4 stars out of 5
In 2014, I was absolutely delighted by sitcom-opening-credit-spoofing viral video “Too Many Cooks.” I even built an internet radio episode around it. I don’t think anything since has captured my imagination even a fraction as much until Six Seven. So when I learned that Cooks director/co-writer Casper Kelly had a feature film, I didn’t waste Too Many Days going to see it!
This time, Kelly sets his twisted satirical eye on TV’s Barney (which I have a slight connection to, as my cousin Steve directed the original Barney movie). Except, instead of a purple dinosaur, Buddy is an orange unicorn. And the movie begins with consecutive episodes of this seemingly 90s era children’s TV show, which made me howl with laughter. And I thought, if Casper Kelly has the cojones for this to be the whole movie — an hour and 36 minutes of just episodes of Buddy, slowly spelling out the plot — this is perfection. This is 5 stars out of 5.
Pero Casper Kelly no tengo los cojones.
So we’re going along in our Buddy episodes, where some of the kids begin to wonder if maybe things are just a bit askew. Like, perhaps Buddy isn’t the loving unicorn that he seems to be? But Casper Kelly cuts away from these Buddy episodes to show a perfect suburban family, headed by Cristin Milioti and Topher Grace. Except Milioti begins to wonder if maybe things are just a bit askew. Like, did they perhaps used to have one more kid? And does this Buddy show — which of course there is no trace of on the Internet or on YouTube, maybe you just need a little rest, Cristin Milioti — have something to do with her missing kid?
Keegan-Michael Key brings a Pee-wee-esque pandemonium to his voicework as Buddy, and Patton Oswalt is effectively earnest as Strappy the backpack. It’s fun to see Clint Howard show up in a later sequence. And they were lucky to cast rising kid star Delaney Quinn — from If I Had Legs I’d Kick You and The Roses — as one of Buddy’s buddies.
This has all the makings of a cult favorite, especially if you grew up on Barney or Pee-wee’s Playhouse.
Will you join the cult?
Movie Review: Buddy
Aquarium Playlist, 9/9/26
EPISODE #700: MUSIC V
The Who — “Happy Jack” [THEME]
Mary Lee’s Corvette — “700 Miles”
Greg Kihn — “When the Music Starts”
The Ronettes — “I Can Hear Music”
Rolling Stones — “Can You Hear the Music”
of Montreal — “Listen to Music and Cry”
Sensational Country Blues Wonders — “Music of the Spheres”
Desmond Dekker & the Aces — “Music Like Dirt”
Scott the Hoople — “Music Arcade”
Jan & Dean — “Music City”
Kool & the Gang — “Let the Music Take Your Mind”
1910 Fruitgum Company — “Play Our Song, Mr. Music Man”
They Might Be Giants — “The Communists Have the Music”
Archie Bell & the Drells — “A World Without Music”
The Shirelles — “Stop the Music”
Jack Silbert proudly records the Aquarium podcast in Hoboken, NJ.
Aquarium Playlist, 8/18/26
EPISODE #697: CATS XI
The Who — “Happy Jack” [THEME]
Karyn Kuhl — “Cat Swamp Road”
Panda Bear and Sonic Boom — “A ? of When”
Brian Bilston & the Catenary Wires — “Under a Cat”
Gay Skeleton Club — “2 Cats”
Sir Douglas Quintet — “I’m Not That Kat Anymore”
Jimmie Davis — “Wampus Kitty Mama”
Little Willie John — “Leave My Kitten Alone”
Dirty Fences — “Keep Your Kitten Inside”
Ratboys — “At 39 Annie Is the Oldest Cat”
The Laughing Chimes — “Cats Go Car Watching”
Adults — “Nine Lives”
Straitjacket Fits— “Cat Inna Can”
Deerhoof — “My Lovely Cat!”
The Mice — “Bye Bye Kitty Cat”
Jack Silbert proudly records the Aquarium podcast in Hoboken, NJ.
Movie Review: Spider-Man — Brand New Day
4 stars out of 5
I hope Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Jon Bernthal all have points negotiated in their boilerplate contracts, because all three actors are in both of the summer’s billion-dollar bashes, The Odyssey and this latest Spidey flick. Which picks up with Peter Parker (Holland) navigating the difficult decision he made in No Way Home to “erase” himself from the lives of MJ (Zendaya) and his chubby buddy Ned, for their own safety.
This leaves Spider-Man more time to bust local crimes, much to the pleasure of the New York police chief, that “Jeff” lady from The Bear. She’s in this a fair amount in the early going, and then not at all for most of the rest of the movie.
Other Bear alum Bernthal? He reprises his Punisher character from one of those streaming series. Punisher and Spidey have a fun rapport that gives way to bromance.
When not crimefighting, Peter uses his keen scientific mind (plus his AI helper voice Naomi Watts) to try to keep his “maturing” spider powers in check. (I feel I saw that storyline in another Spider-Man movie but… ah who cares.) He even visits Dr. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) for advice because Peter can’t visit that Lizard professor in every movie.
And then a new villain appears, except the villain doesn’t appear, but they can jump into anybody’s mind. Which is pretty cool. And this threatens a quasi-governmental agency with some dark secrets, kind of like that one in Disclosure Day except this time Mr. Milchik from Severance is the boss. I won’t tell you who the new villain is, but it is a familiar Marvel name. (No, not Steve Ditko.)
As Peter/Spidey juggles the forces of evil, biological changes, and male loneliness epidemic, Destin Cretton (taking over the director chair from three-timer Jon Watts) does a truly good job balancing these elements onscreen. I didn’t see his previous Marvel work Shang-Chi (I did enjoy his 2019 film Just Mercy), but Cretton has a real flair for action sequences. Yes, I sprung for the Real3D glasses which made it extra groovy as Spidey webs his way across town.
Entertaining all the way through, I feel this is the best Spider-Man movie since the Sam Raimi era. Excelsior!
Aquarium Playlist, 8/11/26
EPISODE #696: DOG DAYS OF SUMMER XI
The Who — “Happy Jack” [THEME]
Magic Ghrelin — “Dog Days”
Dew Claw — “Rescue Dog”
Prof. Fuzz 63 — “The Amazing Adventures of Steak Knife and Biscuit”
Ladybug Transistor — “Your Wagging Tail (Single Space)”
Belly — “Slow Dog”
Ted Hawkins — “Bad Dog”
Paper Lady — “Mutt”
The Alpha Band — “The Dogs”
Grumpy — “You Don’t Like Dogs”
Juliana Hatfield and Frank Smith — “If Only We Were Dogs”
Spider Bags — “Dogs in the Snow”
Skat — “Sleeping Dogs Lie” [Peel session]
Ashley Eriksson — “Dog Drop Lane”
Jack Silbert proudly records the Aquarium podcast in Hoboken, NJ.
Movie Review: I Want Your Sex
4 stars out of 5
You ever go to see a friend play music at 2 p.m. except you misread the flyer and he went on at 12 p.m. so instead you went to the 2:45 movie? That was my Sunday. Otherwise this would probably be a Spider-man review. Still, I was happy to see I Want Your Sex as the lead Cooper Hoffman — after Licorice Pizza and The Long Walk — has achieved “my boy” status. He is a super likable film presence.
As young awkaward Elliot in this, he gets a job as a low-level assistant to of-the-moment artist Erika Tracey (a hilariously hot Olivia Wilde), and quickly achieves “her boy” status. Which in this case means very willing sex slave. Now, if this movie was cast with Chris Hemsworth as the artist and Jenna Ortega as the assistant, that would be culturally uncool, unless, like, she turns the tables on him and hold the phone because I think I have a Hollywood pitch!!
The casting is really fun, actually. We get Mason “Cuba’s son” Gooding as Elliot’s very gay fellow assistant, gently amused by the workplace naughtiness. Daveed Diggs is perfect as Erika’s second-in-command, who has seen it all before and needs to protect Erika from her worst impulses. As Elliot’s not-interested girlfriend we get a very funny, downplayed Charli XCX. And Margaret Cho and Johnny Knoxville are detectives but that’s a whole other plot twist.
We watch and we generally laugh as Elliot’s life spins out of control. Director/cowriter Gregg Araki lightly addresses topics such as self-worth, yielding control, the absurdity of the art world, and THE MEANING OF SEX (cowriter Karley Sciortino is a “sex writer”), without making any deep dives. And just when I was thinking “Maybe I’m not enjoying this movie quite as much as I was in the early going,” I was very pleased with the ending. Even the closing credits make the point that, to paraphrase another song title, I Want Your Sex just wants to have fun.
Aquarium Playlist, 8/5/26
EPISODE #695: DREAMS VII
The Who — “Happy Jack” [THEME]
Wyldlife — “Fast Dreams”
gobbinjr — “Just a Dream”
Talulah Gosh — “Just a Dream”
Reverend Horton Heat — “In Your Wildest Dreams”
The Bongos — “My Wildest Dreams”
Josie — “Dream Away”
House Deposit — “IKEA Dreaming”
Ashley Eriksson — “Dreams”
Dauber — “Dream Boy”
The Electric Prunes — “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)”
Ruth Brown — “Oh What a Dream”
Belle and Sebastian — “You Made Me Forget My Dreams”
Fastbacks — “It Came to Me in a Dream”
Calexico — “Beneath the City of Dreams”
Gang of Four — “We Live as We Dream, Alone”
Crowded House — “Don’t Dream It’s Over”
Jack Silbert proudly records the Aquarium podcast in Hoboken, NJ.
Movie Review: The Odyssey
4 stars out of 5
The Odyssey has raked in more than $700 million thus far. Of that, I have contributed $5. It was a very rainy Bargain Tuesday so I ducked into the theater to wait out the deluge. I know, I know, I was supposed to see this in IMAX, 70mm if possible, but instead I just sat really close.
Truth is, I’ve been burned by Christopher Nolan too many times to spring for the premium screening anyway. And maybe he’s quietly realized he isn’t all that. Because these “based on somebody else’s work/lives” stories in his recent films have actually been pretty decent, compared to his super-complicated own creations. I liked that Oppenheimer, which I saw 2/3 of on a plane and was compelled enough to rent it to see the rest. I hear Dunkirk was good but I think maybe I was in the hospital and also, feh for big dumb war movies.
Now, I’ve never read Homer’s The Odyssey, although, funny thing, on the radio they said it was flying off the shelves, especially the Emily Wilson translation. And that night I’m at Joe’s Pub and the woman next to me is reading the Emily Wilson translation. I guess that could’ve been a ‘meet cute’ but I wasn’t interested and besides, she was with a dude.
I digress.
So, without background knowledge, I was leaving it in Nolan’s hands to tell me the tale of The Odyssey, and by god he does it in a pretty straightforward way. Everything I saw I’m assuming was in the original version but you Homeric scholars including that Joe’s Pub lady should feel free to correct me.
Matt Damon is my boy, I would gladly follow him into battle, so he is well-cast as Odysseus. No one had ever gone on an adventure like this guy so they invented the word odyssey. He leads the Greek into Troy, sneaks them in in the Trojan horse. When I was a kid it was always on wheels which would be a lot easier, but this time it has to be dragged in, with Elliot “Juno” Page as a lookout. Yay, they win, but it isn’t pretty, and Odysseus takes the long way home. Like, the looooooong way.
As Odysseus makes his odysseusy with his crew, they run into other mythical things you remember from childhood. Hey it’s a Cyclops! Wow, they’re trapped between Scylla and Charybdis like in that song by The Police (or “Rock and a Hard Place” for you mid-period Rolling Stones fans). And speaking of music, it’s the sirens!
Jon Bernthal is quite good as a mostly loyal crewman. Back home in Ithaca (not the one in New York, which I hear is gorges), we have Odysseus’s devoted wife Anne Hathaway weaving away in the backrooms, no doubt prepping for The Devil Wears Prada 3: QuiltMania. Mia Goth is wasted as her handmaiden. I mean, you expect Mia Goth to rip off her corset (wrong era? I’m on a roll) and be sexy Mia Goth but she just stays a handmaiden and thus could’ve been played by anybody. There are a bunch of creepy suitor dudes hanging around assuming that Odysseus won’t return. They are led by a very good and slimy Robert Pattinson, with a good and jerky Corey Hawkins by his side. But Anne Hathaway pays them no mind and just keeps weaving. You go!
Also loyal to Odysseus at home are John Leguizamo, convincing as an old blind shepherd, and Tom Holland as the son of Damon and Hathaway. Now, he’s believable as an innocent who is perhaps not ready to assume the throne, but come on Homer, his character is underwritten. Sonny boy leaves on an unnecessary journey and then comes back. Shrug emoji. Lupita Nyong’o can also blame Homer for not enough to do as Helen of Troy. There’s more activity for Mrs. Tom Holland Zendaya who is subtly spooky as Athena.
And this is just a sentence to say that Charlize Theron is the most beautiful woman in the world.
It is a very good movie. There is some cool action on land and sea and fighting and creatures, and Nolan keeps the story easy to follow. And beyond loyalty, we also get a couple of big concepts that resonate across the millennia: Odysseus’s skepticism of the laws of Zeus, and his slow acknowledgement of the horrible consequences of war. What Nolan seems unable to do is imbue the story with much emotion, which for me prevents it from being a genuinely great movie. Now do I have any takers to translate this review into Greek?
Jack Silbert, curator