Stuff I Watched & Don't Feel Like Writing a Whole Entry About

 Some movies and TV shows I like writing a whole entry about.  And others...not so much.  These are the latter category.

Free Guy:  I think this was one of those movies delayed by the pandemic that probably would have made more money if it had been released in a normal time.  Anyway, the premise is sort of like The Lego Movie where an ordinary boring character suddenly realizes there's a whole other big world out there.  In this case it's Ryan Reynolds as an NPC, one of those background guys in video games, who suddenly gains free will.  There's a girl with colorful hair just like The Lego Movie who helps Guy explore the world and becomes his love interest, though it's different in that she exists in the real world and he doesn't.  Taika Waititi is the bad guy who runs the software company and stole a lot of code from two small time programmers.  The company tries to destroy Guy but with the girl's help he fights back.  It drags on a little too long but there are some fun Easter eggs, especially in the end fight with "Dude," a buffer Ryan Reynolds.  These eggs show what happens when you own Marvel and Star Wars and Fox.  (3/5) (Fun Facts:  Ryan Reynolds and Taika Waititi were both in Green Lantern and both movies were produced by Greg Berlanti, a founder of the "Arrowverse."  Hugh Jackman, Deadpool's arch-enemy, voices an informant in an alley.  I watched the movie on Disney+ but it's also apparently on HBO Max.)

The Tender Bar:  This movie was written by the writer of The Departed, directed by George Clooney, and starred Ben Affleck.  You'd think when you combine three talents like that you'd get a great movie--but you'd be wrong.  Really wrong.  Not that this isn't well made (mostly) but it's just really, really dull.  There's barely any conflict at all.  Even Mitch Albom and Nick Sparks novels have more conflict.  The movie is about this kid named JR whose mother moves him back to Long Island to her dad (Christopher Lloyd)'s house where his Uncle Charlie (Affleck) also lives and works at a bar called The Dickens.  Charlie becomes JR's father figure because his real dad is a shithead alcoholic DJ who bounces around and is never in JR's life.  The movie skips about halfway through to JR going to Yale (for free), where he meets a young black girl who basically strings him along for years before marrying someone else.  He gets a job at the New York Times but they ultimately do not keep him on.  Still, he has a loving extended family, goes to an Ivy for free, and immediately works at one of the most prestigious newspapers in the country.  His dad not being around and him not getting his first love have to pass for the only drama in this bland film.  Early on his mother has a malignant tumor cut out...and nothing more comes of it.  Which is the same thing that happens in The Room, where Lisa's mom is said to have breast cancer but it never goes anywhere.  In The Disaster Artist, the actress playing Lisa's mom laments this fact.  JR's mom is still around at the end of the movie and apparently perfectly healthy.  So what was the point of mentioning the cancer if it has no bearing on the narrative?  I guess in part I shouldn't be mad because this is a true story.  I should be mad that anyone thought to publish a memoir about this and that talented people would adapt it into such bland treacle.  (1/5)  (Fun Facts:  With Affleck and Clooney you have two Batmans and Tye Sheridan, the second Cyclops, plays the older JR.  At the end, Uncle Charlie gives JR his car, which is about the worst gift for someone moving to Manhattan where you either have to pay a lot of money for a parking garage or spend a lot of your time finding somewhere to park the car.  A classic car would probably be a target of thieves too.  I'm just saying.)

Mayor of Kingstown:  This is a crime series on Paramount+ starring Jeremy Renner.  It's that familiar story of the guy who doesn't want to take over the kingdom/empire/criminal enterprise being forced to do that.  In this case there's a city in Michigan (somewhere) with a couple of prisons and Renner's dad and then his older brother made a living by being a liaison with prisoners and sort of being a go-between with the prisoners and guards.  But after his brother is killed in a robbery, Renner's character has to take over the family business to maintain the peace.  Except things start to fall apart until there's a full-scale riot.  Meanwhile an inmate named Milo is plotting to get money for...something and recruits a hooker named Iris to seduce Renner's character, but he resists until she's nearly killed.  I liked the show, though it leaves some questions at the end.  Like where's Milo?  And what's going to happen with all those dead bodies in the bus?  I was annoyed that no one took a few seconds to do a Google search and realize Michigan hasn't had a death penalty in a long, long time.  I mean before you set up this whole show, maybe you should have actually fact-checked that?  It literally would have taken less than a minute to ask Google or Siri or whatever.  I'm just saying. (4/5) (Fun Fact:  There are a couple of nods to the MCU like when Renner buys a bow and arrows to shoot at a bear rummaging around his cabin.  Iris is also referred to as a "Black Widow" when she auditions as a stripper.)

Star Trek Discovery, Season 4:  Season 4 has Michael Burnham in command of the USS Discovery and a new, Galactus-level threat facing the reborn Federation.  In broad strokes it sounds exciting and perhaps as a 2 1/2-hour movie it would be, but stretched into 13 episodes it's less so.  There are a few dull episodes, especially when they approach and enter the "Galactic Barrier," which is different though maybe no less silly than that Great Barrier in Star Trek V.  "Rosetta" particularly felt to me like vamping so they could have enough episodes for the full order.  (I suppose we could blame filming during the pandemic to excuse it.) "All In" was where they got to have the most fun, pulling off a hive of scum and villainy better than the recent Boba Fett show, which is saying something about both franchises.  The finale was disappointing to me.  I never felt any real tension that anyone would  die or anything like that.  Even when Book "died" and Tilly and Vance seemed doomed, I knew the 10-C aliens would have saved Book and stop the DMA in time.  Guess what?  They did.  They were pretty much a deus ex machina so that the only one to suffer any consequences was Tarka.  Like I said on Facebook, all we needed was them to spin the Earth backwards to turn back time like Superman.  I'm sure other people liked it better because it was all Happily Ever After.  Maybe instead of having a "big bad" to focus on all season (Klingons, Red Angel, "the Burn," DMA) they should try a more episodic approach next season.  But they probably won't. (2.5/5)

211:  I mentioned this movie in a previous article about how it inspired me to come up with a GI Joe reboot idea.  This is another of those cheap straight-to-streaming jobs starring Nic Cage as a retiring cop in a small Massachusetts town.  The town becomes the target of some bad mercs when their client tries to screw them by wiring their money to banks all over--including one in that town.  Most of the movie then is a shootout between the cops and mercs.  It's not really great "cinema" but it's an OK distraction. Unlike Bruce Willis, I think Cage still at least puts some effort into these things. (2.5/5)

Trauma Center:  Speaking of Bruce Willis not giving effort, there's this straight-to-streaming movie!  It takes place in Puerto Rico, where a woman witnesses a murder by some corrupt cops.  She's shot in the leg and the corrupt cops want to get the bullet out because that could identify them.  Mayhem ensues with Willis half-assedly playing a not-corrupt cop trying to rescue the woman, who limps around the hospital for most of the movie.  A pudgy, older Steve Guttenberg appears in a small role in case you wondered what the hell ever happened to him since the 80s. (2/5) (Fun Fact:  The Golden Raspberries created an entire category of Worst Bruce Willis Movies for 2021.)

Backtrace:  Sly Stallone seems to have enough star power yet (and maybe invested his money well enough) to avoid straight-to-streaming movies like Willis, Cage, Travolta, and so on.  But there is this one from 2018.  Matthew Modine is an old guy who lost his memory after being shot in the head after he and a couple of guys robbed a cement plant or something.  He hid some of the money away beforehand and no one has been able to find it.  He wakes up unable to remember anything about that and goes to a mental hospital for years.  Eventually his son and a female doctor break him out and shoot him up with experimental drugs to try to find out where the money from the robbery went.  They have to "backtrace" to different places trying to jog his memory.  Stallone is a local cop who's been following the crime for a while.  Christopher MacDonald (the bad guy in Happy Gilmore) is an FBI agent who, what a shock, turns out to be corrupt.  It was not great but like 211 it's an OK distraction for about 90 minutes. (2.5/5)

Money Plane:  I first heard of this from a Rifftrax email because they did a riff on it.  It was a "Just the Jokes" kind though so I didn't buy the riff until I saw the movie was on Hulu.  As you might figure then it is a pretty bad movie.  Some guy who I guess is or was a pro wrestler leads a crew who are the ones you get if Danny Ocean, Leverage, and The A-Team turn you down.  After a job goes wrong at an abandoned factory private museum, the crew has to get on the "money plane" and steal a bunch of crypto and money.  What is a "money plane?"  It's a plane where Joey Lawrence (whoa) lets fake rich people bet on stuff like how long it will take a cobra to kill someone.  With more money for better actors, real-looking sets, and decent writing this could have been an interesting premise, but in the end it all comes off looking cheap and dumb.  For instance, this brilliant crew plans to take over the cockpit of the plane and yet never imagined the contingency where there would be a pilot AND a co-pilot?  You know, like every commercial airliner in the sky?  Thomas Jane and Kelsey Grammar cash paychecks, the latter as the mustache-twirling villain who doesn't actually have a mustache.  I'd recommend buying the riff just to make it more fun, but that's just me.  (2/5)

Sweet Virginia:  I thought that starring Jon Bernthal of The Walking Dead and The Punisher on Netflix this would be another of those cheap action movies that's mostly forgettable but an OK distraction.  Instead, this is a slow, meandering plot with Bernthal as a motel owner who used to be in the rodeo but now has early-onset Parkinson's or something.  Meanwhile, a woman has her husband killed by a hitman who was pretty stupid not to get money up front.  The woman figures her husband's life insurance or something will pay the hitman off, but it turns out her husband had a lot of financial trouble, so the hitman goes to Plan B, which is robbing Bernthal's woman who has money for...reasons.  It was all really slow and boring and while Bernthal's acting is good, but he doesn't really do a whole lot.  Besides always having the money for your hitman ready up front, another lesson this movie teaches is that if you have a stab wound that's been bleeding, don't wear a white shirt! (2/5) (Fun Fact:  This movie follows that old Chekhov dictum about showing a captured Nazi rifle over the front desk of the motel and then using said rifle in the final act.)

Small Engine Repair:  This also stars Jon Bernthal and it likewise fooled me into thinking it would be a cheap action movie.  The first hour is Bernthal, the star/writer/director John Pollono, and some other guy telling stories about their lives in Manchester, New Hampshire that usually ends with drunken fighting.  The stories are so disjointed and there's seemingly no point to them, so I finally fast-forwarded and found out there is actually a point:  Pollono's daughter gets embarrassed on the Internet and tries to kill herself.  So he invites the preppy drug dealer to his small engine repair shop to kill him.  They show us the killing and disposing of the body...which doesn't actually happen.  They don't even kill him because he took some pictures with them on Instagram before they knocked him out and tied him up.  So what?  Sure the police might ask them questions, but all you have to do is get rid of his car and say he left.  Who's going to know?  I almost think it would be better with a second watch knowing what I do now.  But I really don't feel like it.  (1/5)

Seeking Justice:  Pluto TV's On Demand in January had some more straight-to-streaming Nic Cage movies that probably weren't on Hulu.  This one he's a teacher whose wife (January Jones) is raped.  He's visited by Guy Pearce, who represents a secret society that can kill the rapist, but in return will want a favor.  Nic reluctantly agrees and the rapist is killed.  Six months later the favor is called in and when Nic finds out the guy they want him to kill isn't a bad guy but a reporter looking into the secret society, everything starts going to shit.  There was some OK action but considering Nic's wife was the one raped they don't give her a lot to do and really she seems a lot cooler about what happened to her than he does.  At one point he steals a valet ticket and gets a cool Escalade that apparently doesn't have LoJack or any kind of fancy tracking system?  It has a DVD player and stuff but no OnStar or anything?  Otherwise it kind of drags a little before the big final set piece in an abandoned mall--I bet it was hard to find one of those. (2/5)

Vengeance:  A Love Story:  This is based on a Joyce Carol Oates story called "Rape:  A Love Story" which I'm going to guess was a bit more subtle and maybe had less of a body count.  The movie is about a woman being raped by a group of meth heads on July 4th in "Niagara Falls" (actually Georgia) which was witnessed by her 12-year-old daughter.  Nic Cage is a cop who met the woman a couple years earlier when she was out with a girlfriend and had a couple drinks with him, then gave him a probably fake number.  He happens upon the woman's daughter after the rape and takes them to the hospital.  The rapists are quickly found but when it comes time for the grand jury hearing or whatever, the sleazy defense lawyer who makes Saul Goodman look like Atticus Finch (Don Johnson) turns it into a circus that totally smears the victim, saying she offered sex for money and her daughter just didn't understand what she saw.  I think the title of the original story was supposed to go with this idea that the defense lawyer tells the criminals that a trial is really about two stories.  In this case the prosecution's story is that this is a rape while the defense's story is this is a love story--if you call drunken prostitution a love story.  After the hearing, the rapists and other people torment the victims while Nic Cage decides to murder the rapists.  So there's still some juxtaposition with the title in that it's about vengeance, but also it's a love story in that he's doing it because he loves the woman.  Anyway, the whole thing felt like a Lifetime movie with better production values. (2.5/5)

Dying of the Light:  I am 99% certain I saw this before, but I can't find a review of it on this blog or my movie review blog.  Pluto TV doesn't list the year of the movie like Hulu or Amazon, so when I put it on, I was like, "Hey, that young guy looks like Anton Yelchin."  But of course he died in 2016, so was it really him?  It was, because this movie came out in 2014.  Anyway, Nic Cage is an aging CIA agent who 20 years earlier was captured and tortured by a Muslim extremist.  Confined to a desk now and suffering early-onset dementia, Nic's character gets word from another analyst (Yelchin) that a rare drug is being shipped to someone in Mombasa.  The Muslim extremist who tortured Nic has a condition that would need that drug.  So he and the younger guy end up going to Bucharest and then Mombasa to track the guy down.  Along the way, Nic is struggling to hold it together because of the dementia that causes him to forget things and hear noises and have sudden bursts of emotion.  In what should have been the end, Nic and the Muslim extremist meet in Mombasa and the "bad guy" is so sick he can't get out of his chair to pray and Nic starts forgetting why he's there.  In the end, Nic just leaves and decides to go home.  That would have been a good enough ending for me, but I think the producers didn't think that was a strong enough ending, so they tack on some henchmen of the Muslim extremist shooting at Nic and the analyst, who is wounded, and then Nic kills the henchmen and drives back to the extremist guy's house to finally kill him.  Then he dies on the way back when he drives on the wrong side of the road.  Was that better?  I don't really think so.  Overall though it was still a decent spy thriller. (3/5)

Trespass:  This was from 2011, when Nic Cage could still work with top-flight talent like Nicole Kidman and decent talent in Ben Mendelssohn.  This could have been a cheap straight-to-streaming movie because it almost entirely takes place at a house where supposedly rich Nic, Nicole, and their daughter live when Mendelssohn, his brother, and a couple others break in to rob the place.  There are numerous twists and a lot of screaming and shooting and stabbing and lighting things on fire.  The twists made it so I never quite knew what was coming, so it was not bad overall. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  Director Joel Schumacher worked with Nic Cage and Nicole Kidman back in the 90s in 8mm and Batman Forever respectively.)

Inconceivable:  It's not a documentary on Wallace Shawn's character in The Princess Bride.  It's pretty much The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, only the babysitter turns out to be the donor for Gina Gershon and Nic Cage's kids.  Nic Cage doesn't get much to do while the rest of it isn't great because it's pretty much been done before. (2/5)

Primal:  Nic Cage is a big game hunter who captures prey to illegally sell to zoos who gets stuck on a freighter with a serial killer and a terrible CGI white jaguar.  X-Men and Taken's Famke Janssen also appears as a naval officer.  It was an ok disposable action movie. (2.5/5)

Pharma Bro:  This documentary on Hulu is not great.  The core concept is a guy moves into the building of Martin Shkreli, the guy who became known as the "Pharma Bro" and Public Enemy #1 for raising drug prices by an obscene amount.  The idea is the filmmaker wants to get close to Shkreli, but other than giving him a six-pack of beer, not a lot comes of it.  The guy making the movie doesn't really have the commitment of Michael Moore in trying to get to Shkreli or when he goes to the guy's old company.  In case you forgot about this, it does help refresh your memory.  And it should bum you out that A) Shkreli didn't go to jail for raising drug prices (like Capone, they busted him on something else) and B) there is still no law addressing what Shkreli did and C) no one lowered the price of those drugs yet.  As for why Shkreli was such an asshole, there's really no answer. (2/5)

Donut King:  It's weird that this was executive produced by Ridley Scott through his company Scott Free Films.  Maybe he likes donuts?  Anyway, did you know by the mid-80s pretty much 90% of donut shops in California were owned by Cambodians?  It's all thanks to "Ted" Ngoy, a Cambodian refugee who learned donut making, started his own shop, and then began bringing over other Cambodians and leasing shops to them.  It juxtaposes a lot of cute family stuff and animation with the horrors in Cambodia in the late 70s.  And then it starts wandering down blind alleys about other shop owners and "cronuts" and stuff like that.  To put it in order, Ngoy and his wife had a cute love story in Cambodia, fled to America, started the shop, became huge successes, but then Ngoy squandered it all gambling and having affairs.  While there are fewer Cambodian donuts shops now, there are still many with many of them being run by second- or third-generation immigrants.  I do wish it had been a little more focused in its narrative, but it's still an interesting story.  And how these immigrants work really makes me feel lazy. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  One of Ngoy's innovations was using pink boxes for donuts instead of white because it was slightly cheaper.  The pink boxes are now often seen in TV and movies when someone buys donuts.)

Over the Top:  Because they've made about 3000 references to this movie on various Rifftrax movies, I finally got around to watching it.  This is one of the movies along with Masters of the Universe that really pushed Cannon Films towards bankruptcy in the late 80s.  In this case in order to retain Sly Stallone, they had to pay an obscene amount of money.  The movie itself is OK, like a more family-friendly Rocky only with arm wrestling.  Stallone is a trucker who side hustles in arm wrestling competitions.  When his estranged son gets out of military school, he picks the kid up at his mother's behest and they go on a road trip from wherever to California or somewhere and bond.  Robert Loggia is the kid's grandpa who hates Stallone for leaving his daughter for...reasons that are never really discussed in-depth.  A couple of things the Rifftrax crew make fun of is how at the tournament the announcer keeps telling us this is a "double elimination" tournament so you have to lose twice...except apparently in the final match where the other guy who probably never lost a match only has to lose once to Stallone to lose the tournament.  The other thing is they keep saying Stallone's character's name interchangeably as Lincoln "Hawk" and "Hawks."  Anyway, it's not the worst movie ever but it's not a great movie.  (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  The soundtrack includes a song by Sly's brother Frank Stallone.  Hooray nepotism!)

Karate Kid III:  This is another Rifftrax favorite; they featured the villain Terry Silver in part of a special but I hadn't had a chance to watch the actual movie.  It is pretty lame.  The first half is Daniel and Miyagi trying to start up a bonsai tree store.  Like a lot of bad sequels, the girl from the previous movie was written out off-screen and a new love interest brought in.  Anyway, Terry Silver is such a scene-chewing over-the-top villain that even Mr. Burns or Blofeld would tell him to tone it down a little.  I was surprised to find out they were actually using him in that Cobra Kai show; this seems like the kind of movie you'd want to retcon out of existence.  (2/5) (Fun Facts:  Paula Abdul did the dance choreography.  There was also a note that they got the permission of DC Comics to use the title "The Karate Kid."  I guess they probably had a character called that in the 70s or something?)

Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies:  After some blather about #metoo this is a surprisingly well-organized documentary that provides what the title says:  a history of nudity in the movies from some of the very first films in the 1870s showing naked people exercising all the way to 50 Shades of Grey.  It talks with historians, film critics, and actors including Malcolm McDowell, Eric Roberts, Sean Young, Mamie Van Dorn, and many more!  If you want the skinny (pun intended) nudity was hardly seen in American movies from the mid-30s until the early 60s and then through the 80s there was a lot more of it until it just sort of leveled off.  This mostly deals with mainstream movies, not the porn industry and mostly American movies, though some foreign films are thrown in for comparison.  And yes, there is nudity in this--a lot of it.  But it's all really tasteful.  Wink. (3/5)

Red Penguins:  This documentary is about Russia after the Soviet Union broke up.  The vaunted Red Army hockey team (the one Americans beat in the "Miracle on Ice" in 1980) was in dire straits because everything was so chaotic.  The Pittsburgh Penguins ownership came in to help run the team in part so they could get access to the great Russian players.  A young Jewish guy from New York was sent over there to run the team they renamed the "Red Penguins" as an amalgamation of the Red Army and Pittsburgh Penguins.  The American guy pulled a lot of stunts like circus bears serving beer on the ice and "cheerleaders" stripping on the ice to bring crowds in and introduce capitalism to the Russians.  But the venture ran into problems when the Russian mob started to get involved.  As someone who's watched hockey it was interesting, but it was one of those that skips around, making it confusing when things were taking place.  (3/5)

Rick & Morty Season 5:  I like Rick & Morty but I'm not one of those superfans.  For me this season was OK.  The episodes that actually had some emotional weight were good while the episodes that were mostly just random crap happening weren't as good.  One decent episode has Morty falling in love with "Planetina" a female Captain Planet whose grown "kids" are exploiting her for profit until Morty steps in.  But their love is not meant to be because Morty is not as hard-ass about the environment.  Another one is a spoof of Voltron, Goodfellas, and Scarface as Rick completes a Voltron-type team of robot ferrets and then starts building tons of copies and selling them.  The Voltron parts were fun but the other stuff was kinda meh.  The final episode was a downer as after breaking up the previous episode, Rick & Morty reunite in the "Citadel" a center of Ricks and Morties in the multiverse or whatever.  It was the kind of episode where if you really cared and kept all this shit together in your head it would be better.  I don't know; maybe this show has already peaked. (3/5)

Supervized:  This indie movie shot in Ireland stars Tom Berenger, Louis Gossett Jr, and Beau Bridges as aged superheroes living in a nursing home catering to former superheroes.  When one of their friends is stripped of his powers and dies, the former heroes have to uncover and stop what's going on.  Though in the end they don't really accomplish much as the bad guy dies on her own, though I suppose it is because she kind of OD'd on their superpowers.  Anyway, it's not a bad movie but it's the sort with a bigger budget it probably would have been able to do more. (3/5)

I Want You Back:  This Amazon Prime movie stretches a sitcom premise into 2 hours.  When Charlie Day and Jenny Slate get dumped by their significant others, they form a two-person support group and then decide to break up their former significant others.  Day befriends Slate's ex (Scott Eastwood) while Slate tries to seduce Day's ex's new boyfriend.  There are some extra complications thrown in to make it too long because you know what's going to happen, though there's no big kiss on the Empire State Building or anything like that.  There are a few laughs but it was not great. (2/5) (Fun Facts:  The climax involves the main characters flying from Savannah, GA to Atlanta, GA, which is about 250 miles, so they could have easily driven there in a few hours; with security and all that it would have taken about the same amount of time to just drive there.  Gotham's Ben McKenzie has a small part as a girl's dad for some reason; maybe he was married to or friends with someone in the production?)

Killers Anonymous:  In the past I've talked about how a movie like Smokin' Aces so desperately wants to be a Tarantino movie that it was kinda sad.  In this case, the movie desperately wants to be something like a Shane Black movie or Bad Times at the El Royle that it's just kinda sad.  And unlike that movie they could only afford two notable actors:  Jessica Alba, who's basically killed before the end of the credits, and Gary Oldman, who mostly talks on the phone and looks through binoculars.  So mostly you have nobodies playing hired killers who have a support group and while the premise sounds like it should be funny, it doesn't really turn out to be.  In the end it's not a bad movie but it never quite becomes a good movie even with various twists and turns. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  In one of my previous mega Stuff I Watched entries I mentioned Max Cloud, which was directed by the director of this.)

The Big Ugly:  The title does not refer to stars Vinnie Jones or Ron Perlman, though it really could.  Malcolm McDowell is a British crime boss and Jones his top enforcer.  They go to "West Virginia" (actually Kentucky) where Perlman is searching for oil.  The idea is the mob will fund the venture to clean its money, which will give Perlman the capital to operate.  Everyone wins, right?  But then the problem is Jones passes out and his young black girlfriend goes out with Perlman's son, who ends up killing her.  It's sort of like Road to Perdition or John Wick then as a guy seeking revenge blows everything up because the boss (Perlman in this case) is too intent on protecting his idiot son.  But in this case it works less well because the setting is too small so it's really not that hard to track the idiot son down and get to him.  It would have worked better if they had been in London, but that would have cost more.  It really could have been more exciting but maybe most of the stars are too old. (2.5/5)

This Was the XFL:  On Super Bowl Sunday it seemed appropriate to watch this 30 for 30 documentary on the XFL's rise and fall.  In the late 90s NBC lost its NFL contract and its sports president teamed with his buddy Vince McMahon of the WWE to create a new football league.  The problem is McMahon and his crew created a lot of hype but kind of neglected the actual product; they didn't even have any teams or players until about 2 months before kickoff.  There wasn't time for much training or bonding, so the first week it was pretty sloppy.  And some of the rule changes from the NFL didn't work out, like having guys scrambling for the ball instead of a coin flip--that led to a number of people getting hurt.  A lot of coaches and players also didn't really want to do the whole WWE reality TV thing either.  Viewership continued waning and hardly anyone attended or watched the "Million Dollar Game" to determine the championship.  But some of the technology like the "Sky Cam" and mic'ing up players became part of NFL broadcasts.  It was pretty interesting though not extremely hard-hitting because the filmmaker was the son of the NBC Sports guy.  (3/5) (Fun Facts:  At the end it says XFL MVP Tommy Maddox "won" Super Bowl XL in Detroit; in reality he was on the bench after losing his job to Ben Roethlisberger a couple years earlier.  Pittsburgh wide receiver Antwan Randle-El threw more passes in that game than Maddox.  Former XFL player Paris Lennon won a Super Bowl with Denver after a stop with the Lions.  Which was worse:  the XFL or Lions?)

30 for 30:  Scabs:  I actually forget the title of this at the moment.  Anyway, it was about the 1987 NFL strike that led to replacement players playing for 3 weeks.  It mostly focuses on the Washington Football Team as they won their games, including a crucial game against Dallas that was sort of David vs Goliath as Dallas had most of its regulars back by then.  A few of the players managed to stay around, but didn't get Super Bowl rings after Washington won it that season; they eventually got rings in 2018.  It talked to a number of the players but it's the sort of documentary that really could have been a 10 minute YouTube video or just a segment on SportsCenter. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  The Keanu Reeves movie The Replacements was very, very loosely based on this story.)

30 for 30:  Al Davis vs the NFL:  Really this should have been called Al Davis vs. Pete Rozelle because it only focuses on Davis, the owner of the Raiders, and Rozelle, the commissioner of the NFL from like 1960-1990.  Their "rivalry" wasn't really that electric because it was just through lawyers and other proxies.  I mean they weren't having it out in public or fighting in the street.  The biggest bone of contention was when Davis wanted to move from Oakland to Los Angeles in 1980 and Rozelle wouldn't let him.  A couple years later it did happen after the Raiders deadlocked in the first trial and won the second.  Then like 10 years later (after Rozelle retired) they moved back to Oakland.  After Davis's death, his son moved the team to Las Vegas.  Anyway, for some largely pointless reason they use "deepfake" to create zombies of Rozelle and Davis.  The Davis zombie looks like Mickey Rourke is playing him, which probably would have been better.  Since this was a couple years ago and wasn't ILM doing Luke Skywalker for The Mandalorian it looks weird and there was really no point to it.  (2/5) (Fun Fact:  An interesting 30 for 30 would be a full episode on the tiny Los Angeles suburb that gave Al Davis $10 million to put the team there on the site of a gravel pit.  The $10 million was nonrefundable and so the town lost the money and the team.  I'd like to hear more about how that went down and the fallout.)

30 for 30:  Mike and the Mad Dog:  I only watched this episode because it's a short one at about 55 minutes, not 90-120 minutes like some others.  It's the origin of sports talk radio!  At least modern sports talk radio where you have 2-3 guys yelling at each other and dumb people calling in.  It started in the late 80s with Mike Francesca and Chris "Mad Dog" Russo on the new sports talk station WFAN in New York.  It was like a less cordial Siskel & Ebert where the two guys didn't really get along that well but did a show together for 20 years.  If this had been longer maybe it could have gotten into some more of the conflicts.  In 2009, by the time social media and "cancel culture" were really getting started, they broke up with Mike staying on WFAN and "Mad Dog" going to Sirius XM.  I don't listen to talk radio so I wasn't extremely into it and I have to say this probably didn't help the culture much more than Rush Limbaugh. (2.5/5)

American Dad Seasons 15-16:  When I started watching this show many years ago I really liked it because even though Seth MacFarlane co-created and stars in it, it's not just a rehash of Family Guy.  Most of the XMas episodes are still the best of any of those animated shows because they're just so crazy and hilarious.  But like Family Guy, The Simpsons, and South Park I think it's past that tipping point where it's just not that good anymore.  It's still good for a few laughs, but it's definitely jumped the shark.  Like those other shows I don't know if this will ever get cancelled because it's on TBS, so it's not like you need huge ratings to be considered "doing well" there; they're basically a big fish in a small pond since moving from Fox. (2/5)

Robot Chicken Season 11:  Speaking of, when I had some discount codes on Amazon I bought season 11 of this show.  With season 10 I complained that I was outgrowing the show or it was outgrowing me as a lot of the references were going over my head.  And that continues here where references to things like Hey Arnold (2 sketches even) don't resonate with an 80s kid like me.  There was a baffling sketch that went on too long about a pig boy going to a prom and I have no idea if that was a reference to something or an original but it was just not funny.  The Halloween special was pretty good.  Like American Dad's Christmas special it featured a Groundhog Day-type time loop as the nerdy kid has to try to get Halloween right.  Increasingly I feel like Captain America in the first Avengers where there's so much stuff that I don't get so that when there is a reference I understand, I'm so relieved and shout, "I get that reference!"  There was a really good sketch that features Dilbert and starts off as a Die Hard parody but then turns into a great joke about Dilbert's creator and what a piece of shit he is.  So there are still some good bits but like American Dad and those other shows I mentioned it probably needs cancelled at this point but also like American Dad it's still a big fish in a small pond so I don't know when that might ever happen. (2/5)

***

BTW, watching so many Nic Cage movies, I wondered if I could do an A to Z Challenge on it.  I looked it up on IMDB but I would have to fudge a few letters like Q, Y, and X, though there was a Z.  What a shame.  I'm sure people would love that.

Here's the rough draft of my list:

• Adaptation
• Bad Lieutenant Port of Call New Orleans
• Con Air
• Dying of the Light
• 8(Eight)mm 
• Face/Off
• Ghost Rider
• Humanity Bureau, The
• It Could Happen to You
• Joe
• Kick-Ass
• Leaving Las Vegas
• Matchstick Men
• National Treasure
• Outcast
• Pig
• Q?
• Raising Arizona
• Snake Eyes
• Trapped in Paradise
• USS Indianapolis
• Vengeance: A Love Story
• Weather Man, The
• X?
• Y?
• Zandalee

I think I have seen all of those except USS Indianapolis and Zandalee.