It's Back: Stuff I Watched

Hey, I finally stopped watching Rifftrax and MST3K on Pluto TV to watch other stuff!  Some of which I've already mentioned in other entries, but some stuff I haven't.

The Shape of Water:  This won the Oscar for Best Picture.  I'm not sure it was the best movie of last year but it's a good movie.  A quirky, sometimes raunchy fairy tale about a woman in 1962 who's working as a cleaning lady at a secret government lab when they bring in a creature from the Black Lagoon or something.  She and the creature fall in love and she plots to break him out to escape the evil Michael Shannon.  A good movie but maybe a little too simple; the only one who really has any moral complexity is the Russian double-agent.  Otherwise you know who's good and who's bad pretty quick.  (4/5)  (Fun Fact:  The creature is played by Doug Jones, who played a very similar creature in the Hellboy movies, also directed by Guillermo del Toro.  This creature even has superpowers!  He just can't talk.  Maybe David Hyde Pierce was too busy to dub in.)

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)

Blade Runner 2049:  This sequel 30 years after the original is OK but not great.  I mean it's not Last Jedi bad for a sequel but it's slow and really annoying the tiny text prologue to fill us in on all the history since the last movie.  Over 90 minutes go by before Harrison Ford shows up.  Even then mostly he's tied up and almost drowns.  Can he just retire already?  It's starting to get embarrassing. (2.5/5)

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle:  Like Power Rangers earlier in the year, this is focused mainly on a group of teenagers learning to come together as a team after they're assigned to detention in a basement and find an old video game.  When they pick characters and turn the game on, they're all sucked into the world of the game, where they have to return a jewel to a statue to save the land of Jumanji.  The kids all get characters the opposite of what they are: the nerd is the Rock, the jock is Kevin Hart, the nerdy girl is a hot chick, and the hot chick is Jack Black.  So the idea is that each character has to learn to use new skills as they come together.  The Rock actually does a decent job impersonating a nerdy teenager and Jack Black does a good job impersonating a self-centered teenage girl.  Overall it's a decent movie but fairly predictable. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  There's sort of a reverse Big at the end when one kid who's been stuck in the game since the 90s reappears in modern times as Colin Hanks.)

Killing Gunther:  This was a pretty funny mockumentary about a bunch of second-rate contract killers trying to kill the mythical Gunther.  The reason being that killing Gunther would be like finding Bigfoot or UFOs or something; it would make them legends!  But it turns out to be a lot harder than they thought.  Many of them are killed while a couple others escape.  It turns out Gunther is Ahh-nold Schwarzenegger.  Overall it was really funny and there was plenty of action. (3/5)

Aftermath:  This also stars Ahh-nold.  Though it's not an action movie.  It's a drama.  If you didn't figure that out by watching the movie, then in the credits you might notice Arnold had a "drama coach."  Because "stare at the floor or into the distance looking sad" needs a coach.  This is I guess based on a true story.  There's a snafu in the Columbus air traffic control tower and two planes crash.  Ahh-nold's wife and daughter are on a flight from Kiev for whatever reason.  Then he's sad for over a year while futilely trying to get anyone to apologize.  Meanwhile the air traffic controller becomes a pariah and loses his wife and kid and job and stuff.  Eventually there's some violence but by then there's been so much navel-gazing that who can even stay awake for it?  The whole message of violence begets violence (or potential violence) is pretty cliche anyway. (1/5)

Good Time:  The vampire guy from Twilight breaks his mentally challenged brother out of therapy to rob a bank so they can go buy a farm like Of Mice & Men or something.  The teller gives them a dye pack so they end up being chased by cops and the mentally challenged brother is caught.  So vampire guy has to try to get him out, which involves an odyssey through boroughs of New York that ultimately achieves nothing.  Not really a great movie.  Kind of boring. (2/5)

Logan Lucky:  A West Virginia family has been down on their luck so long it seems to be a curse.  Then the older brother (Channing Tatum) and his one-armed brother (Adam Driver) hatch a plan to rob a race track in North Carolina during a big race.  They enlist the help of an explosives expert already in jail, Daniel Craig.  Like a good heist movie there are plenty of twists and turns, but this was also pretty funny. (3/5)

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot:  Have you realized the war in Afghanistan has been going on for almost 17 years now?  This takes place mostly from 2003-2006, not even the halfway point!  Not even the halfway point and already it was getting pushed off the front page for Iraq.  So veteran producer Tina Fey gets to be a reporter in Afghanistan, which it turns out is not a lot of fun.  It's highly dangerous and complicated.  She and a Scottish journalist (Martin Freeman) get together and when he's captured, she goes to a Marine colonel (Billy Bob Thornton) to get him sprung.  But there's no walking off into the sunset.  Overall it was a good dramedy that's also a sad reminder of just how long we've been over there and how unlikely it is we'll stop anytime soon. (3/5)

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back:  I watched the first one of these a while back and it wasn't that good.  This one was better than I thought, though still not a great movie.  An army major Jack Reacher has been talking to on the phone (Cobie Smulders, who was also in Killing Gunther) has been arrested for treason.  He springs her and they go on the run, ending up in New Orleans with a teenage girl who may or may not be Jack's daughter.  The whole thing revolves around a plot to smuggle in weapons and opium from Afghanistan--see WTF above.  Pretty much a straight-ahead action thriller, which is I guess what you'd expect, right?  (2.5/5)

2 Days in the Valley:  This 90s movie involves assassins and robbery and some other stuff that I don't really remember right now.  It has a good cast with Jeff Daniels (a rogue cop who really contributes nothing to the plot), James Spader (an evil hitman), and Charlize Theron--OMG, she's so fucking hot!  Oh, and Danny Aiello is in it.  Yeah.  (2.5/5)

Free Fire:  In the 70s two bands of criminals meet in a warehouse.  A group of Irish "freedom fighters" led by Cillian Murphy are going to buy some guns from a South African group led by Sharlto Copley.  But the deal goes sour and the whole movie then is the people running, jumping, ducking, and crawling around this warehouse in increasingly bad condition until only one is left to escape with the money.  As you'd expect this isn't all that long; I think it's the kind that's "90 minutes" with the credits moving at a crawl to round it up to that.  It is really action-packed though.  It also stars Brie Larson and Armie Hammer.  (2.5/5)

Shangri-La Suite:  This is basically like if Wes Anderson had directed Natural Born Killers.  A young man and woman fall in love at a rehab clinic.  The boy has visions telling him to go to LA and kill Elvis during a concert.  So he and the girl set off across the country.  I actually fell asleep during the middle part, but I saw the end.  I think it's obvious that Elvis didn't die--then at least.  What I did see was pretty good.  To elaborate on my first sentence, it has a lot of the quirky narration and stuff similar to Wes Anderson movies like Hotel Budapest, Royal Tenenbaums, and so on, but it's also about a couple going on a crime spree across the country.  Maybe Bonnie & Clyde would be more appropriate for the second movie.  Whatever.  (2.5/5)

Crank 2:  I only turned this on because it was free and I wondered how the fuck he could possibly have survived the last movie when at the end he fell from like several thousand feet onto the pavement.  Well somehow he manages to stay alive long enough for a "Chinese" gangster (a racist cameo by the late, mostly unmissed David Carradine) to replace Crank Chelios's heart with a fake one that will go out unless he keeps it charged by doing dumb Jackass stunts like putting wires in his mouth and fucking his girlfriend in the middle of a horse racing track.  It's an utterly dumb, homophobic, misogynistic, racist piece of garbage perfect for the Trump supporters at your next family reunion.  Yee-haw!  (-99999999999999999999999999999999999/5)

Moonraker:  Someone had this bright idea that since Star Wars happened a year or so earlier, why don't we find a way to capitalize on that with the James Bond franchise?!  Hence this piece of shit movie was born.  Other than the title and name/occupation of the main character it bears no similarity to the Ian Fleming novel of the same name.  In Bond fashion it goes from California to Italy to some other places, and then to a big space station where they have artificial gravity and laser guns.  And even though there hadn't been an actual space shuttle launched into space yet, NASA can launch a shuttle with a cargo bay full of army guys on a moment's notice.  I'm not a rocket scientist, but having watched/read The Martian I know it takes months to plan a space launch.  And the G-forces would have crushed those army dudes in the cargo bay, which is why the astronauts were strapped in the nose section during launches.  Ugh, so lame. (1/5)

The Mick:  Kaitlin Olson basically just plays Dee from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia only without the rest of the gang.  When her sister and her sister's husband abscond overseas after being accused of white collar crimes, black sheep Mickey is left to raise their 3 kids.  It seems like a sweet deal in that she gets a mansion, fancy cars, and all that but the 3 kids are brats, kinda bringing it down.  It's an OK show but didn't find enough of an audience at Fox.  I think it would have played better on FX or FXX  since it's the same kind of adult humor as Always Sunny. (3/5)

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency:  This is a BBC America/AMC production very loosely based on the 2 Douglas Adams novels.  I read those novels about 10 years ago but this really has nothing to do with those except a mention of Thor.  Basically series creator Max Landis uses the title character's name and occupation and not much else.  The plot involves time travel; a cult that swaps bodies (often with animals) to make money, have sorta-immortality, and infiltrate upper echelons of society; a 19th Century inventor; a bellhop; and a kitten with the spirit of a shark inside of it.  It was pretty good but really I couldn't shake the feeling this was too much Max Landis and not enough Douglas Adams.  It felt far more American than British, which in this case is sort of a bad thing.  The last episode is frustrating in that it seems to end about 8 times before the final, depressing ending.  I'm not sure if there's a season 2 yet--or ever. Probably the coolest thing was the steampunk Boba Fett/Iron Man suit the 19th Century inventor creates. (2.5/5)

Sneaky Pete, Season 2:  I watched season 1 of this crime caper last year on Amazon and in March came the second season.  In season 1 a con man pretends to be his cellmate to hide from a vicious mobster and infiltrates the cellmate's family.  That season ended with the mobster dead and "Pete" (real name Marius) with a sack of money and heading out until he's picked up by two guys.  So as this season begins, the two guys mistake him for the real Pete and want him to find his mother, who supposedly stole $11 million from a Montenegro gangster.  There are a lot of machinations in the 10 episodes but the ending is only a little more satisfying than Ocean's Twelve, where as a screw you to the audience they revealed that the main objective had already been achieved a while ago and most of this movie was just for show.  In this case a whole thing about a stuffed buffalo in an Indian casino was just for show.  Pretty lame twist.  Good setup, meh ending.  If there's a season 3, Marius is likely to be confronted with Pete's family knowing he's not the real deal. (3/5)

Patriot, Season 1:  This dramedy is also on Amazon Prime.  It's about a burnt-out secret agent whose father convinces him to do one last mission.  It's 2012 and Iran is nearing a nuclear weapon.  John has been wandering around Europe, doing occasional folksinging gigs after he was captured and tortured in Egypt.  To stop Iran, John's father wants him to get a job at an oil pipe maker in Milwaukee that's doing business in Iran.  John will then relay some bribe money through Luxembourg.  But things start going wrong from the interview.  When a candidate seems likely to get the job instead of John, John shoves him in front of a truck.  But he doesn't die!  Instead he just has some brain damage and memory loss.  Meanwhile, John's new boss (Kurtwood Smith of Robocop and That 70s Show fame) hates him, but John's ability to shoot ducks on a company trip wins him the favor of the CEO.  Soon John is on a trip to Luxembourg, but when he has to check the bag of money, it ends up getting lost.  And Luxembourg, which hasn't had a murder in years, soon has several on its hands.  It was a pretty good show, though some threads like the folksinging partner played by Mark Boone Jr or John's wife don't really go anywhere.  And what doesn't make much sense is the ending where the pretty Luxembourgian homicide detective steals the money, abandoning her daughter to get on a train for parts unknown.  It didn't really seem to jive with someone who followed a murder investigation all the way to America (twice!) to suddenly just steal $11 million because she could.  I guess that helps to set up a possible season 2. (3/5)

Once Upon a Time in Venice:  Bruce Willis is a private eye in Venice Beach--the only private eye in Venice Beach.  When his protege (that annoying guy from Silicon Valley and those Verizon ads) locates a missing Samoan woman and takes her to the office, where Bruce Willis and her have sex, it ends up starting a chain of events that has Bruce Willis dodging Mexican drug dealers, black drug dealers, Russian loan sharks, and jealous Samoan brothers.  Through all of this he has to try to get his dog back.  There are some fun parts, but in our outrage culture I suppose you can make the case that pretty much all the people of color are villains--at least initially.  And I'm not sure why it needed a downer ending, unless it's to set up a sequel, which should be easy since it's not like you need much to land Bruce Willis these days. (2.5/5)

Birdemic 2: The Resurrection:  What's the only thing worse than Birdemic?  Birdemic 2 of course!  It's hard to tell if this is so bad intentionally to mimic the first one or if James Nguyen is really this incompetent at film making.  The most ridiculous moment is instead of renting an ambulance, they use about the worst CGI ambulance imaginable.  Otherwise there's all the things you'd expect:  wooden acting, nonsensical plot, and poorly rendered computer animated birds that don't behave in any way like real birds.  Maybe it's that this wasn't a Rifftrax version that it was more depressing than fun.  You'd think in 5 years or so James Nguyen might have learned something about film making, right?  Apparently not. (-999999999999999999999999999999999999999999/5)

Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay:  Amanda Waller is dying from...something and wants a magic card that will literally let her bypass Hell to go to Heaven.  So she sends Deadshot, Bronze Tiger, Killer Frost, Captain Boomerang, Copperhead (a snake guy), and of course Harley Quinn to go steal the card from the daughter of Vandal Savage, the immortal Neanderthal.  It's R-rated with plenty of blood and gore (like exploding heads) but the story is mostly nonsense.  And since it involves Hell, why don't they go to Constantine, the HELLBlazer?  I mean, duh.  Instead they track down a former Dr. Fate working as a male stripper.  Though it's not that long it's one of those that felt long. At least unlike the last animated Suicide Squad movie they didn't force Batman into it. (2/5)