging.

Seriously.

Hey remember when Arismendy Alcantara didn't suck and was being mentioned as part of the core? Me either.

Does he suck? Maybe. Do I hate him? Yes.