every movie ever made, in alphabetical order
(we’re in the J’s, with anti-alphabetical cheats)

Joe versus the Volcano (1990)
Joey Breaker (1993)
John Dies at the End (2012)
John Henry and the Railroad (2013)
John Wick: Chapter 3: Parabellum (2019)
John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023)
Fantasy A Gets Jacked (2017)
Tongues (2016)
What We Left Unfinished (2019)

Joe versus the Volcano (1990)

Joe works at a dark, dilapidated office in a factory that makes rectal probes, and he’s depressed. Then he’s given a fatal diagnosis, mere months to live, so he quits, and accepts an invitation to sacrifice himself to a volcano god on a remote South Pacific island. Why not? He’s going to die anyway, and he’s always wanted to travel, and all-expenses will be paid by a billionaire who needs Joe’s suicide to gain access to the island’s supply of bubaroo for his superconductor business.

Yeah, this movie is kinda wacky.

Dan Hedaya is hilarious as Joe’s dull, droning boss, and the movie’s depiction of their hellish workplace and monotonous life was a key moment, not just in the movie, but in my life.

When I first saw this, 1990, I was living in my van and dreaming of escaping everything ordinary. It was somewhere in the movie’s first twenty minutes of workplace scenes, when quitting my job and leaving Seattle stopped being a dream and started being a plan.

In 1990, though, I didn’t much care for the rest of Joe versus the Volcano. Everything seemed Hollywood silly, heightened and exaggerated. Pleasant enough, but nothing special.

Watching it again, though, all these years after taking the movie’s advice, it actually is something special. Yeah, everything (including that brilliant opening scene at the factory) is amplified a few degrees, reality stretched like a rubber band for effect, but that’s the point, Doug ya dummy.

The running gag is that Joe is so bland, even he doesn’t know who he is. With only a movie’s length left to live, Joe is everyman learning every lesson, and he’s played by Tom Hanks, back when Hanks did everyman comedy so well.

Meg Ryan plays three roles, two out of three quite well. The city is lit with colors as Joe falls for the first Meg, but Meg 1 and Meg 2 can’t handle what Joe’s become. Third Meg’s the charm.

The whole shebang feels like a far older movie than it is, a Hollywood fantasy from the 1940s — A Guy Named Joe, or Here Comes Mr Jordan. It would’ve starred Jimmy Stewart, but early Hanks is close enough.

Maybe it’s twisted, but I was rooting for Joe to jump into the volcano at the end. In a good way.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Joey Breaker (1993)

You might know character actor Richard Edson from small roles in Desperately Seeking Susan and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, or larger roles in Do the Right Thing and Stranger then Paradise, but here he’s the leading man.

He plays a hot shot Hollywood agent, and he’s fine, and the movie seems to be a cynical spin on show biz, but every few minutes this text appears:

This legal notice takes about 1/3 of the screen space for exactly one minute, fades away, and comes back a few minutes later. My guess is, I’m watching a pirated copy of a studio screener, but that line about “penalty of law” had me so dang worried, I clicked it off after 25 minutes or so.

Verdict: NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

John Dies at the End (2012)

Two insufferable white guys (Chase Williamson, Rob Mayes) trade wisecracks as they’re buried under an avalanche of horror movie clichés. I couldn’t keep track of which white guy was which, and after 35 minutes of unfunny jokes badly delivered, no coherent moment had emerged from the rubble and stubble, so I shrugged and clicked it off.

I am impatient in my dotage, and not hip enough for this kind of crap.

Verdict: BIG NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

John Henry and the Railroad (2013)

This is an abbreviated telling of the legend of John Henry, ex-slave and hard worker famous from folk songs and such. It’s slick, corny, and feels like a well-funded kid’s fantasy flick full of Important Life Lessons. The narrator carries a guitar, so it’s no surprise when he bursts into song, in what seems to be a 22-minute country music video.

Verdict: NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019)

In the previous sequel, assassin John Wick killed a guy in the lobby of the Continental Hotel, where killings are prohibited by assassins’ law. As penalty for that, there’s now a assassination order on John Wick, and every assassin in Assassinville is after him. Fortunately, he’s pre-stashed a collection of assassin tokens at the New York Public Library, but unfortunately, another assassin is waiting to kill him there.

And that’s just the first ten minutes, in this third installment of the kooky and violent series that plays like a live-action Road Runner cartoon with guns.

The franchise is all about assassins in a world that looks like ours, only with more assassins, and all the assassins do their assassinations by complicated assassin rules, under a hierarchy of assassinage that’s nuts, of course, but makes for an interesting ballet of death (literally, this time). The John Wick movies are very well-made, for what they are, and highly entertaining if you’re OK with human life having no worth whatsoever.

I’m OK with that, for the length of a movie anyway, but I will say, this is the first Wick episode that occasionally bored me. Maybe I’m getting maxed out. It rallies at the end, though, and promises more fun in John Wick 4.

And I wonder, are all the grunts and moans in the battle scenes scripted, or ad libbed?

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023)

Hundreds of assassins want to assassinate the assassin John Wick, and we see about a dozen dozen-way gunfights.

When one of the assassins we’d barely met dies, the music swoops up and we’re supposed to be sad, but that’s ridiculous, ain’t it? These are killers in the killing business, and even Keanu Reeves as Wick himself is never allowed to show more than the slightest personality, so why should the audience care if some special guest assassin gets assassinated after a few minutes on screen?

Wick 4 is completely in keeping with Wick 1, 2, and 3 — same tone, same high-quality choreographed fights and guns and nun chucks and stabbings. And I liked Wicks 1, 2, and 3, so why did Wick 4 bore the life out of me?

The problem, I suspect, is that after seeing Wick 1, two years passed before I saw Wick 2, but that was only a month and a half ago, and then Wick 3, and a few days later, Wick 4. More down time is required, perhaps, between all the endless over-the-top assassinations, so I’m putting Wick 4 back on the watchlist, and I’ll screen it again in a year or so, if I’m still alive.

For now, the verdict is: NOT YET.

♦ ♦ ♦

Fantasy A Gets Jacked (2017)

Most of Seattle knows Fantasy A, the self-described rapper with autism who plasters every telephone pole in town with posters for his shows and CDs. Heck, even before seeing this mini-flick, I’m pretty sure I would’ve recognized him, if we’d met on the street.

This agreeable 27-minute farce has Fantasy A beefing with other local rappers, and as promised by the title, he gets robbed — on his birthday, so his cake will have to stay at Safeway.

When he gets angry he growls like an rabid chihuahua, but mostly he’s just jolly, long as nobody hugs him. My favorite moment is when an ordinary schmuck is walking a back street in Seattle, and recognizes Fantasy A, who’s busy puff-pillow punching a rival rapper. The street schmuck interrupts to say, “Hey, can we take a photo together? You’re Fantasy A, right? I think you’re really cool.”

“It’s a good feeling to meet someone who’s a fan of my music,” says the rapper with autism.

“Uh, I only really know you from your posters…”

Curiously, Fantasy A doesn’t rap in the film, so now I know him from his posters and from Fantasy A Gets Jacked, but I still don’t know his music. And coming soon, his feature film debut, Fantasy A Gets a Mattress.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Tongues (2016)

This short is a 19-minute extended smile, as we get to know Daniel, a young Christian man who takes his faith very seriously. He wants to speak in tongues, but it hasn’t happened yet, and the pastor thinks the delay might be because Daniel is having impure thoughts.

What the pastor doesn’t know is that Daniel’s impure thoughts are about the pastor’s daughter. And then the Lord starts working in ways not at all mysterious, but awkwardly real and funny.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

What We Left Unfinished (2019)

When communists took power in Afghanistan the 1970s, they nationalized the country’s film industry. Thereafter and until the commies were toppled by the Mujahideen in 1991, many films were commissioned and released, and five were censored for not being pinko enough, and never released.

This documentary talks to various people involved in making those never-seen films, showing clips and asking the filmmakers what they’d intended, and how and why the government (under the Soviet Union’s control) overruled the artists.

Like, let’s film this war scene with real bullets, because blanks weren’t available. Here’s where the actor and director miscommunicated, so the actor stood up at the wrong moment during filming, and got shot in the head, dead. Less astounding but more relatable, here’s a filmmaker who knew he was making propaganda, and tells us he argued about it at the time, but was constantly overruled.

When I think of Afghanistan, movies aren’t what come to mind, so this is a topic I might have never imagined. It’s hella interesting, though, and some of the clips look like movies I might’ve wanted to see.

Verdict: YES.

1/5/2026

Logo illustration by Jeff Meyer.
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