The Lovers, The Lovers, The Lovers, You Don't Treat Me No Good No More

Once The Lovers starts, the marriage between Mary (Debra Winger) and Michael (Tracy Letts) is not in the middle of a rough patch nor is it about to hit a speed bump that interrupts romantic paradise. No, the moment the story begins, it's pretty damn clear that these two have drifted apart from one another for eons now. They're both seeing other people behind the other's back, with Michael striking up a romance with dance instructor Lucy (Melora Waters) and Mary engaging in an affair with writer Robert (Aidan Gillen). Each of their affairs have gone on long enough now that Michael and Mary's secret romantic partners beg them to cut off the marriage that has been going on for so long now.

Good Luck Chuck, With A Movie Like This One, You're Gonna Need It

We've all heard of the movie Rocky, but do you know about the real-life boxer who helped inspire that famous film character? Despite the title leading you to think it was a film adaptation of a Zachary Levi NBC sitcom or perhaps a biopic of Chuck Berry, Chuck is all about the life and times of Chuck Wepner (portrayed here by Liev Schreiber), a boxer who got to fight Muhammad Ali (Pooch Hall) in a high profile fight that Wepner ended up losing. You might think that might have been shattering to Wepner, but he took the loss in stride and ended up becoming a minor celebrity due to him managing to briefly knock Ali off his feet during the fight.

Wakefield Can't Come Up With Enough Depth For Its Lead Characters Journey Of Self-Discovery

Life has not been easy for Howard Wakefield (Bryan Cranston), a guy who feels like life has been piling up on him between a dissatisfying job, a fractured relationship with his wife and two daughters who'd rather he didn't exist at all. He's looking for some escape from his existence and he finds the chance for just that when he rediscovers the little attic space in his families garage (which is a separate building from their house). Here, he discovers there's a lot of room in here as well as a window through which he can watch his families comings and goings. Suddenly, an attic used to store seasonal decorations and camping equipment is looking mighty inviting.

3 Generations Is A Scattered And Clumsy Mess

3 Generations was supposed to come out in a general theatrical release domestically all the way back in September 2015 with the title of About Ray. After it garnered a critical thrashing at the Toronto International Film Festival, The Weinstein Company pulled it from its release schedule and it basically vanished. Then, earlier this year, it was abruptly announced that the studio would be releasing About Ray under its current title and in a smaller theatrical release under their Radius-TWC banner, which had been discontinued for over a year but was briefly brought back to life solely for the purpose of getting this feature finally released.

We'll Always Have Paris (Can Wait)

We've all been on vacations, but no two vacations are alike, much like snowflakes! Yep, vacations come in all shapes and sizes depending on so many factors, like where you're going, who you're traveling with, all those crucial elements. Some vacations you go on are non-stop thrills and fun, just complete joy from start to finish. Then there are those vacations you endure that are a total snooze for their entire time, there's just no true blue enjoyment to be had. And then there are those vacations that have some fun and even memorable spots in them but end up being just kind of average, which, unfortunately, is the type of vacation the Eleanor Coppola movie Paris Can Wait most resembles.

Snatched Has Some Funny Moments But It's Too Heavily Scattered To Work Fully

Family vacations always seem to detour into unexpected misadventures and detours and all kinds of other problems in the real world, but in the movies, I don't think there's such a thing as a drama-free vacation. Whether it's the Griswalds going on their Family Vacation or European Vacation or those Millers posing as a clean-cut family to get down to Mexico or Robin Williams and his family in the 2006 family film RV, cinematic depictions of family vacations just seem destined to go awry. Snatched, a new Amy Schumer/Goldie Hawn comedy, very much continues this pattern of family getaways very much not going according to plan.

All Along The Baywatch Tower

We don't have very many beaches down here in Texas, particularly in the land-locked region I call home, Allen, Texas. Ya gotta go down to Galveston or other areas closer to the Gulf of Mexico if you want some of that sun n' surf all that beach blanket bingo's are talking about these days. Considering I've never been a big fan of the beach, the fact that there aren't a lot of nearby beaches isn't exactly an insurmountable tragedy for me. What is a tragedy for me though is that I sat through the tragically unfunny beach-set motion picture Baywatch, which will likely keep me off of sandy shores for the foreseeable future.

WAR (Machine)...HOO! WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR??

American pop culture is at an interesting...impasse, I guess you could say, in terms of how it treats the Iraq war. For a good long while during the Iraq war conflict, American war movies were firmly situated in the past, namely in World War II where audiences could have a greater sense of removal from what was transpiring on-screen and some clear-cut villains (Nazi's and Hitler) to root against. In 2009, we got two movies that tackled the brutality offered up by the war and its effects on individual men with the excellent The Hurt Locker and the incredible Brothers, but since then, most of our wartime movies have been mostly empty features, whether they're just "rah-rah" action films like Lone Survivor or American Sniper or supposedly philosophical but mostly just empty movies like Billy Lynn's Long Half-Time Walk.

Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales Is Soaked In Tedium And Terrible Writing

Just like Bernie in Weekend At Bernie's, the Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise is dead. The newest entry in this lame-brained saga, Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, brings a franchise that's always struggled with sequels to lows lower than the ones seen in the already anemic Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Yes, the one that committed the foul crime of wasting Ian McShane as an evil pirate is no longer the worst entry in this series, that's how bad Dead Men Tell No Tales is. Nothing can dull the glorious high-quality of that original Pirates Of The Caribbean movie, but at this point, this newest Pirates movie is like Terminator: Genisys; a nonsensically told story that's just around to provide "REMEMBER THIS FROM PAST MOVIES???" moments in place of anything even remotely of substance.

Happy 40th Anniversary Star Wars!

40 years is a long time.

Like, a long time.

We've been through seven Presidents Of The United States in that time, four different James Bond actors, the entire runs of TV shows like Breaking Bad, The Sopranos and Law & Order in that four decades of time. So many people have come and gone, so much has been lost and gained, but there Star Wars stands, like a lighthouse in the fog of reality, always standing, always shining, always providing clarity even in the midst of tragedy. It's always residing there as this pop culture institution children love and adults will enjoy both watching on its own terms and similarly enjoy passing onto the next generation.

Lowriders Needed More Polish Before It Could Truly Shine

Lowriders is a collaboration between two of Hollywood's biggest production companies; Ron Howard and Brian Grazer's Imagine Entertainment and Jason Blum's micro-budget wonder factory Blumhouse Productions. The two have joined forces to finance and theatrically release (via Blumhouse's self-distributing studio BH Tilt that put out recent movies like Incarnate, The Belko Experiment and Sleight) Lowriders after the movie sat on the shelf for nearly two years. Interestingly, in that time, three of its main stars (Melissa Benoist, Theo Rossi and Tony Revelori) have gotten involved in major roles in high-profile superhero projects. Hopefully Demian Bichir joins them in that regard soon!

In Laman's Terms: Celebrating Three Years Of Land Of The Nerds

In Laman's Terms is a new weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

Three years.

It's been three years since I started this website.

Three years ago, I launched Land Of The Nerds after months of preparation and thought as a way to segue from being my High School newspaper's film critic into being a full-on pop culture journalist. My entire life I had been captivated and inspired by websites like Comingsoon.net, Roger Ebert's own website The AV Club and The Dissolve that provided plenty of film news and in the latter three websites cases, also provided commentary and reviews that attended to a wide spectrum of types of movies. Blockbusters, obscure documentaries and direct-to-video comedy sequels all got equal levels of analysis. The world of cinema was vast and unpredictable and these websites were populated by people just dying to explore that world and all its nooks and crannies.

My job in starting Land Of The Nerds was to create something that could take that level of dedication and writing quality and add my own dash of personality to the mix. Since May 24, 2014 when Land Of The Nerds first opened, I've published 1,496 pieces of writing, most of which were movies reviews but there were plenty of editorials and news pieces to spice things up too. In recent weeks, I've been expanding the type of writing done on here too; music reviews, a prominent fixture in the early months of this website (where namely reviews of country music singles), have returned with a vengeance with a new weekly feature entitled Douglas Laman Needs A Tune-Up where I review a classic album I've never heard of before.

A new weekly editorial feature, In Laman's Terms, has also been an attempt by myself to revive a feature that was more prominent in the early days of the site. Why do I bring these two columns up specifically? To show how Land Of The Nerds is growing now and will continue to grow for as long as it exists. I love routines and proven schedules but I am not a stagnant person when it comes to my writing. I am always looking for new film genres and new avenues of pop culture to explore and write about and these two new weekly fixtures I hope serve as an indication of the wide spectrum of content Land Of the Nerds provides from yours truly.

Where do we go from here? Who really knows. Weekly fixtures and movie reviews will continue unabated (though my summer college courses will heavily restrict movie reviews to primarily new releases versus the heavy emphasis on reviews of pre-2017 feature films I've been doing for the first five months of this year) while I hope to one day make good use of the plural use of the word "Nerds" in this site's title and hire additional writers to provide their own unique perspectives to the table when it comes to pop culture. I would have once thought that was impossible, but I also would have thought it was impossible for this website to garner over 25,000 pageviews in a single month and since that's happened in two separate months in 2017, perhaps that goal of adding writers to this website will happen one of these o'l days!

I really don't want to sound like a bragger or anything like that, but I do work hard here, I take pride in my work and always wanting to improve it and looking back on the three years of steady pieces of writing I've provided on a daily basis does make me proud. Though it's a geeky pile of work I've created over the last few years, it's MY geeky pile of work and I'm happy to have my name and face on this website. But I'm even happier that I can share these works with you dear reader. Whether you've been reading this site for all three years of its existence or you just stumbled upon Land Of The Nerds by accident, I thank you for sticking around and listening to my extended ramblings about all sorts of pop culture fixtures. Your interest in diving deeper into the world of cinema makes my heart soar and you're the reason the site has kept going for as long as it has.

In summation, thank you to everyone for reading what I've made here for three years, I'm really proud of what's transpired so far in the Land Of The Nerds and I'm incredibly excited for what's to come. I don't know what's in the future, which is both a scary and exciting experience. But that's also how I felt when I was a High School Senior in the last week of High School, and now three years later, look what's happened. I just finished my third year of college and have done three straight years of working on this website. Not everything's been good that's occurred in the last three years for sure (just look at American politics) but we've also had amazing events too like the legalization of gay marriage, plenty of moments I'll never forget shared with my friends and family and I also have seen too many amazning movies to count.

The future is, quite frequently, a terrifying thing  But as long as I've got this site, writing, you fine readers and some good movies by my side, I think I can handle anything life throws my way. Here's to the next three years and beyond of Land Of The Nerds!

Douglas Laman Gets A Tune-Up (Entry #3): What's Going On by Marvin Gaye

DOUGLAS LAMAN GETS A TUNE-UP

ENTRY #3: What's Going On by Marvin Gaye

Douglas Laman Gets A Tune-Up is a new weekly series wherein Douglas Laman listens to an album of music he's never fully listened to before (though he may have heard one or two songs from it) and writes up his brief thoughts on it.

For the next entry in this series, we head only a few years after 1967 when The Velvet Underground & Nico was released but we do head into a different genre of music entirely. Marvin Gaye's 1971 album What's Going On clearly belongs to the world of soul music, a genre reliant on African-American culture and one that served as an artistic outlet for African-Americans in both the 20th and 21st century. While American music was still struggling to recognize African-American artists on a regular basis in the 1960's and 1970's, the terrain of soul and jazz music served as one of the few go-to avenues for African-American musicians looking to express themselves in an authentic way.

The 2008 Stage Version Of Rent Shows Why This Gut-Wrenching Musical Has Endured For So Long

It's interesting to me how a large amount of art can be dubbed both timely to the specific period it premiered in and timeless in the types of emotions and characters it grapples with. Rent, a Broadway musical penned by Jonathan Larson, is very much one such production, with its story chronicling the experiences of eight adults in their early twenties grappling with financial insecurity and the AIDS crisis being very much something that resonated powerfully with audiences in the mid-1990's. For decades at that point, the AIDS crisis had ravaged the LGBTQA community and instead of creating more empathy for members of this community, individuals like former President Ronald Reagan only made those suffering from AIDS and the LGBTQA community itself even more of a pariah in American society than it already was. 

There's Just Not Enough Brains Or Good Scares In The Underwhelming Alien: Covenant

Ridley Scott is a master of his craft. Like fellow 1970's filmmaker trailblazer Steven Spielberg, it's awesome to see him still out there making large-scale movies and pushing boundaries in the modern age. The guys made his modern-day duds for sure (The Counselor has its notable fanbase for sure but I just couldn't get into and Exodus: Gods And Kings was a total snoozefest) but his most recent film, The Martian, demonstrated why we al fell in love with him in the first place. All of that praise having been said, I won't lie; Alien: Covenant, his newest directorial effort, does make me think it's time for some new creative (acid) blood to get injected into this franchise on some level.

Another Brick In The Wall

Truth in advertising still exists it seems, as The Wall very much does indeed focus on a wall. I have this wish that more modern-day Hollywood movies would use more inventive titles and eschew these shorter generic titles running rampant in modern cinema but at least the more truncated title of The Wall is pretty accurate to what the actual movie entails. The only way it could be more accurate is if it somehow managed to cram in the names of its two lead actors and its primary location (Iraq) in the title, though at that point I suppose the title would become quite unwieldy at that point. I doubt they could even fit that on a poster in a satisfying manner.

Originality, Fun And Being Entertaining Are Not King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword's Strong Suits

I always felt like The Sword In The Stone was one of the weakest animated Disney movies as a kid. Maybe my opinion would change as an adult (I haven't seen it in years) but its more episodic story structure was more obvious there than it is in other animated fare from Disney in the same era and the characters never struck me as all that interesting. That having been said, I'd handily say that particular cinematic take on the King Arthur mythos is notably superior to Guy Ritchie's new take on the world of Camelot in King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword. After all, The Sword In The Stone at least had that owl who was occasionally funny.

We Built The Lost City Of Z On Rock And Roll

In his 1995 review of Congo, Roger Ebert mentioned how the jungle adventure movie had "fallen out of fashion", which is true, we didn't really see a whole bunch of such movies in the years leading up to 1995. While last year brought the new Jungle Book remake from Disney and The Legend Of Tarzan, jungle adventure movies have otherwise been mostly scarce in 2010's cinema as well, a sign that that particular subgenre may really have just fallen by the wayside for a variety of reason. But just because it's scarce doesn't mean it's gone extinct. Case in point, last month brought a brand spanking new jungle adventure movie in the form of James Gray's newest directorial effort, The Lost City Of Z.

Journey To Italy Is A Quietly Tragic Romantic Drama NOT A Concert Movie About Journey Performing In Italy As I Thought

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #31
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #12

We have plenty of movies about people falling in love, with the subgenre thriving because of people of all genders getting to live vicariously through the characters on-screen engaging in a perfect romance they know can't possibly exist in the real world. There's plenty of those movies I like but I also tend to gravitate heavily towards movies with more realistic depictions of romance, specifically, one's that show people in either romantic partnerships or marriages that are crumbling and how that deteriorating relationship affects both people. That's why Richard Linklater's Before Midnight is so excellent, among many many other reasons!

Gifted Is Far From Original But It Has Its Moments And Proves (Once Again) That Chris Evans Has Dramatic Acting Chops

Chris Evans is so assured and natural in his multiple performances as Captain America that I think we all take for granted just how good he is as a performer to make that character (which many in the public had dismissed as a jingoistic one-note caricature before the 2011 Captain America film) feel so real and dramatically investable. You can see the guy's talent as an actor in plenty of other works too, including Sunshine (which way more people need to see!), Snowpiercer (ditto) and in his small but hilarious role as Lucas Lee in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Evans gets to flex his dramatic muscles once more in the new Marc Webb drama Gifted.