Is Caleb Hammer Actually Helping People?

Posted on May 16, 2023 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

A few months ago, I discovered a YouTuber named Caleb Hammer. He’s kind of like Dave Ramsey, showcasing mostly young people’s dire financial situations and striving to help them reach prosperity. While Ramsey has a proven track record stretching back about three decades, Caleb is more of an unknown quantity.

I gave him the benefit of the doubt as I watched his unorthodox method of berating people over their poor spending habits and lack of discipline. Ramsey does the same thing, after all. 

However, I started to wonder if there’s some fundamental flaw in Caleb’s approach. He puts together nice budgets for people, but I don’t know if the people he’s talking to are being helped to change according to what he sets up for them. Let’s examine why that is and what Caleb should do differently to be more of a benefit to people drowning in debt. Continue reading →

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Why Data Is the Best Star Trek: The Next Generation Character

Posted on May 9, 2023 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

I remember years ago on Reddit visiting the Star Trek subreddit and finding a post entitled, “I just finished watching TNG for the first time. Who is your favorite character, and why is it Data?” That made me laugh. It’s funny because it’s true. The ensemble characters in Star Trek: The Next Generation are each defined by a single trait. Picard is aloof, Riker is strong, Worf is noble, Geordi is tenacious, Crusher is incisive, Deanna is empathic, and Data? He’s different. Data is relatable.

He’s an android who wants to understand human emotions and perhaps even experience them one day. Unfortunately, he lacks the capacity to feel anything, so he has to watch his crewmates suffer, celebrate, and struggle with no common frame of reference with which to understand them. For some reason, this makes him remarkably likable and interesting.

When we first meet Data, he’s childlike and curious, sometimes even arrogant and annoying. But something interesting happens over the course of the show’s seven seasons. He becomes more in tune with people’s emotions, and he fights back against his own limitations.

Episodes like “The Most Toys,” “Brothers,” and even “A Matter of Perspective” give him ample opportunities for growth. I’d like to share parts of them as a means of explaining why I agree that Data is the best one of the main characters in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Continue reading →

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Nine Months Later, Life Isn’t What I Expected

Posted on May 2, 2023 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

On August 3, 2022, I paid off my mortgage and began a new era of my life. I wanted to throw a big mortgage-burning party and invite all my friends and neighbors to join in on the fun. But I quickly realized that it would take a little while to save up enough to do that. So I made it my goal to have enough saved up by the end of April 2023 to throw a proper party.

And then life happened. Continue reading →

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Who You Gonna Call a Perfect Chiasmus? Ghostbusters!

Posted on April 25, 2023 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

As I mentioned last week, this Cinematic Chiasmus is not my own. A reader of mine named Jay not only suggested it, but he mapped it out for me. All I had to do was write the descriptions. I’m happy to do it because Ghostbusters is one of my favorite movies. And I have a secret to share at the end of this article that probably no one will believe. But I promise it’s true!

So stay tuned as we discover the astonishingly symmetrical nature of the original Ghostbusters. Continue reading →

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Four Extraordinary Cinematic Chiasmus Articles Coming Soon

Posted on April 18, 2023 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

If I say that something is unprecedented too many times, that word will lose its impact. And yet I’ve felt the need to say that six of the last eight Cinematic Chiasmus articles I’ve written, starting with Tron and ending with Pride and Prejudice (1995), have been absolutely unprecedented because of either how they came to be or how epic in scope they were.

Despite all that, let me tell you that what I’m about to share is truly unprecedented. You see, when a brilliant reader of mine recommended Tron, Escape from New York, Dreamscape, Akira, and Conan the Barbarian as potential examples of Cinematic Chiasmus, he did so without knowing for sure that they would fit into that category. He just had a feeling, and he suggested that I take a look to see if they were symmetrical in nature. And it turned out all of them were.

I still haven’t gotten to his final (so far) suggestion of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. But that’s on the docket.

Those five articles were all incredible to write. And now I am about to have a totally new experience. A “long time listener, first time caller,” as he put it, recently sent me a series of messages through the Contact Form on this website. They were absolutely stunning.

A man named Jay sent me four film titles with fully fleshed-out chiasma! You know how I always start each Cinematic Chiasmus article with a summary from A to Z, or whatever number sequence, of the events in the film to show how everything connects? That is what he did for me. There’s no guesswork about whether or not the four films he sent work. They all do. Now all I have to do is write the rest of the copy in the articles.

I’m going to try to write all of those articles in quick succession. We’ll see how quickly I can write them since he’s already done the legwork of discovering the chiasmus in each one. This will be a remarkable series of Cinematic Chiasmus articles unlike any other I’ve done in the past. Why? Because I truly didn’t write them. Someone else came up with their frameworks, and I’m just filling in the details.

Stay tuned for those in the near future, hopefully starting next week if all goes as planned.

This is the Deja Reviewer bidding you farewell until we meet again.

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Clever Foreshadowing in The Dark Knight

Posted on April 11, 2023 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

I love the dialogue in The Dark Knight. It’s punchy, full of memorable lines, and has plenty of excellent callbacks to Batman Begins and earlier lines within the film itself. “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” “You wanna know how I got these scars?” “I make my own luck.” “I’m a dog chasing cars.” “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

There’s one line of dialogue that cleverly foreshadows the ultimate fate of a mob boss named Sal Maroni. I hadn’t really noticed it until recently. Perhaps you already saw its significance long ago, but it was really cool for me to finally see, so I’d like to share it with you. Continue reading →

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We All Need a Pat on the Back Sometimes

Posted on April 4, 2023 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

I’d like to share a little story from when I was a new father. My first son was just over a year old when my daughter was born. It was hard having two young babies so close to each other. Little did I know that a third baby would be coming just a year and a half later.

Having those first two children helped to inspire me to start this website. In fact, I started it just two months after my daughter was born. It’s amazing how much you can get done when you suddenly have almost no free time and you can’t even get a good night’s sleep anymore. Continue reading →

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Honey, I Shrunk the Kids Is About Bigger Things Than I Remembered

Posted on March 28, 2023 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids was the first movie I ever saw in a theater. I somehow got invited to another kid’s birthday party, and I was delighted to go. None of my brothers or sisters had seen it yet, so I was going to be the first. I was just a small child when I saw it, and I had never experienced such a big-screen adventure. Of course, being a child, I didn’t pick up on all the subtle nuances the film had to offer.

As a grownup, I just revisited it with my own children, and I found myself absolutely loving every second of the film. I even appreciated all of the big subjects the film delves into.

I’d like to share what I saw on my most-recent viewing of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids to explain why I love this movie. Continue reading →

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And I Thought My Jokes Were Bad

Posted on March 21, 2023 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

Remember that 2008 movie where, near the start, a bunch of mobsters’ money disappears from every bank in their city and gets put into one big pot that none of them have control over? And yet they’re told (by the man who moved their money without their permission) that their money is safe.

Immediately after he makes that statement, a clown walks in laughing at everyone in the room and says, “And I thought my jokes were bad.”

Of course I’m talking about The Dark Knight, which came out the same year that a massive financial meltdown was happening before our very eyes. It feels like déjà vu right now, doesn’t it? I’d like to share some insights I’ve had based on fictional events in the movie. I don’t intend to read intentions that aren’t there into the movie, but to use it to comment on current events. Continue reading →

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My Hands Look Like an Old Movie Right Now

Posted on March 14, 2023 by Robert Lockard, the Deja Reviewer

If you’ve ever seen Beneath the Planet of the Apes, you’ll be able to appreciate what I’m about to say. In that movie, there are a group of mutants who appear to be perfectly normal humans on the outside. However, when they approach a nuclear bomb that they worship, they remove their masks to reveal their horribly scarred skin beneath.

The mutants in Beneath the Planet of the Apes resemble my hands right now.As it turns out, living in the aftermath of a nuclear war and in close proximity to a nuclear warhead doesn’t do your skin any favors.

Thankfully, I do not have radiation poisoning or anything like that. But I am recovering from a pretty severe case of Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease. I got sores all over my hands, and then my skin hardened to the point that it felt like I was wearing gloves all the time. And now that layer of glove-like skin is peeling off a little at a time.

What it’s revealing doesn’t look terribly appealing. The skin underneath looks raw and covered in red spots. Instead of the dead feeling I used to have, the parts that have peeled to reveal the skin underneath are quite painful. Having a lot of pain in my hands and fingers is not exactly conducive to my job as a writer. After all, I need to strike keys to make words appear on the screen. Suddenly that is easier said than done.

I apologize for not being able to do a better job these past few weeks. I’ve experienced an extraordinary amount of pain, which refuses to die down completely. There are plenty more things I want to share in the future. But I must forbear for now. Thank you for your patience with me during this trial.

This is the Deja Reviewer bidding you farewell until we meet again.

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