Letterboxd — Your life in film

Pretty fascinating, funny, and bittersweet doc about Rodney Bingenheimer, one of the architects of the modern day KROQ.

Despite making the station massively popular and getting tons of then-unknown (and now super-famous) bands airplay, Rodney never made much money or many close friends during his 40-year career.

The doc is structured like a Hollywood movie—the three acts, the character arc, the happy ending—which is fitting for such an iconic LA figure.

Unexpected entry in the One Crazy Night genre!

Not too much of a character study—just fun to ride along with hitman Cruise and niceguy Foxx, seeing what shit goes down.

Mann's nighttime LA is a vibe; a total ghost town, sickly green from the sodium-vapor streetlights.

Shave 15 minutes off this thing and it would be tight as a marine’s top sheet.

"What if later-career Judd Apatow directed a ROMANCING THE STONE remake?"- some exec in 2022, asking a roomful of moneymen who agreed for some reason.

The greatest American documentary ever made.

A lean, masculine crime flick. You can practically smell the Brut and leather coming through the screen.

Hoskins is GREAT as our hapless, befuddled lead—an ex-con trying to make a (somewhat) legitimate go of things without having to resort to extremes, at odds with his own ape brain. All flop sweat, narrowed eyes, bared teeth.

Well-paced with a compelling build-up to the unexpected third act. Good stuff.

These sorts of movies are a big blind spot for me; the James Bonds, John Wicks, and Ethan Hunts of the celluloid world.

That being said, anytime I put one on, I'm usually wowed and thoroughly entertained.

This is actually the first M:I movie I've seen, and it scratched the itch: death-defying, practical stuntwork; a race-against-the-clock plotline; solid acting, and bullet-proof dialogue.

And even though I called every single a-ha! from a mile away, my enjoyment wasn't swayed.

The water flooding the truck is one of the coolest practical visuals I've seen in a minute.

There's a lot of talking in this one; the amount of footage in this, they probably could've kept in JACKASS FOREVER, though there are a lot of repetitive bits so I can understand the judicious editing.

The hawk ripping off Steve-O's eyebrows is about a split second worth of footage, but it made me actually guffaw.

These movies are powerful. They're art.

I'm convinced M. Night died in 2006 and was replaced with two 10-year-olds in a trenchcoat wearing an M. Night mask.

Super sleazy, barely comprehensible release from the purveyors of such exploitative trash, Cannon Films.

Even knowing the type of films Cannon was known for, and looking at it through the lens of “it was a different time”, I was still awed at just how grody (and xenophobic!) it managed to be.

And look, I enjoy my fair share of lurid exploitation and have watched plenty of heinous shit (especially from Cannon), but the presentation here is strangely perverse—and strangely anti-cathartic.

There’s nothing outrageously gleeful about the unfoldings, nothing redemptive, and everyone is awful through and through. This one is a bummer.