Category: News

Jonathan VanBoskerck is not exactly a household name, but on Friday he very quickly, became the most famous Disney Adult in America after a bizarre opinion piece decrying “woke” culture was published in an Orlando newspaper.

The photo, with the man in a Hawaiian-adjacent Disney shirt with Disney trinkets in the background, was enough to grab the attention of plenty of people online. But the column was much more bizarre: the Las Vegas native described his family’s yearly trips to the Florida theme park were being ruined by a “woke scalpel” that was removing parts of his favorite rides and ruining the experience because of cancel culture.

It’s reminiscent of the man who recently went viral for getting arrested at Disney for not adhering to the park’s safety standards amid the still-ongoing coronavirus pandemic. But that reminder of the real world is not the issue for Van Boskerck, it’s that sometimes people who dress up as anthropomorphic dogs and Disney princesses have tattoos and haircuts that were not animated in the 1960s:

Recently, Disney announced that cast members are now permitted to display tattoos, wear inclusive uniforms and display inclusive haircuts. Disney did all of this in the name of allowing cast members to express themselves.

The problem is, I’m not traveling across the country and paying thousands of dollars to watch someone I do not know express themselves. I am there for the immersion and the fantasy, not the reality of a stranger’s self-expression. I do not begrudge these people their individuality and I wish them well in their personal lives, but I do not get to express my individuality at my place of business.

That may seem like a silly thing to get upset about, but it’s really the “woke scalpel” that Disney has taken to its rides and attractions in recent years that’s made him most upset. Essentially, VanBoskerck is really missing all the horny and racist stuff. He complains that Disney is updating its Jungle Cruise ride to take out harmful stereotypes of indigenous people, and lamented the missing scenes, like a guy being boiled alive, from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride they’ve removed over the years:

Pirates used to be one of my favorite attractions. My family would always ride it first on our first day at the Magic Kingdom. Now, we do not even ride it every trip. When my family rides Pirates now, each of the changed scenes takes us out of the illusion because they remind us of reality and the politics that forced the changes.

Disney World is going to lose us as customers if it continues down this path. I do not want to have Disney World taken away from us because Disney cares more about politics than happy guests.

But it’s important to note that, well, what they got rid of was a bizarre sex slave auction from the Pirates ride. If his family is really missing that, well, that’s weird. And the Splash Mountain changes are because of something he himself noted: the ride’s history with the wildly racist and controversial Song of the South. Most of these changes are happening because Disney is phasing out things that don’t seem as acceptable in modern society, sure, but as many noted online it’s also in an effort to make the rides line up with upcoming movies.

Disney is so big and so popular that its park rides have become their own movie franchises, which in turn makes them get retrofit to be advertisements for the movies and shows the theme park attractions have spawned. It’s just business, and honestly it seems like pretty good business to transform Splash Mountain from a fun ride with a fraught history into a fun ride with an animated movie tie-in.

VanBoskerck getting mad about all of this and haphazardly chalking it up to cancel culture is about as lazy as going to the same theme park for the same vacation every year. And the self-described “Christian and a conservative Republican” declaring that Disney’s values don’t add up with his just sort of says a lot about where his head’s at with pretty much everything these days. Which is why there was a LOT of reaction online about how weird all of this was.

A surprising amount of Jurassic Park jokes were made, too.

Even the creator of another animated Disney show, Gravity Falls, got involved.

James Gunn chimed in, too.

His Goodreads profile was apparently found as well and, uh, it’s a lot.

There was also some digging about the expression he does at his job, which is an assistant District Attorney in Las Vegas who tried really hard to execute someone recently.

The lesson here, as always, is to diversify your vacation plans and not build your entire personality out of a corporation that is very much not your friend. Oh, and try not to declare your fondness for animatronic sex slavery in a major metropolitan newspaper.

(Via Orlando Sentinel)

HBO Max continues to slay the streaming game this month, pumping out a handful of original series and dropping some straight-from-theaters blockbusters to keep fans entertained.

We’re particularly hyped to finally see Tenet on the small screen — sorry, Christopher Nolan — and for Angelina Jolie to make a return to her action hero days. Oh, and there’s plenty of comedy coming too. Look out for Jean Smart’s new HBO Max dramedy and a Michael Che special.

Here’s everything coming to (and leaving) HBO and HBO Max this May.

Tenet
Christopher Nolan might not be pleased but we’re pretty thrilled that Tenet is finally coming to a streaming platform. If you didn’t catch this time-hopping thriller in theaters — and really, who did? — it follows John David Washington’s character on a mind-bending journey to prevent the start of another World War.

Those Who Wish Me Dead (Warner Bros. Film Premiere)
Angelina Jolie stars in this thriller along with Jon Bernthal and Nicholas Hoult. Jolie plays a veteran firefighter who, in the midst of a terrible inferno destroying the forests of Montana, must help a young boy on the run from a pair of twin assassins.

Hacks (HBO Max Original Series Premiere)
Emmy-winning icon Jean Smart stars in this dark comedy about a washed-up Las Vegas comic trying to get back into the stand-up game. To do it, she’s got to partner with a young up-and-coming comedy writer from Los Angeles who’s unimpressed with her material. Their odd-couple-like banter makes up the bulk of the entertainment here.

Avail. 5/1
17 Again, 2009
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, 2012 (HBO)
Anaconda, 1997
Anger Management, 2003 (HBO)
Baby Boom, 1987 (HBO)
Barry Lyndon, 1975
Black Hawk Down, 2001
The Cable Guy, 1996
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, 2005
Cursed, 2005 (HBO)
Daddy Day Care, 2003
Darkest Hour, 2017 (HBO)
Darkness, 2004 (Extended Version) (HBO)
The Dirty Dozen, 1967
Dumb & Dumber, 1994
Employee Of The Month, 2006 (HBO)
Firehouse Dog, 2007 (HBO)
Flight Of The Intruder, 1991 (HBO)
Free Willy, 1993
Frida, 2002 (HBO)
Generation Por Que? (HBO)
God’s Not Dead, 2014 (HBO)
Good Morning, Vietnam, 1987 (HBO)
Happy Feet Two, 2011
Happy Feet, 2006
Harley Davidson And The Marlboro Man, 1991 (HBO)
Hercules, 1983 (HBO)
Igby Goes Down, 2002 (HBO)
Igor, 2008 (HBO)
Insomnia, 2002 (HBO)
The Interview, 2014
Jackie Brown, 1997
Kansas, 1988 (HBO)
Magic Mike, 2012
Menace II Society, 1993
Michael, 1996 (HBO)
Mortal Kombat, 1995
Movie 43, 2013 (HBO)
Muriel’s Wedding, 1995 (HBO)
My Baby’s Daddy, 2004 (HBO)
Mystery Date, 1991 (HBO)
Norbit, 2007 (HBO)
Para Rosa (Aka For Rosa) (HBO)
Precious, 2009 (HBO)
Rabid, 1977 (HBO)
Romance & Cigarettes, 2007 (HBO)
Rosewater, 2014 (HBO)
Rudy, 1993
Rush Hour 2, 2001
Rush Hour 3, 2007
Rush Hour, 1998
Save The Last Dance, 2001 (HBO)
Save The Last Dance 2, 2006 (HBO)
Senseless, 1998 (HBO)
Separate Tables, 1958 (HBO)
Serpico, 1974 (HBO)
Serving Sara, 2002 (HBO)
Summer Rental, 1985 (HBO)
Tenet, 2020 (HBO)
The Debt, 2010 (HBO)
The Immigrant, 2014 (HBO)
The Kingdom, 2007 (HBO)
The Last Of The Finest, 1990 (HBO)
The Perfect Man, 2005 (HBO)
The Tuxedo, 2002 (HBO)
The Wings Of The Dove, 1997 (HBO)
The Witches Of Eastwick, 1987 (HBO)
Tomcats, 2001 (HBO)
Trust Me, 2014 (HBO)
Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection, 2012
Varsity Blues, 1999 (HBO)
Welcome To Sarajevo, 1997 (HBO)
When Harry Met Sally, 1989
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, 1971
Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, 2018 (HBO)
Words And Pictures, 2014 (HBO)

Avail. 5/2
Uri and Ella, Season 1

Avail. 5/3
300: Rise of an Empire, 2014
Pray, Obey, Kill, Docu-Series Finale (HBO)

Avail. 5/6
Hunger, 2008
Legendary, Max Original Season 2 Premiere
Take Me Out To The Ball Game, 1949
That Damn Michael Che, Max Original Series Premiere
West Side Story (TCM CFF Opening Night), 1961

Avail. 5/7
La Boda De Rosa (Aka Rosa’s Wedding) (HBO)

Avail. 5/8
Greenland, 2020 (HBO)
Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World– Season 2 , (Subtitled, Episodes 14-25) (Crunchyroll Collection)

Avail. 5/9
Axios (HBO)

Avail. 5/10
Jujutsu Kaisen – Season 1, (Subtitled, Episodes 13-24) (Crunchyroll Collection)
Race for the White House, Season 2
The Crime of the Century, Two-Part Documentary Premiere (HBO)

Avail. 5/13
Hacks, Max Original Series Premiere
Wonder Woman 1984, 2020 (HBO)

Avail. 5/14
Those Who Wish Me Dead, Warner Bros. Film Premiere, 2021

Avail. 5/15
The Personal History Of David Copperfield, 2020 (HBO)
The Nevers, Part 1 Finale (HBO)

Avail. 5/19
Apple & Onion, Season 2A

Avail. 5/20
Adventure Time: Distant Lands – Together Again, Max Original
The Big Shot with Bethenny, Max Original Season Finale
Ellen’s Next Great Designer, Max Original Season Finale
Territorio (Aka Close Quarters) (HBO)
This Is Life with Lisa Ling, Season 7

Avail. 5/23
In Treatment, Season 4 Premiere (HBO)

Avail. 5/25
Cinderella Man, 2005 (HBO)
Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel (HBO)

Avail. 5/26
Curious George, 2006 (HBO)

Avail. 5/28
A Black Lady Sketch Show, Season 2 Finale (HBO)

Avail. 5/30
Mare of Easttown, Limited Series Finale (HBO)

Leaving 5/11
Mud, 2013

Leaving 5/13
Bullitt, 1968
The Searchers, 1956
Take Me Out To The Ball Game, 1949
West Side Story, 1961

Leaving 5/16
Annabelle Comes Home, 2019 (HBO)

Leaving 5/23
Mortal Kombat, 2021

Leaving 5/28
The Operative, 2019 (HBO)

Leaving 5/31
All About My Mother, 1999
All the President’s Men, 1976
Amistad, 1997 (HBO)
The Avengers, 1998
The Beguiled, 2017 (HBO)
The Bishop’s Wife, 1947
Black Christmas, 2019 (HBO)
The Blind Side, 2009 (HBO)
Blood Work, 2002
Blue Streak, 1999
Bombshell, 1933
The Book Of Henry, 2011 (HBO)
Book Of Shadows: The Blair Witch 2, 2000
The Bridges Of Madison County, 1995
Butterfield 8, 1960
Captain Blood, 1935
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, 1958
Cats, 2019 (HBO)
The Cider House Rules, 1999 (HBO)
Cinema Paradiso, 1990 (Director’s Cut) (HBO)
Cradle 2 The Grave, 2003
Critical Care, 1997 (HBO)
Cruel Intentions, 1999 (HBO)
The Dancer Upstairs, 2003 (HBO)
Dangerous Liaisons, 1988
The Dead Don’t Die, 2019 (HBO)
The Dead Pool, 1988
Death Becomes Her, 1992 (HBO)
Defending Your Life, 1991
Dirty Dancing, 1987 (HBO)
Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, 2004 (HBO)
Dolores Claiborne, 1995
Doubt, 2008 (HBO)
Downhill, 2020 (HBO)
Driving Miss Daisy, 1989
Drop Dead Gorgeous, 1999
East Of Eden, 1955
Emma, 1996 (HBO)
Emma, 2020 (HBO)
A Face In The Crowd, 1957
Father Of The Bride, 1950
Flipped, 2010
Giant, 1956
Heartbreak Ridge, 1986
Hot Fuzz, 2007 (HBO)
Hunger, 2008
Jaws, 1975 (HBO)
Jaws 2, 1978 (HBO)
Jetsons: The Movie, 1990 (HBO)
Justice League: Gods And Monsters, 2015
A Kiss Before Dying, 1991 (HBO)
The Last King Of Scotland, 2006 (HBO)
The Last Kiss, 2006 (HBO)
Lego: Justice League: Attack Of The Legion Of Doom!, 2015
Life As We Know It, 2010
Life With Father, 1947
Little Women, 1949
Living Out Loud, 1998
The Long Kiss Goodnight, 1996
Magnum Force, 1973
March Of The Penguins, 2005
The Matrix Reloaded, 2003
The Matrix Revolutions, 2003
The Matrix, 1999
Maverick, 1994
Misery, 1990 (HBO)
Mortal Kombat, 1995
Mortal Kombat Annihilation, 1997
Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge, 2020
Nell, 1994 (HBO)
Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always, 2020 (HBO)
Papillon, 1973
A Patch Of Blue, 1965
Phantom, 2013 (HBO)
Phantom Thread, 2017 (HBO)
Project X, 2012 (Extended Version) (HBO)
Ray, 2004 (HBO)
Richie Rich (Movie), 1994
A Room With A View, 1986 (HBO)
Sanctum, 2011 (HBO)
Scream, 1996
Scream 2, 1997
Scream 3, 2000
Se7En, 1995
Selena, 1997
Shaun Of The Dead, 2004 (HBO)
Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows, 2011 (HBO)
Skyline, 2010 (HBO)
Snakes On A Plane, 2006
Snow White And The Huntsman, 2012 (Unrated Version) (HBO)
Stuart Little, 1999
Stuart Little 2, 2002
The Thin Man, 1934
Tightrope, 1984
True Grit, 2010 (HBO)
Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family, 2011
Unforgiven, 1992
Veronica Mars, 2014
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, 2007
Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, 1966
X-Men: Dark Phoenix, 2019 (HBO)
X-Men: First Class, 2011 (HBO)
You Can’t Take It With You, 1938

Post Malone has kept busy lately. He’s getting ready to headline Rolling Loud, he launched new merch for his rosé brand, he got shot by Jason Statham (in a movie, not real life), and he performed at the Grammys. In terms of new music, though, it’s been about a year and a half since Post Malone released his latest album, Hollywood’s Bleeding. It appears he may be gearing up to drop not just one new project in 2021, but a pair of them.

In an Instagram post, Malone’s manager Dre London implied that he and Malone are in agreement that Malone should put out two albums this year. He also noted that one of these projects may arrive sooner than fans might expect, and that the title of one might be revealed soon. Sharing a photos of himself smiling while on the phone, he wrote, “Some would say thats the smile when the wire hits! But for me this isn’t true! It’s even bigger than that! This that smile while on FaceTime with @postmalone agreeing that the world deserves 2 Posty projects out this year! Discussing dates to drop the 1st one sooner than u think! I won’t tell u the title name just yet maybe next week.”

He actually is confirmed to drop something new, though, as he’s teaming up with the Calm app for an hour-long version of “Circles.”

What if Marriage Story but everyone is nice? Like, no one’s arm goes through a wall or the pain of enduring a gash. There are arguments, but you don’t so much feel people sprinting away from each other with a quickness or the effects of an explosive war. What if it was more like two people on separate rafts floating away from each other, hands outstretched? Wouldn’t that be a gut punch to see something so naturally attuned to the way magical beautiful things die if the tides don’t shift in their favor?

We Broke Up is all of those things, but it’s also funny, with a grounded and concise story and characters that cause you to invest deeply in an outcome that often feels like it’s teetering on being obvious before circling back.

The leads, William Jackson Harper and Aya Cash, are our friends from TV (The Good Place and You’re The Worst), and they’re charming and sometimes heartbreaking here as Doug and Lori, a couple dealing with the realization that they might want different things after years together. Directed by TV veteran Jeff Rosenberg (who co-wrote with playwright Laura Jacqmin), the film has a throwback indie feel while both leaning into and evading rom-com tropes. As the setting, there’s a destination wedding at the camp where Lori and her sister spent time as kids. There are also quirky family members, near hookups, and a runaway bride. But it’s all a misdirect to contrast the back and forth going on between Harper and Cash’s characters while they pretend everything is great to try and get through Lori’s sister’s wedding to a guy she only recently met.

When I spoke with Harper and Cash recently, the former Good Place star told me he was drawn to the way the film subverts those tropes and, particularly, the realistic way it handles a tough moment that some relationships reach.

“It just felt very real to me that sometimes things don’t disintegrate because of a huge transgression. Sometimes these [relationships] disintegrate because people are growing in different directions or want different things. And that’s hard. It’s a lot thornier. […] Eventually, you have to either agree to move forward or to let it go because there’s really not a middle ground to be found.”

This film will doubtlessly spark some reflection about your own relationships and the choices we all make along the way. It’s something Cash spoke to in a pitch-perfect way when describing to me the experience of being with her long-time partner and the many different versions of ourselves that we cycle through when with someone for that long.

“I find that I’ve been in many relationships over 16 years. I’ve been with different people, and it just happens to be the same person. What you want at 22 and what you’re looking for in a partner is different than what you want at 30 and 35. What you’re looking for in life changes and how you want to live your life changes as you grow up. And so I feel like I was lucky enough to find a partner who was also changing and growing, but we’ve definitely had periods of time where we’ve looked at each other and been like, ‘Do we want the same thing? Do we want this?’ The kids conversation, the marriage conversation. The markers of adulthood come up and you have to have a real reckoning on, are you on the same page about those things? So I feel like you have to constantly re-date someone and re-get to know them as you both change.”

For Harper, the experience of the film kicked up slightly uncomfortable questions about the way he has viewed his own relationship, specifically with the idea that we’re supposed to have an idea for what our life is supposed to look like. Something he says is a part of this story.

“[The film] is something where it made me revisit some things in the past where I’m like, ‘How many times did I make decisions or had conflicts that stemmed from not what I actually want, but what I want my life to look like?’ And that’s kind of a tough realization to have sometimes because it feels, I don’t know, vain is not the right word, but something about it feels like it’s not about the other person and with it not being about the other person that feels off to me. And so it just made me look back at times where I’ve leaned into that thought process more than I think is healthy.”

While there’s a heaviness around the main relationship, We Broke Up is still often rooted in comedy, playing on the awkwardness of navigating a wedding for a mismatched pair and the absurdity of grown adults throwing themselves completely into a batch of outdoor parties and drinking games while unlocking nostaglia and reliving the summer camp experience. There’s also heart, particularly with how Harper’s character is so deeply woven into the Cash character’s larger family.

All parts assembled, Rosenberg and Jacqmin deliver a story about the toughness of the ties that hold people together. Something that hits hard when compared to the flippant way relationships often come undone on TV and in films. This is also a story that feels incomplete. And I mean that in the best way. As Harper says near the end of our chat when I ask if he allows himself to imagine these characters a decade down the road, “there’s a whole hell of a lot of story left. [With] a huge journey that follows this.” And while a Before trilogy like run of stories and check ins seems unlikely and we may never see how this unfolds, we care enough about these characters and the tangible love that they have for each other from start to finish that we wish we could and we wish them well.

Fresh off of the success of Pulp Fiction, NBC was quick to snatch up Quentin Tarantino and have him direct an episode of its soon-to-be-smash hit medical series ER. Tarantino delivered “Motherhood,” the penultimate episode of the first season, which drew in 33 million viewers when it aired in May 1995. However, during a recent cast reunion, Julianna Marguiles revealed that Tarantino was apparently a little paranoid about NBC messing with his work, so he devised a crafty method of filming the episode that initially left the cast a little confused. Via IndieWire:

“When Quentin Tarantino came to direct us, he was such a big fan of the show, he only did one take,” Margulies said. “So they didn’t have a choice to edit. We would rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. We would do one take and he would go, ‘Great, let’s move on!’ And I asked him why he was doing that and he said, ‘It’ll be my cut no matter what.’”

Considering Tarantino is one of the biggest auteurs in Hollywood and has a signature style that’s been the catalyst for his success, it’s interesting to imagine a time when he was still afraid of studio interference and had to come up with clever methods to protect his work, even for TV. Especially since, back in the 90s, doing TV work was sometimes looked down on, with the days of Prestige TV and a blurring of the lines between big and small screens still a few years off. Although, one could argue that ER set the stage for TV to finally get the respect it deserved. Leave it to someone like Tarantino to be at the forefront of having prescient respect for the medium. In any event, whatever his reasons for doing it, this is still really, really funny.

(Via IndieWire)

Grammy-winning singer HER is hard at work on a new project and today, she revealed what it’s going to be called. Back Of My Mind. Incidentally, it’s also her debut album, as her prior efforts, the self-titled H.E.R. and its 2019 follow-up I Used To Know Her, were compilations of previously released material (a quartet of EPs bearing the same titles).

However, despite not having an official “album” to her name, the Bay Area singer has become one of music’s most accomplished artists over the past several years, with singles like “Focus,” “Damage,” and “I Can’t Breathe” charting on the Billboard Hot 100 and appearances alongside stars like Daniel Caesar, Jazmine Sullivan, and YG raising her profile to near-superstar status.

That status was sealed as she secured high-profile placements on the Judas And The Black Messiah soundtrack and sang the national anthem at the 2021 Super Bowl. Meanwhile, “I Can’t Breathe” won Song of The Year at this year’s Grammys, while “Fight For You” was nominated for a Golden Globe. She even jokingly tried out for Silk Sonic, Anderson .Paak and Bruno Mars’ new band, a placement that could help her net yet another platinum plaque in the near future.

There’s no release date yet for Back Of My Mind, but the notebook photo she posted on Twitter suggests she’s got at least of a couple of its unknown number of songs in the can already, while her new single “Come Through” is out now. You can listen to that below.

Sasha Sloan is on her way up. She dropped her debut album Only Child last year, and that was preceded by collaborations with artists like Kygo, Camila Cabello, Charli XCX, and plenty of others. Now she has expanded that last, as her latest single, “When Was It Over?,” is a collaboration with country star Sam Hunt. Sure enough, the acoustic ballad wears its country influence on its sleeve, and Sloan and Hunt’s vocals pair nicely on the emotional track.

Sloan says of the track, “‘When Was It Over?’ is about not being able to let go of someone even when you know there’s nothing left. [Co-writer Shane McAnally] brought the title into the room and Sam and I both loved it. The rest fell into place from there.”

While naming Sloan a rising pop star to keep an eye on in 2020, Uproxx’s Caitlin White wrote, “With one foot in the EDM world and another in the realm of soft songwriting, on her debut full-length, last year’s Only Child, she finally began to meld the two, bringing whispers of a drop and other energy-shifting elements to sparse, acoustic tracks. […] If you’re looking for 2020 gems that got overlooked, her debut is definitely one — and it’s more than likely the follow-up will be even better.”

Listen to “When Was It Over?” above.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The Inside The NBA crew has been together in their current form for over a decade, and as such it’s hard to avoid repeating yourself or coming back to the same topics at some point. At times this plays out in basketball debates, as Shaq, Chuck, and Kenny fall into the same arguments, but it also happens with their random tangents as well.

On Thursday night, the crew once again got into it over Shaq’s gas tank theory, in which he doesn’t want to fill his entire tank up every time he stops but just put in enough to get where he needs to go. It drives the rest of the crew nuts, as they point out he’s eventually going to have to put that gas in his tank again to go somewhere else, but he just refuses to back down from his stance. This time, Ernie Johnson had enough, begging them not to get into this same argument they’ve been in for four years now, but even Ernie’s despair couldn’t stop this train from going off the tracks as Kenny and Shaq allowed themselves to get riled up by Chuck once again about gas.

The cut to Ernie’s despondent face in the midst of all of this is why they win so many Emmys. It is truly some sensational production work. The best part is that Chuck got it started, knowing exactly what would happen and then just sat off to the side cackling while Kenny can’t help but engage with Shaq in the world’s dumbest conversation. Shaq breaking out stat sheets to try and illustrate his point is also tremendous, as if the problem here is that Kenny just needs a visual aid to understand his lunacy.

Ahead of Avengers: Endgame, theaters across the country hosted Marvel marathons by showing all 22 movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I like Marvel movies, but I would rather run an actual marathon than watch 22 movies in 59 hours. That is, in my professional opinion, too many movies. A less butt-numbing idea is to spread the marathon out over multiple weekends, like what Universal is doing with Fast & Furious.

A different Fast & Furious movie will be shown in select theaters every Friday between the end of April and June, when F9 comes out. The “Fast Friday” series begins with The Fast and the Furious on April 30, followed by 2 Fast Furious on May 7, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift on May 14, Fast & Furious on May 21, Fast Five on May 28, Fast & Furious 6 on June 4, Furious 7 on June 11, and The Fate of the Furious on June 18.

Best of all, the screenings are free. Not F9, though. You have to pay for that one (and it will be worth every cent).

You know what the Marvel and Fast & Furious marathons have in common? Vin Diesel. All I’m saying is, it’s not too soon to start planning a XXX retrospective ahead of the 20th anniversary next year… Anyway, to find out more information about “Fast Friday,” including how to get tickets and which theaters are participating, you can head here.

When I was growing up, first we had Street Fighter, and everyone was obsessed. We were like little drug addicts, congregating in liquor stores and dingy arcades, where kids from all walks of life would come together to beat up each other’s avatars in this irresistible game, and afterward wander around itching and begging for quarters like pre-pubescent crackheads. For a perfect snapshot of this time, there’s an episode of Baywatch where someone throws a beer can at Hobie, and then later Mitch smells it and thinks he’s been drinking, but it turns out Hobie was just playing Street Fighter in a weird little convenience store surrounded by delinquents instead, which is almost the same thing.

Have I set the scene well enough? Okay, well Mortal Kombat was basically the dingier, grosser, more extreme version of Street Fighter. If Street Fighter was Baywatch, Mortal Kombat was your uncle’s porn. We had to go over to the arcade in the bad part of town to play that one, a game with blood and gore where players openly vied to murder each other, just for the thrill of it. This was both revolutionary and seemed instinctively “wrong,” and everything about playing it made you feel slightly dirtier afterwards. This is all a long way of saying that for as much as I’ve ridiculed video game adaptations over the years, Mortal Kombat, an insanely dumb cash grab that I had to watch alone in my bedroom, shamefully, because it has far too much gore and swear words for my seven-year-old stepson, who surely would’ve loved it, made me feel almost exactly the same way.

Firstly I would recommend skipping the first 20 or 30 minutes of this movie. It sets up the plot and the characters but scarcely has a movie’s appeal relied less on characters and plots. It is meant to be viewed while chuckling stonedly at the catchphrases you recognize between asking “wait, what?” at the story developments. Paying too much attention to the latter spoils the effect.

All of the characters from the video games are there (I think?). Only now, some of them are part of Earthworld, while others are from Outworld, a meaner, more brutal version of Earth, that wants to dominate Earth, which it can by winning the latest iteration of Mortal Kombat. Outworld is a place that’s, like, bad, you see, and the Earthworld characters — among them Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, the glowing-eyed demi-God Raiden, and main character Cole Young, a family-man MMA fighter — have to defend it from the Outworld bad guys: Sub-Zero, Kabal, Shang Tsung, and various monsters. There, you’re caught up.

In essence, it’s the Avengers blueprint. Some bad guys from another world come here and want to rule. The difference here is that there’s no sheen of all this being some kind of social good, where powerful heroes are meant to both inspire and protect humanity. These characters are all just meat sacks for the grist mill, there to avenge their ancestors and satisfy our blood lust and nothing more. Yes, making an R-rated movie out of a nineties video game is a dumb idea, with inspiration that is purely commercial. Its very existence raises a number of questions. Is it for kids? If so, then why R-rated? And based on a game they wouldn’t remember? Is it for adults? Then why based on a video game for kids? Yet in this case, the entire endeavor is so pointless that it almost becomes art.

Something about Mortal Kombat‘s total lack of pretense towards nutritional value is weirdly refreshing. When Kung Lao, the character who wears the bladed hat, turned his hat into a circular saw on the ground and used it to bisect a bad lady in half lengthwise only seconds after she’d been introduced, complete with glistening CGI gore, I nearly cackled. Likewise, the constant and unnecessary swearing, presumably present only to make us feel like we’re sneaking cigarettes behind the autoshop building, is consistently entertaining, and a weirdly perfect complement for all the otherwise stilted dialogue like “Silence!” and “I have come back from hell to avenge my family.”

When Cole Young, the MMA fighter, and his wife, survive an attack by Goro, the four-armed monster, she tells her young teen daughter casually, while packing up the family’s things, “I just wanna get out of here, fuck another four-armed monster showing up.”

Fuck another four-armed monster showing up. I had to pause and rewind. This sentence belongs in the Louvre.

The whole movie is written like this, a mix of uncanny valley broken English videogame speak, Joss Whedonesque smarm, and a 12-year-old who just watched Eddie Murphy’s Raw for the first time. It evokes the same feeling that the Mortal Kombat videogame offered, that somewhere on Earth, there lived an unscrupulous man who believed that America’s youth desperately wanted to watch characters impale, behead, immolate, and bludgeon each other. He probably hated us, but he was right.

‘Mortal Kombat’ hit theaters this weekend and is available to stream via HBO Max. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.