Final Thoughts on Watching the Original Transformers Series

 Three weeks ago I posted about watching the first two seasons of the original Transformers series, which coincided with the new movie.  But there was still one whole season that took place after the disastrous 1986 animated movie--which is still one of my sentimental favorites--and the three-episode "Rebirth" miniseries that introduced a lot of the 4th wave of toys.

• I hated Rodimus Prime far less than before.  This time around I didn't hate the new Autobot leader Rodimus Prime as much as when I was a kid.  A big part of it had nothing to do with the show itself and more to do with the Lost Light comics I read a few years ago.  Rodimus was the leader for that expedition and while the original TV show character isn't nearly as good, I think it gave me more of a soft spot for the character I didn't have back in the late 80s when he was mostly the guy replacing the beloved Optimus Prime.  And in a way, what happened to Rodimus was sort of a forerunner to what happened to Azrael in Batman comics, though I don't think Rodimus was so much destined to fail.  With Azrael or the "Reign of the Supermen" characters, I think the plan always was to bring the original back.  But with Rodimus I don't think that was Hasbro's plan as there wasn't a new Optimus Prime toy until the fifth wave about two years after Rodimus's introduction.  When Optimus returns in the TV show he's the same as before, without any new gimmicks or a new alt-mode or anything.  That just doesn't jive with Hasbro's usual MO.  I think it was just Hasbro panicked when the ratings (and probably toy sales) dipped.  While fans usually considered Rodimus whiny and annoying it's really only 3-4 episodes of the whole season where he's kinda whiny about being the leader.  Like often happens, I think it just got blown out of proportion.  Really I think Rodimus's most hateable moment is when a planet of Autobot pacifists is blown up and Rodimus really has no empathy for the survivors losing their home.  He's basically like, "Meh, your planet sucked anyway."  It was out of character for an Autobot.  Stuff like that makes him more a victim of poor writing than anything.  Like in "Dark Awakening" he just hands the Matrix off to zombie Optimus when what was probably just a few episodes earlier in "The Burden Hardest to Bear" he realizes that he's the guy and the Matrix is his cross to bear.  When you're a kid you aren't going to think about stuff like that but it becomes more noticeable about 35 years later.
• Some episodes needed room to breathe.  The third season doesn't really have an episode I like as much as "Fire in the Sky," "The Master Builder," or "War Dawn" of the first two seasons but there are some decent ones.  Episodes like "The Burden Hardest to Bear," "Forever is a Long Time Coming," and "Only Human" had some decent concepts.  The real problem was they could have used to be two-part episodes so there was more time to explore them.  The latter I did in a story of the same name when three Autobot-type robots land on Earth to search for a comrade and take on human bodies.  The TV episode is only 22 minutes so there's barely any time for the Autobots who are turned into humans to deal with all the complications of being tiny flesh creatures.  A two-part episode or a book like mine provides a much better opportunity to get into the central conflict.
• Carnage in C-Minor is Worse Than Kremzeek!  The story of the episode is actually a pretty serviceable Transformers story:  there's a planet where the leaders use musical harmony as a weapon and of course the Decepticons capture it and the Autobots have to stop them.  But when I watched it this time, the actual drawing and animation were so, so bad.  It seemed every scene had characters who were drawn badly, not drawn to scale, or miscolored.  And I'm not sure if whoever was doing the animation even read the script from  how characters like the Aerialbots would show up suddenly and then disappear or how at one point Hot Spot was standing next to Defensor--of which he is the central component.  It was just hard to watch and more annoying in a way than "Kremzeek" because it was just so incompetent.
• Speaking of incompetence...I don't know who's in charge of the Pluto TV On Demand, but several of the episodes were out of order.  "Dark Awakening" is supposed to be the final episode before "The Return of Optimus Prime" but they have it like 7th or 8th.  There's even a segment at the end that says, "Is this the last we've seen of Optimus Prime?  Tune in tomorrow..."  In one episode, Octane laments to Sandstorm how angry the Decepticons are with him for trying to usurp Trypticon...which was a few episodes down the list.  Speaking of Sandstorm, there's another episode farther down the list that's supposed to introduce him as part of a planet of pacifist Autobots.  And I'm pretty sure "The Quintesson Journal" was supposed to go AFTER "The Big Broadcast of 2006" instead of the other way around because in BB2006 the Quints are trying to recover the journal that in QJ exposes their Ferengi-like dealings with the galaxy, such as selling weapons to both sides of an intergalactic conflict.  They really needed someone who knows what he/she is doing to curate this list.
• Someone didn't do the math.  Supposedly Captain Marissa Fairborn of the Earth Defense Command is the daughter of Flint and Lady Jaye in GI Joe.  I mean, the captioning even refers to her "father" in one episode as Flint.  Buuut, since GI Joe was running concurrently to Transformers and Flint and Lady Jaye had no daughter, that would mean Marissa could only be about 19 years old at most as the third season takes place in 2005-2006.  Unless she's some kind of Emma Earl-type genius, I don't see how she's a captain in the defense command at such a young age.  This is something shows often don't think about but it's an annoying little hobby of mine.  Another stupid game I play is, "How old would this character be now?"
• There is almost no way to make Headmasters and Targetmasters not stupid.  The last 3 episodes introduce the new lines of toys known as Headmasters and Targetmasters.  The Headmasters had heads that could pop off to become little guys who could be pilots of the Transformer's vehicle/animal mode.  The Targetmasters had guns that would turn into a little guy to again serve as a pilot if you want.  The show tries gamely to come up with a concept for why a Transformer might have his head turned into a little dude that comes off.  In this case they go to the planet Nebulos and the Nebulons have their own civil war.  There's really no good reason for them to create Headmasters and Targetmasters other than they have to.  Having a pilot provides a slight benefit on the unfamiliar planet of Nebulos, but it's not where they'd really need to have their heads turned into little suits of armor.  The comic book also struggled to find a way to justify this and I think did an even worse job.  "To show we come in peace, have our heads!"  Um...what?  I just don't see much of a way to justify this with organic pilots.  I think the later Titans Return line that revived the gimmick justified it a little better by saying that the little head guy was a tiny robot who would give the rest of the robot some special power or ability it wouldn't otherwise have.  That's probably the best way to do it.  Still, while it's a fun thing for a toy, it's not really great for a story.

Anyway, those are some random thoughts on the last season-plus of the show.  Like the movie it's still a sentimental favorite.

When Don't You Separate Art & Artist?

 I've followed the Chive on Facebook for a while.  Mostly they just post silly PG-13/R-rated content and sometimes lame "articles" that are really just cherry-picking a bunch of Tweets to assemble them into a listicle.  One day I came across this joke:

I just skimmed and went, "Oh, ha ha."  I mean it wasn't a great joke.  Pretty obvious, really.  A basic "dad joke."  Then I saw they were quoting Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert who only a short time before this posted had been making racist remarks (again).  And so then there's that uncomfortable moment of realizing that they were using a hacky joke by someone who is basically a Nazi.  Cringe!

When I mentioned this in the comments, someone attacks me saying I'm not "mature" enough.  "You're just a child!"  Though they didn't say it in so many words, I think they were saying a "mature" person would separate the art and the artist.  It's just a joke, right?

Thinking it over, I don't really think so.  This wasn't a Dilbert comic strip or episode of the TV show.  This wasn't fiction at all.  This was the actual guy's social media account.  The same kind of account from which he makes his racist rants.  Quoting a dad joke off there is really not cool.  Because that's how you normalize guys like that.  It's like saying, "See, he's not such a bad guy!"  When he's a huge piece of shit.  People like Jimmy Fallon doing that helped to get Trump elected despite being a huge piece of shit.

And like I was saying, there's no fictional product to shield this.  If this was a Dilbert cartoon then fine, it's not coming straight from the horse's mouth--or ass.  Though being somewhat knowledgeable about recent events, I'd still find it pretty cringey.

I was never much of a Dilbert reader and didn't really like the show that much (Dogbert was kinda funny as sort of a mashup of Brian and Stewie on Family Guy), so I definitely wouldn't be a huge defender of Adams in the first place.  But if it were still on somewhere I could watch it, I'd probably watch Seinfeld even though Michael Richards is a racist shithead.  I mean, Kramer is just a character in the show, not an actual guy.  Just like I could still watch Kevin Spacey in movies like LA Confidential or American Beauty because he's playing a character.  If I wanted to rewatch The Mandalorian I wouldn't fast-forward the parts with Gina Carano because again it's just a character.  In those cases you can be "mature" and separate the art and the artist, but when it's nonfiction like a social media account, it just doesn't seem the same to me.  It's not being filtered through a writer, director, producer, etc.; social media accounts are basically the person his/herself.  Even if an intern wrote it, it's still being presented as Adams's own words, not the words of a fictional character.

And it's not like Adams is my employer or anything.  I mean, if I were at work and a boss makes a tawdry joke I'm not going to quit on the spot.  In a perfect world maybe I would, but in the real world I need money.  And reporting it to someone would just be a waste of effort and in the end probably wouldn't accomplish anything.  But again, this is not that.

What annoys me the most is you put this up and then I'm just scrolling through my Facebook and see this and now you're pulling me into this.  I have enough shit to deal with that I don't need the guilt of chuckling at a joke from a racist shithead.  It's kind of like the Kid Rock Bud Light thing only for good reasons instead of homophobic ones.

Basically all brands (including the Chive) should just not get involved in this dumb shit.  And if you are, at least do it for a better joke.  Like the Chris Rock-Will Smith thing, lost in the shuffle is that it wasn't even a good joke!

Anyway, I don't think "a child" would give this that much thought.  Now, what do you think?  Anyone?  Anyone?  Oh, right, Ben Stein wasn't all that great either.  Awkward.

Don't Make Your "Villain" Have Too Just of a Mission

Friday I posted my mini-review of Creed III along with some other movies and the problem with that movie was I really had a hard time rooting against the villain.  In fact, I mostly agreed he got screwed, so why shouldn't he get revenge on the "hero?"

The setup was that when they were teenagers Adonis Creed and Dame Anderson were amateur boxers.  Dame actually wins the Golden Gloves tournament and is kind of an older brother to Adonis.  After the tournament they go to a party store to get some snacks.  Adonis sees a guy named Leon who was a neighborhood criminal.  Adonis punches Leon and gets jumped by a couple of thugs.  Then Dame pulls a gun to get the thugs to let Adonis go.  As the cops roll up, Adonis runs away while Dame is arrested and jailed for the next 20 years.

During that 20 years, Adonis becomes a rich, famous boxer with a wife and young daughter.  You could say he has Dame's life.  Meanwhile, he never writes, calls, or visits Dame in prison.  Yet Dame never ratted him out to the cops or media; the latter probably could have got him some money from a tabloid that he could have used on the outside to make a new life.

Given these facts, why is it I'm supposed to think Dame is the villain and Adonis is the hero?  When they have their big boxing match at Dodger Stadium, why am I supposed to be cheering for Adonis?  I mean, really, I was kinda siding with Dame.  He has a legitimate beef.  He protected Adonis and went to prison and Adonis never even sent him a thank you note.  Why shouldn't he want revenge for that?

Contrast this with Rocky III:  Clubber Lang (Mr. T--I pity the fool!) is a brutal boxer from the projects of Chicago.  He sees Rocky Balboa as this rich, soft white guy who's coasting into retirement.  Rocky's manager Mick won't give Clubber a fight because he knows Rocky would lose.  So Clubber crashes Rocky's retirement press conference to goad him into a fight by insulting him and even suggesting that Rocky's wife Adrian would prefer a "real man" instead.  Like Dame, Clubber has some good reasons, but in this case, Rocky is also justified in that Clubber is insulting him and his wife.  Whereas, what justification does Adonis have to be pissed at Dame?

Adding to why the plot of Rocky III works, there's also the redemption angle.  Rocky gets his ass kicked by Clubber and in the process his manager dies of a heart attack perhaps caused by Clubber shoving him and the beating he was giving Rocky.  To get his fighting mojo--and manhood--back, Rocky goes to see Adonis's dad in LA and trains to beat Clubber.

In Creed III there's not really a redemption angle.  Adonis retires after a fight in the beginning of the movie.  Thanks to Dame, some people start to question Adonis's toughness and all that but it really isn't that big of a deal.  I mean, in today's Internet culture you have people try to say Michael Jordan wasn't really that good--he was nothing without Pippen!  (Is that why the Bulls won 0 championships when MJ was "retired?"  And have won 0 championships since he retired for good?)

So the problem is two-fold with this movie:  the villain's motivation is actually too good and the hero's motivation is pretty weak.  Thus the epic fight at the end isn't really that epic.  If you really want the end battle to be epic, you have to make sure the motivations are clear and that what the bad guy wants is bad and what the good guy wants is good.  Otherwise, the stakes get pretty murky.

That doesn't mean your bad guy always has to be a mustache-twirling megalomaniac.  I mean in Rocky III, Clubber doesn't want to take over the world and he's not holding the arena hostage or anything.  But he is a brutal, nasty jerk who has done our hero wrong by insulting him and his wife, possibly killing his manager, and making Rocky question himself/his manhood.  So when Rocky wins the fight, we're glad because Clubber was a jerk and Rocky is a good guy.  Whereas in Creed III, why should I want Adonis to win?  What does he even win?  He gets the title belts back, but since he retired a champion he never really lost them.  Dame might have insulted him, but it was the truth, wasn't it?  Adonis ran away and abandoned his friend.  Sure he was young and stupid, but he was still a coward.  Why should I want the villain to fail?  Dame was kind of a jerk but he had a right to be, didn't he?  As I said, Adonis was basically living his life.  Not that he was blameless--he did have priors that contributed to his sentence and was not behaving well enough to get out early either--but he had a right to be mad and want revenge.  So when he loses, he loses a lot more than Adonis wins.

When writing a story then, it's important to make sure that your conflict has the proper stakes.  You want people to want the hero to win and win something important enough to make the journey worthwhile.  Otherwise, what's the point?

Stuff I Watched Late May-Mid June Edition

 This will undoubtedly be shorter than the last one as it hasn't been so long since the last time.  Even though people don't seem to care about these, I have found it is a lot easier to find reviews on Blogger than on Facebook, so I will continue with this just so at least I'll know what I watched and then when Tony Laplume gets around to more capsule reviews I can see what I thought of the movie.

Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania:  When this movie struggled, haters were quick to announce that superhero movie fatigue was finally here.  Then Shazam 2 flopped to reinforce that--never mind that DC announcing a movie universe reboot had pretty well kneecapped this franchise.  Then GOTG 3 did pretty well so now where are we?  Anyway, the haters should have remembered that the Ant-Man franchise has pretty much been Marvel's weakest one.  That it exists at all is because of Edgar Wright's persistence--only for it to get hijacked by "the MCU."

It is puzzling then that Marvel chose to make this the big launch of their Phase 5, but then it is one of their most venerable franchises remaining.  With Thor basically retired and Gunn leaving GOTG for DC, this was the next oldest franchise left.  Still, the problem is the first two stories were pretty small in scope while this is much, much bigger--and yet technically smaller as it's in the subatomic quantum realm.  As I opined on Facebook, this was like if Alien From LA starring supermodel Kathy Ireland had had a $300M budget.  It is pretty much the same story:  normal people (or normal-ish since it's Scott Lang, his daughter, Hank Pym, and Janet and Hope van Dyne) are drawn into a world beneath our own filled with strange beings that is ruled by an evil empire.

In this case the empire is run by Kang, played by Jonathan Majors who played a different version of the character in Loki.  He was trapped in the quantum realm by other versions of him and then later by Janet.  To escape he needs Pym particles, so he takes Scott's daughter and forces Scott to get the MacGuffin he needs to escape.

Overall it wasn't bad but it really isn't great either.  As I said, the first two movies were much smaller in scope, more street-level superheroics than grandiose battles of huge armies and whatnot.  So it really hits different.  There's also no Luis or Scott's ex-wife and only a brief, lineless cameo of Jimmy Woo.  Jonathan Majors really dominates the movie as Kang while Paul Rudd is mostly given the task of protecting his daughter and looking befuddled.  When Scott and Hope confess their love at the end it's really unbelievable because there's hardly any screen time shared by them that isn't shared with other characters.  Michelle Pfeiffer gets a couple of decent scenes while Michael Douglas really only gets one.  And the latest actress to play Cassie is OK.  Bill Murray guest stars as basically a white Lando Calrissian. 

Much has been made about the effects and some really don't look great--especially MODOK.  I'm not sure why they chose to use him as even in the comics he's pretty goofy-looking.  They should have just left him in the Patton Oswalt stop-motion series.  Or spent more money to make it look better--if that's even possible.  I don't think it is.  Anyway, it's probably too early to announce the MCU is in trouble, but maybe its best days are behind it. (2/5)

Creed III:  As I said on Facebook, this was basically Rocky III meets Warrior.  Like Rocky III it involves the main character facing a jealous rival who takes his title and then has to get it back.  Like Warrior, that jealous rival is someone he knows, only a friend instead of a brother.  Years earlier Adonis Creed (Michael B Jordan) got into a fight with a neighborhood criminal and was bailed out by his friend Dame Anderson (Jonathan Majors) who pulled a gun.  While Adonis got away clean, Dame went to jail for about 20 years.  Once Dame gets out, he manages to take the heavyweight championship in sort of a Rocky fashion.  Then he starts ragging on Adonis until Adonis fights him.  The problem with the movie is the "villain"'s motivation is actually pretty reasonable.  I mean Dame went to prison for saving Adonis and didn't give Adonis up.  Meanwhile Adonis becomes a famous, rich boxer and never once calls, writes, or visits his former friend.  So why shouldn't Dame be angry with him?  Why shouldn't he want revenge?  Really this could have been solved with some talking instead of fighting. While Rocky III is pretty clear in who we want to win, I couldn't really cheer Adonis that much. Otherwise it's OK even if Sylvester Stallone never appears as Rocky. (3/5) (Fun Facts:  no one from the Rocky movies shows up but Drago's son from Creed II appears and Stallone is credited as a producer.  Jordan, Majors, and Tess Thompson are all in this and part of the MCU.)

Renfield:  I watched this on Peacock.  If you're familiar with Dracula--the book and movie--Renfield was the henchman to Count Dracula, sort of his Igor.  This movie stars Nicholas Hoult (Beast of the X-Men soft reboot movies) as Renfield, who has grown tired of finding fresh bodies for his ungrateful master played by Nicolas Cage.  After taking refuge in New Orleans, he joins a support group for people in a codependent relationship.  Soon he meets a local cop (Awkwafina) and the son (Ben Schwartz) of a local gangster (Shohreh Aghdashloo of The Expanse).  Mayhem ensues as Renfield tries to break away from Dracula's control.  The movie was written by Robert Kirkman of The Walking Dead fame, though his superhero series Invincible is more of a touchstone as this has that same Matthew Vaughn-type mix of humor, graphic violence, and gore.  Overall it's OK, though not great.  While Cage as Dracula was a selling point early on, his scene chewing ends up as more of a distraction than anything. With someone more subtle the attempts at real feeling would have worked better.  (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  the movie was directed by Chris McKay who previously worked on The Lego Movie and Robot Chicken, which is more this movie's speed.)

The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard:  2017's The Hitman's Bodyguard was a fun movie, though not particularly great.  Basically Ryan Reynolds was Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L Jackson was Samuel L Jackson and they just did their shtick to a plot that was basically Midnight Run in Europe.  There weren't really many loose ends to tie up, but the movie made money, so they of course had to make a sequel.  Plus it gave everyone a free trip to Croatia!  And also Italy, Portugal, and the UK.  The title is only barely accurate as Reynolds isn't really the hitman's wife's bodyguard.  They are together quite a bit for the first two acts, but it's not really the same thing as the last movie.  Samuel L Jackson has been kidnapped and so they rescue him but then get embroiled in a plot by Antonio Banderas playing a Greek guy with either a bad wig or bad dye job to destroy the EU as revenge for sanctions against Greece.  There's a lot of violence and blood and cameos by Frank Grillo as an Interpol agent and Morgan Freeman as Reynolds's "father" and mentor.  Even if this hadn't been made on the cusp of the pandemic and released during it, it probably wouldn't have made much money because it's just a fairly lame sequel that few wanted and no one needed.  If you have Netflix, watch Reynolds in Red Notice instead--it's slightly better! (2.5/5) (Fun Facts:  Last time I noted if Deadpool becomes part of the MCU he and Jackson--and Elodie Yung who wasn't in this movie--were both part of that.  This time you have two extra MCU alums in Selma Hayek from Eternals and Frank Grillo from Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  At one point Samuel L Jackson grabs a mace and says, "Let's see what what a mace will do."  You know, because he played Mace Windu?  Get it?  Yeah, that's the caliber of humor you should expect.)

Resident Alien (S1):  This Syfy series was one I wanted to watch but couldn't until it was on Peacock and I had the premium Peacock through my cable service.  Based on a comic from Dark Horse, it's a new take on the idea of an alien crash-landing on Earth and trying to blend in.  In this case Alan Tudyk is an alien who takes on the form of Harry Vanderspiegle, a doctor living in a remote cabin in Patience, Colorado.  After his ship crashes, he spends months watching TV to sort of learn to be human.  Then the local doctor is killed and the police dragoon "Harry" into being the local doctor.  Meanwhile there's one kid who can see him in his alien form and he has to find the parts for his ship so he can complete his mission--to exterminate humanity.

The twist in the show is that "Harry" is not a cuddly alien like ET or wacky like Alf, Mork, the Coneheads, or 3rd Rock From the Sun aliens.  Nor is he a monstrous killing machine like Predator or the xenomorphs of Alien/Aliens.  He's just kind of a dick.  If you didn't know he was an alien you might think he's autistic or has Asperger's or something like that.

A lot of the first season is given to relationship drama involving a Native American woman named Asta and the daughter she gave away to a local family.  Probably not enough is given to solving the murder of the doctor Harry has to replace until a new one can be brought in.  Meanwhile a government task force led by an aged Linda Hamilton is seeking Harry and his ship.  Most of the episodes use that Breaking Bad setup of using the pre-title scene to go into something that happened in the past that has an influence on the current episode like the real Harry meeting an artist with a Vulcan haircut in New York who shows up later in the episode to find out what happened to her husband.  

It's mostly a fun show even if you know Harry isn't going to destroy humanity--yet.  I mean, there is a second season. (3/5) (Fun Facts:  Tudyk's former Firefly co-star Nathan Fillion voices an octopus Harry can understand as they're part of the same evolutionary family.  Voyager's Robert Duncan McNeill is a producer and directs some episodes.  Family Guy & The Orville writer/producer Cherry Ch...really long name is also a writer/producer of this.)

Resident Alien (S2):  Like a lot of movies or TV shows, the sequel isn't quite as good as the original.  At the end of Season 1 "Harry Vanderspiegle" was leaving Earth when he realized the human kid who can see him had stowed away.  In taking the kid back to Earth, Harry's ship crashes and he suffers from amnesia until Asta finds him and snaps him out of it.  It's a bit implausible that the ship crashes in a baseball field and yet no one questions why there's a huge rut in foul territory.  I know they can't see the ship but they can see the rut, can't they?

Meanwhile, once Harry gets his memory back, he builds a bunker and starts preparing for the end of the world.  The first four episodes or so are kind of slow and then things start picking up as Harry creates a new "radio" and finds out one of his people is in New York.  This in turns uncovers a baby, which was probably inspired by the popularity of "The Child," aka Grogu in The Mandalorian.  Fittingly this child is not nearly as adorable--or nice.  There's a big twist about who the real father of the baby actually is.

There are also some twists in the case of the murdered doctor in town.  Unfortunately a lot of time is given to residents of the town and their relationship problems.  Mostly the mayor and his wife and Asta's friend D'arcy.  There's also the chubby female deputy who's obsessed with UFOs and the black sheriff who has trouble getting over the death of his partner back in Washington DC.  A little of that stuff is good for added character moments, but when it's taking up 2/3 of the episodes it starts to feel like padding.

The season ends with some action as Harry has to rescue the baby and confronts the "Greys," another race of aliens operating on Earth.  Overall it starts a little slow but builds to a fairly satisfying finish.  (3/5) (Fun Facts:  A Grey alien is voiced by Star Trek's George Takei.  With 16 episodes, this season is like 2 seasons of some shows.)

Picard Season 3:  After a second season that largely disappointed fans, they got a new showrunner and like The Rise of Skywalker seemed to want to do something a lot more fan-friendly.  While I generally enjoyed the show, it was in the end perhaps a little too eager-to-please.  Borrowing from Star Trek II, Picard finds out he has a son--with Dr. Crusher!  It turns out they were friends with benefits.  Picard, Riker, Seven of Nine, and the crew of the ugly new Titan soon are chased by a "bounty hunter" who turns out to be a Changeling.  It was nice they got the Changelings and some DS9 into it, though still no actual characters exclusively from DS9 in the show--I guess the fans of that don't need servicing.  After some OK episodes and some "Just moving the pieces around the board episodes" it finally gets to the grand finale...which kind of annoyed me.  The Changelings are using Picard's body and the Borg to put some code in transporters that causes younger crew to become like Borg only without the metal on their bodies.  And Starfleet has this dumb new system to link all their ships--which of course gets hijacked.  I got thinking it was pretty much like the reboot of Battlestar Galactica and Robotech:  The Shadow Chronicles.  Does Trek really need to rip off other properties?  And one of its own writers since Ronald D Moore created the BSG reboot and wrote for TNG and DS9?  It sort of stuck in my craw.  And like those other two properties, the only thing that would still work is an old ship--the Enterprise-D.  It was kind of neat to see it again but kind of unbelievable.  Also, using Jack as sort of the Borg Queen's stand-in to control the zombies was sort of like the original X-Men movie.

Then it flies into a Borg ship like Return of the Jedi, which was hard to believe.  There's an overly happy ending that leaves a bit too saccharine taste.  I suppose it was appropriate that it ended with a poker game as didn't the series start with Picard playing cards with Data in a dream?  

Overall it was OK.  I suppose how much you like it depends on how much you like being fan serviced.  I thought it was a little over-the-top in trying to give fans everything it thought they wanted.  It was nice to see the old crew again, though really I think Worf was more fun when he was just hanging with Raffi as sort of a Jedi Master than when he reunited with the old cast.  If you were really a fan of the first season (or first two seasons) then you probably wouldn't like how most of the characters from that first season have been either killed or sidelined.  Since I didn't like the first season and didn't watch the second season, it didn't bug me much. (3/5) (Fun Facts:  there are a bunch of cameos of people and ships like Alice Krige as the zombie Borg Queen, Tuvok, Ensign Ro, Commander Shelby, the voice of Walter Koenig as his own grandson, holo-Moriarty, the "HMS Bounty" from Star Trek IV, the Defiant from DS9, and the Voyager.  Plus Starfleet apparently has a Genesis device even though it blew up and the corpse of James T Kirk.  Amanda Plummer plays Vaida the Changeling; she's the daughter of Christopher Plummer, who was the bad guy in Star Trek VI.  I didn't check but I'm pretty sure one of Geordi's daughters in the show was his daughter in real life; I mean they have the same last name.)

Yellow Bird:  This 2022 movie I watched on Amazon is a low-budget story about a middle-aged guy (also the director, who looks like a fat Elon Musk) who was a PR agent until he married a selfish woman with a chubby daughter and wound up working at the eponymous grocery store that looks like a Spartan-type supermarket.  Then he gets promoted to store manager.  It's an OK movie.  Maybe not as funny as you might think it should be.  Really it's the sort that just needed better actors instead of those who should be bit players. (2/5) (Fun Facts: one actress is named "Plastic Martyr" which I assume is not her real name.  Bill Murray's brother Brian voices a ceramic gnome the main guy hallucinates about for some reason.) 

The Pro and Con of Kindle Unlimited

 Amazon has had the Kindle Unlimited thing for probably about 10 years now, if not longer.  In some ways it can be good to help add to income, but sometimes, I have my doubts about just how helpful it is.  I mean, check out these numbers from May 30th:

You notice how many pages of the books were read and yet how little money I receive?  Let's crunch some numbers here:

Ginger and A Most Unusual Ring are each about 85 pages according to Amazon.  So that means in that picture, about 2.25 full books worth of reading.  Of course that's oversimplifying because it could be 200 people just read a page and quit.  But still, if I sell 2 copies of each book, that's roughly $4.  So for those two books I'd be making $8 instead of a paltry $1.58.  That's a pretty big difference, especially over 31 days of the month.

But the thing is, you don't know if the people who read pages through Kindle Unlimited would actually buy the book if there were no Kindle Unlimited.  If they had to spend $2.99 instead of reading it "free" they might be a bit more discriminating about what they read.  So I might make less money than I am.

The Pro of KU is that maybe I get more readers.  The Con of it is that those readers are potentially providing me with less money.  Part of that is Amazon's fault as this whole system can get messed up with people who use "book stuffing" or now generate a lot of crap with "AI" or just the Nikki Crescent types who put out a new book every two days.  That stuff splits the pot wider and wider and we all end up suffering for it.

Would I consider dumping KU?  Not really.  Most other sites are so paranoid about erotica-type stories that I probably couldn't even publish on them and I doubt the sales I'd get would make up for the loss of the KU.  But maybe I should try one at least for a month or so and then switch it to KU just to see what happens.  Those who write "normal" books might have more options.

What do you think?

What Makes A Classic?

 I had a random thought while driving home one day:  a lot of the ordinary cars of my childhood have pretty much gone extinct.  By that I mean you hardly ever see a Chevy Celebrity or Ford Probe or Buick Skylark in the wild anymore.  Most of those passenger cars, vans, and trucks from the 80s and 90s are now rusting away in junkyards or some hillbilly's yard.

It occurred to me that the reason those vehicles are extinct and others like muscle cars of the 60s and 70s or hot rods of the 40s or 50s are still around is that no one chose to preserve those vehicles.  I mean, most people don't want to restore a Ford Probe and drive it around.  Or put a big fancy engine in it and give it a bright paint job.  No one thinks a Celebrity is a "classic" car.

For that matter, most of the ordinary cars of pretty much ever have also wound up in junkyards as scrap because no one bothers to try to preserve them.  What remains are the sports cars, some trucks, and some sedans from olden times.  And that also goes for museums.  I mean, I doubt any museum is going to have a Chevy Cavalier unless it was used as a pace car or connected to some famous event.  Those things just aren't that interesting to people.

What remains are things that people think have style and power.  Or historical value.  Cars like Model Ts, Bel Airs, or Corvettes.  The regular cars that were just pretty plain and boring get junked and no one cars.  After a while, no one probably even remembers them.  In another 20 years or so, that will probably true of Ford Focuses and the like.

This Focus is already in the junkyard. [sob]

(Electric cars might be forced to be junked the same way people have to get rid of old iPhones--because there's no longer the support for them.  I mean if your Volt or Tesla recharge station goes bad and they don't make any compatible ones anymore, you'd probably have to get rid of the car, right?  Unless you want to pay to get one from eBay or something.)

Such is the way for everything when you think about it.  Most of the books from the last 400 years wind up being lost and forgotten.  What remains are the "classics" people decided to preserve for one reason or another.  Because back in the 1600s there couldn't have just been Shakespeare, the Bible, Don Quixote, King Arthur, and Canterbury Tales.  There were probably plenty of other plays and books that no one saved.  Or in the 1930s there was tons of stuff being printed for pulp magazines and dime store paperbacks; most of that stuff is probably lost.

And of the billions of books on Amazon now, how many will survive into the future?  1%?  Less?  I doubt any of mine would be preserved by other people, because why should they be?  I'm not famous or infamous.  I wasn't well-regarded by critics or audiences.  There's really no reason that anyone would bother preserving the complete works of Eric Filler for eternity.  The Harry Potter books, definitely.  The more popular works of Stephen King, sure.  Award winning books, probably.  The early works of John Grisham or James Patterson?  Oprah's Book Club picks?  There I think it starts getting kinda spongy.  

Depressing as it may seem, the same applies to people.  Most people wind up being forgotten by history.  A few leaders, scientists, authors, philosophers, prophets, or criminals are preserved in the public records.  The other millions (and now billions) are forgotten except maybe within their own families or cities.  Isn't that why pharaohs wanted those pyramids?  So no one could forget them?

Anyway, next time you're on the road, maybe take a longer look at those ordinary cars--because it might be your last.

Rating Movies: Tony Laplume vs Grumpy Bulldog (2019-2020 Edition)

These are back-to-back, but Laplume actually did them weeks apart and just with the A to Z Challenge and stuff I could do them on back-to-back blogging days.  Anyway, this one isn't all that long.  I don't think Laplume did as many and about half of them I hadn't seen.  Like I said in the last entry, between all the new streaming options and Pluto TV and generally not wanting to waste time and money going to movie theaters, I watched fewer newer movies.  Even some of the big franchise ones I didn't watch because I didn't care.  So here's what's left!

Joker (Laplume)

rating: *****

review: Opinions range from brilliant to apathy, depending on how invested the viewer is in the legacy of the character.  The stairway sequence alone makes the results iconic, and Joaquin Phoenix a worthy successor to Heath Ledger.

Me:

Trying to find a review is really difficult and I'm not sure if I really did one.  Anyway, it was OK for what it was.  It's basically something more akin to Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy than a superhero movie.  There is a forced reference to Bruce Wayne and the death of his parents.  Mostly if you hadn't called it Joker it would be a fairly cliché movie about a loser who inadvertently becomes a hero to the masses by going against the system. (3/5)

Star Wars - Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: At this point you were either onboard with the sequels or had already dismissed them.  I found the conclusion of Rey's journey, her relationship with Kylo Ren, to be perfect, a response and the antithesis to how things played out in the original trilogy (and even the prequels), daring to believe in hope in a most cynical age.

Me:

Rise of Skywalker:  It tried hard to clean up after its predecessor and Make Star Wars Epic Again, but does it with needless plot complications:  Chewie "dying," C3-PO not being able to translate Sith to them, and that whole dagger thing in general.  Trying to give Rey an epic destiny and bring in a new Big Bad just makes things more of a mess.  A well-intentioned mess but hardly a satisfactory conclusion. (2/5)

Terminator: Dark Fate (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: Ever since the second one, this franchise has been hellbent at sabotaging itself. Dark Fate was the rare instance of everyone sort of agreeing to trust the results. I've generally enjoyed every film, but this one was a cut above.

Me:

Dark Fate:  Maybe you'd consider it ironic or something like that that bringing James Cameron back to the franchise didn't really help.  Of course Cameron was only one of like 20 people involved in the story and "produced" it, which I imagine him sitting in a chair counting his money like Gus Van Zant in Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back.  The other irony is people didn't like the third movie, so...let's pretty much do the same thing as the third movie only worse.  So...we still have Judgment Day only now SkyNet is "Legion" and since John Connor is killed in 1998, there's some Mexican girl named Dani who's going to lead the resistance.  And we have a Terminator sent to kill her that's part liquid metal with an old-school Terminator underneath--just like the third movie!  Though it's like a Transformers Pretender in that the outer "shell" and inner robot can completely separate to create two attackers.  This time instead of a normal human or a Terminator to protect John Dani, we have an "Augmented" woman from the future to defend the girl.  Plus there's a geriatric Sarah Connor to provide life lessons like put your phone in a potato chip bag so the government (or Terminators) can't track you.  It's kind of funny that in this future you have robots who cover themselves with flesh and humans who implant themselves with metal--so we're kinda meeting in the middle to where if both sides didn't kill each other they might become indistinguishable. (2/5)

The Lighthouse (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: Robert Pattinson has been keen to find oddball projects, and this was perhaps his most successful at getting the mainstream to notice.  Personally I need to watch it a few more times, since I find his performance to be unusually showy, but I guess others didn't.

Me:

Another where I can't find a review I wrote here so maybe I just said something on Facebook.  Anyway, it's kind of slow but you're always wondering where it's going to go.  Like The Shining or similar movies it's really about how isolation causes these two guys to slowly go mad and of course they end up taking it out on each other. (4/5)

The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: The movie with the most ridiculous title ever is absolutely worth experiencing, especially the tense first half, which leads to getting to just spend time with Sam Elliott, since the actual climax isn't worth as much.

Me:

The Man Who Killed Hitler & Then the Bigfoot:  From the title this movie wants you to think it's weird and maybe fun.  It's not really either of those things.  I mean it's not early Tim Burton or David Lynch or Richard Kelly weird.  The core of the story is pretty good, even if a lot of it is cribbed from Legends of the Fall, a favorite of my late sister and probably some other movies.  Sam Elliott is an old man who left his sweetheart to join the army in WWII and went undercover to kill Hitler--at least A Hitler; the implication being there were multiples.  Which makes sense when you consider how other despots like Saddam Hussein had a double (or more) to serve as decoys.  By the time he gets back, his sweetheart is dead.  Years later, he's recruited by the governments of the US and Canada to kill a Bigfoot creature that's poisoning all life in an area.  And he does so, obviously.  And then it just kind of peters out.  The Bigfoot part really seems to serve little purpose.  I mean does it redeem him for losing his sweetheart?  No.  (We don't really know how she died let alone whether he could have saved her or anything.)  Does it bring him fame or glory?  No, it's a secret mission.  Does it help him connect with anyone at all?  Not really, though he does later go see his brother.  So other than adding some zing to the title, it doesn't contribute much.  Earlier the young him gets a shave from a mystic Russian, who cuts him with the razor and says he will succeed in his mission (killing Hitler) but will be cursed the rest of his days.  So maybe him not dying and killing Bigfoot was to show how he's cursed or something.  I would have liked something more conclusive. (2.5/5) (To explain my Legends of the Fall reference, in that movie Brad Pitt and his younger brother join the army in WWI and when the younger brother is killed, Brad Pitt slaughters a bunch of Germans and then spends years traveling the world, unable to live with the guilt.  By the time he gets home, the girl he loves has married his older brother, Aidan Quinn.  Some of this was parodied on an episode of Archer with his valet Woodhouse in the Brad Pitt role.)

Captain Marvel (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: Nothing wrong with it, except there's no way it can validate the hero's claim to icon status, which is the one thing it really needed to do.

Me:

Captain Marvel:  This might be higher (or lower) if I'd seen it more than once.  Marvel had ample chances to be the first one to do a big female superhero movie, but they didn't come up with this until after DC's much better Wonder Woman.  It's too little, too late, much like the forced "girl power" scene in Endgame.  And turning Nick Fury losing his eye into a joke was pretty lame after 11 years of movies. (2.5/5)

The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: Can't really compete with the poignant twist at the end of the first one.

Me:

Ugh, another I apparently didn't write an entry here for?  Like a lot of sequels it isn't as good as the first part.  I completely agree with Laplume that this couldn't match that poignant twist between father and son in the first movie.  So this time it tries to have a twist featuring the boy and his sister.  But that doesn't even ring true in my experience; my sisters never wanted to play Transformers & GI Joe with me and my brother and we never wanted to play Barbie or My Little Pony with them.  Maybe that's because there were two of us and two of them?  If it's just one and one maybe there's more incentive to cross the gender line?

Anyway, they throw more stuff at you but not really better stuff. (2.5/5)

Dark Phoenix (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: Kind of ironic that the end of the Fox franchise proper circles back to the point everyone thought killed it in the first place.

Me:

I wrote a long review comparing the comic book story and the movie so I'll just kind of summarize.

Like this year's Shazam Fury of the Gods, the movie was basically knee-capped by its own studio when the Fox-Disney deal put an end to the Fox X-Men universe.  What's the point of a franchise movie when everyone knows the franchise is dead?  From my long review:

The book is better on the whole, but the movie has its moments.  A few.  It's definitely not a great movie but it's not Wolverine Origins bad at least.  And a little less stupid than Apocalypse was.  I mean you don't have Jean and Magneto putting a house together like it's made of Legos.  And Magneto only kills a few people, not thousands.  So that's something.

On its own the movie has the same problem as a lot of the X-Men franchise in squandering some of its characters.  Storm and Nightcrawler really have no character development; the former just does weathery stuff and the latter mostly is a teleporting taxi service.  The Cyclops-Jean love story that had years and years to build on in the comics feels rushed and hollow in the movie.  And Xavier's kind of a dick most of the time.  What happened to Moira Taggart?  Were they still a thing?  Maybe that's why he's such a dick.

Anyway, it wasn't great and it wasn't terrible.  As essentially the end of the franchise it's kinda going out with a whimper. (2.5/5)

Avengers: Endgame (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: I was thoroughly underwhelmed by the whole Thanos experience.  They just didn't know what to do with him, so fittingly, he's barely in this one.  This is the definition of the MCU's villain problem.

Me:

You can read my long, grumpy review; this is more of a summary from my ranking the Meh-CU entry:

Avengers:  Endgame:  But now we have to fall back on that deus ex machina of time travel to fix things because otherwise how could we?  Another long, dreary slog with the forced death of Iron Man and the even more forced departure of Steve Rogers.  Some people have probably seen it fifty times by now, but once in the theater was enough for me.  And that was largely to avoid spoilers. (2/5)

Alita: Battle Angel (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: Nothing wrong with this one except it feels like small potatoes compared to most of the other things from the year.

Me:

Alita: Battle Angel:  A couple of people in a Facebook group said this was good so I watched this on HBO.  It was pretty good, but the android looks so fake with those big weird eyes and stuff.  I know they did that to make it more like the manga version, probably because of all the people who bitched about Ghost in the Shell, but it just looked weird, worse than that Robert Zemeckis stuff in Polar Express, Beowulf, etc.  Anyway, there was plenty of decent action and Christoph Walz is good as Alita's "father" while fellow Oscar winners Jennifer Connelly and Mahershala Ali cash a paycheck as the bad guys.  With a fourth Oscar winner in James Cameron writing/producing there was a lot of talent ultimately wasted on a movie that didn't do great box office, but especially if you have HBO (or maybe a free Redbox rental) then it's worth a watch. (3/5)

Shazam! (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: As it turns out, if people keep saying your movies are too grim, it's not the appropriate response to make a movie that features a kid in the body of an adult.  The results aren't bad, but keeping them disconnected from everything else is definitely the wrong move.

Me:

Shazam:  Like Deadpool, this was as much a comedy as an action movie.  A lot of it is basically like if in Big the kid had turned into Superman instead of Tom Hanks.  It took a character most people hadn't cared about since the 50s and made it a success. (3.5/5)

Gemini Man (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: I have a full review with a much different rating (I'm pretty sure), but this one's more accurate to relative results.  I guess I really would rather watch Men in Black without Will Smith than two Will Smiths.  This is '00s Smith rewarmed.  He'd already moved past this kind of material.

Me:

Again I can't find a review I wrote here but I know I watched it.  I would agree with Laplume in that this was kind of a throwback for Will Smith.  I guess trying to recapture the magic of Independence Day and Men in Black back in the 90s with kind of an old-school sci-fi action movie.  The twist was there were two Smiths, one his present (at the time) age and a younger clone or whatever.  I think in the end it was a serviceable movie but not really great and any progress it might have made for Smith's career was washed away by the infamous Oscars slap. (2.5/5)

Spider-Man: Far From Home (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: I just wasn't a fan of the MCU Spider-Man, until he was joined by the other Spider-Men in No Way Home (which like Far needlessly belabored the title of the first one).

Me:  

This would probably be lower if not for the cookie scene with J Jonah Jameson--played by JK Simmons even!  Between that and actually making Peter and MJ's relationship more like Peter and MJ's traditional relationship it felt more like a Spider-Man movie even with the globetrotting.  Mysterio was actually a better hero than villain, but the callbacks to Civil War and Iron Man were neat--the latter featuring Ralphie from A Christmas Story!  Still not as good as the first two Raimi movies. (3/5)

Hellboy (Laplume)

rating: **

review: I was never the biggest fan of the original films.  This one is a marked step down from them.

Me:

I don't know how so many movies didn't get written about on this blog.  This is another one.  Sad.  This was another of those where they tried to be more faithful to the comics than the previous movie but it didn't really make it better.  Overall I agree with Laplume, though I might say at best it was a step sideways. 

Here was my comment on Facebook: Like The Amazing Spider-Man it's OK but doesn't really feel like an improvement over the original unless you really like gore and gross stuff.

(2.5/5)

Midsommer  (Laplume)

rating: **

review: Florence Pugh is the golden child of critics these days (she also starred in Fighting with My Family, which is probably the only reason it was taken seriously by them).  And mostly, I just don't get it.  This was one of her breakout movies.  I found it needlessly impressionistic.  Because it's really just one of those weird movies that desperately wants to be profound but isn't.  The exact opposite of the movie at the top of this

Me:

Midsommar:  This is one from last year that for some reason people, including critics, seemed to love but I found it so, soooo boring and predictable.  The main character is a girl who spends most of the movie ugly crying because her sister committed suicide and killed their parents.  She tags along with her boyfriend and his friends to a village in Sweden that has a creepy festival.  If you've ever seen Wicker Man--either the original 70s one with the Equalizer guy or the 2000s version with Nic Cage--then you already know pretty much what's going to happen.  It just takes a long, long time to get to that point. (1/5)

2020 Movies!

Reading Laplume's capsule entry of the first pandemic year, I realized I had only watched a paltry 6 of them.  So I figure I might as well just post them here.  A lot of this is of course because so many movies got postponed with theaters closed during the pandemic.  Marvel pretty much sat out the year and the final James Bond movie starring Daniel Craig got bumped to 2021.  Meanwhile Star Wars was only on TV that year, so not a lot of big franchises.  Anyway, here we go!

WW84 (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: Everyone went gaga over the first one, but I instantly preferred this one, which was a better overall showcase for Wonder Woman, and had a memorable villain or two besides.  The opening sequence alone is a classic, and I guess I'm a sucker for ones showcasing someone in a cathartic flying experience, since I loved that best about Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, too.

Me: 

WW84:  Only after a meme on Twitter told me I could use my regular HBO login to watch HBO Max did I get around to watching this.  And...I didn't really like it.  The core concept didn't work for me.  I mean in superhero movies magic is one thing, but a wishing stone?  And Maxwell Lord (basically a cut-rate Donald Trump) wishes to be the stone?  That's like that old thing where you get a magic lamp and wish for more wishes.  And it's 1984 but no one ever takes a picture of Wonder Woman?  Granted they didn't have cell phone cameras, but people had regular cameras and Polaroids.  Shouldn't there be at least blurry Bigfoot/Nessie-type pictures?  And wouldn't Bruce Wayne and maybe Clark Kent and Arthur Curry remember when Wonder Woman saved the world?  And she flies now? (She flies now.)  She wishes Steve Trevor to live again and he Quantum Leaps into some other dude?  Considering he died in 1917 how is it he could fly a jet in almost no time?  And when did Wonder Woman start trying to make things invisible?  And why the hell isn't she flying and making shit invisible in BvS or Justice League?  

"Cheetah" wound up being pretty lame.  The nerdy person who obsesses over the hero and turns on him/her was already done in Batman Forever and Amazing Spider-Man 2.  And just because she wore leopard print she turns into a cat woman?  Maybe if I had watched it in a theater I would have liked it more by virtue of being a captive audience but watching it at home I just started playing games on my phone and not really giving a shit.

I really liked the first movie but it was more down-to-earth.  The scene where she crossed No Man's Land gave me the chills; this just gave me the yawns.  I'm wondering if Patty Jenkins isn't like Zack Snyder in that she shouldn't be given too much creative control or she'll make a mess; doesn't give me any hope for her Star Wars movie or a sequel to this. (2/5)

Capone (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: I can think of very few actors who without the benefit of some scandal have garnered such undeserved scorn from critics as Tom Hardy.  For anyone else this would've been hailed as a genius showcase.

Me:

Rightly or wrongly Josh Trank took most of the heat for the dumpster fire that was Fant4stic.  Now he's back with this trippy look at Al Capone's last year.  I'm not really sure what the point was except for us to see what a pathetic state he was in after dementia and strokes.  I like Tom Hardy but since they didn't do a lot of flashbacks to Capone's younger days, why not just hire an older actor instead of doing fake-looking prosthetic makeup?  Anyway, it's OK but one glad I got "free" on Amazon. (2/5)

Sonic the Hedgehog (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: The hedgehog is entertaining, but for me it's a hugely welcome spotlight and return to form for Jim Carrey after years of exile.

Me: 

Another I can't find a review of on here so I probably wrote it on Facebook.  Anyway, I liked this movie a lot more than I thought I would.  I never really played the video games since I didn't have a Sega so I was not really a target audience.  Still, it really shook off the video game movie jinx by managing to be fun and yet poignant, like a Pixar movie only mostly live action.  Jim Carrey hams it up but in a movie like this it was OK. (3.5/5)

Bloodshot (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: An attempt at jumpstarting a new cinematic superhero universe for most viewers, even before the pandemic, was instead a nonstarter, with Guy Pearce gamely trying to rub off whatever remaining Memento magic he had on Vin Diesel.  But Vin Diesel never really has fans outside of the Fast & Furious movies, alas, even if he makes decent action movies out of the concepts driving them.

Me:

I can't find a review of this either but I remember watching it and thinking it was not that great.  The start of it makes it seem like one thing but then there's a twist.  Overall it wasn't that good. (2/5)

The New Mutants (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: Holds the dubious distinction of being the last of the Fox productions of X-Men movies, with a troubled release date history that no doubt benefited from the pandemic for finally happening.  Not a bad movie by any means, but its existence in a vacuum is disappointing given how most of the other films in the franchise went out of their way to provide some tangible link to the rest of it, usually with a throwaway cameo or two.

Me:

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 2020 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.)

Fatman (Laplume)

rating: **

review: Mel Gibson has been pumping out b-movies.  They're not all terrible.  In fact he's made some brilliant choices!  But this Santa Claus thriller ain't necessarily one of 'em.

Me:

Fatman:  I probably could have watched this last year on Amazon Prime, but this year it's free with commercials on Peacock.  If you're a fan of Terry Pratchett's Discworld the premise is similar to his holiday novel Hogfather in that an assassin is hired to kill Santa.  But in this case it's more of a straight-ahead action movie instead of a clever light drama.  A rich boy who got a lump of coal in his stocking calls up the hitman he has on speed dial to hire him to kill Santa.  Like in Hogfather, the assassin has actually been toying with this idea and is willing to take a crack at it for real.  In this case he drives to Alaska to track down the old fat man--Mel Gibson--who to stay afloat has leased his elves to the government to make parts for a fictitious jet fighter. (In today's world, making drones would probably be more appropriate.)  And so then there's a showdown and all that.  It was amusing even if Pratchett's version is better. (3/5)

Some disagreements there.  And some not.  Huzzah.  If Laplume ever does 2021 I think there'd be more than 2020 by virtue of the Marvel movies and last James Bond and probably some other ones.

Rating Movies: Tony Laplume vs Grumpy Bulldog (2018 Edition)

I did entries comparing Tony Laplume's capsule reviews for 2014-2017 to my reviews, sort of as an ad hoc Siskel & Ebert.  Then he did 2018 and I almost didn't do it because there were quite a few that I hadn't seen.  I think by 2018 you started to get more streaming options with things like CBS All Access (now Paramount+) and HBO Go/Now (soon to just be Max) joining Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon.  Plus Disney was starting to pull up stakes on Netflix and other services to create Disney+.  So with all these new options adding original content and dispersing new movies to different places, it made it harder to keep up with things except for the biggest movies.  As well, late in 2017 I started watching Pluto TV a lot, mostly the Rifftrax and MST3K channels and Laplume would never watch those movies because Mr. WWE Fan is too good for bad movies. [eye roll]

I did decide to compare those I remembered seeing but then the problem was about 1/3 of those I couldn't find where I'd actually written a review.  I figure either I didn't write anything or I just did something on Facebook and good luck trying to track that down now.  So I just scribbled something based on my best recollections.

Now on to the show!

Isle of Dogs (Laplume)

rating: *****

review: The movie that definitively made me appreciate Wes Anderson, his second stop-motion animated flick, about a nightmare scenario striking a Japanese city which exiles all its dogs to "Trash Island," and the courageous dogs (and humans!) who struggle to save the day.  Packed with Anderson's trademark ability to collect great stars to his projects, including what's now my favorite Bryan Cranston performance as Chief, the unlikely leader of this pack.  The whole film is amazing, including a perfect soundtrack.

Me:  

Isle of Dogs:  To my knowledge this is Wes Anderson's second stop-motion movie after The Fantastic Mr. Fox about 8 years ago.  This is about a Japanese city in the near-future that banishes all dogs to an island of garbage because of a dog flu.  One of the dogs is the son of the mayor's dog so the kid goes to the island to find him.  A group of dogs finds the kid and helps him traverse the island.  Like most everything Anderson does it's kinda weird but it has heart.  I mean at the core it's basically a story of a boy and a cur becoming friends.  Just the stop-motion and weirdness like most human lines being only in Japanese (only sometimes with translation) might throw people.  Though it's on a Japanese island it features mostly white people doing the voices:  Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand, Jeff Goldblum, and long-time Wes Anderson alum Bill Murray.  Does that count as cultural appropriation?  (3/5)

Solo: A Star Wars Story (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: For most Star Wars fans, my opinions are the exact opposite of mainstream opinion.  Just recently, I thought Rogue One was basically an abomination, and the sequels were brilliant.  And I loved Solo, exactly what the character Han Solo needed to solidify his legacy, including an extremely clever interpretation of the old Kessel run record he bragged about in his first appearance.  If ever Star Wars truly became more than just the Skywalker saga (sorry, Mandalorian fans), this is what it looks like when Han takes center stage, and exactly how it ought.

Me:  

I didn’t watch this until after I got Disney+ in 2020 and then just thought it was meh.  Not really a necessary addition to the Star Wars mythos.  Lando perving on a droid was especially not something we needed to see or even contemplate.  Ick.  And Han’s surname is the result of a shitty dad joke:  He’s Han and he’s solo, get it?  Ugh.  Han is probably the least interesting or important character in his own origin story.  The Q’ira and Darth Maul scene could have set up another movie but since this flopped (in part because of post-Last Jedi backlash and in part because of its troubled production history) they did that in the comics instead. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact: you can still get the action figures from this and the last two sequel movies for pretty cheap on Amazon or at discount stores.)

Super Troopers 2 (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: I didn't really get into the Broken Lizard boys until Club Dread, so the first Super Troopers had for a long time been a comedy milestone for other movie fans.  I was more than ready for this late sequel, however, especially thanks to all the Canadian humor infused into the shenanigans.

Me:  

Super Troopers 2:  This was one of those movies Kickstartered--or actually it was some other site that was the same deal--by fans and released for a few weeks in theaters.  Because Disney moved Avengers 3 back a week it ended up coming out a week before that and thus being obliterated.  Which might be just as well.  Most of it is just a bunch of moldy cliches about Canadians and/or French Canadians as the doofus cops from the first movie are brought out of being fired as city cops to patrol a part of Canada being annexed into the US.  The funniest parts were when they dress up as Mounties and mess with people on the road and "the Fred Savage Incident" that's referenced but not shown until the credits.  (And the gag reel during the credits.)  If you haven't seen it, you're probably better off. (2/5)

Gringo (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: A classic ensemble farce lampooning corporate nonsense.  Another movie that demands a much wider and acclaimed reputation.  This year was full of 'em.

Me: 

Gringo:  This Amazon movie from 2018 is about an African guy who goes to work as a middle-manager for a Chicago company.  One of his biggest jobs is going down to Mexico to check up on things down there.  Learning his job is about to be cut and his wife (Thandiwe Newton) is having an affair, the guy decides to fake a kidnapping to get the company to pay him.  Except the company doesn't have a kidnapping insurance policy anymore, so to save money, the CEO (Joel Edgerton) sends his brother (Sharlto Copley) down to Mexico to extract the guy.  There are a lot of twists and double-crosses and things like that.  If you like those early Guy Ritchie movies like Snatch or Revolver then you'd like this because it's the same blend of violence and dark humor. (3/5) (Fun Facts:  For some reason Charlize Theron plays a bitchy, slutty executive; it just seems like she could have done something better.  Nash Edgerton directed this so you have Australians starring in and directing a movie about an American company employing an African guy to go to Mexico.  It's a small world after all.)

Tag (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: Famously the movie that broke Jeremy Renner's arms (he's had some terrible luck, okay?) and limiting his resulting chances to be featured heavily in the later Avengers movies (but was that really ever going to happen?), but well worth it.  A classic comedy.

Me:  

Tag:  Based on a true story there's a group of guys who for one month of year play an epic game of tag.  They get in disguise and stuff to tag each other, but they've never tagged their friend Jerry (Jeremy Renner) who is getting married.  So they all go home for the wedding hoping to tag him, but he won't make it easy.  It was amusing but a little long.  In the credits they show the real guys this was based on and some of the stuff they did was better than the movie.  One guy dressed up in a bulldog mascot costume so he could tag another guy at a basketball game.  That would have been cool in the movie.  Also during the credits Jeremy Renner with the other guys as backup sings the old Crash Test Dummies song Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm--however you'd spell it. (2.5/5)

Sorry to Bother You (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: LaKeith Stanfield had a breakthrough year (he also had a small but striking supporting role in The Girl in Spider's Web), headlined by this wicked satire.

Me: 

 I know I watched this but I can’t find a review.  I liked it up to a point.  Where it starts getting into turning people into centaurs (or something like that) it goes a bit too far for me. (3.0/5)

Ant-Man and the Wasp (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: Paul Rudd is such a great hand, it's easy to forget why he's generally not really considered a leading man.  This is even more obvious in the recent third installment, but in this second one, there's plenty of assisting parts, including an upgrade so Marvel could claim it used its female characters better than its record had really stated by this point. 

Me:  

Ant-Man and the Wasp:  A Marvel sequel that is fun and mostly focused on its own little corner of the MCU, though the cookie scene does have a huge impact on Endgame.  Bringing back Hope's mother was something I was surprised they didn't do the first time, but I guess they wanted to spend more time setting up that quantum realm thing.  And adding another old Batman movie alum to the MCU with Michelle Pfeiffer!  Ghost is less forgettable than most Marvel villains and in this case not even really a villain so much as someone trying to save herself.  (3.0/5)  

Mission: Impossible - Fallout (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: Ah!  Right!  The infamous Henry Cavill role that produced the mustache!  Tom Cruise had developed a nasty habit in this series to curb the wider appeal of any potential usurpers (Jeremy Renner, previous victim, Ghost Protocol), and Cavill's best scene, preparing for a fight in a restroom, showcased in the trailers, is relegated to much less impressive results in the film itself, and of course a reveal as one of the bad guys.  But I really do love this series.

Me:

This is another one I know I watched but I can’t find a review.  Anyway, if you asked me to differentiate this one from the previous 2 movies, I would find that a Mission: Impossible.  Just like if you asked me to identify which woman was in which movie as Tom Cruise’s side piece (or even his wife from the third one), I would also have no idea.  And at this point if you ask me what this movie was about, also no idea.  But Henry Cavill has a mustache!  That was the most memorable thing. And Tom Cruise does some crazy stunt--again.  (2.0/5)

Avengers: Infinity War (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: Elsewhere on this blog you can see where my original thoughts were considerably more positive, but hindsight places the best sequence, and the only one I really think fondly about, in Steve Rogers' dramatic comeback.  Otherwise, dramatically underscores all the failings of the MCU to be anything more than throwaway entertainment.  

Me:  

You can read my full, super-grumpy review here.  Or here’s my shortened version from my ranking entry, “Avengers: Infinity War:  A long, dreary slog that's largely devoid of plot logic.  I went through all that in my grumpy review of it.  I mean, why not just use the Time Stone and go back to kill Thanos?  Or at least keep him from from getting all the stones?”  I mean since they used time travel to fix things anyway, right?  No, we can’t time travel then but we can time travel later. [eye roll] (2/5)

Venom (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: Hey, I'll follow Tom Hardy anywhere!  Typically great performance.  Rest of the film around him...well, it's there, anyway.

Me:  I can’t find a review but I mostly liked this.  I didn’t have very high expectations for a Venom movie that couldn’t have any Spider-Man elements in it but they made it work well enough.  Indie movie darling Michelle Williams is largely wasted as the love interest--except when she briefly gets to be Venom--while the bad guy was a pretty decent Elon Musk-type asshole rich guy.  I still haven’t seen the sequel to see what they did with Carnage.

Here's my comment on Facebook: This was surprisingly not bad. This version of Venom is obviously an improvement over Spider-Man 3. I like how they give the symbiote some personality, one that sort of mirrors his host.

(3.0/5)

Aquaman (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: I just haven't really gotten around to revisiting it.  I love Jason Momoa's Aquaman.  But he doesn't feel as electric as he does in (either cut of) Justice League, here.  Role of a lifetime all the same.

Me:  Aquaman:  The first movie after the disaster of Justice League and it did a good job of changing the narrative by largely ignoring Justice League, ditching the grim-n-gritty Snyder tone, and taking its cues from Black Panther and Thor.  The end result is a decent popcorn movie on par with a lot of Marvel efforts. (3.0/5)

Deadpool 2/Once Upon a Deadpool (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: The novelty of Ryan Reynolds getting to have the first one made overlooks that the results are seriously obnoxious, without anything around the performance remotely capable of or interested in balancing it out.  This second one has Zazie Beetz as Domino.  It's pretty much enough.

Me:  

Deadpool 2:  It's OK, but not as good as the first one.  It does one of those annoying sequel things by killing off the girlfriend in the first 20 minutes.  Then at least they make fun of that in the credits, so at least they recognize it's kind of lame.  The "X-Force" thing is kind of a fake out.  I'm sure there are some fans who are really annoyed about how Shatterstar and some of the others are used.  Josh Brolin's Cable is OK but in the comics I guess he has a lot of other powers and stuff.  The funniest parts were actually in the mid-credits scenes.  Who would you trust less with a time travel device than Deadpool?  If you haven't watched it yet, there's no end credits scene.  I'm just saying. (2.5/5)

Tomb Raider (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: Goodness, Alicia Vikander deserves a far larger legacy than she ended up getting.  This take on Lara Croft is far more credible than its two cinematic predecessors, and not just because it's based on later entries in the game series that grounded our hero more in the real world.  Last year's Uncharted shows where this one really fell short of the mark: besides Vikander, there's not much else to see.

Me:  

Tomb Raider:  I've never played the video games and I only watched the Angelina Jolie movies once maybe.  Like Pacific Rim [Uprising], this was OK but didn't really feel all that epic or fun like the previous movies, Indiana Jones, or even National Treasure.  I guess to pad the run time it starts out with a pointless kickboxing scene and then some extreme bike riding.  Simon Pegg's frequent cohort Nick Frost shows up in a cameo as a pawn shop owner who gives Lara Croft money to go to Southeast Asia and get a boat to a mysterious island.  It's funny how the boat captain she barely knows is like instantly ready to lay down his life for her.  I guess she's attractive, but I wouldn't sacrifice myself for her in like ten minutes--at least not without getting some first. (Oink, oink.)  Anyway, eventually she has to stop a bad guy from unleashing one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  I'm not sure if there will be a sequel or not.  Maybe they can put more effort into the script. (2.5/5)

Black Panther (Laplume)

rating: **

review: I still don't get why the character of Black Panther itself isn't considered hugely embarrassing, but it seems a sizable portion of both black and white audiences prefer a fantastical vision of Africa, and an African hero, to represent the best hopes of black people in America, than anything else.  In any other setting, this would work much better.  As the most famous and successful black superhero (at least at the movies), I just don't get it.  Might still end up the most enduring artifact of the MCU era.  If so, its legacy should grow accordingly.  As part of the MCU, it's just ridiculous.

Me:  

Black Panther:  The first Marvel movie that actually had any social relevance.  Until then they all revolved around white males, many of whom with superpowers.  The only two black heroes, War Machine and Falcon, were sidekicks.  Like with female superheroes, Marvel got shown up by DC and so finally did what they could have done years ago.  And while the plot largely follows the traditional Marvel formula, it introduces us to the whole new world of Wakanda that seems like an alien planet even though it's on Earth.  Killmonger is one of the better Marvel "villains," a villain who is in a way a hero as he wants to right the wrongs done to black people over the centuries.  In the era of Trump and police shooting black kids routinely, who can blame him?  There's also some fun and humor provided thanks to the banter between T'Challa and Shuri and the hapless CIA agent played by Martin Freeman.  Andy Serkis chews a bit too much scenery, but overall it's definitely one of the best MCU films. (3.5/5)

Robin Hood (Laplume)

rating: **

review: A fun update but decidedly a lower register than the Kevin Costner and Russell Crowe versions that preceded it.  I mean, is Taron Egerton ever going to be considered to portray a father figure to Superman???

Me:  Another I can’t find a review of but I know I watched it and thought it was better if you think of it as a superhero story vs. a Robin Hood story.  But better than the Ridley Scott one and at least Taron Egerton can speak with an English accent. (2.5/5)

Death Wish (Laplume)

rating: **

review: Bruce Willis's last shot at a mainstream hit is a remake that doesn't really know how to spotlight him.

Me:  

Death Wish (2017):  This is a remake of the 1974 Charles Bronson movie that pretty much started the whole NRA revenge fetish porn industry.  In that movie Bronson's character was an architect whose wife is followed home from the store by goofy punks led by a young Jeff Goldblum.  In this version Bruce Willis is a doctor (lol) who goes out to dinner with his family one night.  The valet gets the location of his house from his car's navigation system (good thing I'm too poor to valet) and gives the location to some crooks, who then break in when the family isn't supposed to be at home but the wife and daughter are.  The wife is killed and the daughter put into a coma.  So after the cops come up with zip, Bruce Willis gets a gun to play vigilante.  Unlike the 1974 version he actually finds the right people to get revenge.  Willis gives a B+ effort while Vincent D'Onofrio cashes a paycheck as the brother who never really contributes anything and Dean Norris basically reheats Hank from Breaking Bad.  While this tries to be socially relevant by taking place in Chicago, which has had a lot of gun violence the last couple of years,   the problem is since 1974 this formula has been used time and again in a variety of ways like Robocop, Darkman, The Crow, Chance of a Lifetime--oh wait that's just in my head.  Anyway, so unlike 1974 this feels pretty generic. (2/5) (Fun Fact:  Elizabeth Shue is Bruce Willis's wife in the movie, so her and Vincent D'Onofrio have an Adventures in Babysitting reunion.  That movie took place in Toronto-as-Chicago about 30 years ago.)

Annihilation (Laplume)

rating: **

review: Much buzzed about, but mostly a wasted cast in a movie of total nonsense.

Me:  

Annihilation:  Like the director's previous Ex Machina, this is a sci-fi movie that is not extremely action-packed, but is tense, gorgeous, and hard to pin down.  (And both feature Oscar Isaac--bonus!)  Basically a meteor or something hits a part of the southern coast by a lighthouse and starts mutating all the life in the area:  grass, trees, animals, and even people!  Natalie Portman's husband Oscar Isaac (so yes, Star Wars nerds, Padme Amidala hooked up with Poe Dameron!) was part of an expedition to explore "the shimmer" and disappeared.  Until he comes stumbling home with amnesia and then passes out.  So she agrees to join 4 other women to explore the Shimmer.  The place is just crazy with all the mutated stuff.  And naturally the people are not immune either.  Anyway, if you're more a fan of sci-fi like 2001 or Solaris than Star Wars or Transformers (Michael Bay version) then you'll probably like this.  And I guess if you're a fan of women in movies who aren't taking off their tops or wearing skimpy costumes.  (4/5)

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Laplume)

rating: **

review: Great animation (of the kind later put to equally stellar work in The Mitchells vs. the Machines), but otherwise lost in spastic storytelling.

Me:  

Into the Spider-Verse:  This movie combined two comic book storylines:  the Spider-Verse story by Dan Slott and the Ultimate Spider-Man reboot introducing Miles Morales by Brian Michael Bendis.  The movie focuses on Miles, who is bitten by a spider and gains most of Spidey's powers and some new ones.  When the original Spider-Man dies, Miles is left to try to find a way to save the world--until he meets an older, out-of-shape Peter Parker from another world.  And then he finds out his new friend Gwen is a Spider-Girl or Spider-Woman or whatever.  And then Spider-Ham, Spider-Man Noir, and some weird Japanese anime Spider-Man thing show up from other universes.  Since this was animated, it had a lot more freedom creatively than the live action movies.  So it could finally give us a big screen Spider-Ham, plus the others, plus Kingpin, and a gender-swapped Doc Ock!  The end result is a brilliant movie, whether you're a fan of Spider-Man or not. (3.5/5)

Bumblebee (Laplume)

rating: **

review: A lot of viewers thought this one corrected the mistakes of the Michael Bay era.  But the results are basically exactly the same as the Michael Bay era.  But without the Michael Bay magic.  So...

Me: 

Bumblebee:  A Force Awakens-type movie as it largely follows the formula of the 2007 movie of a boy girl and his her robot car.  It simplifies the plot a lot more than the 4 previous movies on this list.  The robot designs also looked a lot better, with most of the existing characters on Cybertron actually looking like their G1 versions.  The new characters looked pretty good too.  I was disappointed that I couldn't find a toy version of the one that turned into a Harrier jump jet and another that turned into an F4 Phantom fighter plane.  The former they only seem to make in car mode and I don't know about the other.  The thing I didn't like about most of this movie were the almost constant music cues reminding us it was the 80s.  I mean, really, I got it the first time; I don't need you to drum it into my head 100 more times! (3.0/5) (Fun Fact:  They did eventually sorta make the two figures I wanted, but they screwed up both planes so neither looks accurate.  I did get the Harrier one on clearance, but the fake F4 just looked stupid.  How hard is it to Google planes, Hasbro?!) 

Ready Player One (Laplume)

rating: **

review: Modern Spielberg is desperate to please, and here's his shot at adapting a popular book.  It's not Harry Potter.

Me:  

It's not that the movie was bad; it just wasn't as good [as the book].  The book goes a lot more into this world.  And there are a lot more 70s/80s references than 90s/2000s/2010s ones.  As I said in an entry a few months ago, this was a mistake because the "gunters" were supposed to be so obsessed with the creator that they completely immersed themselves in everything he was into back in the early days of video games.  There was also a lot more in the book about Wade's home situation and his parents and also him going to online school and such.

I'd say to read the book if you really want the full experience or just watch the movie if you don't care. (2.5/5)

The Hurricane Heist (Laplume)

rating: *

review: My first viewing suggested a surprisingly amateurish experience.  Wanted to be kind of like the Fast & Furious films.  Fell well short of the mark.

Me:  I’m pretty sure I watched this but I can’t find a review.  Basically I think it was a cheap straight-to-streaming movie that was OK for its 90-ish minutes but not really great for a heist movie. (2.0/5)

I think at least this time we had more disagreements about these.  That always makes it more interesting than if we agree on everything.

Friday we tackle 2019 AND 2020!