"Silicon Cowboys" Review

 Even if you're not a tech nerd like me, you probably recognize names like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Steve Wozniak as founders of Microsoft and Apple. But how about Rod Canion, Jim Harris, or Bill Murto? Those names ring any bells? Me neither despite being a older Gen Xer nerd who remembers the wild early days of computers in the late-70s/early-80s and whose first computer bought in 1997 was made by the company they founded: Compaq. And I had no idea how revolutionary Compaq was until watching Silicon Cowboys, a fascinating documentary about the early years of the firm.

Founded in late-1981 by the trio, all Texas Instruments employees in Houston who wanted to do something on their own, their Big Idea was to make a portable ("luggable" was the term for this 27 lb box) computer that would have the display and disc drives in a housing with a removable keyboard that would be fully compatible with software written for the IBM PC. IBM was the 800 megaton gorilla (to mix metaphors) in the market owing to their long history in mainframe computers. The idea that some guys from Texas could challenge Big Blue was like if someone decided to form a startup to challenge Google now.

 The key to compatibility was the microcode in the BIOS (basic input/output system) embedded in chips in the PC. While everything that comprised IBM's PCs was off the shelf parts anyone could buy, to run the software required this code and that was copyrighted. IBM was able to shut down "PC clone" makers for infringing on their code.

So Compaq would need to write a BIOS by trial and error without referencing IBMs code. When the head engineer bought and IBM tech manual and found out all the calls were documented, he was off the project because he'd seen the code. Anyone who got these manuals had to have those pages removed and destroyed before they could have them. They just ran software until it failed then figured out why it failed until they had their own compatible BIOS that had no IBM code on it. They couldn't be shut down.

The Compaq portable was a smashing success and the company took off like a rocket becoming the fastest to enter the Fortune 500 and to reach one billion dollars in sales. IBM remained cocky and arrogant and Compaq ate their lunch, reaping massive sales and market share. Finally the Empire struck back, threatening them with patent infringement suits unless they paid up. While the critical microcode wasn't at issue, IBM had skads of patents on everything and to fight the cases to prove unique development would've been too costly, so Compaq paid the greenmail.

Then IBM tried to wipe out the clone market with their PS/2 series which implemented a new architecture called Micro Channel which added some sorely needed features, but would also require everyone to buy only Micro Channel compatible peripherals. Considering some firms had massive investments in PCs and supporting equipment, this was too big an ask. Then Compaq led a consortium of other clone-makers to announce an standard called EISA which added the advances of Micro Channel while maintaining the compatibility with existing peripherals. IBM was trapped by their greed and need for control.

 But it wasn't all smooth sailing for Compaq as eventually hungry upstarts like Dell (founded by Michael Dell in his UT-Austin dorm room in 1984) pressuring them on price which led to the their first quarterly loss ever, layoffs, and the dismissal of their co-founder/CEO Canion less than a decade after launching this rocket. (Some gratitude, huh?)

 20 years after its founding, Compaq merged with HP to form the largest PC company in the world, but the documentary downplays how it was generally considered to be a bad deal for both sides, leading to turmoil in stock prices, layoffs, and general drama. The Compaq name pretty much is extinct by now. As for IBM, they exited the PC market a few years later, selling the operation to Lenovo. 

At a tight 77-minutes long, Silicon Cowboys is a very illuminating look at what is a semi-forgotten, yet seminal period in the computer revolution. When I spotted it perusing the virtual shelves of Prime Video, I thought it sounded like the first season of the AMC series Halt and Catch Fire and I was correct as the shows co-creator, Christopher Cantwell, appears and clips of the show are used to illustrate events in the development of the first Compaq. (It was a good show, but sadly got pulled off Netflix and put behind the AMC+ paywall.)

Director Jason Cohen makes it easy to follow which of the old white guys telling the story we're watching by flashing their names & old ID photos on screen even after they've been on several times and spices things up with tons of archive footage including the cringiest "rap" video promo called "PacRap" that's even more horrible than you can imagine. Since all the key players were still alive to participate for this 2016 doc along with journalists, historians, and IBM execs to present their perspective, we're given a pretty balanced narrative that doesn't whitewash too much that I could tell.

While this may be a bit dry for non-nerds, anyone interested in the history of the tech we take for granted and how Compaq proved that portability would be the killer app should give Silicon Cowboys a watch.

Score: 7/10. Catch it on Amazon Prime. 

"Violent Night" Review

 Previously reviewed here two years ago and my general thoughts still stand, but I've lowered the score from the above-average 8/10, to the slightly below average 6/10 because the pace is slower than I'd noticed with the mayhem last time. It's not bad and perhaps for first-time viewers it will have the same initial kick, but second time around the issues are more noticeable.

Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable/streaming. (Currently only on Starz.)

"Red One" 4K Review

 Less a movie then a massive business deal amongst long-running associates, Red One came out briefly in theaters where it disappointed commercially, except were were told that it didn't really matter because it was always heading for Amazon Prime so who cares how much it made? This was after a surprising amount of negative publicity concerning The Rock's Dwayne Johnson's prima donna behavior on set which allegedly added tens of millions to the production costs. This was especially ironic because of the beef that erupted between Rock & Furry Fastness kingpin Vin Diesel where Rock (it's less typing) called out lazy "candy-ass" behavior of Diesel on the production of 2017's The Fate of the Furious.

Then there's the stars and filmmakers involved: Director Jake Kasdan directed both of the Jumanji reboots starring the Rock. Writer Chris Morgan wrote every Furry Fastness movie from 3 (Tokyo Drift) through 8 (Fate of...) and the mediocre Hobbs & Shaw spinoff as well as Shazam! Fury of the Gods which co-starred Lucy Liu and whose first produced credit was 2004's Cellular which starred a pre-superhero Chris Evans. The story was by Hiram Garcia, producer of at least 16 previous Rock movies and TV shows.

 It's a tight group of creatives who have made a ton of money making mainstream popcorn entertainment, not that there's anything wrong with that. So why is Red One just another flat-feeling, made-for-streaming, forgotten-immediately-after-viewing piece of content like too much of what the Rock is putting out like the equally forgettable Red Notice for Netflix? (Quick: Who were the co-stars of that one? I'm not even asking what the plot was, just who the co-stars were when they've starred in their own vehicles which have made hundreds of millions of dollars. Give up? Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool) and Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman). See what I mean?)

 After a redundant prologue to set up that Jack O'Malley (Evans) was destined for the Naughty List as a kid, we meet him as he weasels his way into a university's seismology laboratory to attach a tap to the data lines. From stealing someone's coffee to a child's lollipop, he's all about himself. He's also a deadbeat non-parenting sperm donor to Dylan (Wesley Kimmel, nepo baby of unfunny crybaby Jimmy), whose mother, Olivia (Mary Elizabeth Ellis, It's Always Sunny), is a doctor who married some great guy who we never see and is unavailable, so Jack needs to pick him up from school. Apparently, this was some quick fling, but she's guilting him about not wanting to attend Dylan's school performances.

Meanwhile, we meet Rock's Callum Drift (what kind of name is that?), the head of Santa's (J.K. Simmons, being money as always) security detail. He's losing his faith in people being good and submits his resignation to Nick on Christmas Eve. But then Nick is kidnapped from the North Pole, so the race is on to find him in time to save Christmas.

The Director of MORA (Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority), the secret agency that enforces the peace treaty between mythological creatures and humans and isn't at all ripped-off from Hellboy's s Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (B.P.R.D.), Zoe Harlow (Liu), rightly figures that Jack supplied the data to find the North Pole's shield barrier (which is totally not ripped-off from the camouflage hiding Wakanda from the world in Black Panther), but realizes he didn't know what the data was for. Appealing to his mercenary sensibilities, she offers to double his money to help trace the path back to who initiated the caper leading to world-spanning hijinks.

The mastermind of the plot is Gryla (Kiernan Shipka, Mad Men), an Icelandic winter witch who was a former lover of Krampus (Kristopher Hivju, Game of Thrones, The Fate of the...oh look, another connection), who happens to be Nick's estranged brother which raises some unsettling questions considering Nick is a jacked human - no jolly round elf he - and Krampus is a 12-foot-tall goat-man, and whether he was involved. At first I thought Gryla was going to be some angry girl who didn't get the Barbie she wanted due to Shipka's youth and demeanor, but her actual plan is totally not ripped-off from Thanos to a degree.

 Will they rescue Nick in time to save Christmas because it's totally not a holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ unrelated to the secular commercial season that glommed onto it. Will Jack & Cal rediscover the Spirit of Christmas and will Jack begin to be a father to the teenager who another man has been raising as his own for years? Duh.

Even when the destination is a foregone conclusion, it's possible to make the trip entertaining and Red One simply doesn't deliver the presents. It feels rote and tired, beginning with Rock's performance. I don't know if the drama preceding it adversely colored my perception, but Rock has always excelled at knowing just what kind of movie he's in and delivering the performance that's needed. But not here. This is a phoned-in candy ass performance where it feels like he felt showing up was all that was needed without turning on the charm. And his "power" is the ability to shrink himself down to a 30-inch version of himself in a manner totally not ripped-off poorly from Ant-Man during fights.

Evans is equally lackluster as he recycles his same persona that he's used since ending his decade as Captain America, the fast-talking-saying-nothing chatterbox he's been in Knives Out, The Gray Man, Ghosted and Pain Hustlers. The range he used to have a decade ago in roles as varied as Snowpiercer, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Sunshine and Push as well as seven Captain America and Avengers films is still missing and he needs to find it again.

Kasdan's direction is adequate. He has experience with VFX-heavy genre movies from the Jumanjis (I saw the first one and like it; didn't see the second) and the VFX are top-notch and seamless, but the overall tone is dark, both visually and tonally. Why is the North Pole a dark Blade Runner-feeling world. OK, it's dark up there in the winter, but a magical kingdom run by a guy who can deliver presents to billions of people in one night can't light it up like Times Square?

But the story, especially with Jack's son is muddled by him not really being his father. It all feels like plot contrivance to get a treacly ending. Estranged parents are a common trope of Christmas movies, so why introduce this stepfather figure only to sideline him? It would've been better if he had no idea he had a kid or to have him be divorced from Olivia. (Why do I need to even be thinking about this?)

While Red One isn't a particularly bad movie, it's not a good movie. If feels like a project generated by ChatGPT to fill the schedules (and pockets) of a cozy group of makers and cast members who wanted something to do without really needing to tell this story out of passion. When even the disposable entertainment feels cheap, that's not good.

Since Amazon hides the Dolby Vision and Atmos audio behind their additional ad-free tier, the presentation was just HDR10 with 5.1 audio. It's nothing spectacular to show off your home theater setup with, so if you're just watching in HD, you're not missing much except more detail in the gloomy scenes.

Score: 5.5/10. Catch it on Amazon Prime.

"Carry-On" 4K Review

While Netflix's prestige Oscar-bait film Maria dropped last Wednesday, Friday is reserved for their passable popcorn fluff titles and this week's entry is the high-concept thriller Carry-On. Does it make its flight or end up in lost luggage? Let's find out.

Taron Egerton (Kingsman series) stars as Ethan, a TSA agent at LAX whose girlfriend, Nora (Sofia Carson, the Disney Descendants series), is newly pregnant. Their relationship is under some strain because he's kind of a listless vessel, underachieving in work and life. He shows up late for work on Christmas Eve and still asks his boss, Sarkowski (Dean Norris, Breaking Bad), for a promotion and is nearly laughed out of the room due to his lack of initiative.

However, a co-worker, Jason (Sinqua Walls, Friday Night Lights), suggests he take his place on the X-ray machine so he can work crowd management and Sarkowski reluctantly agrees. Jason feels bad for Ethan because he's only been there a few months and already gotten promoted twice while Ethan has been there three years and gone nowhere career-wise.

Unfortunately for Ethan, this means that when a bin comes through his machine with an earpiece in it and a note to stick it in his ear, he is now trapped in a scheme where the man on the other end, the nameless Traveler (Jason Bateman!), calmly informs him that unless he lets a specific bag pass through his scanner, someone will die, specifically Nora. With an accomplice, the Watcher (Theo Rossi, the kinky shrink in The Penguin), monitoring the security cameras, and a third, never seen, accomplice breaking into houses to gather intel - and initially intended to grab Jason's wife and kids as he was supposed to be on the machine - the Traveler is always ahead of Ethan frantic attempts to save Nora and the airport from the deadly carry-on.

Simultaneously, a LAPD detective, Cole (Danielle Deadwyler), investigating the murders of two Russians whacked by the Traveler earlier, is closing in on the airport as a possible destination for a suspected nerve gas weapon. When Ethan's failed attempt to call 911 is correlated to her case, she's on the move.

Carry-On is a decent, albeit predictable, potboiler that mostly succeeds due to Jaume Collet-Serra (Black Adam, The Shallows, four 2nd-tier Liam Neeson movies) taut direction because the screenplay by videogame writer T.J. Fixman, with additional uncredited input by Michael Green (Blade Runner 2049, Logan), is trope-heavy to the point you can spot which tertiary characters are going to be killed off the moment they're introduced. We also have to suspend disbelief that the Watcher has magical hacking powers to access information instantly and that he is able to find a convenient sniper vantage point in a parking structure where he can see Nora in the terminal. (To paraphrase Cinema Sins, convenient vantage point is convenient.)

Egerton is appropriately frantic as the man who finally finds something worth putting in the effort for and Bateman is surprisingly chilling as the low-key mastermind orchestrating this far-fetched scheme.

As far as passable yet forgettable Netflix Original movies go, Carry-On delivers what it says on the tin. You're paying for Netflix, so may as well watch it. It's not a waste of time.

Score: 6/10. Catch it on Netflix.

"Dominique" 4K Review

Here's how Dominique opens: We see a Jeep with three Colombian men driving through the jungle, arriving at a crashed small airplane. They open the hatch and spy a large crate bound with chains, so lug it outside. One of them goes to investigate the pilot and finds a blonde woman inert at the controls, unconscious or dead. He notices her cleavage in a gratuitous closeup and begins to fondle her because oink. He then notices hundred dollar bills tucked under her clothing and pulls out a knife to cut her seatbelt off when to the surprise of no one, she awakes, snatches the knife from him and stabs him repeatedly, spraying blood all over the cockpit window and her. She then goes outside and whacks the other two men, taking their truck, burying the crate and heading into town. Alrightee then!

That's our introduction to the titular character played by Ukrainian-Scandanavian actress Oksana Orlan (more about how you haven't heard of her either later), so we're clearly in for some grindhouse antics. She goes to a bar where a middle-aged Amazonian blonde (she's 5'11") chugging tequila doesn't really blend in. A local, Julio (Sebastián Carvajal), introduces himself and she clearly takes a liking to him because she's immediately back at his place, having her way with him. (Grrrl Powah! Girls on top!)

The morning after, she discovers he's a local policeman when he puts on his uniform, but he leaves this woman whom he'd just met and boinked home to hang out with his very pregnant sister, her two kids, and his elderly wheelchair-bound father, while he goes to work for the exceedingly corrupt police Chief Santiago (Maurice Compte, Narcos), who uses the police as an army for the local cartel boss. But Julio is the One Good Cop and meets with an Internal Affairs officer to provide video evidence of the atrocities being committed only to learn the hard way the the cop cops are also corrupt and it ends very badly for him.

 Santiago sends a half-dozen cops to get the laptop with the original files from the home, but Dominique kills them all. He them parlays with her, telling her that if she gives him the laptop that night, he'll spare Julio's family. Knowing that's a lie, she fortifies the home and lots of killy hijinks ensue.

 Now I'm a fan of revenge flicks and hot kickass women kicking ass, so why am I giving Dominique a Skip It? To explain requires massive spoilers, so let me run down what sorta works first.

When the trailer for this arrived, looking like "female John Wick meets Desperado" I looked it up on IMDB and was puzzled why this movie even existed considering it has zero stars - the closest to a recognizable face is Compte who has a bunch of TV series credits - and Orlan's IMDB page's most recognizable past projects were 2005's xXx: State of the Union (the one with Ice Cube instead of Vin Diesel) where she played the uncredited Trophy Wife and Michael Bay's The Island where she was the uncredited Rich Woman. And also she's now 51-years-old.

Alright, so you have a middle-aged former model with almost no prior roles of note who looks a lot like Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon and an exhibited acting range similar to Keanu Reeves (not that these roles require a ton of emoting). Perhaps the director/writer/editor Michael S. Ojeda is someone? Scanning his IMDB......annnnnd nope, nothing much except 20 episodes as a "recreations director" for a show called Deadliest Warrior which took the question of "Who would win a fight between Jesse James and Al Capone or Vlad the Impaler versus Sun Tzu?" and made a show of it.

However, he does have two relevant listings: First a direct-to-video thing called The Russian Bride which starred Orlan as, well, duh, mail-ordered by evil billionaire Corbin Bernsen and a short film called Rise of the Phoenix where Orlan starred as a woman named...wait for it...Dominique. This was made in 2015 and clearly was the demo reel to get the feature funded. Orlan is co-credited with coming up with the story so it's like Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman's collaboration creating The Bride for the Kill Bill films if you ordered from Temu.

 So, is Ojeda a pulp grindhouse visionary or something? Not that Dominique indicates. He has a jittery handheld aesthetic that reminded me of Robert Rodriguez's El Mariachi in its rawness and the story and execution of the action scenes is adequate for the caliber of the production this is.

But where it all goes wrong requires spoiling the ending, so if you're still down for a lean and mean low budget revenge action flick that will leave you angry at the end, go for it. It was riding a 5/10, Catch It On Streaming review until the end so perhaps you can overcome it.

But for the rest of you, SPOILERS BEGIN NOW:

After surviving the massive attack with the grandfather and oldest daughter's boyfriend catching some death, Dominque takes the sister, her newborn baby (who arrived during the battle after about 10 minutes of labor), and the other two children into the countryside to meet up with a kindly doctor who is waiting for them with an ambulance to transport them to safety far from this town. Everything looks hunky dory until the doctor is killed by a sniper and it's revealed the cartel had the rendezvous staked out. In the ensuing mayhem, everyone in the family is killed, even the newborn.

What. The. F*CK?!?!?

Earlier in the movie, Dominique explains that the only reason she's staying to defend the family of her one-night stand was, "I don't like when people die for no good reason." Um, HELLO?!?!? What would you call that ending, Mr. Ojeda?!?!? No, the fact you show the aftermath of her killing all the cartel members during the end credits doesn't make it better and if you thought you were launching a series off this movie, hooooo boy, no no no no NOOOOOOO!!!!

For all his evil-doing, you have to credit Harvey Weinstein for making a condition of releasing Clerks be that the original ending where Dante is murdered by a robber be cut. He understood that after all the wacky fun of this comedy, killing the poor guy who wasn't even supposed to be working that day would be commercial suicide, thus saving Kevin Smith from his own post-ironic stupidity. Too bad no one told Ojeda that killing children wasn't a winning move.

That's not to say that downbeat endings can't work. Leon doesn't make it out alive at the end of Leon: The Professional, but his death has meaning. This is just senseless shock.

END SPOILERS.

As for the 4K HDR presentation, it's not very effective as the low-budget cinematography is frequently blown out and generally flat. Looks more like Blu-ray quality which is fine for the material. 

 Dominique could've been a low-rent cheap thrill on top of a puzzlement as to why it was even made, but the unbelievably bad choice at the end just blows it.

Score: 4/10. Skip it.

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"Biggest Heist Ever" 4K Review

 The latest in Bitcoin-themed documentaries comes courtesy of Netflix and director Chris Smith (Wham!, Hollywood Con Queen) in the form of Biggest Heist Ever, the tale of the 2016 theft of $70 million in Bitcoin from a Hong Kong-based crypto currency exchange called Bitfinex by hackers. With the crypto boom several years later, the haul was then worth $4.5 billion - at the time of this writing, it'd be worth $12 billion & yes, I regret not buying Bitcoin in 2010 - an amount that prompted Internal Revenue Service money laundering investigator Chris Janczewski to begin trying to track down where the money may've gone.

 Because every crypto transaction is logged on the blockchain (the makers explain the tech of crypto clearly), Janczewski was able to analyze where the coins had passed from wallet to wallet, but couldn't determine who had control of them. He suspected that the hackers were stuck trying to get the cyber coins translated into spendable currency because to do so means presenting your real identities to set up accounts.

His prime suspects are the least likely pair of cyber Bonnie & Clydes - Silicon Valley tech bro Ilya Lichtenstein and his girlfriend Heather Morgan who worked as a consultant and contributor to Forbes online. Adding a bizarre spin to things is Morgan's rapper/social media influencer wannabe persona as "Razzlekhan" with thousands of videos including some of the most cringe-inducing stuff you'll ever see. No way could these two have pulled off the heist of the 21st Century, right?

 Spoiler: They did, or to be more specific, they plead guilty to the charges, though Smith definitely implies they may not have conducted the actual hack. (The way they ultimately trip themselves up is so stupid it beggars belief.) This leads to the fundamental flaw with Biggest Heist Ever in that it doesn't quite resolve itself satisfactorily, though it offers more of a conclusion than the long walk to nowhere which was Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan & Sara. 

With no participation from either perp, we're left with lots of talk from former friends, colleagues, collaborators, and investigators along with the massive amounts of videos from the weirdos. It's entertaining, but superficial and vaguely incomplete feeling. 

Score: 6/10. Catch it on Netflix.