3.5 stars out of 5
It has many of the trappings of a quality independent movie: veteran actor playing a past-his-prime type, quirky supporting characters, logos of prominent film festivals on the poster. If we take a deeper dive into the credits, though, the indie pedigree starts to crack. Knives Out guy Rian Johnson is an executive producer. Writer/director Noah Segan has acted in three Rian Johnson movies, and his only previous writing credits are a vampire flick and a segment in a horror anthology.
Still, I try to judge a movie by what I see and hear on the screen, and it starts pretty strong: We hear “New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down” by my pal James Murphy’s LCD Soundsystem, which sets us up for yet another cinematic love letter to New York. (The city has received so many of these love letters, you can imagine them being filed away in a shoebox unopened.) John Gallagher Jr. (The Newsroom, social distancing selfie No. 931, etc.) is a modern-day fast-track business guy who realizes… his wallet’s been swiped! By who? Now we visit another New York, with run-down storefronts, pawn shops owned by Steve Buscemi, and old-school pickpocket John Turturro who poo-poos cellphones, computers, you get the drill.
Our protagonist is a thief. Except we’re rooting for him because he steals from worse people and he’s caretaker for his neurodegenerative-suffering daughter— this was confusing for a long time, why is this other character calling her his “old lady”? Oh it’s because this significantly younger woman is his WIFE.
Turturro is terrific in this. We’ll be disappointed when he isn’t nominated for best actor, boo-hoo. Was also happy to see Giancarlo Esposito, whose career I’ve been following since 1987, as Turturro’s buddy on the force. One’s a cop and one’s a crook but they things in common! Buscemi is just right as an old-timer making a few concessions to modern life to keep his business active. Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black) gets one ok scene as Turturro’s estranged daughter from an earlier marriage. I wish I’d seen cameos by Aida Turturro and Ad-Rock. Rob Brown has a bit part; I may have spotlighted him in Scholastic MATH Magazine back in 2000 when he co-starred with Sean Connery in Finding Forrester.
A different, more subtle writer/director could’ve used most of these elements and delivered a touching, possibly tragic character study. A small film, and still a NYC love letter, why not. But something just felt off to me here. And then there’s some stunt casting in a key moment which basically knocked me out out the story, followed by some twisty-turny plot work. Both of these late elements seemed disrespectful of the audience, like we couldn’t accept a soft landing. Try us! But maybe soft landings are impossible once you have your knives out.
Movie Review: The Only Living Pickpocket in New York
Aquarium Playlist, 11/3/26
EPISODE #708: MESS
The Who — “Happy Jack” [THEME]
X — “The World’s a Mess; It’s in my Kiss”
Son Volt — “The Mess of a World”
Roe Knows Best — “Making a Mess”
John Cozz & Ken De Poto — “Head’s a Mess (Frankie’s Song)”
The Dreaded Laramie — “Mess”
The Moore Family Band — “I’m a Mess”
Radiator Hospital — “Hot Mess”
Laura K — “He’s a Mess”
Devo — “Big Mess”
The “5” Royales — “Messin’ Up”
Young Fresh Fellows — “All Messed Up”
The Rolling Stones — “Mess It Up”
The Hive Dwellers — “Messed Up and Ramblin’”
Ray Charles — “Mess Around”
Prince — “Gotta Stop (Messin’ About)”
Donnie Iris — “Ah! Leah!” r.i.p.
Jack Silbert proudly records the Aquarium podcast in Hoboken, NJ.
Aquarium Playlist, 10/27/26
EPISODE #707: HALLOWEEN 2026
The Frogs — “I’m Evil, Jack” [ALTERNATE THEME]
Sunshine Convention — “Halloween on the Barbary Coast”
The Darts — “Every Night Is Halloween”
David and Jad Fair — “Trick or Treat Country”
Bunnygrunt — “Here Come the Vampires”
Ashley Eriksson — “The Happy-Go-Lucky Ghost”
The Sinners — “Nightmare”
Cor de Lux — “Cannibals”
Eyelids — “Ghost Ghost Ghost”
Renee Maskin — “Haunted Palace”
Devo — “Monsterman”
Chuck Prophet — “Wake the Dead”
Veronica Falls — “Found Love in a Graveyard”
The Dungeons of Horrors (Scott the Hoople) — “Gone Dead Girl”
“The Werewolf of Hoia Bacui” (Graveface Super Spooktacular Halloween Special)
Lou Reed — “Halloween Parade”
Jack Silbert proudly records the Aquarium podcast in Hoboken, NJ.
Movie Review: You Can See Everything
4.5 stars out of 5
I’ll follow Nathan Fielder pretty much everywhere. For me, that started back in 2011 when he played “Nathan” on TV’s Jon Benjamin Has a Van. His project that I’ve enjoyed the least was The Curse with Emma Stone, yet, I still liked it. So, when I saw that Nathan had made a surprise feature documentary about Elizabeth Holmes — I’d watched the HBO Theranos documentary but not the Hulu docudrama — I knew I’d see it right away.
Unless you’ve lived under a pop-culture rock for the past 10 years and 10 days, you know that Elizabeth Holmes was positioned as — or positioned herself as, and this difference is at the heart of Fielder’s film — a young female Steve Jobs. Her product: a small device that could take a blood sample and from that, diagnose any illness out there. Saving countless lives worldwide! Silicon Valley med-tech went apeshit, investors poured a ton of money into her “Theranos” project, and then found out, no, there was no such working device. She was arrested and jailed on federal charges for fraud.
This film begins a little over a month before her 10-year prison sentence begins. I won’t discuss too much of what happens, but suffice to say Elizabeth and her baby-daddy Billy Evans have allowed Nathan (and a small film crew, including co-director Lance Oppenheim) incredible access, especially from someone who hasn’t been interviewed in years. And I’ll also say that Elizabeth consistently denies any wrongdoing; she and Billy blame this whole mishegas on a communication mix-up. Nathan likens it to the “Who’s the First” routine, or I might also suggest Bill Clinton’s low-point quote, “It depends what your definition of is is.”
If you go into this movie expecting big laughs or blockbuster revelations, you will be disappointed. But if you settle in and get more comfortable with the quirks of Nathan, Elizabeth, and Billy — mind you, I never got fully comfortable with any of them, which I think is another of the movie’s points: These people are a little goofy! — your payoff is a fascinating film, unlike anything I’ve seen before.
A central question here is, to quote the Queen of Soul: Who’s zoomin’ who? Did Elizabeth manipulate the world? Is she manipulating Billy, or is Billy manipulating her? Are they trying to manipulate the public, to “rehabilitate the brand,” with Nathan’s help? Is Nathan manipulating them for entertainment’s sake? We’re in a movie where Amanda Seyfried — who played Elizabeth Holmes in the Hulu series — shows up and seems like the voice of reason. Huh? Billy seems like the bad guy, or at least a bad guy, but is that just distracting us from the sins of Elizabeth and her big teary blue-eyed “Who, me?” act? (But is it an act?) Nathan is certainly charmed by her — in the trailer it had looked to me like they might kiss. Jeez I don’t know! Go see this and get all wonderfully confused for yourself. I guess we’re not much closer to the introduction of a compact, life-saving medical device but, oh well, that’s entertainment!
Aquarium Playlist, 10/20/26
EPISODE #706: COUNTING BY TEN
The Who — “Happy Jack” [THEME]
Marianne Faithfull — “Counting”
Young Fresh Fellows — “Another Ten Reasons”
The Undertones — “Top Twenty”
Chuck Berry — “Thirty Days”
Muddy Waters — “Forty Days and Forty Nights”
Drunken Prayer — “Fifty Foot Locust”
Billy Ward & the Dominoes — “Sixty Minute Man”
Robyn Hitchcock — “1970 in Aspic”
The Individuals — “Dancing With My Eighty Wives”
Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band — “Ninety-Day Cycle People”
David Nance — “110 Blues” [I-80 version]
The Sadies — “120 Miles Per Hour”
Springhouse — “10 Count”
Jack Silbert proudly records the Aquarium podcast in Hoboken, NJ.
Aquarium Playlist, 10/13/26
EPISODE #705: BLOWIN’ UP
The Who — “Happy Jack” [THEME]
Los Straitjackets — “Blowout!”
Kiwi Jr. — “Blowin’ Up”
Dinosaur Jr. — “Blowin’ Up”
The Exciters — “Blowing Up My Mind”
The Bongos — “Blow Up”
George Harrison — “Blow Away”
Jeff Lynne — “Blown Away”
Matthew Sweet — “Blown Away”
The 5th Dimension — “Blowing Away”
The Proper Ornaments — “Cremated (Blown Away)”
Phil Seymour — “Don’t Blow Your Life Away”
Almanac Singers — “Blow Ye Winds, Heigh Ho”
Dear Nora — “When the Winds Blow”
Was (Not Was) — “I Blew Up the United States”
Sludgehammer — “Blow Out”
Jack Silbert proudly records the Aquarium podcast in Hoboken, NJ.
Movie Review: The History of Concrete
4 stars out of 5
HBO’s How To with John Wilson was a real pleasant pandemic surprise, debuting in October 2020. It presented an ostensible how-to project each week, but was actually — as I described at the time — “a showcase for Wilson’s unerring eye for the absurd via reams of his on-the-street video footage, paired with his halting, nervous-guy narration.” It ran for three delightful seasons.
Three years later, I was intrigued by the seemingly dull title The History of Concrete. But could Wilson expand his 30-minute concept into a 1-hour, 41-minute feature film?
That’s just the kind of challenge Wilson thrives on.
The movie began and I was so happy to have Wilson back. It’s a very particular style of humor that no one else can deliver (and perhaps not everyone can appreciate). In this outing, he revels in self-deprecation as Wilson recounts having his own series and the resultant low level of fame, and then of no longer having a series and figuring out what might be next. We gleefully cringe as he pitches his movie idea to would-be investors. And we do learn a thing or two about concrete (which is not cement, but contains cement) as he travels the country and even to Italy in search of concrete information. (Sorry.)
I was laughing out loud (at one point, he brilliantly tells a whole story simply panning from boat name to boar name), and then realized I’d stopped laughing out loud. OK, maybe 101 minutes was a lot of time for him to fill. But then Wilson’s secret gift emerges, and he may not even admit this: He cares about people. We meet quirky individuals — a gum remover, a tattoo saver, a liquor store employee/bar-band musician, just to name a few. And while a cruder creator might be saying, “ha ha look at these dopes and their stupid jobs,” Wilson lets their goofy humanity shine through, following their passions and their niche expertise. Wilson knows he’s one of them, and one of us.
Aquarium Playlist, 10/6/26
EPISODE #704: TRIP TO MAINE
Vic Chesnutt — “Vernon” [ALTERNATE THEME]
Gold-Bears — “Record Store”
Sourpatch — “Deli Dream”
Cub — “Motel 6”
E.R. Jurken — “Maine Man”
The Zombies — “A Rose for Emily”
Minutemen — “Life as a Rehearsal”
The B-52’s — “Rock Lobster”
The Animals — “Gonna Send You Back to Walker”
Lil Wayne — “Georgia… Bush”
Joni Mitchell — “Chelsea Morning”
Eisley — “Trolley Wood”
Otis Ball — “Crashing Your Wedding”
The Extra Lens — “How I Left the Ministry”
Mudhoney — “Touch Me I’m Sick”
E — “Manchester Girl”
Gang of Four — “Cheeseburger”
Jeremy Messersmith — “Jim Bakker” r.i.p. Jim Bakker
Jack Silbert proudly records the Aquarium podcast in Hoboken, NJ.
Aquarium Playlist, 9/29/26
EPISODE #703: TROUBLE II
The Goodbye Party — “Trouble” [ALTERNATE THEME]
Aesop Rock x Blockhead — “Trouble Trouble”
James Mastro— “Trouble”
Freedy Johnston — “The Trouble Tree”
Antietam — “Trouble Net”
Vehicle Flips — “Trouble on the Western Survey”
The Resonars — “If You’ve Got Troubles”
Minor Alps — “If I Wanted Trouble”
Rufus Wainwright — “Trouble in Paradise”
Half Japanese — “Double Trouble”
Magnetic Fields — “The Trouble I’ve Been Looking For”
Warren Zevon — “Trouble Waiting to Happen”
Stray Cats — “I Attract Trouble”
Cadallaca — “The Trouble With Public Places”
Joe Simon — “Trouble at Home”
The Only Ones — “Trouble in the World”
Mighty Sparrow — “No More Rocking” r.i.p.
Jack Silbert proudly records the Aquarium podcast in Hoboken, NJ.
Jack Silbert, curator