Bennie

It’s a soap opera dressed up in nostalgia, but falls way short of its target. If you really want a dose of reality, watch Twelve O’Clock High (1949). If compared to “Band of Brothers,” “Masters of the Air” fails to develop because it shows little of the build up of men and equipment as well as how they were trained. The series also fails to show the sheer fortitude that it took to fly missions that destined the “Mighty 8th” to suffer the most casualties of any command in WW2. 600,000 sorties, 670,000 tons of bombs along the way 26,000 Airmen were killed, 28,000 became POWs out of the 350,000 total force. Of the men who flew in 1943 alone, only 25% completed 25 missions. There seems to be a lot of focus on drinking, girls, and pageantry, but little to honor the brave men and what they endured. No mention of Gen. Eaker, the commander of the 8th, only LeMay is mentioned which means they followed some watered down version of the events to come up with the show. The show does not mention that he led the famed Regensberg Raid that terminated in Africa. Masters of the Air showcases CG, wardrobe, cliché WW2-isms, but little substance. With all the firepower behind the show, it’s just another larger version of a Spielberg’s “Amazing Stories” but in multiple parts. I bet the depiction of the Tuskegee Airmen is going to be equally disappointing since their story is more than a footnote.

Our Boys is well shot and the actors portray a drama that has been experienced for hundreds of years. It provides a glimpse (albeit one-sided) of a struggle where one side feels justified by it's violence because of the other side's intrusion or injustice. It has the same feel as Prisoners of War (seen on Hulu) and even some of the same actors in it as well as other popular Israeli shows as Fauda (Netflix) and Hostages (Netflix). The show begins with the kidnapping of three young men and their eventual triple homicide, allegedly by anti-Israelis. It's unclear from the show (unless you visit the web to learn more about that incident) what ever transpired to catch those criminals because the show Our Boys, leans heavily towards exposing a radical right religious Jewish orthodox in Jerusalem. We hear only snippets of the kidnapping that sparked the revenge killing of a Palestinian boy. After the first episode, the show depicts a ultra-detailed, almost minute by minute dramatization of how the Israeli investigators tracked and captured the young men responsible for the murder of the Palestinian, but not a lick about what Palestinian authorities do to catch the murderers of the three Jews. This show ends up putting Israel in a mostly unfavorable light by making Israel the aggressor and the Palestinian/Anti-Israel factions as faceless non-sponsored terrorists. Yet, they put a bright spotlight on the three Jewish men that kidnapped, killed and burned that Palestinian boy. Either way you slice it, one horrible, unthinkable act does not justify another. The brutality of the murder of that innocent Palestinian is abhorrent and is just as intolerable as the kidnapping and killing of the three Jewish boys. Period. This show buries the Israeli pain and celebrates the Palestinian struggle. But why? I'll chalk it up to artistic license to make whatever they think will express their views. Someone here is a self-deprecating, self-loathing producer who thinks promoting the underdog Palestinian will bring Israel to bear it's shame as an occupier, but that's just not the whole story, much like, "Our Boys." Remember, this is an Israeli production, but perfect for HBO since they seem to seek this kind of rhetoric.

Unbelievably disappointing, but, then again, Jonah Hill is highly over-rated and Eddie Murphy is a has-been supported by tired supporting actors who attempt to show everyone that the issue of race relations are now "main stream!" So, now it's basically a dead movement. This is the entire movie boiled down to a heaping pile of modern nuances and lingo that if it were made in 1980 instead of 2022, it would be riddled with jive talk! Here you have the two bougie-ist people in LA trying to be "real!" What I love most is that Jonah Hill is essentially in Black Face, trying to do what "Malibu's Most Wanted" did over 20 years ago! At least Malibu got it right! With a cast of so many talented people, this movie felt more like a thrown together, poorly written episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" than an inside look at what happens when a mid-30's loser decides to swim in a dating pool of highly explosive inter-racial dynamics. It was so hard to get thru, because it never gets out of first gear, it keeps sputtering and stammering towards a plot with so many struggles, it's full of awkward dialogue and situations that never materialize into a connectable storyline. I challenge you to find anything relatable! Totally terrible!