There are indeed many reasons you should love Benny. After all, it’s only fair—BENNY LOVES YOU.
How much does this weird teddy bear-Elmo combination loves his person? A lot. Enough to kill for. Over and over again.
Horror-comedy isn’t easy. But the multitalented writer/producer/director/lead star of this production succeeds admirably. The man gets the tone just right, so that it’s wacky yet charming, murderous yet oddly adorable.
The protagonist of the story, Jack, the object of Benny’s affection, is a man-child who has been stuck in comforts of arrested development for 35 years and then abruptly thrust into adulthood. Swamped by changes, he has one constant in his life, his toy teddy that’s been with him since childhood. This teddy bear aims to help its person … no matter what. And true to his rather demented appearance, he has oodles of homicidal ideas on how to help.
Clever, hilarious, and all around awesome (not to mention British which elevates the jokes), this was a great random Prime video find. Check it out. And remember … Benny Loves You!

I don’t think this got talked about enough. I don’t think this got the attention it deserved. And to be clear, this deserves a lot of attention.
We live in the day and age of remakes, most of which are unnecessary. Dead Ringers isn’t just a remake, it’s a reinvention. In fact, it goes so far above and beyond the limitations of Cronenberg’s original, it almost makes you forget it ever existed at all.
Let’s face it—remakes are by and large a reflection of a creative stagnation. When studios have nothing new to say, they dust off the old successes and revamp them for new audiences.
And every so often, you get surprised, nay, dazzled, by a marvel like this.
Rachel Weisz (one of my all-time favorites and reliable excellent) has been doing such extremely interesting movies lately, which is no small task in business where it’s a struggle for a woman to remain relevant at all after a certain age. She is the mastermind and the beating heart behind this mini-series production, and while her behind-the-scenes work is obvious in brilliant choice of writers, etc., it’s difficult to think of that (or any other things for that matter) once she is on screen playing the infamous twins.
It truly is a career-making performance.  Yes, the technology has come a long way to make acting beside yourself seamless, but there’s more to it than that. There is an innate skill—a mastery—at bringing to life two characters so different and yet so similar, in all of their splendid disfunction.
In a song, this would be “I can’t live with or without you.” Their codependency is that profound. It goes well beyond right and wrong, well beyond social conventions or even science. Every boundary is pushed as the plot careens toward its inevitable devastating ending.
And as both the brazen, wild twin and the brilliant, mild one, Rachel Weisz will sock you, delight you, and break your heart over and over again.
On screen, she is magnetic. No matter the line—and she is given some spectacular lines here.
The production is likely too disturbing to be binge-worthy, but at the same time, it’s difficult to look away.
Blood-red in dress and style, visceral and incisive, this is purely brilliant.
And oh so clever, too, in what it says about the way the modern society regards and treats women: the barbaric regulations and obscene expectations.
I’m not usually a fan of didactic narratives as they tend to overwhelm the plot, but Dead Ringers does it exactly right, with marvelous subtlety.
There’s so much more I can say about how much I loved this, how it stayed with me long after watching, and so on, but in service of succinctness, I’ll stay with this—watch this. Do yourself a favor, watch this and be reminded of what quality entertainment ought to be like.
It’s one of the best things I’ve seen in a long, long time. Recommended.

Jordan Peele has done it again. Jordan Peele has made (produced to be clear, not directed) a scary movie about race. Jordan Peele has a unique biracial perspective that he has done every twist and take on during his five years in comedy as 50% of the ingenious Key and Peele duo.
But no, he hadn’t. Turns out all this time he had more to say and now he can’t stop, won’t stop going on about it.
Should race be talked about? Yes, you bet. A lot. Is the conversation going to fix it? Unlikely, but it is still a conversation that needs to be had. Should it be had the way Peele does it? Well…debatable.
In comedy, Peele was subtle, unbiased, he poked fun at every side of the issue, every stereotype, every cliché. In horror, Peele is serious. And serious Peele is a tediously proselytizing Peele with messages as heavy-handed as fake news on social media, albeit in good cause.
And this heavy-handedness ruins every movie Peele goes near, time and again. This one he didn’t even direct; he produced it and was one of the three co-writers. And it was still tedious.
The difference here is that why his two previous most famous movies were original works, this one is a remake of sorts, meaning there is already a preset standard, a certain quality to uphold, a source material to do justice to.
Well, dear readers, sadly Peele doesn’t do the original justice. Nowhere near it. I’m a huge genre fan and the original is one of my all-time favorite movies.
And guess what? The original was still about racism. It just wasn’t pie-shoved in your face the way Peele likes to do it.
With this new and updated version, Peele decides to cover all racism in America, of all eras, making the central character a recurring one throughout time.
But first…meet Anthony played by the reliably good Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. Anthony is an artist, we know this right away because he wears his too-tight pants rolled up too high and a beanie on the very top of his noggin, also rolled up, even inside.
Anthony, as evidenced by his art to begin with, appears to have no talent whatsoever, but has managed to finagle his way into art world all the same, owing it in no small way to his wealthy art curator girlfriend. Anthony is obnoxious, mediocre, and a sloppy drunk to boot, but he’s built like an Adonis, irresistible to women, and gets away with whatever. For a while.
Anthony becomes fascinated with a certain local legend revealed to him by the local laundromat worker played by Colman Domingo. Soon, Anthony is sneaking around old, abandoned projects and playing at the mirror games one really, really ought to leave alone.
Of course, those who know, do. It is made very clear throughout the movie, over and over again, but people do it anyway, because without stupid people, horror movies wouldn’t work.
Anthony just does it because he’s a jerk that way.
Soon there are bodies stacking up all around Anthony, gutted and hooked to death. But at least his art at last becomes interesting.
Soon Anthony is toeing the dangerous line between knowing and becoming. For if the legend is to stay alive, it’ll need fresh bodies.
 
That’s basically it. Despite having three writers and a terrific (if barely credited) source material, the movie is only just over 90 minutes and isn’t that good for any of it. Sure, there are some fun scares, some interesting visual choices, clever use of shadow puppetry, perfectly decent acting throughout, but it all gets completely overwhelmed by the weight of the “Peele message.”
 
The end result leaves a lot to be desired. The potential is there. The movie just doesn’t get to be the frightfest it’s meant to, because it doesn’t stop preaching long enough to permit it.
 
 
This review was difficult to write. It’s almost impossible to talk about race in this day and age. Unless you’re Jordan Peele. For whom it is impossible to stop or moderate.
 
But if you take a moment to actually read and digest what I’m trying to say, I believe you’ll see that it says the following:
 
1.I’m a huge genre fan and a fan of Peele’s.
2.I believe race conversations are important, but they should not overwhelm their chosen medium (movie in this instance)
3.I believe Peele has a unique perspective on race (personally and generally) and I’m interested in hearing what he has to say about it and in his experience, but not the way he does it in his movies
 
But there’s an ocean of misinterpretation between what a person writes and what people read so there…
 
The movie got pretty low ratings, so I wasn’t the only one thinking it wasn’t up to par, but then again it tripled its budget, so in the world of money (the only world that matters in this day and age) it did well.
The fans of the original might be disappointed.
The thing is, there is a way to talk about race in scary movies. There really is. The Purge movies (at least the first few, I’ve not seen the latest yet) have done it. They have a great and sound internal logic. Their stab (pardon the pun) at the social structures that create the racial divisions, they take on the powers that be. Peele’s didactic is monotone, nuance-free, and instead of adding to the story, it overpowers and detracts from it.
 
Anyway, that’s my take on the movie. If you have any thoughts, drop a comment below.