More Stuff I Watched Since the Last Time

More Stuff I Watched Since the Last Time...

Max Steel:  This was based on a Mattel property I don't remember.  This kid moves back to his hometown and starts manifesting liquid energy and then an annoying robot partner shows up and then there are bad guys and...I didn't really follow most of the exposition.  It's otherwise an OK movie that wastes the acting talents of Maria Bello and Andy Garcia.  The latter looks especially ridiculous in an Iron Man-ripoff suit.  At least they didn't seem to try too hard to set up sequels or a "cinematic universe" because I'm pretty sure it didn't make enough money for that. (2/5)

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 2:  Maybe if I'd watched this in the theater, where I was a captive audience, I'd have liked it more.  The middle of this especially seemed to drag to the point I was getting bored and playing on my tablet and such.  There just didn't seem to be much of consequence going on.  Star-Lord finds out his father is a "Celestial" who has his own planet and often takes the form of Kurt Russell.  Considering the two-part Avengers Infinity War starts next year you'd think they'd want to do more to position the Guardians for that, but I think the cookie scenes did more for that than anything in the movie.  Though the end with Yondu was nice.  Not sure why Sly Stallone was cashing a paycheck as the Ravager leader; it seemed as pointless as the rest of this.  But I don't know, maybe if I watch it again at some point I'd like it more.  I might have just been in a grumpy mood. (2/5)

Alien:  Covenant:  After Prometheus, one of the main complaints was how fucking stupid these "scientists" were, taking off their helmets and running around like Scooby and Shaggy in a place filled with killer aliens.  So what does Ridley Scott do?  He has a bunch of idiots go to an alien planet with no spacesuits or masks or anything and they get infected with aliens and shit.  Because, well, I guess a computer told them the atmosphere was OK.  I mean sure they do this on Star Trek but that's not supposed to be realistic while this is supposed to be more so.  Anyway, somehow the android David from Prometheus--who was just a head--got a body and killed all the "Engineers" (and Noomi Rapace) with some spores and decided to create aliens that wind up killing the dumb shits who land on the planet.  But two dumb shits escape except they can't tell the good android from the evil android and so wind up fucked.  Like Transformers 5 it doesn't seem like they really learned from their previous failure and thus repeated it. Ridley Scott will need Blade Runner 2049 to do better to regain some of the goodwill he got from The Martian. (1/5)

Ghost in the Shell (2017):  I never saw the anime, so I don't have any idea how accurate it is.  Basically it's like Robocop in that a dead woman's brain is put in a robot, albeit this robot looks pretty normal.  Then she's put in a secret unit to fight bad guys.  There's no training montage or anything; one minute she's waking up for the first time and the next she's killing bad guys.  Would have helped to have something in between maybe.  Like Robocop she starts looking for bad guys and ends up being hunted instead.  There's even a robot vs cyborg fight that isn't quite as good as Robocop vs ED-209.  The story is a little muddled, but it's at least better than the Robocop reboot. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  The issue of "whitewashing" was brought up since this was originally a Japanese comic and anime.  You'd get the comic book fansplainers then saying "Well actually" but the character in the movie is literally whitewashed as an Asian woman's brain is put in Scarlett Johannson's body.  When her robot body emerges for the first time there is a white shell around it that flakes off, just kind of hammering the point home.)

Batman & Harley Quinn:  I wouldn't have watched it but it was almost free from Redbox, so fuck it.  Fuck it is basically what Bruce Timm and DC Execs said with this.  Instead of adapting graphic novels and such they just slapped together something with their two biggest and most overexposed characters.  It's made in the style of the animated series from the 90s with Harley Quinn getting released from jail and working at basically a superhero-themed Hooters.  Meanwhile Batman needs her help to track down Poison Ivy and some Swamp Thing-like dude from another dimension.  They're planning to release a virus that will make everyone into plants.  Despite this being a cartoon there are some PG-13 moments like the superhero-themed Hooters and when it goes into Batman 66-type captions that read "Ow, My Balls!"  The end just cuts off without really resolving much as Harley decides to just light Swamp Thing-type dude on fire.  Did they get the virus back?  Meh.  Who knows.  Or cares? (2/5) (Fun Fact:  Fortunately they're getting back on track with their next project:  an adaptation of the graphic novel Gotham By Gaslight, which imagines Batman in the Gilded Age battling Jack the Ripper.)

Marvel's The Defenders:  I binged this entire 8-episode miniseries one Sunday.  The four Marvel Netflix heroes (Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, and Iron Fist) are all brought together to fight the evil Hand, led by Sigourney Weaver.  Under her direction the Hand brought back Daredevil's lady love Elektra and brainwashed her into being their "Black Sky" super ninja.  It takes the first couple of episodes for the four heroes to finally get together at Midland Circle in Manhattan. What's kind of lame is how easily Luke Cage is freed from prison by Foggy Nelson; it makes the end of Cage's first season kind of anticlimactic.  Gradually things ramp up as the Hand needs Iron Fist as the key to their great McGuffin that turns out to be the corpse of a dragon buried underground that has some kind of secret sauce to give people eternal life.  This is kind of silly, but it's played straight as Daredevil and Elektra seemingly make the ultimate sacrifice, but well, of course not.  It'll be interesting to see how this affects the next seasons of these shows but next up is The Punisher.  Overall it's good for TV but not exactly on par with The Avengers.  (3/5)

The Tick:  I watched the original live action series a few years ago, but I never watched the animated series or read any comics or anything.  This revival on Amazon was greenlit last year with the pilot episode.  It mostly deals with an accountant named Arthur whose father was murdered by "The Terror" years ago and so has become obsessed with finding the villain.  One night while tracking some bad guys, Arthur meets the Tick, a big blue superhero who at first it seems like is a figment of his imagination, but later other people start to see him too.  Arthur gets a weird Russian suit with wings and is stalked by a Punisher/Deathstroke-type anti-hero called Overkill.  It was good for the most part, but unfortunately there are only 6 episodes so just as we're starting to get answers, it ends.  I hope there will be more later. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  Overkill has a sentient boat called "Dangerboat" that's voiced by Alan Tudyk, which might be why it sounds like K-2SO from Rogue One.)

Voltron Legendary Defender "Season 3":  As I predicted, the first couple of episodes reengineer the Voltron team into the familiar 1980s configuration as Keith takes over the black lion, Lance the red one, and Princess Allura the blue one.  Meanwhile former black lion pilot Shiro escapes the evil Galra and rejoins the team.  And the evil but charismatic Lotor is taking over the Galra and hatching an evil scheme...and then it abruptly ends after 7 measly episodes.  Christopher Dilloway says there will be more episodes in October, so it just seems silly to start now, barely get anything started, and then have to wait two months. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  In one episode they go to an evil mirror universe where Shiro is actually a guy named Sven--a callback to the original blue lion pilot in the 1984 series.  Sadly in the evil mirror universe no one had a goatee.)

Bojack Horseman: Season 4:  This at least was a full season.  Unfortunately it wasn't as good as previous seasons.  For a show called Bojack Horseman, he was almost a secondary character in his own series.  Literally about a quarter of the season was dedicated to episodes where he hardly appeared!  The problem is the other 3 seasons all had a more focused approach.  In season 1 Bojack was having a book written about him; in season 2 he was making a movie about Secretariat; and in Season 3 he was promoting said movie for the awards crowd. But this time he doesn't really do anything; he just hangs around with his daughter who we find out at the end is really his half-sister.  Meanwhile the supporting characters are all off doing their own thing so nothing really comes together.  If there's a season 5 it would be nice if it got back to putting the focus where it belongs:  on the horseman! (2/5) (Fun Fact:  There was a fake-out at the start of the season where you think at the end of Season 3 he's going to run with the wild horses, but really he goes off to Michigan to hide out in his ancestral home.)

Handsome:  I guess this was supposed to be like a funny, foul-mouthed Columbo since Steven Weber tells you right at the beginning that he's the murderer.  But really it wasn't all that funny or even a very interesting mystery.  There are a lot of extraneous characters who don't really add much like a neighbor and his accordion-playing wife, a detective who likes to speculate wildly, another one who's a woman who dresses in men's clothes for...reasons, and a chief who's alternately hitting on the eponymous detective and telling him to file his retirement papers.  None of it really adds much to the story, such as it is.  Basically a woman who babysits a kid next door meets an actor at a party so she can score some swag from his gift bag and winds up being murdered by him later.  Saved you about 80 minutes of boring crap.  Netflix has some good original series (see above) and movies but this is one I wish they hadn't spent my subscription money on. (2/5)

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword:  As I said on Facebook, it would help if you can purge from your memory any knowledge of the actual King Arthur legend like the movie Excalibur.  I mean there's very little of that in this other than some names and vague ideas.  Instead director Guy Ritchie and his writing team try to melt together an Arthurian movie, one of Guy's London crime movies like Snatch, Robin Hood, and probably a few other things so that you end up with Arthur floating to London as a baby like Moses only to be adopted by prostitutes until he becomes their pimp.  Meanwhile King Uther's brother has made a deal with "syrens" (a weird squid lady creature) in his basement to build a tower that will somehow give him ultimate power.  The simple way to review this is to quote the old lady behind me in Transformers 2:  This movie is so stupid.  (1/5)  (Fun Fact:  N/A)

Kong:  Skull Island:  Last year Warner Bros backed its way into a DC cinematic universe and this year they're backing their way into a "Monsterverse" with this movie.  The way BvS followed Man of Steel, this follows the 2014 Godzilla remake.  It takes place in 1973 when some scientists and military guys go to Skull Island and are knocked out of the sky by Kong and then beset by a number of giant critters, chief among them weird lizards with skull faces.  The whole thing feels largely empty, like a commercial for future movies though it isn't until the cookie scene at the very end that we get to introducing Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, and others. (2/5)  (Fun Fact:  To back into their cinematic universe, they cast at least 4 members of the Marvel Cinematic Universe:  Tom Hiddleston (Loki), Samuel L Jackson (Nick Fury), John C Reilly (Nova Officer, GOTG), and Brie Larson, the future Captain Marvel.  I guess they're hoping for some kind of cinematic osmosis?)

Gold:  Finally, a movie about a white man raping a Pacific country for its minerals!  But seriously, Matthew McConaughey is a prospector who's been down on his luck in the 80s.  Then he contacts a geologist who thinks there's a big gold strike in Indonesia.  When they find some gold dust it seems they're on the right track and they start selling stock to a lot of investors, led by Corey Stoll.  But, spoiler alert, it turns out the geologist planted the gold dust and then ran off with some money, leaving McConaughey holding the bag.  It's an OK drama but maybe a little too long.  Seems weird that with a star like McConaughey and a strong cast I hadn't even heard of this until it was released on DVD; I'm not sure it ever got past the "limited release" in theaters. (2.5/5)

Forces of Nature:  I fell asleep while trying to watch this online a month or two ago but it was on Showtime so I got to finish it.  I kinda wish I didn't.  Ben Affleck is a guy getting married in Savannah, Georgia but his flight out of New York skids off the runway, leaving him stranded.  His seatmate Sandra Bullock is also going to Savannah so they set out on a Planes, Trains, and Automobiles style trip that did start in a plane and then go to an automobile and then a train and then back to an automobile.  Along the way they hook up, but...spoiler alert...Affleck ends up marrying his bride-to-be Marua Tierney even though she looks about 10 years too old for him.  And Sandra Bullock makes amends with her estranged kid.  So, yay?  I guess, but it seems kind of pointless, like if Planes, Trains, and Automobiles had ended with Steve Martin getting home and slamming the door in John Candy's face.  Not very satisfying. (2/5)

What We Did On Our Holiday:  A dysfunctional British family travels to Scotland for their father/grandfather's birthday.  Along the way the parents fight almost nonstop, except when they fall asleep and one of the kids steers the car.  Once arriving in Scotland, the grandpa takes the three kids to his favorite beach, where they have plenty of fun--until he dies.  Instead of freaking out, the kids (aged 10-5 or so) decide to give him an impromptu Viking funeral he joked about by assembling a raft and lighting it on fire.  Now if I were 10-5 I think I would have been freaking out and run screaming.  There is some trouble with the cops and reporters then before a not entirely happy ending.  At times funny and at times sad it's a decent movie. (3/5)  (The divorcing couple are played by Rosamund Pike of Gone Girl and David Tennant of Dr. Who/Jessica Jones, which when you think about it the crazy wife from Gone Girl and the Purple Man would make for a pretty terrifying couple.)

Cooties:  The credits might put you off chicken nuggets for a while as it shows a diseased chicken getting ground into a gross nugget that is eaten by a little girl.  The kid turns into a zombie and it starts to spread while only the adults are immune to the effects.  So a bunch of dim-witted teachers led by Elijah Wood and the forehead guy from The Office have to find a way to escape.  One stupid thing is in the teacher's lounge is a block full of knives, which seemed weird.  I mean who needs a bunch of knives in a teacher's lounge?  Except to repel zombies.  But when the zombies start running around, no one grabs the knives.  It violates that thing that Chekov and/or Hitchcock said about showing a gun in the first act.  Anyway, it just ends seemingly at random with lots of stuff left unresolved, but it's pretty amusing if you don't take too seriously it's a movie about murdering children. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  Two of the executive producers are Hayden and Tove Christiansen, who I'll assume are brothers.  Lucky for us they don't act in the movie.)

Birdemic:  Rifftrax episodes frequently reference movie so it was nice to have a chance to see it.  The movie is hilariously inept with pathetic acting and even more pathetic CGI effects.  Since apparently they couldn't hire a bird wrangler they use terrible CGI birds that often hover, despite that being impossible.  When the birds first attack, it's hilarious there are all these bad CGI explosions, like the birds are bombing the town.  Besides the frequent shots of parking and gratuitous story about solar panels, stock options, and Victoria's Secret, the most hilarious thing is that while the actors are freaking out and shooting birds, you can see cars and people in the background acting totally normal.  And then for no reason at all the birds fly away.  The end.  This is the best worst movie you'll see. (5/5)

Mystery Team:  Three nerdy kids led by Donald Glover have been junior detectives since elementary school.  Now that they're almost graduating high school they want a real case and so start investigating the murder of a little girl's parents.  Except they really know even less than Scooby and the Gang about investigating crimes greater than someone sticking a finger in a pie.  What I saw was pretty funny but then I fell asleep.  I woke up for the end to see who did it--no rubber masks were involved. (2.5/5)

Radical Jack:  All you really need to know is this 2000 movie stars Billy Ray Cyrus, who at the time was still the most famous person in his family.  You might wonder why someone would cast the guy behind "Achy Breaky Heart" but then Hollywood had already cast Brian "the Boz" Bosworth, Shaq, Dennis Rodman, and Vanilla Ice in movies so why the hell not?  The plot is pretty much Roadhouse if Patrick Swayze's character had been coerced by the CIA to take a job as a bouncer to spy on small town drug dealers.  And maybe if it had starred Patrick Swayze it would have been slightly more tolerable. (1/5)

Bermuda Triangle:  A very long, boring, inept 70s movie about a boat that gets lost in the Bermuda Triangle while looking for "Atlantis."  They find a doll that apparently was a little girl who died a century or two ago, which supposedly talks to a little girl who starts saying creepy things in a badly dubbed voice.  When they go underwater they murder three sharks for little reason.  I mean the sharks weren't even threatening them and they just shot them!  Plus there's a black cook who's so stereotypical even Donald Trump probably couldn't excuse it.  Not even Rifftrax can do much with this turkey. (1/5)

Deep Web:  The "dark Web" is the seedy underbelly of the Internet and now a go-to plot device for lazy screenwriters when someone needs illicit goods or services.  Silk Road was a major dark website that mostly sold drugs for Bitcoins.  The administrator for the site called himself "Dread Pirate Roberts" after the character from The Princess Bride (Cary Elwes in the movie version).  Eventually the FBI caught him and he was put up for trial.  Unfortunately Writer/director Alex Winter (aka Bill S Preston, Esquire) has his buddy Keanu Reeves (aka Ted "Theodore" Logan) narrate in such a monotone that it put me to sleep so I don't really know how it all turned out. (1/5)

Banking on Bitcoin:  This documentary goes hand-in-hand with Deep Web above as much of Bitcoin's rise and popularity was thanks to the Silk Road allowing people to buy drugs online.  The site and its operator are featured in this documentary and even some of the same writers and such are interviewed.  Like when I watched a Minecraft documentary, this didn't really do what I hoped for, which was to explain just what the fuck Bitcoin is in layman's terms.  At one point it goes to a group of old people and one asks if you buy something with a Bitcoin, how do you make change?  But the movie never really answers the question.  As far as I can tell, other than drugs people don't really buy much with Bitcoins; they just hold on to them like stocks or bonds.  I suppose it's a good idea whose time hasn't come yet.  (2/5) (At its height around 2013 there were Bitcoin exchanges that soon went the way of EBay consignment stores.  They even sponsored a college bowl game on ESPN, which was one of the first times where I thought, "The fuck is a Bitcoin?"  Still wondering.)

Lo and Behold:  This Werner Herzog documentary starts with a history of the beginnings of the Internet.  Then it just goes into some random things vaguely associated with the Internet:  artificial intelligence, solar flares, robotics, Internet addiction, and a place in West Virginia where due to is proximity to a radio telescope there's no cell signals, which makes it a haven for people who don't want to use the Internet for whatever reason.  It's mostly interesting but doesn't really have much cohesion. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact: the title comes from LO, short for LOGIN, which was the first-ever email between UCLA and Stanford.)

Boobs!:  Who wouldn't want to watch a documentary about boobs?  What's America's obsession with boobs?  I think the answer is pretty easy if you use Freudian psychology:  it involves an Oedipal complex.  Rather than ask psychologists or anything, this mostly talks to random people and Tom Arnold.  Like Lo and Behold it goes into random tangents about breast enhancement/reduction and porn and all that.  If the production values weren't like an 80s local news broadcast it would be better. (2/5)

Ashley Madison:  Sex, Lies, and Cyber Attacks:  Ashley Madison was a site dedicated to letting married men hook up with chicks.  Its parent company also owned sites like Cougar Life and Established Men.  Basically any fetish, they had a site for it.  Then in 2015 a group of hackers called "Impact Team" hacked the Ashley Madison site and threatened to release the personal information of subscribers.  When the company didn't pay, they also published company emails, which leads some to believe the hack might have been an inside job.  Since no one has been charged (as of the date of the documentary) there's no real conclusion.  It's just some stuff that happened.  (2/5) (Fun Fact:  The CEO of the company stepped down and the company rebranded itself after the email scandal.)

Man vs Snake:  Back in the early 80s there was this video game called Nibbler where a snake eats pellets, getting bigger and bigger.  There was a game called "Snake" on late 90s/early 2000s Nokia phones that was pretty much the same.  Anyway, this guy named Tim McVey (not related to the OKC bomber) set the record for a billion points.  Many years later he and some other people try to do it again.  First he tries to do it at a convention in DC but fails.  Then fails at home a couple of times.  Finally on XMas in 2011 he does it.  His victory is short-lived, though, as someone beats his score the next year.  And someone beats that score...and so on...so it was fun and interesting, but kind of pointless.  (3/5)  (Fun Fact:  McVey was originally from Ottuwah, IA, the oft-mentioned home of Radar O'Reilly in M*A*S*H)

The Kid Stays in the Picture:  Robert Evans started as a maker of women's pants with his brother.  Then he acted in a couple of movies thanks to a chance encounter in a Beverly Hills swimming pool.  Eventually he began producing movies.  In the 70s he had a string of hits like Rosemary's Baby, Love Story, The Godfather, and Chinatown.  In the 80s coke and tangential involvement in a  murder trial sunk his career.  He did a few movies in the 90s like The Two Jakes (a sequel to Chinatown), Sliver, Jade, The Phantom, The Saint, and The Out of Towners, none really big hits.  One thing he never mentioned is really his decline began around the same time Jaws and Star Wars ushered in the era of the blockbuster.  Since Evans handles all the narration (and there's also footage from interviews and such) it's hard to know exactly how truthful it all is.  Still, it was pretty interesting. (3/5) (Fun Facts:  Apparently Evans is still alive, though he hasn't been very active the last 15 years; the last major picture he produced was How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.  Also while he did most of his work through Paramount, this documentary was distributed by Universal.)

Hidden Rules of Life:  Algorithms:  An Oxford math professor demonstrates how useful algorithms are in our daily lives. Algorithms are mathematical procedures for solving simple problems; the first recorded one can be used to find out the number of tiles you'd need to cover a floor.  It talks about some early computing ones and then the original Google PageRank algorithm that made the site so popular and how it can be applied to a soccer team.  For a show about math it's not that boring. (3/5)

Room 408:  I accidentally watched this while building a set of Legos.  I think it's based off a Stephen King story, which is why the main character is a writer.  A writer who checks into the eponymous room that's supposed to be haunted.  Then he starts to experience a lot of weird phenomenon.  It's kind of like Inception at the end as you wonder if he really got out of the room or not.  It's OK but not particularly scary.  Maybe if you're 12 or the sort who gets scared by the standard haunted house.  (2.5/5)

The Saint:  This was a book series that I think started in the 1930s featuring master gentleman thief Simon Templar.  In the 60s there was a British TV series starring Roger Moore that helped him get the Bond role.  In the late 90s Robert Evans (see above) produced a Val Kilmer-starring feature film that didn't do all that hot.  This version on Netflix stars nobody even close to A-list and has TV movie production values.  Templar and his computer hacker assistant have to find $2.5 billion dollars  destined to help Nigeria that were stolen by some people.  I'm not sure if this was the pilot for a series or what, but it was kind of dull; I stopped paying attention after a little while.  A couple of times it seemed like an actor botched his/her lines and yet they left it in.  Not nearly up to Robert Evans caliber. Ha. (2/5) (Fun Fact:  the late Roger Moore has a small role in this as Jasper, whoever that was.  I read the first book in the series a while back; it was OK.)

Looney Tunes: Back in Action:  I guess you could call it the "spiritual sequel" to Space Jam as it pairs Looney Tunes characters with live action people.  Brendan Fraser and Jenna Elfman this time with Daffy and Bugs.  They're trying to get a diamond called the "Blue Monkey" before the evil Acme corporation led by Steve Martin.  The hi-jinks became grating after a while.  Like later Muppet movies it's kind of annoying that a lot of the voices sound similar but aren't really the same. (1/5)  (Fun Fact:  Read Nigel Mitchell's Toons series instead.)

God's Pocket:  The eponymous neighborhood in Philly is a real shithole, only in the 70s or whenever this was supposed to be it's still mostly a white shithole, unlike say Detroit.  The late Philip Seymour Hoffman is a meat delivery guy or something who moonlights as a low-level mob guy too and then his messed-up son is killed in a construction accident that no one really gives a shit about.  He has trouble then paying for the funeral to the point the funeral director throws the body on the roof or something and so he puts the body in his meat truck to preserve it.  When he tries to sell the truck, someone takes it for a joyride and it gets into an accident, spilling the body onto the road to "die" a second time.  Meanwhile Hoffman's wife and a reporter who was supposed to be looking into the accident go off and fuck in a meadow.  In case you haven't figured yet, it's not an uplifting story.  But it's well-made and less obnoxious than say the movie above. Just saying. (3/5)

Term Life:  Vince Vaughn with a stupid haircut is a guy who plans robberies and then sells those plans to interested parties.  But when a party is murdered by crooked cops, he has to go on the run with his teenage daughter.  It was largely a lot of boring cliches strung together.  A better movie about a criminal bonding with his estranged daughter is Ridley Scott's Matchstick Men. (2/5) (Fun Fact:  Bill Paxton plays a crooked cop pretty much like the one he was playing in the Training Day TV show when he died.)

Cursed:  In Hollywood, a brother and sister (Jesse Eisenberg and Christina Ricci) are attacked by a werewolf and then start becoming werewolves.  They eventually have to find and kill the werewolves who changed them:  Joshua Jackson of Dawson's Creek/Fringe and Judy Greer of Archer/Arrested Development.  It's one of those that seems to shift in tone from serious to campy. (2/5) (Fun Fact:  In an episode of Archer they joke that Judy Greer's character spent months thinking she was a werewolf.)