WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP......SPECIAL 'COGNITIVE THE LIKES OF WHICH NO ONE'S EVER SEEN BEFORE' EDITION......

 

Trump proudly announces he passed his cognitive tests, proof positive of his high I.Q.......while his doctors refused to comment on rumors that Trump's test results in reality showed he possessed the cognitive abilities of a head of lettuce.....

Trump bails out Argentina at the expense of American ranchers...and further announces that Argentine beef will soon hit American supermarkets as New & Improved Trump Steaks....("But I promised our ranchers that they'll receive my own autographed coupons for jump-the-line status for those long lines for SNAP food.....oh, wait a sec....never mind, we'll get 'em Wal-Mart gifts cards....."

At long last, Trump's coming to realize he can't get around the 22nd Amendment  and run for third term in 2028....... but instead plans to purchase Jeffrey Epstein's island, rename it "Tropic of Trumpovia' and apply for his new kingdom's representation in the United Nations with Pam Bondi serving as official Ambassador....promised Trump, "It'll be an all new big beautiful country like no one has ever seen before.....and all young girls 17 and under will require no passport of visa and be given free hotel vouchers..."

To BQ visitors:  Happy and safe Halloween!

To "I never voted for THIS!" Trump voters:  Prepare for the horror show you DID vote for......starting with your sky high health insurance premiums....and for your dreams of 'America First', enjoy those steaks and hamburgers from Argentina....

'A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE'....OR: HOW WE LEARNED TO START WORRYING AND FEAR THE BOMB....

 A House of Dynamite (Netflix-2025)

     By now, you might have picked up on the angry buzz surrounding this film's deeply unsatisfying climax. More on that a little bit later in this review.

      Our instant impressions?  At least the first third of it is a superb white knuckle doomsday thriller in the tradition of Sidney Lumet's 1964 "Fail Safe". Once again, the clock tick tick ticks down on nuclear Armageddon, with the military, the NSA bigwigs and POTUS himself hopelessly trying to thwart the end of the world as we know it. 

     Director Kathryn Bigelow ("Zero Dark Thirty", "The Hurt Locker") knows how to pump up worldwide suspense and dread to the max. As the film restlessly bounces between its various desperate and alarmed high level players, we watch the inexorable trajectory of a nuke headed for ground zero Chicago. Who launched it? Who knows....since the Russians and Chinese claim their innocence.....

        A grand slam first third of the film, for sure. And then....kerflooey.....off the rails it goes.

        The film backs up all the way to its beginning and presents the very same events, only from different characters' perspectives. While Bigelow and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim are no doubt patting themselves on the back for their cleverness, the rest of us are rolling our eyes and emitting deep sighs.....

          So the second third of the film becomes exactly a duplicate of the first, only from different angles and through the viewpoints of different people. This much we know......all efforts to stop the missile have failed, in a few minutes Chicago's toast and an anguished POTUS (Idris Elba) has those few minutes to decide whether to wait to see if any of our adversaries admit it was mistake or should our Prez simply retaliate and nuke the most likely suspect right away. 

        From this point, to continue to provide a comprehensive review of this film, we MUST discuss the ending. Therefore, major SPOILER ALERT coming up......so if you've yet to see it and would rather experience the film first, by all means go for it and then please return to read the rest of this post. 

-------------------------------------------------------------

         And now the worst is yet to come. For an overwhelmingly aggravating third time, the film backs up yet again......same events, different perspectives. This time we do get to see Idris Elba as the POTUS stuck with the fate of the world in his hands...(he only existed as a phone voice in first two thirds).....

         And here's what really set viewers on fire....for the third and final time, the film stops short of showing the President's ultimate, world shaking decision. Essentially, the film declares...."okay, YOU figure it out among yourselves......discuss."

          So anybody waiting for those 1099 CGI animators to strut their stuff and treat us to the sight of Chicago blasted, melted and vaporized, forget it.

        (Come to think of it, Sidney Lumet didn't show us New York and Moscow blowing up in "Fail Safe" either but nobody gave him a friggin' hard time about it....) (What a deep disappointment the "House of Dynamite" would be for Trump if he watched the film....denying him the joy of watching the Windy City reduced to dust in the wind....)

        Believe it not, we at BQ didn't have that big a problem with that deliberately coy conclusion. It's clear that director Bigelow and writer Oppenheim's intentions here were to pose an always looming, terrifying situation and force us to ponder it. 

         But the problem arises from Bigelow's being too good at what she does, bringing the audience to the seat-of-their-pants excited anticipation for an expected gut-punch, powerhouse ending. It should've occurred to her that her deliberate academic, conversation-piece finale would make an audience think she was flipping them the finger.

       As for Oppenheim, his ruinous triple-timeline structure only made us think he'd been flipping the finger at us from the very beginning. His work here will stand as one the most self-sabotaging screenplays ever written and produced.....a disastrous idea taken to destructive  extremes. He dropped a nuke on his own film. 

       Here's what scared us to death even more than the film's attempts to do the same thing......instead of Idris Elba's obviously intelligent, decent, empathetic POTUS, we imagined these events happening for real......with the real President in office now, a mentally and physically declining idiot sociopath, an utter fool whose decaying mind believes only in the greater glorification of himself. 

       A thought more terrifying than anything this film serves up.  1 & 1/2 stars (*1/2).

'CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD'......SLASH TEST DUMMIES.....FROM HUSK TIL DAWN.....

 Clown in a Cornfield (2025 film) & Clown in a Cornfield book by Adam Cesare (2020)

     Offhand, we can't think of any other teen slash-'em-up that originated as a novel except this one, adapted from a book by Adam Cesare...(who's already written and published two subsequent sequels.)

    And it just so happens that we came across the book at a library sale, so we gave it a read after seeing the film. 

     Biggest non-surprise of all time: the book was better. 

      By that we mean that author Cesare managed to put a unique nasty spin on the slashers' motive (yes, there's more than one of them, made quickly apparent in both the book and film, so we're not guilty of spilling any huge spoilers here....)

       In doing so, Cesare elevated the story's principal theme into a darkly satiric commentary on the perpetual war of generations that's been waging since the 1950's across American culture and politics....clever and thrilling at the same time. 

         The film, directed and co-scripted by Eli Craig ("Tucker and Dale versus Evil"), barely taps into the book's main ideas. It settles for skimming through them as it delivers the usual snarky slasher movie wham-bams, filled with gory kills and the usual snarky teen banter. 

         And in a movie like this, as the producers and filmmakers know all too well, it's all about the kills and the quips. Are enough people eviscerated, stabbed, crushed and/or reduced to ripe, red human marmalade? And do the teens get to breathlessly spew out enough sarcastic comebacks as they flee for their lives?

        Using those standard guidelines, we suppose "Clown in a Cornfield" does a serviceable job and fulfills whatever minimal expectations slasher fans might demand for a Friday night tub 'o buttered popcorn time waster. 

       Anyone who's read the book however, would roll their eyes at the film's skimpy, bare bones, hop-skip-and-jump through whatever stuff it deemed usable to make a typical crowd pleasing slash-o-rama.

       So the extended showdown between the teens and their tormentors (a highlight of the book) comes off as rushed and chaotic in the film. 

       (And fair warning : horror buffs who fondly remember the sharp spoofery of director Craig's 'Tucker and Dale..' will find it only sparsely rationed out in small spoonfulls here....)

       Only one MVP stood out for us in the film's cast - female lead character (and obvious 'Final Girl') played with loads of adorable spunk by Katie Douglas. (who's been specializing in playing abducted teens in reality based Lifetime Channel movies....sheesh...). We wish her well and like to think better films and better roles are ahead for her....

        For the book, 3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2)

        For the film 2 stars (**).

'FINAL CUT'.....A SLASHER CRASHES A SLASHER MOVIE.....KNIFE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT.....

Final Cut by Olivia Worley (2025) 

 

     Just in time for spooky season (and for slasher movie buffs, perfect for anytime at all) comes this clever variation on what's become a regular genre all to itself, in both books and films........the 'Death and horror during the making of a horror movie' trope.

     Author Olivia Worley's affection for the genre shines through on every page and if films like the 'Scream' series are your particular cup of blood, you won't want to miss all the horrific fun as as a rising number of characters meet their gory fates.

     Everything's in place that you'd come to expect in stories about slashers and behind-the-scenes of low budget filmmaking. Aspiring young actress Hazel LeJeune has won the role of the 'Final Girl' or as we've all come to know and love, the last girl standing in a slasher movie. But not just any random slice-'em-up. . This one's a fictionalized account of a real life small town schoolteacher who slaughtered a bunch of his students...... and whose daughter, 3 years old at the time, was none other than Hazel.

     And now, 15 years later she's right back in the swampy backwoods town of Pine Springs, Louisiana, shooting what's more or less a re-enactment of her father's ghastly crimes on the actual locations. While her dad's still imprisoned, it's starting to look like someone else has decided to rack up an all new body count, using the cast and crew of Hazel's film as fresh victims. Talk about life imitating art.......Hazel realizes she'll need to make her role as Final Girl as convincing in real life as she's trying to achieve in front of a camera.

     As a lifelong horror fan, I had the best time with this book. Hazel's motley crew of castmates, suspects and victims are well drawn and the book delves into Hazel's own inner conflicts and fears.....as in: how much of her father's murderous impulses did she inherit? There's even a touch of meet-cute/opposites attract romance between her and her leading guy.

     What I also liked - the startling unique spin that author Worley put on the traditional climactic showdown, as well as the extra twists that start popping up in the final pages. And slasher connoisseurs won't be disappointed with the impressively high quantity of poor souls who......well, let's just say you won't see them in any sequels.

     For everyone,(like this reviewer) who can't get enough of this stuff......good times to be had with this one.  5 stars (*****)

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP......SPECIAL "HELL OF THE BALL" EDITION.....

 

Need we say more? 

We can't think anything more simultaneously funny and horrific than Trump's actual behavior. Is this reality....or are we all trapped in the same nightmare?

For some odd reason, Trump never threatens to deploy troops to cities in red states....oh...wait a minute....

A would-be Trump appointee bows out when he lets slip his Nazi-ism.....explained Trump, "That's okay, we've got a better job for him anyway, he'll be in charge of organizing a new branch of the military....Imperial StormTrumpers. Isn't that name wonderful? I thought of it myself, did you know that?"

In the midst of the endless government shutdown, Trump provides the country the perfect metaphor for what he's doing to all of us....taking a wrecking ball to the 'People's House'.  Boasted the President, "It will be the greatest, biggest ballroom in the history of all ballrooms, a ballroom the likes of which has never been seen on Planet Earth or any surrounding galaxies. We'll open it with a grand ball where everyone's invited to come, at $20,550.98" per ticket, so you should place your orders now before we sell out faster than we're selling out the country..."

Trump sues the Justice Department for 230 million dollars which, if awarded to him, would come out of taxpayer money....."It's only right that everyone pays me, because all those unfair prosecutions really hurt my feelings, so you'll all just have to cough it up.....I promise all the money I win will go to charitable causes....we're putting in a sauna and small indoor pool for Ghislain Maxwell's cell......"

Trump pardons convicted serial liar and grifter George Santos because he always voted Republican.....("He's basically a good boy, my little Georgie-Porgie, but everybody gets their hand caught in the cookie jar every so often, no big deal....and like a good little puppy, he always licked me...and more important, voted with me. Did you know he was also in line for the Nobel Peace Prize? He told me so himself...."

Speaker of the House Johnson continues to make up lame, pathetic excuses for not seating duly elected Arizona representative Adelita Grijalva....whose vote will help release the Epstein files....Stated the Speaker, "This has nothing to do with protecting Donald Trump and other pedophiles....oops, I mean...well...uh....never mind what I mean...."

Trump cancels all trade with Canada, enraged about a Canadian commercial that featured Ronald Reagan's speech about tariffs being stupid and destructive......("And they'd better watch themselves.....I put off the idea of invading and annexing Canada for awhile, but I'm gonna have Pete Hegseth look at those plans again....I'll end up makin' Americans out of 'em whether they like it or not.....")

s

Steve Bannon declares plans for a third Trump term already in place....because Trump is "a vehicle of divine providence...he's an instrument..." (And no, we didn't make up that last part....seriously.)  Millions upon millions of Americans partially agree with Bannon's description of Trump as an 'instrument'....since he is, in fact, the biggest tool who ever managed to become President.....

To BQ vistors: Happy, safe weekend to all!

To "But I never voted for this!!" Trump voters: See you at the Polls on November 2026....unless, of course, Trump cancels elections and has all legal American citizens (and Trump voters who don't like what he's doing) immediately detained and deported. 

'LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE FABULOUS STAINS'.....BETWEEN PUNK ROCK AND A HARD PLACE......

 Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains (1982)

     If you're thinking, 'Ah, BQ's unearthed yet another undiscovered gem!'.....well.....yes and no.

     Undiscovered? Not quite. Made in 1980, Paramount shelved it for a couple of years until it went into endless rotation on HBO and other premium cable movie sites. 

      And...der Bingo...a cult oddball was born among insomnia afflicted viewers who watched it repeatedly in the middle of the night....

      A gem?  Not quite. Raggedly and overall sloppy filmmaking were all too apparent but some powerhouse performances from future stars kept anyone who stuck it out enthralled.

       And talk about prescient.....the film offered up a battle cry for female empowerment and a take-no-prisoners attack on misogynist patriarchy. 

       It's a rise-and-fall story of a blatantly untalented punk rock girl band who become overnight pop culture sensations.....which they owe to their fearless, fierce leader 17 year old Corrine, played by then 15 year old Diane Lane. 

       Corrine's the tone deaf lead 'singer' of The Stains, comprised of herself, her sister Tracy (Marin Kanter) and their cousin Jessica (Laura Dern, then 13 years old), neither of which can play their guitars. Due to Corrine's growing notoriety from rage-filled, caught-on-camera public outbursts, the girls secure a place on a bottom-of-the-barrel rock tour of has beens and wanna be's.

        The Stains share the stage with The Metal Corpses, drugged-out, booze soaked, washed up acid rockers on their last gasp and the young British up-and-comers The Looters, fronted by their angry, in-your-face vocalist Billy (played by, prepare yourselves, then 23 year old Ray Winstone of "The Departed"  and "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull")

      The group's total lack of musicianship gets them booed off the stage until Corrine reveals a skimpy costume and delivers a 'f*** everybody' rant and a call to young girls to stop letting the world patronize, minimize and/or abuse them. Her defiant mantra, "I don't put out!" becomes instantly adopted by hordes of newly enraptured teen girls and young women.

      And a multi-media sensation is born, with the Stains' hustling, hungry agent agent (David Clennon) making big bank selling merch to their adoring fans......all of them outfitted like Corrine and her bandmates,  sporting multi colored skunk hair, bikini briefs and fishnet stockings. 

     Throughout its brief, rapidly paced running time, the film takes a gritty, sometimes on target satiric view of the music business underbelly. Its teeming cast of grifters, strivers and never-will be's are never less than fascinating to watch. And there's an equally cold eye cast on the media's bemused coverage of the ongoing loony circus provided to  them by all those colorful wacky folk with the long hair and guitars. 

        We're certainly no expert on the music  performed here, so we couldn't tell if the songs are accurate replicas of the bands' genres or merely smartass sarcastic jokes, like the faux country songs of Robert Altman's "Nashvile." To us, they sounded like a mixture of both......

        We do know for sure that the film's most plot pivotal scene rings completely false, a dumb, senseless  misstep that, in light of today's pop music world, rings false. On stage an enraged Billy, as revenge on Corrine for appropriating one of his songs, harangues the Stains' fans for falling for Corrine's manufactured rebel girl shtick and enriching her by throwing their money away on her merch. The film then wants you to believe that the army of fangirls instantly turns on Corrine, attacking her physically and pelting her with bottles of hair dye. 

        Maybe we're naive, but since when did rock stars making gobs of cash on albums, posters and T-shirts ever make them less popular with their fan base? As an experiment, we'd love to see someone try a updated version of Billy's speech on Taylor Swift fans, who just emptied their parents bank accounts to buy 8 copies of Taylor's CD because each one has a different color cover. Would it work? Would Taylor's Swifties hurl LP discs at her like lethal frisbees?  You tell us......

        But back to the movie.....as wobbly as it is (director Lou Adler and writer Nancy Down bitterly squabbled all through its production), we enjoyed every minute of it. In Diane Lane, Laura Dern and Ray Winstone you can catch a sneak preview of some of cinema's most talented forces-to-be-reckoned-with.....way back when. 

         And best of all, the film knowingly finishes with a funny sharp montage of The Stains' ultimate fate.....and all too true. (We wouldn't dare spoil it, other than saying it's worth staying to the end for...) 

       For BQ, that's enough for 3 stars (***). Worth checking out. 

     

      

'THE WIDOW'.....A LOW RENT LEGAL EAGLE LANDS A MURDER TRIAL....HIS OWN....

 The Widow by John Grisham (2025)

     Once again John Grisham proves that nobody knows lawyers, the legal system and the ins and outs of lawyering like he does. And he also knows how to take readers into the deepest weeds of jurisprudence and still somehow hold their attention without leaving them cross-eyed with confusion.

     But in "The Widow" the author's first attempt at a conventional whodunit, I myself would have preferred a little less time plodding through those weeds. The book maintains a measured pace throughout and that's even after the halfway point, when Grisham plunges his lead character into the most serious trouble a lawyer can fall into - a first degree murder charge for killing his client. At that point, I struggled to resist skimming through the pages and pages of unnecessary information to pick up the pace the book should've maintained al along.

     Small town Virginia lawyer Simon Latch isn't much of protagonist to root for, but I suppose it's a tribute to Grisham's storytelling skill that he throws enough woes in Simon's path that you end up in his corner anyway. Simon is barely eking out a living by writing wills and his soured marriage has flatlined. But into his office and life walks lonely 80-ish widow Eleanor Barnett who wants a new will to supersede the one written for her by unscrupulous lawyer Willy Thackerman. And Simon, with his dwindling bank account and massive gambling debts. can scarcely believe his luck......the widow's late unlamented husband left her a stock portfolio worth millions.

     Simon's eyes light up with greed, as he sees himself, swimming in cash as the eventual executor of Eleanor's estate, especially since she's bitterly estranged from her creepy, potentially violent stepsons. But is the widow's backstory about her vast hidden fortune for real or just a symptom of dementia? Just when Simon thinks he's verified the cash is in fact the genuine article, things go seriously south for him......a murder indictment with potentially the rest of his life spent in prison.

     And even with a top notch criminal defense attorney and a prosecutor's case built on flimsy circumstantial evidence, Simon faces a jury and a public fed up and disgusted with lawyers in general. So he'd better find the actual killer in a hurry before the cell doors clang shut on him permanently.

     All the byzantine legal eagle maneuvering, Grisham's forte, is fascinating up to a point until you realize it's slowing down the pace of the story, sometimes to a crawl. And to be blunt, the eventual whodunit reveal doesn't make for much of a stunner either. That didn't bother me all that much though, since Grisham' s great talent comes from his characters working their way out of the messes they've landed in, rather than any "Aha!" surprises.

     What did irk me and left me with a "What? That's it??" Where's the rest of it?!" dissatisfied expression was the book's abrupt final page....which I'm thinking will leave readers to wonder if they got a defective copy of the book that's missing a chapter. For a seasoned, veteran crowd pleasing best selling author, it struck me as a severe misstep and helped knock a star off this review's rating.

     3 stars (***).

'THE MIDNIGHT KNOCK'....WAY OUT WEST....AND THEN, WAY, WAY OUT....

 The Midnight Knock by John Fram (2025)

     I'm torn in multiple directions trying to coherently assess this book. Much of it left me in jaw dropping awe of its intricate structure supernatural myth building and its dazzling high wire juggling of every genre imaginable - murder mystery, violent crime thriller, blood dripping horror and even spectacular fantasy-science fiction.

     And much of it left me exhausted, confused, bored and impatient enough to bring me to the point of giving up on it altogether. Yes, this book came as close to bail out time as I've ever been in years.

     But then came its literally transcendent grand opera finale, filled with carnage, heartbreak, love, sacrifice, a good vs. evil showdown for the ages and even celestial, metaphysical spectacle. All of a sudden that book's incredible finish kept me nailed to the pages the same way it did when it started out........ as a mere pulpy road trip for disparate desperate characters through the lonely wilds of West Texas. .

     So how do I explain a story that's both brilliant and maddening in equal measures?

     I wouldn't know where to begin, except with a bare bones description of its initial set-up. Way out in that arid, forbidding and according to local legend, cursed desert highway, come a bunch of people either on the run or on the hunt. In one way or another, they're all connected to a ruthless criminal kingpin with a long arm when it comes to vengeance and bullet-riddled payback.

     And the forbidden road they're on leads them all to a strange motel sitting in the middle of nowhere,. Nothing about this place seems right starting with the peculiar twin brother and sister who own and manage it. Overlooking the property is an equally bizarre Victorian mansion exuding an aura of overwhelming dread and a looming dark mountain that seems to change shape and size every time you gaze at it.

     It doesn't take long for the motel's new guests to figure out their explosive, murderous confrontations will become the very least of their problems.

     That's about as much as I'd ever attempt to describe before "The Midnight Knock" launches its long tortuous, twisting path through multiple realities, revelations, monstrous visions, more than a few monsters, and that stunning climactic finale designed to leave readers stunned and satisfied.

     It's one crazy goulash of a book that really tested the very limits of my patience for it. If nothing else it shows that author John Fram is a creative force to be reckoned with and as much as I grew weary of whole chunks of this book, I wouldn't dare miss whatever Mr. Fram comes up with next.

     3 stars (***).

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP.....SPECIAL "YOUNG REPUBLICANS UBER ALLES!!" EDITION......

JD Vance dismisses the Young Republicans racist and Nazi posts as "just something stupid that young boys do....".....as millions upon millions of disgusted Americans dismiss anything coming out of JD Vance's mouth as..."just something vile, moronic and evil that a Trump toady does....

Dozens of journalists exit the Pentagon, refusing to sign Pete Hegseth's order to only report news that comes only officially from the Pentagon...news outlets also refused to sign an addendum to the order requiring reporters to wear T-shirts emblazoned with, "God Bless God, Guns 'n Trump"....

After glorifying himself as a peace maker, Trump promptly goes back home to wage his various wars against American cities......the Nobel committee reiterates that sending troops to invade Portland, Chicago and New York will most likely disqualify Trump from next year's peace prize as well......prompting Trump to immediately begin preparing a military invasion of Sweden and Oslo, Norway, where the Peace Prize is awarded....."we'll use the National Guardsmen from Minnesota and Wisconsin....they gotta lot of blond recruits, don't they? Guys who speak Swedish or Norway-ese or whatever the hell they babble in over there....I can promise you they'll grab that Peace Prize for me like it was Miss Universe's pussy...."

Masked (and morbidly obese) ICE goons continue to rampage through American cities, often detaining and brutalizing documented American citizens including roughly handling teens and children.....which prompts White House Dracula Stephen Miller to offer ICE agents a $500 dollar bonus for each slammed-to-the-ground suspect who's age 16 or younger.....and $1000 for each pregnant woman wrested to the pavement....

Trump jokingly admits he doesn't want to know what really goes on in Stephen Miller's mind....to which millions of sane, decent people in America and around the world reply,...."Neither do we...."

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt declares the Democratic Party is entirely made up of Hamas supporters, illegal aliens and terrorists.....and warns that Attorney General Pam Bondi will shortly commence an all-out effort to have all Democratic voters rounded up and sent to re-education camps in El Salvador Guantanamo Bay.....("and we might as well throw in any Japanese left over from those wonderful World War 2  internment camps too.....who knows what they might still be up to?"

Trump's descriptions of "war torn" Portland seem disproved by constant photos of quiet streets and costume protests....though at least one anxious resident expressed fear that there may be shortages of  the whipped cream he prefers on his Starbucks latte....

To BQ visitors: Happy "No Kings Day" tomorrow!

To "But I didn't vote for this!" Trump voters: Please remember that your very last chance to reclaim, redeem and save your souls (as well as the United States of America) arrives on November election day of 2026. Don't blow it.