More Stuff I Watched 💪🙉

Yeah, this again...

The Legend of Tarzan (2016):  This was better than I thought it would be.  I'm not really a fan of Tarzan, though I did like the Disney version in 1999.  This is one of those soft reboots where it's not really starting over but it is kind of a start.  Basically Tarzan (John Claymore is his real name) and Jane have returned to England until he's contacted by the Belgian government to go back to Africa.  He refuses until a black American (Samuel L Jackson) convinces Tarzan to go back to Africa because the Belgians might be enslaving some of the natives.  The Belgians are trying to get some diamonds to pay for their colony in the Congo and need to bring Tarzan there so some natives can kill him.  Anyway, a lot of the CGI is obvious but the story is OK and it has an impressive cast including Margot Robbie, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L Jackson, and Alexander Sarsgaard--the son of Stellan Sarsgaard, whom you might remember from the Thor and Avengers movies. (3/5)

Voltron Legendary Defender Season 2:  This season uses wastes the first two episodes to get the team back together after their narrow escape from the evil Zarkon at the end of last season.  I didn't really think this was necessary, but whatever.  Most of the season is spent with the team dodging Zarkon's forces, gaining new allies, and setting an elaborate trap for Zarkon.  The last episode features an intense battle that almost makes up for the lack of Voltron fights earlier in the season.  I mean the plotting is much better in the old series, but sometimes you just want a Robeast to show up, them to form Voltron, and chop the fucking thing in half like the old days.  There was a pretty funny episode where they go to a space shopping mall and find a store that's filled with all sorts of old Earth electronics like video game systems that were sorta like the Sega Genesis or SNES.  The last episode "kills" a member of the team but it wasn't a surprise because they'd telegraphed it all season and really, who's the one character in this version who wasn't in the previous version?  Yeah, really.  So maybe next year Princess Allura will finally get to fly a lion--probably the red one. (3/5)

Sausage Party:  Seth Rogen and friends make the anti-Pixar movie.  Food in a supermarket is alive and thinks humans are "gods" who take them to the "Great Beyond" to live happily ever after.  But then Rogen's sausage finds out the truth.  He and his friends have to unite to stop the gods from devouring them.  It's filled with sophomoric humor as you'd expect from Rogen and company but there are some decent jokes.  The anti-religion message is pretty obvious.  Still wondering what a "lavash" is. (2.5/5)

Green Room:  A garage punk band traveling around in a van and siphoning gas to make ends meet gets a gig in what turns out to be a white supremacist compound.  They play their gig but when Pat (the late Anton Yelchin) goes back for his friend's phone, he sees a woman murdered in the "green room" for the bands.  The band then takes shelter in the green room while the supremacists, led by Patrick Stewart looking like an older British Nazi version of Walter White (complete with drug making!) plot to break into the green room and kill them.  Mayhem ensues.  It's oftentimes gross but sometimes funny and mostly tense. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  The casting crosses Star Trek streams as you have Captain Picard and the reboot Chekov.)

Ratchet & Clank:  I never played the video games so I don't really know how accurate this is to the source material, but as far as video game movies go it was good.  Like Luke Skywalker, Ratchet is on a small desert planet dreaming of adventure.  The main difference is that Ratchet is some kind of meerkat-looking thing.  A defective warbot crashes on the planet and warns Ratchet that the evil Drek is going to kill the heroic Galactic Rangers.  When they inadvertently save the Rangers, Ratchet and Clank become part of the Rangers to stop Drek from carving up planets to make his "ultimate planet."  Which mashing parts of planets wouldn't really work in real life, but whatever.  It's light sci-fi adventure that's pretty funny in parts.  I guess not every video game movie is a stinker. (3/5)

The Confirmation:  A boy spends the weekend with his alcoholic father (Clive Owen) and they learn valuable lessons and bond and stuff.  Mostly they look for some valuable old tools stolen from the dad that he needs for a job starting on Monday.  It's a good movie with enough action and humor to keep things moving.  (3.5/5)

Beyond the Reach:  Michael Douglas is a wealthy businessman (when isn't he?) who employs a guide to take him to the desert area called "the reach" to hunt bighorn sheep.  When he accidentally kills some dude instead of a sheep, Michael Douglas decides to stalk and try to kill his guide, though he has ample opportunities to do so.  I didn't really pay much attention to it and really, why didn't he just kill the guide right off?  Pulling a total Dr. Evil there. (2/5)

Stark Raving Mad:  It's like a D-list Ocean's Eleven as Seann William Scott assembles a team of idiots to steal a priceless artifact and stuff.  As cover for the robbery, he throws a rave downstairs in a club.  Then complications ensue.  And so forth.  I didn't really care. (2/5)  (Fun Fact:  If you get cornered by a lion, you should charge at it according to this movie.  Don't quote me on that though if you really do get cornered by a lion.)

Knock Knock:  This is like one of those Penthouse letters:  a middle-aged guy (Keanu Reeves) is home alone and two hot chicks show up in the rain.  He lets them in and they ask to take of their clothes to dry them and then ask to use the shower.  And then they suck his cock.  But then the next morning they start acting like a couple of rejects from The Purge, terrorizing him just for the hell of it.  Mayhem ensues!  Some of it sexy mayhem. (2/5) (Fun Fact:  This was directed by Eli Roth, the guy behind those Hostel torture movies, so yeah it's not surprising that again we have a torture scenario.)

The Last Heist:  A safe deposit company is closing down and so some robbers decide to go in and steal some drug money.  Their scheme is foiled by a guy in the bank.  Not an off-duty cop like Bruce Willis but a serial killer (Henry Rollins) who likes to cut people's eyes out because he thinks it saves their souls.  So that creates a lot of mayhem.  It's otherwise not really anything you haven't seen before in a heist movie.  I guess the "last" part refers to the bank going out of business.

Humans vs Zombies:  The movie is as generic as the title!  I mean it's just a bunch of standard zombie movie shit you've seen done better on The Walking Dead or movies like Dawn of the Dead and even Shaun of the Dead.  Basically a virus escapes and starts infecting kids on a college campus and mayhem ensues.  At the end for the "cookie scene" they use the Dawn of the Dead remake trick of using camcorder-looking footage to show the last people being eaten in case you had any hope.  Lame. (1/5) (Unfun Fact:  A couple of times they joke about this one girl having a "lesbian haircut" because she has curly hair to almost her shoulders.  No, Mr. Director, that's not a "lesbian haircut."  Rachel Maddow has a lesbian haircut.  Ellen Degeneres has a lesbian haircut.  If you're going to make homophobic jokes, do it right!)

St. Elmo's Fire:  This 1985 movie co-written and directed by Joel Schumacher had an all-star young 80s cast:  Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Emilio Estavez, and Andrew McCarthy!  They're a bunch of whiny yuppies in training who have graduated or flunked out of college and are moving on to that next phase of their lives.  And sleeping with each other and stuff.  Honestly it was better when I saw the beginning, fell asleep, and woke up for the end because then I missed all the boring soap opera stuff.  (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  The AM station my brother and I used to listen to for Tigers games would use the "Love Theme" from this movie as filler when they had a couple of minutes left between the end of a song or Tigers broadcast or whatever and the news at the top of the hour.)

The Magic Sword:  This cheesy 60s fantasy movie makes the original Clash of the Titans seem like Lord of the Rings.  Some dude goes to find a princess with a magic sword and help from his mommy the witch.  What a wussy "hero."  The Rifftrax gang makes it more fun but there's only so much they can do. (1/5)

The Art of More Season 2:  I jokingly called the first season "The Art of Snore" because I never stayed awake for an entire episode.  And guess what?  I didn't stay awake through the second season either.  It's good to help put me to sleep because try as they might, there are really almost no stakes in this feeble drama.  Oh no, someone's taking over the auction house and putting Kate Bosworth out of business!  She'll have to get like a real job now I guess.  And oh no the billionaire guy's modern art museum might not get built on time!  Ooooh.  Heavy stuff man. (1/5)

Narcoleptic Theater:  One night I started out watching Money Train, fell asleep, woke up for part of the middle of The Motorcycle Diaries, fell asleep, and then woke up for the end of Animal House.  Now there you go, put those together into one movie:  Money Motorcycle House or Train Motorcycle Animal or something.  To rob a train full of money to pay their tuition, some college frat boys hop on motorcycles to stage a daring robbery!  Or something like that.