For our 2023 movie this week me and my buddy Melissa saw "BlackBerry", a comedic take on the rise and fall of the BlackBerry phone. I bypassed such mega hits from that year such as "Oppenheimer" and "Killers of the Flower Moon". Both are damn long movies and seemed a little pretentious and preachy in the trailers. Never depend on Hollywood to be the arbitrator of morality gleaned from historical events. Hollywood has no morality. I have never been a blockbuster fan as it is, and 3-to-4-hour movies is way too long for my withering attention span.  I don't need to see a director masturbating to his genius. If they can't bring a story home in about 90 minutes I'm not interested.

The first thing that struck me in researching the film for this review was how accurate it was historically. It did pretty much follow the true story of what happened to the BlackBerry empire. Even the actors looked very much like their real-life counterparts. The first thing that caught my eye about this movie was it starred Glenn Howerton from "It's Always Sunny in Philidelphia", my favorite TV show that I have never seen a full episode of because I have only watched short You Tube clips and became a fan from those alone. Howerton plays real life BlackBerry CEO Jim Balsillie as a complete sleazy megalomaniac asshole and the real Jim Balsillie resented his portrayal yet went on a junket of interviews and events to promote the film. The lure of fame won over being insulted, which was a telling clue to his real personality. As Balsillie himself said, "When you last name is 'Balsillie' you get a thick skin pretty fast as a kid."

All in all, a good flick, and this coming from a guy that wasn't even sure what a Black Berry was before I saw this movie. You are talking to a man who is only on his 3rd cell phone since 2000, and they have all been basic flip phones. It would have been only 2 phones had I not dropped one in my sink by accident a couple of years back. They don't get much use.

By the way, there is a method to my madness in picking what movies we watch. I go to a list of the films released on whatever the year is we are looking at, pick out five of different genres, and Melissa picks one of those as the movie of the week.