I did mini-reviews of the first three seasons of this series when I originally watched them in 2016-2018, but I had never watched the last 5 "seasons" that were really more like 3 1/2 seasons. After I watched the 2011 soft reboot series Voltron Force and completed a trilogy of gender swap books based on Voltron/Power Rangers, I got a hankering to watch this and the DVDs on Amazon were pretty cheap; they were cheaper than a month of Netflix and I didn't have to sign up and cancel anything. Plus then I own them! It seemed like a perfect plan...until it wasn't.
Anyway, while Voltron Force and the 90s CGI series were soft reboots that were supposed to be sort-of sequels to the original series, the Netflix series is a full reboot. It starts with three young cadets (Lance, Hunk, and Pidge) sneaking out one night when there's an attack by an alien ship. Along with a former cadet (Keith) they find the blue lion hidden away on Earth. It takes them to the distant planet of Arrus, where they go to a castle. The beautiful Princess Allura and her assistant Coran are woken from stasis after 10,000 years to find all their people gone and the Voltron lions scattered.
(Side Note: In my books the fighters--not lions--were on Earth for 1,000 years and someone complained that was too long. The bad guys should have had better technology after 1,000 years! But this has a break 10 times bigger than that! And still the bad guys don't have anything better than Voltron, haven't taken over the entire universe (like Earth), and Emperor Zarkon and his witch Haggar are still alive after all that time while presumably not being frozen. So who's really stretching plausibility here?)
Allura instinctually knows who should go to which lion, which is not the order in the original series. The original order was:
Keith: Black Lion
Lance: Red Lion
Pidge: Green Lion
Hunk: Yellow Lion
Sven/Allura: Blue Lion
What never really made sense is that the piping of their spacesuits didn't exactly match their lions because Keith's suit had red on it, Lance's had blue, and Sven's had black. When Allura took over for Sven, hers had pink because of course girls like pink.
In this case the show lines up the colors of their suits with their lions:
Keith: Red Lion
Lance: Blue Lion
Pidge: Green Lion
Hunk: Yellow Lion
And then Black Lion is piloted by a new character named Shiro who was captured by Zarkon's forces (the Galra) and used in gladiator fights, during which he lost an arm that was replaced with a robot arm, until he somehow escaped. Each character then is assigned a basic role:
Shiro: the charismatic leader
Keith: the loner
Lance: the goofball daredevil
Pidge: the tech/science genius
Hunk: the funny fat guy with a heart of gold
Allura: the strong but not yet wise ruler
After a couple of episodes we find out that Pidge is a girl pretending to be a boy to try to find out what happened to her father and brother, who were captured along with Shiro but separated from him. And no one really has a problem with this. Maybe some fans did, but I always thought it worked better than Pidge being some weird little dude.
The first season has them find the lions, learn how to form Voltron, liberate a few planets, and then bite off more than they can chew by going for Zarkon's base. They are nearly defeated, but with some help manage to escape.
The second season they take a little more measured approach in gaining some allies, especially the "Blade of Marmora," who are rogue Galra soldiers. Then they begin preparing a trap for Zarkon that of course doesn't go as planned, but this time they're able to do some real damage to Zarkon's base and put him in a coma.
These first two seasons are 13 episodes apiece. The problem then arose with the next season when for whatever reason they decided to start halving the seasons. Instead of 13 episodes, season 3 is only 7 and season 4 is 6 and season 5 is 6 and season 6 is 7. Which if you can do math means seasons 3-4 are 13 episodes and seasons 5-6 are also 13 episodes. Just looking on the images of the DVD cases, you can see that seasons 1-2 have as many episodes as seasons 3-6 combined.
And then just to confuse everything further, there are seasons 7-8 that aren't on DVD or to buy on Amazon or anything. Those seasons went back to 13 episodes apiece. I had to sign back up to Netflix to watch those; maybe the pandemic interfered with getting a DVD of those out. I kind of wonder if by that point the show's viewership was down and Netflix wanted to just dump everything out as quick as they could. Basically everything from about season 4 on all came out in 2018, which by today's standards is pretty weird. Maybe everyone had realized they fucked things up and were trying to course correct--though it was too late.
So there really should only be 6 complete seasons, but for whatever reasons they messed up the releasing for the middle ones. The problem with this is for example, Season 3 doesn't really do a lot compared with previous seasons. Shiro disappeared at the end of season 2 so in the first couple of episodes they rejiggered everything to the traditional 80s lineup with Keith taking over Black Lion, Lance the Red, and Allura the Blue. Meanwhile Shiro escapes (again) and returns to the team while Zarkon's son Lotor becomes a new threat.
And just when we're getting some pieces in place, the "season" ends with a flashback to Voltron's creation and the revelation that Haggar and Zarkon are married. I guess they just forgot over 10,000 years? It's not as annoying on DVD now but back in 2018 it was kind irritating to basically just get things started and then find out it was over for months. Especially back then Netflix wasn't really using the week-to-week releasing that most streaming services use now for their major shows. For people used to binging, it was pretty irritating to only get a few episodes and then have to wait.
Crackle did the same thing with the third "season" of Supermansion and it was really annoying too how they'd dribble out a few episodes then make you wait a while to dribble out more and then a third batch. And in between batches they had a couple of holiday shows. I, and I think most viewers, would rather you just did the whole thing at once. If not just put the whole series up at the same time then go through the whole run week-to-week without a lot of interruptions. Otherwise there's so much else going on that it can be irritating to keep track of stuff.
Predictably while Season 3 was just setting the table, Season 4 has more action as Zarkon is reanimated in sort of a Darth Vader suit, Lotor is made an enemy of the empire, and Keith joins the Mormora full-time while Shiro reclaims the Black Lion. The most touching episode is when Pidge finally finds her brother after initially thinking he was dead and buried in a cemetery on a dead world. Then everyone gets together to take down some Galra forces that would give the rebel coalition control of a third of the empire. Of course things don't go as planned and they're bailed out by Lotor.
Unlike the previous shows, in this series Lotor is not really a bad guy. Instead of being a vain, psychotic madman like in the other shows, this time he's smart and cunning. Instead of using force to enslave the galaxy like his father, he wants to discover an easy way to harvest the energy known as "quintessence" to bring everyone together. A kinder, gentler empire. Like Alexander the Great, he allows worlds he conquers to continue their traditions and have some autonomy.
He becomes more important in Season 5, which is another setting the table season as Lotor helps the rebels and kills his father in a duel before attempting to claim the throne. Pidge and her brother rescue their father and Keith finds his mother. And we get stronger clues that Haggar the witch did something to Shiro when he was captured and has turned him into an unwitting mole. Allura and Lotor enter a "white hole" to learn secrets of Altean alchemy.
That all sets up season 6 of 7 episodes. Not surprisingly a lot happens. Keith and his mother find a colony of Alteans and find out the experiments Lotor conducted on the population. Shiro turns on the team. Lotor is consumed with the power of quintessence and makes his own Voltron-type thing. And there's a final showdown between the Lotorbot and Voltron for all the marbles.
Initially I thought season 6 was the end because it seemed like an end and there's no DVD set or anything for the last two seasons yet. There were some loose ends to wrap up, but the sixth season could have been the end.
Instead there were two more full seasons of 13 episodes. Season 7 is an illustration in contrasts. The first 6 episodes are really slow as the lions have to power up and begin a long journey to Earth. It's not until the sixth episode that they can form Voltron! And then they magically unlock rocket boosters that get them to Earth much quicker.
Only they find Earth has been overtaken by the Galra warlord Sendak! There's a two-part episode that mostly details how Earth was taken over except the Galaxy Garrison headquarters thanks to technology developed by Pidge's father. When they make new fighters and a ship, it really made me want a crossover with Robotech. Voltron and the SDF-1 filled with Veritech fighters battle the Galra! It would have been epic!
The lions show up and then begin working with the Galaxy Garrison to liberate Earth. The last four episodes make up for the initial slowness of the season--maybe too much so. I mean the battle is almost constant in the last few episodes with more bullshit complications, solutions, and more complications than the last act of Rogue One. After Sendak is defeated there's some kind of robot that looks like DC's Steppenwolf they struggle to defeat. Inside is an Altean pilot that sets up the final season.
The first couple of episodes again are a little slow as it has Voltron and their new ship the Atlas leave Earth. There's a flashback to how the witch Haggar got her groove (and memories) back and found the Altean colony from the sixth season to recruit them to fight Voltron with giant robots. A planet is destroyed and Allura struggles with the idea that her people are now the enemy.
Most of the season was basically like in Marvel Comics and WandaVision/Multiverse of Madness where the Scarlet Witch tries to warp reality so she can be reunited with her kids and the Vision. In this case it's Haggar who's doing a bunch of shit to break reality so she can be reunited with Lotor and Zarkon. I guess while she can travel the multiverse she can't just go back in time in her own universe to stop them from being killed or anything.
I found most of this season to be kind of disappointing. Mostly it's, "Haggar's doing something so we gotta stop her!" Some kind of half-assed "solution." Screaming and fighting and then probably needing to come up with another half-assed solution. And in the end they solve everything with talking. One character makes the ultimate sacrifice and then Voltron is disbanded because even though the lion piloted by the dead person has had at least 2 pilots over the course of the show (plus 1 original pilot) we can't just find someone else to pilot it. Nope, let's just disband the team. Because I'm sure there would be nothing else for Voltron to do, right?
There's an epilogue that kind of Animal House style tells us what becomes of our intrepid heroes. The controversial one is that Shiro marries some guy from the bridge crew of the Atlas who we maybe saw like 3 times and had like 1 line of dialogue. I wrote a post last year after watching Season 3 of Young Justice where they did pretty much the same thing of just suddenly making a character gay. It struck me as hollow then and this also seems hollow. And pretty much ending your show with Shiro passionately kissing...some guy whose name we don't know? It's like they were saying, "Here, 'shippers,' you want a gay kiss, here's your gay kiss!" And/or, "Hey, Netflix, you don't want us to have gay stuff? Well, fuck you, here's a big fucking gay kiss! Yeah!" It felt so tacked on and pointless. Again, like I say in my post last year, it's not that I don't want gay stuff; I just want gay relationships treated like straight relationships and not just ham-fistedly shoved into episodes. And before anyone who actually watched the show says, "AAAAActually..." I know Shiro sort of "came out" during a flashback in season 7, which again was just thrown out there with no real setup or point to it and like in Young Justice just seemed like the producers were trying to placate viewers by saying, "Hey, look, we have a gay character!"
All that aside, the show itself was still the best of the Voltron series. It has the deepest, grittiest story though it's not high drama by any stretch. It is a decent space opera show that still had enough of the original series to appease longtime fans like me. Though sometimes it was annoying that there weren't enough episodes with Voltron being formed to take stuff down. It's like with The Walking Dead you want to see them killing zombies or that new Game of Thrones show you want to see dragons.
Relating this to my previous entry on the "Navy of Humankind" series, there is kind of a balance you have to walk with a sci-fi property like this. You need human drama but you also need cool space battles. It can't be all cool space battles or it feels shallow. But if it's all human drama, it gets kind of boring for people who want to see the giant robot in more than the title sequence.
They also do a fairly decent job at balancing some of the human drama and battles with a few fun episodes. Like in Season 2 they have to get some stuff for their warp drive and go to a space mall. Pidge and Lance steal from a fountain to buy a video game system--that they then realize they don't have a TV to plug it into--while Hunk becomes a short-order cook who soon becomes a mall version of Gordon Ramsey. There's also a Paul Blart-type alien guard and in the end they wind up with a cow from Earth I'm pretty sure named after a writer/producer. In another episode Coran gets infected with a worm that turns him into a crazy showbiz manager who has the team do increasingly ridiculous stage shows to drum up support--which actually works! In another episode, Pidge and Hunk reprogram a sentry to be like a robotic Johnny Knoxville; when they shoot it into space the instrumental "Amazing Grace" from Star Trek II plays to mimic the scene where Spock is shot into the Genesis planet. In the sixth season, before the home stretch, the team plays a D&D-type game with Coran as sort of the dungeon master. So while the series is grittier, it's not grim and gritty. The 7th season tries to have a fun episode where they end up on this weird game show that's like Family Feud meets Double Dare, but I just found it really annoying rather than funny. The final season doesn't have an episode that's all funny but a couple of episodes are less serious like where most of the crew goes down to "Clear Day" on an alien planet that has a carnival once every so often on the one day their skies are clear. And there's also "Day 47" that's a found-footage episode as some pilot guy is filming a day on the Atlas and his camera ends up bouncing around to show stuff happening.
One little nitpick relating to all that: did they really need Lance and Hunk and Coran as comic relief? It didn't quite get to Transformers 2 levels of needing relief from the comic relief, but they probably didn't need three goofballs. I'm just saying.
Anyway, when I talked about Voltron Force, I mentioned there were a few similarities. In that show each member of the team had a "Voltcom" that gave them a special weapon and could unlock a special configuration/power of Voltron. In this instead of the "Voltcom" each pilot has a "bayard" that gives them a special weapon, though in some cases maybe not as cool as the Voltcom ones. Keith still has a sword, Hunk/Lance have guns, Pidge has some little knife thingy, and Allura has a whip. Shiro doesn't have one because the original Black Lion pilot still has it. The bayards don't change the configuration of Voltron but they give him a different weapon: red forms the sword, yellow a shoulder cannon, green the shield(?), and blue I don't really know. All four together make a really big sword and when the Black Lion's bayard is found, it makes the sword into the Blazing Sword!
The other main similarity was that in the end of that other series the castle could take off and fly like a ship. In this series that happens a lot quicker and becomes a lot more useful as a base and backup firepower. In the first two seasons Allura has to pilot the castle and power its wormhole drive and stuff but after she takes over Blue Lion then Coran does more of that stuff.
There are a few references to the classic series like the Sven reference in the parallel universe. In the D&D game episode, Shiro finds a sword that looks like the traditional Voltron sword. When Allura and Lotor make a special ship, they activate it with the checklist that was used for the original Voltron with stuff like, "Mega thrusters are go!" They use that same checklist for the human fighters Pidge's dad designs in season 7. The first episode of season 8 features a clip from the classic series and to get stuff at a dirt mall, Pidge dresses like and does the voice like the classic series version character; in the same episode Allura tries on an outfit that looks like the classic series one.
The animation used in this series is supposed to be like traditional anime, especially the goofy facial expressions and stuff. Not being a huge anime fan it doesn't do a lot for me, but whatever. I think maybe they use cel-shading or something for Voltron and the ships and stuff but it looks a lot better and less obvious than what they used in Voltron Force.
Anyway, if the release schedule hadn't gotten so messed up, maybe the show could have lasted a little longer. I mean if you think about it, they had 6 full seasons that started in 2016, so if they had just released one 13-episode season a year it would have been wrapping up in 2021. Instead it finished in 2018 or maybe early 2019. But if you're a fan of the original and want a more updated, modern take then it's a good series.
(Fun Facts: I have two Legendary Defender Voltron toys. One is a crappy little non-transforming one with a shield where a lot of paint peeled off almost right away. The other is a transforming one from Target that I got on sale at one point. They made larger toys that could transform for both this series and the original; I got all of the original ones to make the classic Voltron, mostly because the talking Black Lion and a couple of others were on clearance at Meijer stores near me. I always wondered if you could mix-and-match the two Voltrons but never felt like wasting the money to find out.
Steven Yuen of The Walking Dead and Invincible plays Keith and I wondered if Keith not being in a lot of seasons 4-5 might have been because he was still working on TWD. Tyler Labine of Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil plays Hunk, which as I noted in one of my mini-reviews he gets typecast as the funny fat guy even in animation. Watching Whose Line Is It Anyway?--Australia on the Movie House app I realized the voice of Coran, Rhys Darby, is one of the frequent improv comics on that show. He also did a couple of episodes of Mike Tyson Mysteries as Terry the annoying pool cleaner. Arnold Vosloo, the eponymous Mummy in the 1999-2001 movies and also Darkman in the straight-to-video sequels guests in an episode as a Blade of Marmora agent. I'm sure there were others but I didn't pause every episode to find out.
The title sequence for the show never really changes from the first episode. So even in Season 8 they still show the original line-up with Lance in the Blue Lion, Keith in Red, Shiro in Black, and Allura in the castle. Despite that they all switched in season 3 & 6 and despite that the castle was destroyed at the end of season 6. And it shows Zarkon even though he dies in season 5. But at least it doesn't use a shitty hip-hop theme song.)
(Sad Fact: In previous posts I've talked about shitty "fans" who created problems for shows like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Power of the Rings by hating on the inclusion of black people. The shitty "fans" for this show were actually a bit different. According to the Wikipedia entry, there were some who were so rabid about "shipping" Keith and Lance that they threatened to dox and/or kill people who worked on the show if it didn't happen. Which seems pretty ludicrous. They couldn't just do what X-Files, Voyager, etc fans in the 90s did and write crappy fan fiction to post on sites for their fellow weirdos to read? Anyway, it's always sad that some "fans" have to be so shitty and make things miserable for actors, writers, and producers who are just trying to make an entertaining TV show.)
Michael Abayomi did a bunch of top 10 lists on his blog and then I thought, "Hey, why didn't I do anything like that?" So I went back through my "Stuff I Watched" entries covering last year to find some of the best things I watched for movies and TV. Since I watched exactly 0 movies in the theater last year, all of these I watched on streaming in vague order and some might have been from 2021 but I watched them in 2022:
Movies:
Prey: For some reason Disney chose to make this a Hulu exclusive instead of releasing it in theaters for a few weeks before putting it on streaming. It's too bad because this is a great-looking movie and in some ways better than the original. It focuses on a young Comanche woman who wants to be a hunter but is told to take more feminine jobs like gathering and healing. Then she finds the Predator that's landed on 18th Century Earth and from there it's kind of Predator meets The Revenant. It's a great action movie with wonderful visuals, effects, and better acting than the original. (4/5) (Fun Fact: The main character is played by Amber Midthunder, who was previously in FX's Legion. You have to wonder if this starred a white male if it would have been shunted straight to streaming.)
The Outfit: I'm pretty sure one of Donald Westlake's Parker novels had this title, but this is not that. This is about an English tailor (Mark Rylance) who comes to Chicago in the 1950s and almost immediately his shop becomes a drop for one of the local mobs. It's kind of similar then to The Drop with James Gandolfini and Tom Hardy, only not in modern day or in New York. The head gangster's son is screwing the tailor's receptionist and then comes to the shop. There's a tape (something pretty new at the time) that becomes like the McGuffin along with the son himself and people die. Then there are twists and turns. I thought maybe a couple more twists than were necessary, but the last couple help to explain why a simple tailor can do what he does. Since everything takes place in the tailor's shop (or slightly outside) this really has the feel of a play more than a film, so you're not missing much if you didn't see it the week or so it might have been in theaters. Still, it was tense and well-acted, and with the twists you never quite knew what was coming. I watched it on Prime Video, but by now it might not be "free" there, though I'm sure it's streaming to rent other places. (4/5) (Fun Fact: in movies especially there's this "rule" about if you show a gun early you have to use it later. When they early on talked about the tailor's shears, I knew they would be of use later--and they were. So call them Chekhov's Shears.)
Everything Everywhere All At Once: I was interested in watching this but it's one of those that was hard to see because it was expensive to rent and then it went to Showtime, which I didn't have. Until there was a sale on Showtime so I signed up for a month to watch this.
Basically it's about the multiverse and Michelle Yeoh and her daughter wage a battle with a lot of crazy shit going on like people with hot dog fingers or a universe where instead of Ratatouille there's Raccacoonie, which I would be into seeing a full movie of. As entertaining as a lot of it is, it went on a little too long and there's no huge revelation. Basically just love everyone and enjoy the moment and stuff like that. I mean, I guess it could be worse: you could have hot dogs for fingers or be a pinata or some fucked-up thing. So that's something. (3.5/5)
I am Vengeance!
The Batman: I meant to get around to watching this for a while but I didn't finally do it until Boxing Day. I had enough confidence that I bought it sight unseen for about $4 after credits. I was (mostly) not disappointed. It takes more cues from the Nolan movies than the Burton ones as it's a grittier, more realistic Gotham. The story is like if you took Year One, Hush, and a few other comics stories and put them in a blender. Like the Tom Holland Spider-Man, they dispensed with the origin, probably figuring we've seen that enough already. So this is in Year Two, where Batman and Lt. Gordon are trying to fight crime. But then a new villain called the Riddler starts killing prominent people and leaving clues to a deep, dark secret, one that might even implicate the Waynes. In trying to track down the Riddler, Batman meets Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman--though again we never use that name--and they team up, which includes some kissing.
While I liked it, I have a few criticisms. First, I don't know what Batman's armor is made of, but there's no way anything in current existence could get shot the number of times it does and survive. Second, the final act is kind of a letdown as it involves a manmade natural disaster and Batman facing a bunch of randos, which kind of diminishes the stakes; this also drags a bit. Third, there's not a ton of development to Alfred or Gordon. Still, it's not enough to really bring it down too much. (3.5/5) (Fun Facts: Like the Nolan movies, this was partially shot in Chicago and heavily hints we'll see the Joker in the sequel. Near the end Batman injects himself with something green to give him a boost; was this Venom and does this hint we could see Bane in a future movie? And if we see Bane, might we get Azrael too? Unlikely, but I can dream...)
The Northman: The way I described this on Facebook was like if you mixed together Hamlet, Beowulf, Gladiator, and maybe a dash of The Lion King. Like Hamlet you have a prince who wants revenge because his uncle killed his father, the king, and married his mother. Like Beowulf it's set in and around Scandinavia of about the 9th Century. Like Gladiator, our hero who was someone important is forced to become a slave for the guy he wants to get revenge on. And like The Lion King the prince at the start is just a kid who loves his daddy, who is grooming him to one day be king when he dies and the kid goes on the run, only instead of a lovable warthog and annoying meerkat teaching him a catchy song, he joins a gang of raiders who mercilessly slaughter men, women, and children. The grittiness, violence, and gore makes this less than a heroic saga. Since he butchers numerous innocent people, our "hero" isn't really a hero and the uncle isn't as big of a jerk as he was in Hamlet, though admittedly I've only seen an old German TV version that was on MST3K. But when the "hero"'s mom drops some truth bombs, it kind of dampens some of our enthusiasm for the prince to get his revenge. Which I guess is true to that old adage about revenge and digging two graves; though in this movie you'd need a lot more than that. (3.5/5)
Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: I am not a Dr. Strange fan and while I own the first movie (I bought it used at Big Lots) I hadn't really watched it in a while. That doesn't matter too much, as long as you remember the bare facts: Stephen Strange was a surgeon who went out with Christine (Rachel MacAdams) for a while but he was a selfish jerk who wrecked his car, his hands, and his career all at once. Then he went to Tibet or somewhere like that and learned magic and got the Time Stone that he gave to Thanos for...reasons. So now a girl named America Chavez shows up being chased by a eyeball/tentacle monster that probably got a lot of guys in Japan excited. After Strange rescues her, she says another Strange and her were trying to get some book to stop the evil that turns out to be the Scarlet Witch, which only makes sense if you watched or at least heard about WandaVision. After a fight with the Witch, Strange and America end up in other dimensions before landing in 836, where their Strange is dead and the "Iluminati" are running everything, led by Patrick Stewart's Professor Xavier, Captain Peggy Carter, Black Bolt, Mordo, some other Captain Marvel, and Reed Richards. In a particularly gruesome scene, the Witch kills all of them, but Strange has a few tricks up his sleeve. Sam Raimi of the first Spider-Man movies takes over and does a decent job. While I'm not a Strange fan, it was an OK popcorn movie and the cameos were neat, though there weren't really as many as I would have thought. Did they ever get that Book of Vishanti or whatever? Maybe I tuned out but wasn't that supposed to be the McGuffin? But then Strange uses the Darkhold instead. Maybe I should watch this again sometime. (3/5) (Fun Facts: Being a Raimi movie we of course have Danny Elfman doing the soundtrack and the mandatory Bruce Campbell appearance; the cookie scene at the very end with Campbell breaking the fourth wall was pretty funny. John Krasinski plays Reed Richards and was so good that I want a new Fantastic Four movie like right now. Make it happen, Kevin Feige!)
Free Guy: I think this was one of those movies delayed by the pandemic that probably would have made more money if it had been released in a normal time. Anyway, the premise is sort of like The Lego Movie where an ordinary boring character suddenly realizes there's a whole other big world out there. In this case it's Ryan Reynolds as an NPC, one of those background guys in video games, who suddenly gains free will. There's a girl with colorful hair just like The Lego Movie who helps Guy explore the world and becomes his love interest, though it's different in that she exists in the real world and he doesn't. Taika Waititi is the bad guy who runs the software company and stole a lot of code from two small time programmers. The company tries to destroy Guy but with the girl's help he fights back. It drags on a little too long but there are some fun Easter eggs, especially in the end fight with "Dude," a buffer Ryan Reynolds. These eggs show what happens when you own Marvel and Star Wars and Fox. (3/5) (Fun Facts: Ryan Reynolds and Taika Waititi were both in Green Lantern and both movies were produced by Greg Berlanti, a founder of the "Arrowverse." Hugh Jackman, Deadpool's arch-enemy, voices an informant in an alley. I watched the movie on Disney+ but it's also apparently on HBO Max.)
Beast: I watched this when it was still streaming "free" on Peacock. Idris Elba and his two daughters go to South Africa and while they're on a safari with an "anti-poacher" (Sharlto Copley) they're attacked by a lion. A lion that had its pride wiped out by poachers and is really, really pissed off. It's the sort of premise that could have been dumb, like that Liam Neeson wolf-punching movie, but the script helps by not having Idris Elba's doctor/father character turn into Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator or something like that. It's all kept pretty much realistic. The end was a little predictable as it was a bit telegraphed. Chekhov's Lions! By the time this posts, I'm not sure where this will be streaming, but I'm sure you can rent it. (3/5)
Spider-Man No Way Home: Since this was on Starz and not Disney+, it took me a while to watch it. I had to actually sign up for Starz when it was 99 cents on Black Friday. I've never really been a big fan of the Tom Holland MCU Spider-Man. It never really felt like Spider-Man to me because of the half-assed way it all came together and him galivanting around with Iron Man and in space and all that. Not until he was swinging around New York with MJ at the end of the second movie did it really start to feel like actual Spider-Man.
In that ending, Peter Parker's secret identity was revealed, which is the key issue of this movie. To try to get people to forget, he goes to Dr. Strange, but the spell goes awry and villains from all the other movies are drawn into the MCU: Norman Osborn (Green Goblin), Dr. Octopus, and Flint Marko from the Tobey Maguire movies and Lizard and Electro from the Andrew Garfield movies. So we cover all the movies, especially when Maguire and Garfield show up.
The first 2/3 is amusing and "fun" in the Marvel way but again not really much of a Spider-Man movie. It's the last third where Tom Holland's Peter really becomes Peter Parker when he loses all the MCU baggage--including his aunt. Without the Avengers, the Stark tech, and all that, Peter Parker is actually Peter Parker: a poor but brilliant high school kid with spider powers that he uses to fight evil because of the responsibility he feels. It took almost 6 movies but they finally got this version of the franchise pretty much where the other two versions began.
I can't help thinking this movie could have worked better without all the multiverses and guest stars and pizazz. Peter losing everything and rebuilding his life would have made a great movie on its own, but it might have been harder to sell it to casual fans. (3/5)
TV:
Lower Decks, Season 3: While the first episode was funny, it kind of annoyed me that the cliffhanger was resolved offscreen. I get that the point is they aren't the big heroes and all that, but it still felt like Ocean's Twelve when there was all this stuff and then at the end they tell you they'd actually done the heist a long time ago. But with that disposed of it got back to normal and then starts to introduce some plot/character developments. The DS9 episode was brilliant as not only did they use the theme song to great comedic effect but it brought back Kira and Quark and was pretty consistent with their characterization. I didn't think they needed a whole episode about a rogue ExoComp, but the episode about a holodeck movie was pretty awesome in mocking the Abrams movies, Star Trek V, and Generations. And it had a cameo from Sulu, which was neat. The twist of the penultimate(?) episode was pretty good and somewhat poignant as while everyone thought Mariner was the dumbass, she turns out to be the only one who wasn't. A good season overall. (4/5)
Strange New Worlds: It was entertaining, but doesn't really live up to the title. Other than one episode where an old flame of Pike's takes him to a planet where they sacrifice a child to keep their planet running, they didn't really go to any strange new worlds. In fact about half the series they don't go to any "worlds" at all! The one where the doctor's kid puts everyone into a story was cute and so was the one where they're on shore leave and Spock swaps bodies with T'Pring--even though Vulcans gender swapping is kind of pointless. Una and La'an playing "Enterprise Bingo" seemed like a bit from Lower Decks but it was pretty funny. The one where they go to rescue a crashed Starfleet ship felt like a ripoff of the Alien/Predator franchises only with Gorn as the xenomorphs. I was disappointed they killed off Hemmer the engineer after only 9 episodes, probably so they can bring in Scotty next season. Predictably with a prequel series, my bone to pick is using so many of the Original Series Enterprise crew in this. Spock was in the original pilot so that's OK, but then you have Chapel and Uhura and probably Scotty now and they've already cast someone as James T Kirk so we'll probably see him again; you start to wonder why they don't just go ahead and do a rebooted Original Series. The "cliffhanger" about Una seems like what they did with Bashir on DS9 over 20 years ago. (3/5)
Halo: I never really played the video game series, which maybe wasn't a bad thing? There's less shooting and fighting than you'd probably expect since it's based on a shooter video game series. It's mostly about John, the Master Chief, who finds an alien artifact and suddenly starts regaining the humanity he lost when he was abducted from home as a child. So there's kind of a Robocop aspect as a guy who was forced into becoming a killing machine starts remembering things. Meanwhile there's a lot about this planet called Madrigal that has some kind of importance. Most of it was pretty good but the ending leaves a lot of questions for a Season 2 with no real closure to all the Madrigal stuff or the former soldier-turned-pirate. (3/5) (Fun Fact: I have such a crush on Cortana. Someone actually make a real version of that!)
Hit Monkey: This Marvel animated series on Hulu teams a snow monkey in the mountains of Japan with the ghost of an assassin. What follows is crazy, fun, foul-mouthed, sexy, and violent. It's definitely not a PG-13 movie aimed at teenagers. I'm hoping for a second season but I don't know if they will. (4/5)
The Boys, Season 3: I liked that they finally got this more to where the comics started, where the Boys would take "Compound V" to get superpowers for a short time to fight bad supes. The first two seasons they made the V like a steroid for supes so it was really hard for the Boys to fight the Supes. But with the "temporary V," we can finally get some cool fights. This season introduces "Soldier Boy," who's basically a combination of Captain America and Bucky--if they were dicks. Soldier Boy is strong and has a shield, but then he's captured by the Soviets in 1984 and experimented on. After the Boys rescue him, they join forces to try to take down Homelander, the psychotic Superman-type guy who's taking control of the Vought company that runs the supes. I liked a lot of this better than the previous seasons, but it's marred by some immaturity that I suppose is going to happen when you have Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg as your executive producers. Remember when all those people were talking about Ant-Man crawling up Thanos's ass to kill him? The writers of this series seemed to take that as a challenge and said "hold my beer" as they have a shrinking supe crawl into some guy's dick to get him off--and then he accidentally goes back to normal size, killing the guy. In my entry on the docuseries Slugfest I mentioned a costume party in Vermont that inspired the first unofficial Marvel/DC crossover. The Boys has something similar, only the costume party is of course an orgy of supes. If they toned down some of that immature, needless gross stuff, it'd be a better series. (2.5/5)
Dicktown: Like Cougar Town, this is a funny comedy with a shitty name. I mean you'd think with a name like that it'd be about porn stars or something. Actually it's an animated comedy that's sort of like Mike Tyson Mysteries that I have repeatedly watched throughout the pandemic. Only this is a little less Scooby Doo-inspired as comedian John Hodgman is John Hunchman, a cut-rate amateur detective who mostly solves mysteries for teenagers with a slacker friend. A lot of it is really about the culture clash between Gen X and Gen Z. The second season has a little more serialized format as there's someone from Hunchman's past who keeps sabotaging him, which ultimately leads to some revelations about a past case. It's pretty funny and like Mike Tyson Mysteries, only about 10 minutes per episode on FX/Hulu, so it doesn't take long to watch. (4/5) (Fun Fact: Paul F Tompkins, Janet Varney, and Kristen Schaal guest voice characters and all three along with Hodgman were part of the 2013 Rifftrax Live show at Sketchfest in San Francisco. The animation is from the same people as Archer and Sterling Archer himself, H Jon Benjamin, voices a villain in one episode. The name "Dicktown" comes from the town being named "Richardsville." It's still pretty lame; calling it John Hodgman Mysteries or Hunchman or Hunchman Mysteries would have been better.)
Mayor of Kingstown: This is a crime series on Paramount+ starring Jeremy Renner. It's that familiar story of the guy who doesn't want to take over the kingdom/empire/criminal enterprise being forced to do that. In this case there's a city in Michigan (somewhere) with a couple of prisons and Renner's dad and then his older brother made a living by being a liaison with prisoners and sort of being a go-between with the prisoners and guards. But after his brother is killed in a robbery, Renner's character has to take over the family business to maintain the peace. Except things start to fall apart until there's a full-scale riot. Meanwhile an inmate named Milo is plotting to get money for...something and recruits a hooker named Iris to seduce Renner's character, but he resists until she's nearly killed. I liked the show, though it leaves some questions at the end. Like where's Milo? And what's going to happen with all those dead bodies in the bus? I was annoyed that no one took a few seconds to do a Google search and realize Michigan hasn't had a death penalty in a long, long time. I mean before you set up this whole show, maybe you should have actually fact-checked that? It literally would have taken less than a minute to ask Google or Siri or whatever. I'm just saying. (4/5) (Fun Fact: There are a couple of nods to the MCU like when Renner buys a bow and arrows to shoot at a bear rummaging around his cabin. Iris is also referred to as a "Black Widow" when she auditions as a stripper.)
Tales of the Jedi: While not officially under the banner of The Clone Wars, it's basically a way to continue that series by exploring different parts of the prequel mythology that the show didn't really cover. The first episode features the birth of Ahsoka Tano, but then the next three are about Dooku's disillusionment with the Jedi and Republic that leads him to join Palpatine. The last two go back to Ahsoka to show how Anakin's training helped her survive Order 66 and how she becomes Fulcrum, which was like a slimmed-down version of the Ahsoka novel I read a few years ago. The Ahsoka parts made me wish they'd just make a movie that kind of summarizes her whole story while the Dooku parts really could have been a lot longer. Still, if you're a fan of The Clone Wars, it helps to fill in some gaps. It'd be interesting to see where the series would go in the future--maybe deeper into the past. (3/5) (Fun Fact: The episode featuring a young Qui-Gon as Dooku's padawan, they did a good job of making him look like a young Liam Neeson and Dooku as a young Christopher Lee; the animators probably went back to older movies they appeared in for the models.)
Star Trek Discovery, Season 4: Season 4 has Michael Burnham in command of the USS Discovery and a new, Galactus-level threat facing the reborn Federation. In broad strokes it sounds exciting and perhaps as a 2 1/2-hour movie it would be, but stretched into 13 episodes it's less so. There are a few dull episodes, especially when they approach and enter the "Galactic Barrier," which is different though maybe no less silly than that Great Barrier in Star Trek V. "Rosetta" particularly felt to me like vamping so they could have enough episodes for the full order. (I suppose we could blame filming during the pandemic to excuse it.) "All In" was where they got to have the most fun, pulling off a hive of scum and villainy better than the recent Boba Fett show, which is saying something about both franchises. The finale was disappointing to me. I never felt any real tension that anyone would die or anything like that. Even when Book "died" and Tilly and Vance seemed doomed, I knew the 10-C aliens would have saved Book and stop the DMA in time. Guess what? They did. They were pretty much a deus ex machina so that the only one to suffer any consequences was Tarka. Like I said on Facebook, all we needed was them to spin the Earth backwards to turn back time like Superman. I'm sure other people liked it better because it was all Happily Ever After. Maybe instead of having a "big bad" to focus on all season (Klingons, Red Angel, "the Burn," DMA) they should try a more episodic approach next season. But they probably won't. (2.5/5)
Only Murders in the Building, Seasons 1-2: (Season 1) I probably should have watched the first season earlier because I've always liked Steve Martin. He's pretty much a Renaissance Man as he's an actor, comedian, writer, director, and musician. In this series he teams up with his Three Amigos co-star Martin Short and they team up with Selena Gomez as bumbling amateur detectives who make their own true crime podcast after there's a murder in their apartment building in New York. There are twists and turns and red herrings and it's mostly pretty fun. What's odd is the first scene of season 1 is actually the setup for season 2, not part of the crime they investigate in season 1. (3/5) (Fun Fact: Ordinarily I wouldn't knock a character having an English bulldog, but Martin Short's character doesn't seem like the English bulldog type. French bulldog would be more appropriate. Or a poodle or something snooty like that.) (Season 2): The second season, like a lot of sequels, doesn't really live up to the original. Selena Gomez is framed for the murder of Bunny, the former head of the co-op in the building. But she doesn't go to jail so she's still free to try to find the real killer with Steve Martin and Martin Short. There are other subplots like a lesbian artist who wants to glom onto Selena Gomez for attention and the secret origin of Martin Short's son--as if anyone cares. And the secret origin of Steve Martin's dad and Steve Martin's daughter. The killer from last season, the deaf son of Nathan Lane, and Amy Schumer all show up (the latter playing herself) for an episode or two without actually contributing much to the plot. One episode there's a blackout and this whole B or C-plot about two gay guys hooking up and all that comes from it is one guy bumps the killer's shoulder so Selena Gomez can identify him; did we need this whole romantic subplot just for that? Like a lot of sequels it throws more stuff at you but can't really replicate the magic of the first season. I can see why Steve Martin said he was going to retire after this series because it does seem like Selena Gomez carries most of the load, but I suppose at 77 and with almost 60 years in the biz, Steve Martin deserves to be able to retire if he wants. Going back through it, it seemed like Selena Gomez could have solved all this on her own without the two old guys. As for the ultimate solution, I'm not sure it really holds water if you work through it backwards. Anyway, though it's not as good as the first season, it's still pretty watchable if you want a cozier-type mystery. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact: The setup for Season 3 has Paul Rudd playing a famous actor who dies on stage in a play produced by Martin Short and co-starring Steve Marin. So maybe they should change it to Only Murders Near the Building? Or Only Murders Involving People Who Live In the Building? Fun Speculation: Was Selena Gomez pregnant when they filmed the first couple of episodes? It looked like she was kind of fat and they were trying to cover it Voyager-style by having her wear jackets and sweaters and bulky stuff like that.)
I'd do music and books, but who would really care? Who even cares about this?
Back in April I got Fire Ant, the first book of the series called The Navy of Humankind: Wasp Squadron for free, probably from a Bookbub newsletter or something. The book isn't very long, which is why I guess it was nominated for a Nebula as a novella and not a novel.
The story is about a young woman named Floribeth Dalisay who comes from a human colony that was mostly Filipino or something. Because she's short--only about 4'6"--she gets work piloting a scout ship, mapping remote systems. The idea is I guess that the smaller and lighter pilot makes it cheaper and more efficient. On one of these scouting trips, she stumbles across aliens!
Instead of being grateful, her superiors get pissed at her for fucking up her ship's AI so she could escape. They want to charge her an amount she can basically never repay for the damage to the ship and its systems. The Navy offers to get rid of the debt if Beth will fly for them. Which she does. Other pilots don't take to her right away but then she manages to save a fellow pilot during a skirmish with the aliens.
It was a decent novella, though it really could have been longer and included more about Beth and her training and stuff like that. Still, I thought it was a good introduction.
Months later there was a Countdown deal on Amazon so I got the other 4 books for like $5. Each book is less than 200 pages, so really novellas and not novels. While I enjoyed the space battles, the human drama is a bit thin.
What I complained about after reading the fourth one is all Beth seems to do is hang out on the mothership and fly missions. A couple of times in the series she goes home and once back to Earth, but she doesn't really do a lot. There's really no love interest for her and as I lamented, I couldn't even tell you whether she likes guys, girls, or both because she seems to have no interest in anything except flying missions.
In the fourth book, she's assigned to infiltrate a captured planet and rescue a scientist. Ah-ha! This could lead to something! She meets and saves a hunky young doctor and they fall in love...or not. Nope, the doctor is middle-aged, married, and a whiny jerk. D'OH!
In the fifth book is the closest we come to Beth having any kind of relationship. After flying some scout missions, she meets a woman named Wyma who's studying the aliens. They quickly become friends and Beth even takes a nap in Wyma's room...and then Beth gets a transfer to another ship and we don't hear anything from Wyma until almost the end of the book when Beth needs someone to analyze a weird sorta dance the alien fighters are doing.
For the most part I enjoyed the books, but I wished there was more to them besides some decent battles in nifty little fighters. It's obvious the author knows his stuff about the military and flying, but he's a little deficient in the human drama aspects. Probably could have used a partner to punch up that stuff. Or at least an editor who could have helped with that.
Great space operas like the original Star Wars trilogy, the Robotech saga, Deep Space Nine, Babylon 5, The Expanse, and the Battlestar Galactica reboot all bring in human elements. It doesn't have to be some big twist like the main bad guy is the main good guy's father, but some romantic entanglements and such help to flesh out the characters. I get these are more military sci-fi than space opera, but that doesn't mean they have to be almost completely bereft of human drama. You need a little of that to help round out the characters.
At the end, Beth becomes an ensign and it mentions that will cut her enlistment time. Great, but what's she going to do next? Flying seems to be all she does or has an interest in. She doesn't even have any hobbies like playing an instrument, cooking, or writing. So if she leaves the Navy, what's she going to do? Go back to flying scout ships? There is no mention of what might come next, so I guess it's up to readers to fill in the blanks.
Anyway, it reminded me of those Union Station books I talked about. It was a similar problem of the books being mostly entertaining but lacking the dramatic elements to make them better. In that case it was a lack of conflict, while these books at least have a major conflict (humans vs. "Crystals," as the aliens are known) but don't really have much of the littler conflicts to make them better stories.
And, also, we get Beth is short after the first book. We don't need reminded of it 50 times during each successive book! And Coca-Cola is still around hundreds of years into the future? I'm just saying.
This continues my streak of not really loving any books put out by Amazon's publishing imprints. I probably got this from Prime First reading and took a while to actually get to it.
The gist is this is another postapocalyptic end of the world YA book. But it's not zombies or nuclear war or disease. Basically one day everyone just keels over except three teens who were contemplating suicide: Dev, a boy with Asperger's in Dearborn, MI; Lucy, a pregnant Goth girl in Atlanta, GA; and Marcus (formerly Mo as in Mohammad) an Arab American quarterback in Oklahoma.
While the beginning of the book tells us they all meet, it's not until 80% in that all three get together for real. Until then Lucy and Marcus search for survivors and find each other while Dev turns his home into a fortress to keep out rats, dogs, cats, pigs, and whatever else. This major section drags on a little long. It felt like watching The Last Man on Earth--an early adaptation of I Am Legend--with Vincent Price as the titular last man on Earth. A lot of the movie was just him puttering around, disposing of bodies and finding garlic and getting a new car and stuff like that that isn't all that fun or exciting. In the same way most of this book is just them puttering around doing that kind of stuff and evading swarms of rats, pigs, bugs, and whatever.
This was tolerable if not really exciting. But after they all meet like in the beginning is where it all falls down. One main character is killed with less fanfare than a dog--literally. Though another character essentially murdered him, this isn't really dealt with. The last 5 percent then goes into fast-forward mode until it just kind of ends. It probably could have ended a while earlier.
It was disappointing that it just ended the way it did. I was hoping for more. So it goes.
(Fun Facts: I live only like 25 miles or so from where Dev would be living in Dearborn. You might not think about it, but wild pigs have become a huge problem in the South, California, and in Europe. The problem is they're big, mean, and tear up just about anything in their path. Without a lot of natural predators they can do a lot of damage. So the idea that with humans gone you have swarms of wild pigs running around unchecked is actually pretty true.)
I left off just before Halloween, so let's catch up on some stuff I watched. There is a lot on here over the last 3 months.
Beast: I watched this when it was still streaming "free" on Peacock. Idris Elba and his two daughters go to South Africa and while they're on a safari with an "anti-poacher" (Sharlto Copley) they're attacked by a lion. A lion that had its pride wiped out by poachers and is really, really pissed off. It's the sort of premise that could have been dumb, like that Liam Neeson wolf-punching movie, but the script helps by not having Idris Elba's doctor/father character turn into Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator or something like that. It's all kept pretty much realistic. The end was a little predictable as it was a bit telegraphed. Chekhov's Lions! By the time this posts, I'm not sure where this will be streaming, but I'm sure you can rent it. (3/5)
Everything Everywhere All At Once: I was interested in watching this but it's one of those that was hard to see because it was expensive to rent and then it went to Showtime, which I didn't have. Until there was a sale on Showtime so I signed up for a month to watch this.
Basically it's about the multiverse and Michelle Yeoh and her daughter wage a battle with a lot of crazy shit going on like people with hot dog fingers or a universe where instead of Ratatouille there's Raccacoonie, which I would be into seeing a full movie of. As entertaining as a lot of it is, it went on a little too long and there's no huge revelation. Basically just love everyone and enjoy the moment and stuff like that. I mean, I guess it could be worse: you could have hot dogs for fingers or be a pinata or some fucked-up thing. So that's something. (3.5/5)
Spider-Man No Way Home: Speaking of multiverses...Since this was on Starz and not Disney+, it took me a while to watch it. I had to actually sign up for Starz when it was 99 cents on Black Friday. I've never really been a big fan of the Tom Holland MCU Spider-Man. It never really felt like Spider-Man to me because of the half-assed way it all came together and him galivanting around with Iron Man and in space and all that. Not until he was swinging around New York with MJ at the end of the second movie did it really start to feel like actual Spider-Man.
In that ending, Peter Parker's secret identity was revealed, which is the key issue of this movie. To try to get people to forget, he goes to Dr. Strange, but the spell goes awry and villains from all the other movies are drawn into the MCU: Norman Osborn (Green Goblin), Dr. Octopus, and Flint Marko (aka Sandman, the Marvel one, not the Neil Gaiman one) from the Tobey Maguire movies and Lizard and Electro from the Andrew Garfield movies. So we cover all the movies, especially when Maguire and Garfield show up.
The first 2/3 is amusing and "fun" in the Marvel way but again not really much of a Spider-Man movie. It's the last third where Tom Holland's Peter really becomes Peter Parker when he loses all the MCU baggage--including his aunt. Without the Avengers, the Stark tech, and all that, Peter Parker is actually Peter Parker: a poor but brilliant high school kid with spider powers that he uses to fight evil because of the responsibility he feels. It took almost 6 movies but they finally got this version of the franchise pretty much where the other two versions began.
I can't help thinking this movie could have worked better without all the multiverses and guest stars and pizazz. Peter losing everything and rebuilding his life would have made a great movie on its own, but it might have been harder to sell it to casual fans. (3/5)
Morbius: The "latest" entry in Sony's half-assed cinematic universe. I put quotes on latest because the movie should have been released in 2020 but was delayed by the pandemic. Anyway, a lot of people were disappointed with this but like many maligned superhero movies like Fantastic Four or original Justice League it wasn't that terrible. It wasn't great either. They basically use a version of the Marvel formula. Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) has suffered from a debilitating condition since childhood. (Was it a birth defect? Who are his parents? Where the hell are they? Who knows!?) and makes friends at a clinic with a rich kid named Lucian, whom he calls "Milo" after a previous occupant of the bed next to him. Years later, Morbius uses vampire bat DNA to cure himself, which if you've watched any movies, you know a scientist experimenting on himself is never good. Predictably he turns into a vampire, but so long as he drinks blood every few hours, he has better-than-normal physical abilities with none of a real vampire's drawbacks. Milo (one of the Dr. Whos) wants the "cure" and eventually gets it but while Morbius tries not to eat people, Milo becomes a monster who frames Morbius for his crimes. Eventually they fight. If it all feels bland and samey, maybe it's because we've seen pretty much the same plot in Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Captain America, and Ant-Man to name a few and the superhero vampire thing done better in the Blade movies.
What disappointed most people was there was really not much cinematic universe crap in it. There was an offhand mention of an incident in San Francisco and for some weird reason, Morbius calls himself Venom at one point. Other than that there's not much until the mid-mid-credits scene when Michael Keaton's Vulture crosses over to the Sonyverse for...reasons and then in the mid-credits scene meets up with Morbius for...other reasons. You have to think the release delays had to play a role in that as this was supposed to come out before Venom 2 and Spider-Man No Way Home, so it would have been hard to retroactively tie into those without reshooting a bunch of stuff. Anyway, the movie was basically a flop so we'll probably only see Morbius again in Venom 3 or a Spider-Man movie as a guest star. (2/5) (Fun Speculation: I'm sure the Rifftrax crew had some fun with Morbius going to Central America to find vampire bats. See the second "Total Riff-Off" episode called "Demon Bat" where an idiot would-be monster seeker named Richard Terry tries to find a monster bat and comes away with only ordinary vampire bats. I guess he never thought of trying to inject their DNA in himself.)
The Batman: I meant to get around to watching this for a while but I didn't finally do it until Boxing Day. I had enough confidence that I bought it sight unseen for about $4 after credits. I was (mostly) not disappointed. It takes more cues from the Nolan movies than the Burton ones as it's a grittier, more realistic Gotham. The story is like if you took Year One, Hush, and a few other comics stories and put them in a blender. Like the Tom Holland Spider-Man, they dispensed with the origin, probably figuring we've seen that enough already. So this is in Year Two, where Batman and Lt. Gordon are trying to fight crime. But then a new villain called the Riddler starts killing prominent people and leaving clues to a deep, dark secret, one that might even implicate the Waynes. In trying to track down the Riddler, Batman meets Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman--though again we never use that name--and they team up, which includes some kissing.
While I liked it, I have a few criticisms. First, I don't know what Batman's armor is made of, but there's no way anything in current existence could get shot the number of times it does and survive. Second, the final act is kind of a letdown as it involves a manmade natural disaster and Batman facing a bunch of randos, which kind of diminishes the stakes; this also drags a bit. Third, there's not a ton of development to Alfred or Gordon. Still, it's not enough to really bring it down too much. (3.5/5) (Fun Facts: Like the Nolan movies, this was partially shot in Chicago and heavily hints we'll see the Joker in the sequel. Near the end Batman injects himself with something green to give him a boost; was this Venom and does this hint we could see Bane in a future movie? And if we see Bane, might we get Azrael too? Unlikely, but I can dream...)
The Northman: The way I described this on Facebook was like if you mixed together Hamlet, Beowulf, Gladiator, and maybe a dash of The Lion King. Like Hamlet you have a price who wants revenge because his uncle killed his father, the king, and married his mother. Like Beowulf it's set in and around Scandinavia of about the 9th Century. Like Gladiator, our hero who was someone important is forced to become a slave for the guy he wants to get revenge on. And like The Lion King the prince at the start is just a kid who loves his daddy, who is grooming him to one day be king when he dies and the kid goes on the run, only instead of a lovable warthog and annoying meerkat teaching him a catchy song, he joins a gang of raiders who mercilessly slaughter men, women, and children. The grittiness, violence, and gore makes this less than a heroic saga. Since he butchers numerous innocent people, our "hero" isn't really a hero and the uncle isn't as big of a jerk as he was in Hamlet, though admittedly I've only seen an old German TV version that was on MST3K. But when the "hero"'s mom drops some truth bombs, it kind of dampens some of our enthusiasm for the prince to get his revenge. Which I guess is true to that old adage about revenge and digging two graves; though in this movie you'd need a lot more than that. (3.5/5)
Uncharted: I never played the video games, so for me this was just a fun popcorn movie that's basically like a reboot of National Treasure. Tom Holland is Nathan Drake, whose treasure-hunting brother vanished 10 years ago. He's recruited by Sully (Mark Wahlberg) to help find a treasure Magellan's crew hid almost 500 years earlier. And then of course there's someone else trying to get the treasure and searching for clues that takes them to Barcelona and the Philippines. It's light and fun and silly, so as long as you turn your brain off, it'll amuse you for about 2 hours. Of course there are mid-mid-credits and mid-credits cookie scenes to set up a sequel. (3/5) (Fun Fact: I've never played the game, but I have the theme song on an album from Amazon where the London Philharmonic recorded versions of classic video game themes like this one, Super Mario Bros, and Tetris.)
Red Notice: this is largely the same movie as Uncharted, only a Netflix original that stars Wonder Woman, Deadpool, and Black Adam instead of Spider-Man and...I guess Mark Wahlberg hasn't played a superhero yet. Anyway, it's about stealing three eggs that Mark Antony gave to Cleopatra. The Rock and Ryan Reynolds are forced to team-up and compete against Gal Gadot to get to the eggs. It's similarly light and fun and silly. The main difference is there are a couple of nice twists at the end that maybe you won't see coming. (3/5)
Nope: Was this as good as Jordan Peele's previous movie Get Out? Nope. Was it as bad as similar movies like Signs or Feeders? Nope. Was Steven Yuen's cowboy theme park owner character necessary? Nope. Was Keith David used enough? Nope. Am I going to do the whole review like this? Nope.
Daniel Kaluuya returns as a horse trainer in California whose ranch is terrorized by a UFO. Along with his sister, an electronics clerk from Fry's (apparently in California they have that; the ones I visited in Phoenix were just grocery stores), and a filmmaker played by the great Michael Wincott, he tries to find proof of alien life and to stop the UFO. There's an OK twist about what the UFO is but the last act of the movie is mostly because of characters acting irrationally. While not a bad movie, it's not great either. Maybe next time Peele should have a little less control of the production; it's hard to write, produce, and direct a great movie on your own. (3/5)
Bullet Train: This premiered on Netflix a few days before my subscription was going to expire so I barely got a chance to watch it. Brad Pitt is "Ladybug," a criminal-for-hire who's supposed to snag a briefcase off a bullet train going from Tokyo to Kyoto. It seems easy, right? Too easy and soon things go tits up as there are other assassins aboard the train and soon the body count rises as apparently Japanese trains have no security or anything. Directed by David Leitch of John Wick and Deadpool 2 fame, it's the kind of movie with a lot of style and little substance. But it's a fun ride for the most part and near the end some of the coincidences are explained. If you like Tarantino or Guy Ritchie movies then you'd probably enjoy it so long as you don't try to poke holes in the plot. (3/5) (Fun Fact: there are a few cameos by the likes of Channing Tatum and Ryan Reynolds and probably a couple I didn't recognize. Michael Shannon plays "the White Death" but if this had been made 15 years earlier I bet the part would have gone to David Carradine of Kung-Fu fame--and then infamy for how he died.)
The Gray Man: A Netflix "Original" that's not very original. Basically take every Bond, Bourne, and other spy-type movie, put it into a blender, cast Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans in the leads, and what you get is exciting and fun but not original at all. Gosling is "Sierra Six," a former convict recruited by Billy Bob Thornton into the CIA. The "Sierras" are basically like the Suicide Squad only no bombs in their necks, which probably would have saved time. In one of those classic scenarios, Six gets cold feet when there's a kid near his target and winds up getting some intel on the shitty things his new boss has been up to. He goes on the run while Evans is brought in to hunt him down. In one of those playing-against-type turns, Evans is pretty much the opposite of Captain America; he's more like Crossbones. And dee dah dee dah dee, there are fights and chases and then the big showdown. It's not boring or stupid, but you'll probably feel like you've seen it all before. (3/5) (Fun Fact: the movie is written/produced/directed by the Russo Brothers who did the last two Avengers movies and the better Winter Soldier movie.)
The Contractor: A couple people online had praised this movie so when it was on Paramount+ I finally watched it. Chris Pine is an Army Ranger who's discharged but loses his medical benefits for juicing. He goes to a friend (Ben Foster) who gets him a job with "the Ranch," a private operation that does off-the-books stuff. For an upfront payment of $50K, Pine goes to Berlin, where an operation involving a scientist and some kind of vaccine soon goes tits-up. It was a decent movie, though it felt like a lower budget version of a Bourne movie or something along that line. It might have been better if it had been a little longer; maybe let him complete a mission or two and then have everything go tits-up. Still, it's not bad if you like action thrillery movies. (3/5) (Fun Fact: Pine and Foster previously were brothers in the better heist movie Hell or High Water, which Tony Laplume says was written by the guy who created the smash hit Yellowstone and its various prequels.)
The Courier: I had this movie on my Amazon Prime queue for probably over a year. This was a decent movie if you like le Carre-type spy movies versus something like The Gray Man. I mean this has no car chases or explosions or shootouts. It starts in 1960 when a British salesman (Benedict Cumberbatch) is recruited to meet a Russian military officer in Moscow who wants to pass intel to the West. Over the next couple of years the salesman works as the courier, but things go south during the Cuba Missile Crisis. It's not exactly a fun movie but it's tense and interesting and pretty well made. I mentioned on Facebook I liked the part where they use a kid's reusable drawing pad to exchange messages so they can't be listened in on. Take that, Bond! (3/5)
Confess, Fletch: A couple of Facebook "friends" recommended this and so I watched it with a free Redbox rental. It's not bad. Jon Hamm plays Fletch more low-key than Chevy Chase back in the 80s. He goes to Boston to help an Italian countess find some paintings and winds up getting involved with a murder. Most of it was amusing but not as slapstick as the 80s movies. The twist at the end is Fletch doesn't really solve the murder but he does liberate some paintings. If you like heist/con type movies then it's pretty fun. (3/5) (Fun Fact: Star Trek Voyager's Robert Picardo has a small part near the end as an Italian count.)
Ghostbusters: Afterlife: Fun Fact: I was never a fan of Ghostbusters. Not even the song. I was only 6 when the first movie came out and when I did see it, it kinda freaked me out. I saw the TV show (both of them) sometimes but didn't like them and didn't have any toys or anything. I never watched the reboot because I didn't care if the busters were guys or gals. So what I'm saying is I didn't watch this with a nostalgia filter, which is something you really need. Without it, you can really see how calculated it all is:
Harold Ramis died, so we'll kill him off in the movie. In the first scene, using a body double and trick shots that would embarrass the camera crew of Home Improvement. New York City is expensive and difficult to film in (especially during a pandemic) so we'll say he moved to some town in Oklahoma--actually Alberta. And he has a daughter who had two kids, one who's good at fixing cars and one who's a science nerd--how convenient! And the science nerd makes friends with a nerdy Asian kid and a teacher (Paul Rudd) who's studying seismic disturbances. And this small Oklahoma town is the most diverse small Oklahoma town ever so we can check off all the boxes for Affirmative Action--sorry to sound like a Trump supporter but how many small Oklahoma towns do you think have young people of all races working in the same crappy diner? And then we need a crisis that our kids look into Goonies/Stranger Things-style before it gets even bigger and wouldn't you know we have all the other busters show up--including the ghost of Harold Ramis? Which I guess they could deepfake his ghost body but not his voice? Anyway, I'm making it sound bad, but it wasn't really. It was decent for what it was. It's just hard for me to love it considering I don't really care that much about the franchise.
I'm sure if you love it, you'll be squealing with delight to see the Ecto-1 and proton packs and the old guys and Marshmallow Men and hear those lines like, "There is no [blank] only Zuul." It's just not my thing. (3/5) (Fun Facts: McKenna Grace looks like a live action version of Pidge in the Netflix Voltron show I'd watched a few weeks before this. She also sings the closing theme song. The two cookie scenes feature a pointless cameo from Sigourney Weaver with Bill Murray and the second one at the very end has a good scene between Ernie Hudson and Annie Potts. Though I thought they said the old firehouse was a Starbucks, so how can he be going back in there with it empty?)
Top Gun: Maverick: Like Ghostbusters Afterlife, this trades on a lot of nostalgia. Basically 35 years later (or 30 years later as they keep saying for some reason) Maverick is testing an awesome plane called the Darkstar when he finds a Green Lantern ring gets called back to the Top Gun school to train elite pilots for a dangerous mission, one of whom is Goose's son, who should be like 40 now, but apparently not. And there's a bar owner named Penny played by Jennifer Connelly, who was 15 when the first movie came out. Somehow she knows Maverick...because we need a love interest and Kelly McGillis is gross now. (To me that is a pretty huge upgrade, even if Connelly is 52 now.)
The mission against "the enemy," is pretty obviously modeled after the original Star Wars. I mean, they have to fly along a narrow canyon with anti-aircraft and fighters protecting it to hit a very difficult target. And in the end someone even pulls a Han Solo in the most obvious development ever. It wasn't a bad movie but again there's so much that's so calculated to touch people's nostalgia buttons that if you aren't a fan it really doesn't work as well.
And like Ghostbusters Afterlife you can see how calculated it all is. I mean they use some of the same music, same props, photos, same homoerotic sports on the beach, playing "Great Balls of Fire" in the bar, and flying an F-14 fighter at the end; it's not clever winking so much as smashing you over the head with a hammer and shouting, "Hey, remember what was cool about that movie 35 years ago?!" Then there's the faceless "Enemy" with their unnamed "5th-generation fighters" because if we used a real country it might hurt the international box office. Also why while there's one female pilot, there are no gay characters, at least not that I recall. And what was the point of Ed Harris as Admiral Cain? He was there at the start to close down the Darkstar program, but he didn't come back later to gain respect for Maverick or anything; they could have used a much lesser actor for that role. I'm just saying. (3/5)
The Suicide Squad: I didn't like the first movie and while this changed much of the cast and the director, I still didn't really like it. The Squad is sent to an island off South America to destroy a mad science project. The team this time includes Bloodsport (Idris Elba), Ratcatcher II, Polka Dot Man, King Shark (voiced by Sly Stallone), and Peacemaker (John Cena). Rick Flag and Harley Quinn reprise their roles as well. Like the first movie where I liked Diablo the best because he actually had a character arc, in this I liked Ratcatcher the best, maybe because I had an antihero who spoke to rats in the Scarlet Knight books. Bloodsport just felt like a placeholder for Will Smith's Deadshot while King Shark felt like a placeholder for Killer Croc and Polka Dot Man a placeholder for Captain Boomerang, albeit a better character. There's a lot of blood, gore, and rats before it ends. It was just over 2 hours but felt more like 5 hours to me. It's good I got this free on Redbox. But if you're sick of Pete Davidson, this features him getting shot in the face, so maybe just rewind that and watch it over-and-over again. (2/5) (Fun Fact: Despite the lackluster performance of this movie, WB made James Gunn the head of their creative team. This being a James Gunn film, we of course have an appearance by Michael Rooker early on as Savant, who's the placeholder for Slipknot, the guy who could climb anything and had his head blown up early on. James Gunn's brother Sean plays Weasel, who's revived in a cookie scene while Peacemaker is revived in the second cookie scene.)
The New Mutants: This movie got kneecapped twice by circumstances beyond its control. First there was the Fox-Disney merger that essentially made this a lame duck franchise movie like Dark Phoenix. And then there came the pandemic that delayed the release until 2021 and even then it was only when theaters started opening so it had almost no chance of being a success.
Eventually the movie came to Disney+ and much, much later I remembered I'd put it on my watchlist. Overall for what it is, it's not bad. It's a pretty small movie in that it's pretty much all in one old religious school or hospital or whatever it used to be. Five teenagers are under the "care" of a Dr. Reyes, who is supposed to be helping them control their powers. Maisie Williams of Game of Thrones turns into a wolf (I think), Anya Taylor-Joy of The Northman can enter a limbo world she created with a neat sword and stuff, Charlie Heaton of Stranger Things can launch kinetic energy, another dude can turn to fire (yawn), and then Dani Moonstar (Blu Hunt of...not much) is the new girl whose power is unknown and starts messing with everyone, including her. There's a little lesbian making out and some OK CGI action and stuff. Mostly if this had been given the budget of a big movie and not cut down by circumstances, it could have been built up more instead of running only about 90 minutes. And not surprisingly there are no credit scenes. (3/5) (Fun Fact: Dr. Reyes is played by Alice Braga who was in The Suicide Squad.)
Blacklight: I'm not sure this was in theaters, but it probably wasn't for long. It's a probably straight-to-streaming/Redbox thriller starring Liam Neeson as a fix-it man for the head of the FBI (an unrecognizable Aidan Quinn) but when a political candidate or activist or whatever dies, it sets off a chain of events that pits Liam Neeson against the FBI. It was an OK thriller, but not really great. Basically it's the kind of cheapish, disposable movie that might entertain you for most of its 1 3/4 hour run time. This could easily have starred Nic Cage or Bruce Willis and it probably wouldn't have made a huge difference. (2.5/5)
The Misfits (2021): There have probably been a few movies with this title. This movie I watched on Starz is about a group of young Robin Hoods led by Nick Cannon who recruit a thief (Pierce Brosnan) to help them steal gold from a prison in the Middle East. It's like a low-budget version of better heist-type movies that's not bad but not all that interesting either. It's the kind of movie where you think actors like Brosnan and Tim Roth took the part for some easy money and a free trip to Dubai. And Nick Cannon is kinda annoying. (2/5)
Panama: Generic action movie on Showtime. Mel Gibson takes over the Bruce Willis role of being the name player who doesn't do a whole lot. Cole Hauser of Yellowstone is the main guy who goes around Panama before and during the invasion in 1989 hardly anyone remembers, trying to get a Russian helicopter to kill Noriega. He gets sidetracked by a hot chick. Generic mayhem ensues! (2/5)
Agent Game: After watching Panama on Showtime, I wanted to find another cheap disposable action movie that wouldn't really occupy me but might distract me for about 90 minutes. And, hey, this also features Mel Gibson in the Bruce Willis role of the evil boss guy who doesn't do a lot. There's something about someone being "renditioned" at a black site and then Jason Isaac gets cold feet and is killed, maybe because his paycheck bounced. Most of the movie then falls on Dermot Mulroney, the guy who's not Dylan McDermott. And generic mayhem resumes! (2/5)
Torn Hearts: I haven't been a big fan of Blumhouse other than I think Get Out was one of theirs. But one night I put this on Amazon and it was pretty decent. In Nashville, there's a female duo called Torn Hearts, who are struggling to take the next step in their careers. After getting turned down to open for some big act, they go to the house of a reclusive country singer (Katey Segal, aka Peg Bundy or Leela of Futurama) hoping to get her to record a song with them. They convince her to let them in and then there's some psychological horror as she turns the two girls against each other as hidden resentments come to the surface. Eventually they find out the truth about how Katey Segal's partner died. Which isn't a huge surprise. The end was a little bit of surprise, but not in a bad way. Overall it's not really scary but a decent thriller. (3/5)
Halloween Ends: Speaking of Blumhouse movies I wasn't a fan of...this! While it was billed as the big final battle between Michael Myers and Laurie Strode, that takes up about 2% of the movie. Most of it is a lot of bad flirting and this dude who accidentally kills a kid and winds up becoming a cut-rate Michael Myers. It was basically like if Norman Bates had turned into Michael Myers instead of dressing up as his mom to murder people. I never got around to seeing Halloween Kills, but this was somehow even more boring than Halloween (2018). In the end these new movies really had nothing interesting to add to the Halloween mythos. I mean, Halloween III-VI and even the Rob Zombie reboots weren't great, but at least they tried to say something. H20 did basically the same thing as these movies in a lot less time and tedium. This ends up feeling as satisfying an ending as The Rise of Skywalker. And like that, you know it's not really the end; they crushed Michael in a car compactor or whatever but he'll still come back as soon as the Akkads need money. The cash cow is as hard to kill as Michael in the movies. (1/5)
Tales of the Jedi: While not officially under the banner of The Clone Wars, it's basically a way to continue that series by exploring different parts of the prequel mythology that the show didn't really cover. The first episode features the birth of Ahsoka Tano, but then the next three are about Dooku's disillusionment with the Jedi and Republic that leads him to join Palpatine. The last two go back to Ahsoka to show how Anakin's training helped her survive Order 66 and how she becomes Fulcrum, which was like a slimmed-down version of the Ahsoka novel I read a few years ago. The Ahsoka parts made me wish they'd just make a movie that kind of summarizes her whole story while the Dooku parts really could have been a lot longer. Still, if you're a fan of The Clone Wars, it helps to fill in some gaps. It'd be interesting to see where the series would go in the future--maybe deeper into the past. (3/5) (Fun Fact: The episode featuring a young Qui-Gon as Dooku's padawan, they did a good job of making him look like a young Liam Neeson and Dooku as a young Christopher Lee; the animators probably went back to older movies they appeared in for the models.)
Ticket to Paradise: A bland comedy with almost no surprises that really makes you think everyone involved just made it so they could write off a vacation to Bali as a business expense. George Clooney and Julia Roberts are a divorced couple who've hated each other for 20 years. Then their daughter meets a cute seaweed farmer in Bali and wants to marry him there. So the parents go there and decide to work together to break up the wedding. But guess what? I'm sure you can guess because as I said, there are no surprises. Not even at the end. It was pretty lame and I wouldn't have watched it but it was on Peacock and I could watch it free so whatever. (2/5) (Fun Fact: I was going to call my story Invitation to Paradise Ticket to Paradise but then I saw a commercial for this movie and changed the title. Not that it probably would have mattered. It's not like this made much money. It probably made less profit than my story.)
The Family Fang: I found this while rummaging around Amazon's Freevee movies. It's from about 2016 and stars Nicole Kidman and Jason Bateman (who also directs) as siblings of the eponymous family. When they were young, their parents (Christopher Walken and someone else) would use them for these "art pieces" that were more like Jackass or YouTube pranks. In one the son pretends to rob a bank of lollipops and the mother pretends to be shot by the father dressed as a security guard. Years later, the kids have fled from their parents, Nicole Kidman to become a famous actress (real stretch!), and Jason Bateman becomes a writer whose first book won an award, the second was less successful, and the third he's blocked on. Then their parents disappear and they have to wonder if their parents really disappeared or if it's another "piece." This is the kind of movie that from the preview I thought it would be funnier, like Bateman's series Arrested Development, but it is heavier on the drama. Not in a bad way. I mean it's not overwrought or anything. There is plenty of black humor and some touching family moments. I don't know how many other movies Bateman might have directed before this, but there were a few moments where the camera would move and not really focus very well that I couldn't help thinking wouldn't happen in a, say, Ron Howard movie. Anyway, I still recommend it, especially if you've been part of a dysfunctional family. (3/5) (Fun Facts: Kathryn Hahn from WandaVision plays the young version of the mother. Part of what drew me to the movie is the use of the song below in the trailer, but it's not in the movie--not even the credits.)
The Promotion: Like the previous one, I saw this on Freevee/Amazon, it wasn't as laugh-out-loud funny as I thought, and Jason Bateman appears in a cameo as a corporate retreat guru. This 2008 movie stars Seann William Scott and John C. Reilly as rivals at a Chicagoland supermarket who are looking to be the manager of a new store. You might think this would lead to some slapstick shenanigans or hijinks but they keep it a bit more subtle. And in time the two guys gain respect for each other. The pretty deep cast also includes Jenna Fischer, Fred Armisen, and Bobby Cannavale. While the humor isn't really of the pie-throwing variety, it's not too subtle and even if it's not really, really funny, it's still funnier than NBC's Superstore was. (3/5)
The Architect: I saw this on the Movie House app shortly after I started using that last spring. It looked kinda interesting and was a professional movie unlike a lot of others. There was just one teensy problem: there was no sound! The video played but without the sound. And while I sent an email they have not fixed it. I could have rented it from Amazon but didn't really want to. Eventually I found it on Pluto TV on demand and so finally watched it with sound.
The premise of the movie sounds like a zany 80s comedy like The Money Pit: a couple (Parker Posey and Eric McCormack) contract an architect to build their dream house and things get out of hand. Parker Posey and the architect start to get really cozy and they come up with this weird design inspired by a nautilus while Eric McCormack wants a more traditional, conservative design. And costs start to spiral out of control. While the concept seems zany on the surface, like the previous 2 movies in this entry it's not really a slapstick comedy. It has some funny bits but also leans more towards drama in the final act. But it doesn't lean too far into drama like it could have; I mean there aren't any murders or anything like that. The end is kind of annoying as it doesn't really give us closure on the house and titular architect. (2.5/5)
Black Friday: I was trying to find holiday movies on Starz and stumbled across this. It's from 2021 and stars Bruce Campbell and Devon Sawa as employees of a toy store (a real anachronism for 2021) who on Black Friday are besieged by customers possessed by aliens! It was pretty fun but it needed some more money behind it to up the production values. The store looks like they used a shuttered Toys R Us in the "Commenwealth of Massachusetts" (that's how it's spelled in the credits) and put just enough crap on the shelves so it might look like a real store, but except for an XBox you don't see any real toys like Barbie, Monster High, Transformers, Hot Wheels, Batman, Marvel movies, or whatever else kids are into. Which is a little disappointing to me because especially in older movies like Mac n Me and Free Enterprise I like to look at the shelves in the background to see the toys they used to have; if you watch this 20 years from now you couldn't do that. Really they should have set this in a hardware store so Bruce Campbell could have a chainsaw like Evil Dead/Army of Darkness. At least if they had better populated the shelves they'd have had more options to fight the alien monsters with. Anyway, it's still pretty fun. (3/5) (Fun Fact: Seth Green voices "Dour Dougie," a talking bear who says really depressing things. It's supposed to be the toy of the season except it gets recalled for catching on fire.)
Gretel & Hansel: A retelling of the fairy tale that has Gretel as a teenager with witch magic and Hansel as her naive younger brother. When Gretel refuses to be a whore for an old guy, her mother forces them into the woods. And then they find the house of a witch, which is not made of candy. And while it's obvious they should leave, at first Hansel doesn't and then Gretel doesn't and the whole thing is slow and ponderous and dull as an old butter knife. Kind of glad I never watched this the months I had it on my Amazon watchlist. (1/5) (Fun Fact: The last time I watched a movie in the theater, back in 2019, they were putting up a display for this.)
Trailer Park Boys, Seasons 1-2, & 5: I didn't have time to watch all 12 seasons of this on Netflix, but I watched the first couple out of curiosity. As you'd expect, it takes place in a trailer park. In Canada. Julian and Ricky are friends who have been in jail and are let out to go back to their trailer park. Mayhem ensues as they attempt to grow pot and get their lives back on track. There's a lot of cursing, gun play, and other things that will quickly disabuse you of the idea that Canadians are all nice and polite. I fell asleep at the start of season 3 and when I woke up it was starting season 5. I don't think I missed a lot. It seems like every season is basically the same: Julian and Ricky try to get ahead by selling pot or "hash" or whatever and in the end wind up in jail for a couple of months. I didn't love it but it does at least have more coherent stories than Letterkenny; 90% of every episode isn't just sometimes amusing riffing. (3/5) (Fun Facts: the voices of Ricky and Julian appear in the season 3 episode of Archer called "The Limited" where Nova Scotian terrorists try to rescue one of their own while dressed like Mounties. In season 2 of the show, Ellen--now Elliott--Page is a frequent guest star as "Treena.")
Trailer Park Boys: The Movie: This 2006 movie features the same characters played by most of the same actors (I think IMDB said just Ricky's daughter was different) but it's not really necessary to have watched the show beforehand. Watching some of the show probably would be good to know who people are and stuff, but basically this is like a mini-version of one of the seasons. Ricky and Julian get out of jail and then start a new scheme to make money. This time by stealing change from parking meters, phones, car washes, and a movie theater. Being Canada, stealing change is a little more profitable as they have coins up to $2. Basically if you like the show you'd like the movie. I did largely like the show so I liked the movie too. (3/5) (Fun Facts: apparently this made the most money of any Canadian movie at the time--the record having only been set 4 years earlier. The soundtrack is almost entirely provided by Rush and the Tragically Hip who are both Canadian bands; members of both bands appear as cops in the movie. Ivan Reitman, the director/producer of Ghostbusters and other big movies served as an executive producer.)
The Big White: I hadn't heard of this until I was browsing movies on Crackle for no real reason. This 2005 movie stars Robin Williams as a failing travel agent in Alaska who tries to defraud an insurance company. He finds a body in a dumpster and claims it's his missing brother. An ambitious insurance investigator played by Giovanni Ribisi refuses to accept the claim so he can try to get a promotion out of Alaska. Meanwhile, the petty criminals who killed the guy in the dumpster (Tim Blake Nelson and some other guy) want the body back and take Williams's wife (Holly Hunter) hostage. Then the real brother (Woody Harrelson) returns. Some cut-rate Coen Brothers mayhem ensues. It's kind of fun for a really black crime caper comedy though the last act maybe drags a little. I'm surprised it took me 17 years to hear of this since there are a lot of notable names. (2.5/5) (Sad Fact: According to IMDB, Robin Williams said the shoot in Alaska/Winnipeg drove him back to drinking after 20 years of sobriety. Maybe it was a joke or maybe he'd still be alive if not for this movie. Who's to say?)
Andor, Part 2: I had hoped after I reviewed the first half-dozen or so episodes last time that it might have gotten better. It really didn't. A lot of people gush about how awesome it was and I just don't get it. The way I started to think of it is that this is a Star Wars version of Better Call Saul: a slow, ponderous prequel that provides a backstory I couldn't care less about. I mean, I never cared HOW Jimmy, aka Saul, became a sleazy lawyer; I just wanted to see him doing more sleazy lawyer shit. In the same way, I don't care HOW Cassian Andor joins the Rebellion or even how a Rebellion came to be; I just want to see him doing Rebellion shit. There ends up being so many characters and plot threads I just don't give a shit about. Ooh, will the bitchy ISB officer and dorky former Corporate cop fall in love? Will Mon Mothma's daughter get with some guy so she can get her loan? And will her marriage last? There's so much of this lame bullshit that Andor winds up being a minor part of his own show! Book of Boba Fett was pretty lame, but at least it had the good sense to only be 6 episodes. The 12 episodes of this could be used by the ISB to torture information out of people. And when the hell are we going to get K2-SO in this? That was the only thing I was actually interested in for an Andor show and they couldn't even do that except when he's captured by a couple of similar droids. (1/5)
Star Trek Prodigy, Part 2: I wasn't a huge fan of the first 10 episodes of Prodigy last year. The show was made for Nickelodeon so it's more oriented towards kids. Though I'm not sure if it's oriented enough to really work for audiences under 10. Anyway, thanks to their "proto-warp drive" the stolen Protostar can go from the Delta Quadrant to the Alpha Quadrant in no time flat. The problem is the kids who stole the ship realize there's a weapon on board that would take over Federation ships and turn them against each other until nothing is left. So the kids have to go on the run in the Neutral Zone while Vice Admiral Janeway pursues them. Meanwhile the evil "Diviner" is on Janeway's ship along with a couple of agents. It all comes together in a two-part episode that ends with a heroic sacrifice of a main character, though not one of the kids. It was pretty decent and still leaves the door open for a second season. But like I said, I'm just not sure there's really enough to entertain little kids who watch Spongebob and whatever other shit is usually on Nickelodeon. As far as a Trek show goes it's better than Picard and while not as funny as Lower Decks it has some jokes and references. It's still probably not in the same league as The Clone Wars and Rebels for Star Wars.(3/5) (Fun Fact: one great reference is the return of Ronny Cox as now-Admiral Jellico. Short of a series of Tweets with Jellico telling dad jokes, he's sort of been forgotten in Trek lore so it was neat to see him again.)
Dirty Work: I watched this one night on Pluto TV. Norm MacDonald stars as a guy who needs to raise $50,000 to get his father a heart transplant so he creates a business to allow people to get revenge. It's a funny premise but the movie itself doesn't work that great. The revenge idea would make a great SNL sketch but to stretch it into a movie they had to include a generic love interest and a villain (Christopher McDonald, also the villain of Happy Gilmore) and the cumbersome plot device of the father's heart transplant. (2/5) (Fun Fact: The movie includes a lot of SNL alums like Chevy Chase, Adam Sandler, and Chris Farley. Sad Fact: MacDonald, Farley, and director Bob Saget have all since passed away.)
Breach: This isn't the much better 2000s movie starring Chris Cooper and Ryan Philippe about a mole in the FBI. This is a crappy 2020 movie starring Bruce Willis and Thomas Jane. It's basically like if you took Passengers and Alien and made it for about $1M. A ship with 300,000 people in cryosleep and a dozen or so crew awake is on its way to "New Earth" and has some alien goo released in it that starts killing everyone. Lame, boring mayhem ensues. It made me miss the fun and cleverness of Jason X. Seriously. That's a shitty cheap ass movie but at least it was fun and a clever reworking of Friday the 13th tropes. (1/5)
Sinkhole: I watched this on the Movie House app one Sunday. It's the kind of movie that's not completely terrible, but really needed some money. Most of it feels like if you filmed Breaking Bad or a Coen Brothers movie for a public access channel. A former teacher who looks like shaved Gabriel Luna in Andor is driving a steam shovel in a dump when he finds a dead woman's body. Somehow he winds up working for a meth dealer. Sorta confusing, cheaply-made mayhem ensues! I guess the body he found was a meth addict and the meth dealer hired him as a way to buy his silence? Maybe? (2/5)
Mandy: In the pantheon of crappy Nic Cage movies, this makes Wicker Man look like Leaving Las Vegas. Nic's wife is killed by a mix of Jesus worshipping hippies and bikers who look like cut rate Cenobites. So then he gears up to kill them all. A lot of screaming, grunting mayhem ensues. There's weird animation, lots of weird pink/purple lighting, and gratuitous shots of the bad guy's wiener. Hooray? (1/5)
Rage & Honor: I saw this on Pluto TV and was curious if it was a sequel to Honor & Glory on Rifftrax because both feature Cynthia Rothrock. But no this is a different movie that's not really a different movie. I mean they're both a lot of kicking and punching and lame dialogue and stuff. This features fewer buff, half-naked bank presidents. So that's something, right? No. (1/5)
Spirited: I didn't plan on watching this but I got bored and did a trial of Apple+ to watch the Charlie Brown special and for the hell of it I watched this. It's kind of a different take on the A Christmas Carol thing that focuses on the Ghost of Christmas Present (Will Ferrell) and a selfish media consultant (Ryan Reynolds) whose job is turning people against each other. By now the whole Christmas Carol thing has become sort of a corporate entity that each year targets ones person and changes them, but Ferrell's Ghost is getting antsy and wants to do something big. But Reynolds is viewed as "Unredeemable" and soon proves why as the attempt to make him see the error of his ways starts going sideways. There are twists and maybe one too many complications. Unfortunately it's a musical with songs that are annoying and not memorable and mostly sung by people who really aren't singers. A couple fewer songs and it might have been tighter. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact: at one point Ferrell is at a costume party where someone is dressed as his character from Elf and he comments on how awful it looks.)
Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special: A fun special (about the size of 1 episode of a Marvel series on Disney+) where Drax and the insect lady whose name I don't remember decide that since Peter Quill lost Gamora and hasn't had a real Christmas since being abducted as a child, they'll give him one. Which they do by decorating "Knowhere" and kidnapping Kevin Bacon on Earth. It's a lot of silly fun though the effects aren't as good as a Marvel movie. Except for Gamora I think they got everyone from the cast--even Michael Rooker appears as Yondu in animated form. I especially liked the soundtrack, which features some lesser known holiday songs by Smashing Pumpkins and Fountains of Wayne that I own and frequently listen to. (3.5/5) (Fun Fact: the indie rock band the Old 97s play the alien band in the special, which made me wonder if they have a holiday album--and they do!)
Ice Age: Scrat Tales: This is a series of 6 short episodes based on the weird saber-tooth squirrel Scrat who became sort of the mascot of the Ice Age franchise though he was never really part of the plot. In the first of these, Scrat finds a baby squirrel thing that is just referred to as "Baby Scrat," though it's not clear that they're actually related. I'd kind of hope they aren't because they spend most of the 6 shorts trying to murder each other for an acorn. Not like seriously murder but in Tom & Jerry or Coyote & Road Runner fashion. It's really bizarre, but now I know the Baby Scrat I got from Vine makes many of the same noises as the one in these shorts. So that's something. (2/5)
Mixed Nuts: I'd seen this movie on a few streaming services during previous holiday seasons but never got around to watching it. Then kinda wished I hadn't when I watched it on Peacock. Like I joked on Facebook, I haven't seen so much wasted talent since Avengers Endgame--especially the funeral scene where they have former A-list/Oscar nominees/winners standing around like extras. It's written and directed by Nora Ephron and stars Steve Martin (with dyed hair), Rita Wilson (aka Mrs. Tom Hanks), Madeline Kahn, Juliette Lewis (doing at least her second Christmas movie after Christmas Vacation), Adam Sandler, Gary Shandling, Rob Reiner, Liev Schreiber, a very young Haley Joel Osment, and even Parker Posey/Jon Stewart as a roller blading couple. That's a pretty deep bench, but the results are...meh. It's supposed to be some kind of ensemble comedy but it takes forever to get not very far. Martin, Wilson, and Kahn run a second-rate suicide hotline that's about to be evicted by Shandling so he can put in condos (gentrification wasn't invented in the 21st Century) when a very pregnant Lewis and her husband, a bad "wall artist," and a depressed transvestite played by Schreiber show up and mayhem sorta kinda eventually ensues. Even for 1994 a lot of the jokes about telephone cords, dial phones, and regifting fruitcakes were pretty dated. In the end it's the sort of movie where I say everyone had already or would go on to do much better stuff. (2/5)
Infinite Santa 8000: I watched this pretty odd movie on the Movie House app. It uses pretty crude animation that feels more like a motion comic book than a traditionally animated movie. The story doesn't really make a lot of sense either. In the distant future, the world is pretty much like a Mad Max movie. Santa, who's a cyborg now, has to fight in a gladiator pit for food (which includes his opponent) to take back to his ranch, where he lives with 8 robot reindeer and a robotic girl named Martha. Then an evil mad scientist named Shackleton kidnaps Martha to get Santa's DNA to make himself stronger...or something. A mostly incoherent plot, cheesy animation, and an annoying heavy metal soundtrack mean the only place this would be a holiday tradition is on Rifftrax. (1/5) (Fun Speculation: Was Shackleton named for Ernest Shackleton, one of the people who tried to reach the South Pole? Or is it just a random name? Does it matter? Probably not.)
Beethoven's 3rd: Though I'd admit the first two Beethoven movies were not exactly quality cinema, they do have a place in my heart for the adorable St. Bernard. I could never afford a St. Bernard but they're so big and cuddly that I wish I could have a real one. Anyway, I bought the first two movies on VHS in the 90s. One day after XMas I was on Amazon and saw a 3-pack of Beethoven movies for only $4 and I had a gift card so it was free.
Though I never cared about this straight-to-video 2000 sequel that includes none of the original cast (not even the dog) I figured I might as well watch it. Someone probably pitched this as Beethoven meets Vacation as it's about Beethoven going with the family of the original guy's brother (Judge Reinhold) on a road trip from Colorado to California. But two idiot thieves put some kind of operating system in an old DVD that the family buys. So while Beethoven is causing trouble, there's also these two goons trying to get the DVD. And really lame mayhem ensues! The cringiest part is when they go to "Sumotown," a former Old West theme park bought by the Japanese. Have you ever imagined what it might look like if sumo wrestlers wore cowboy hats and six-shooters? Wonder no more! Just to amp up the cringiness, some of the sumo wrestlers wear sombreros. The filmmaking is barely competent and it's more annoying than fun. But at least there's a St. Bernard--that was actually played by 3 St. Bernards. (1/5) (Fun Facts: Early in the movie they talk about how Barry the St. Bernard saved a boy off an icy ledge in Switzerland. So surely they'll come back to this later and Beethoven will rescue the son off an icy ledge, right? Nope. At the end, Frank Gorshin, aka the Riddler in the old Batman show, has a cameo as an uncle.)
A Bulldog for Christmas: I'd seen this a few years on streaming services but never gotten around to watching it. The premise sounded like something I'd do: a selfish young woman is turned into a bulldog for Christmas! Finally I got bored enough to watch it on Freevee and...it was pretty bad. I mean the acting and production values make A Talking Cat!?! look like ET. It makes Mac n Me seem like something from Pixar. And so on. Suffice it to say, it was really amateur. It is the kind of story that might have at least been serviceable in the right hands, but those hands do not belong to whoever made this. But at least there's an adorable big fat bulldog on the screen a lot. (1/5)
Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys: I think this was the last of the first wave of crappy Puppet Master movies in 2003 and then in the 2010s there was predictably an attempt to revive it. Anyway, like Halloween Ends the battle between Toulon's puppets (only 4 of the original 6; I think IMDB said after that clip show the puppets were auctioned off so they probably didn't want to remake all of them) and the Demonic Toys sorta from Demonic Toys (though again not really all the same ones from the early 90s movies) is a pretty small and disappointing part of the movie. Most of it is Cory Feldman (looking like Mark Ruffalo's stunt double for an Avengers movie) puttering around a shop with his daughter, trying to revive his grand-uncle Toulon's puppets. Meanwhile some toy company made a deal with the devil to create demonic toys to help them get Toulon's formula...somehow. The idea the toy company has 2 (wow, 2!) very basic toys that are huge sellers borrowed a water-damaged, shit-stained page from Halloween III. And some shitty-looking mayhem ensues! As I said, I think this is the last one I could watch for free. Hooray! I had more than my fill of the Full Moon Puppetverse. (1/5)
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