Jawsphobia

This documentary hosted by Matt Walsh has more style than expected, and Walsh holds back on the snarky hostility that marks his youtube videos.

He seems quite cordial in all of his interviews where the elephant in the room is that he expects many of the experts and professors to lie to him in one fashion or another. There is humor to be found in it and also moments that will engage anger from one side or another. It gets into the history of the current climate in regards to sex determined by chromosomes and gender determined by everything from environment to personal whim. Kinsey - it turns out - did not get his data from the general public but from prisoners. My only knowledge of Kinsey came from the Liam Neeson film. It might be worth keeping a notebook handy so you remember what to fact check when it is done. Might experimental or artificial hormones cause cancer after ten years of use? Is seven years after physical transition a crisis time for those who have undergone it? Is it considered transphobic to ask questions and find out what has gone wrong in some cases as one survivor claimed?

Some of the interview subjects must regret participating, because Walsh gives them plenty or rope to hang themselves. The doc does touch on various perspectives and seems to be interested in the truth, as opposed to Matt Walsh's truth or someone else's truth -- and that is enough to make some interview subjects visibly angry. Rather than paraphrase anything, from interviews with athletes to an interview with Jordan Peterson, or a discussion with Dr. Phil I'd rather say that were it up to me this documentary would be mandatory viewing in junior High School. There are people being persuaded by extreme pockets of the Inter-net that all is well with a myriad of claimed genders looking for affirmation and then there is the opposite insular bubble that might eagerly seek out this documentary for confirmation bias.

Preaching to the choir is not very productive, even if on Walsh's youtube channel there might be an advantage in appearing as insensitive as possible to reassure the more conservative viewers who are his bread and butter. This doc is at least walking a fine line because it is letting people react. Most of this movie was done already when Ketanji Brown Jackson was being questioned anticipating her appointment to the US Supreme Court and stated that she could not provide a definition of woman. Her quote, "I'm not a biologist" became a popular joke in unrelated youtube discussions. That clip is shown during the film's ending credits, having boosted the theme What is a Woman to a point where had the doc been made afterward more of those on screen would have had their guard up.

There is a case due for Canadian court for November 2022 where a father objected to his Thirteen year old daughter being scheduled for transition steps to be taken and he went to jail for mis-gendering her. People will draw their own conclusions about whether that sounds excessive. And whether it is better to have a few bold documentaries like this one or just have people walk on eggshells or play "Mindfield hopscotch" to borrow Tina Fey's term for discussion these days.

Terror on the Prairie is a gritty and grounded western. I might have eventually been tempted to pay for this one to support it as a Gina Carano venture after her unjust removal from Lucasfilm. Unlike the trailer, there is no musical score.

The film relies on sound effects and the inherent tension of each scene without tipping the scales to tell us how to feel. The trailer also gave the impression that the threat in the story might come from indigenous characters, which might be par for Daily Wire. But in the movie proper, we immediately see that the white villains are doing the scalping. The baddies are Confederates who resent losing the Civil War, and they are the ones making a show of praying and quoting the Bible. THAT is a pleasant surprise considering what might be expected from a Ben Shapiro production. Gina Carano is not playing Cara Dune from The Mandalorian here, but a regular grounded person who has who is not an expert marksman. The indigenous characters glimpsed in the trailer appear early on to recruit Gina's character to help stitch up an injured woman from their tribe. It is not clear just why they think a white woman will naturally know how to do the operation and why none of them can. But it works out and they give her a token gift in thanks that will come in handy later.

Oddly enough, Terror on the Prairie while an excellent movie is not ideologically different from typical Hollywood approaches to the Western genre. And that is a compliment.

These days I rarely enter an IMDb review. And when I have in the past it has usually been to offer an under-represented opinion. Here goes:

I suspect that some critics are triggered by bits that appear in trailers for the film, like the running joke that Will Ferrell kisses his father John Lithgow as Mel makes wry commentary on it. What someone today might call "gay panic" or "homophobia" is actually better described as CULTURE SHOCK, a term without so much judgment. It is all part of a character arc and effectively underscores the difference in parenting styles at the heart of the movie's conflicts.

This movie opened on my father's birthday, which might have been a good time to see it (or a terrible weepy time) but I had to work. I finally saw it and had the cinema all to myself on a Friday afternoon. The movie deserves more success. It is about on par with most Christmas dysfunction movies like Christmas Vacation. Watching a few of the set-piece moments, especially where they culminate, I am flabbergasted that critics have been hostile. Rotten Tomatoes guaranteed fresh the remake of Ghostbusters and this movie gets a splat? Something is rotten besides tomatoes in the state of Denmark.

The movie skewers gun safety, drinking, and Christmas rituals --- while introducing something I've never heard of: Do people dress as characters in public Nativity scenes? Overall, I found the movie pleasant and mild. The actors are all charming, even the model girlfriend who actually does have a discrete character that isn't quite a cliché.

You can safely disregard any review by a Mel Gibson hater. Adam Carolla's co-host reported Mel saying some quite correct and positive things about the trend of holding abusers accountable, but then she couldn't resist what she called a "refresher" on Mel's past troubles. Those kinds of "refreshers" tend to leave out CONTEXT!!!! and also tend to omit the factor of alcoholism and bipolar disorder, two valid obstacles which I am pleased to see him overcome. He is quite funny in this. I hope he keeps acting (and directing).

There is a fun movie within a movie that is an interesting commentary on Hollywood taste. The movie had me laughing (albeit alone in an otherwise empty theatre) and pretty much smiling the rest of the time. I found it to be a notch better and funnier than the original. Will and Mark are a bit more grounded here. The one scene that didn't work for me as physical comedy was a snow blower catching a string of Christmas lights and pulling it dangerously around, only because it reminded me of a cable snapping in the Piranha remake and slicing someone. The possibility of serious injury was prolonged a few seconds too much. But most of the movie is about little mundane moments and conflicts people can rise above. The ending is Christmas Movie cheesy and that is okay with me.