Stuff I Watched

 The final stuff I watched before the A to Z Challenge begins!

Vengeance (Not A Love Story):  I added the subtitle to differentiate it from the Nic Cage movie a few years ago.  This 2022 movie starring The Office's BJ Novak is about Ben, a New York guy who gets a call one night from the brother of a girl Ben hooked up with.  He says the girl died in her hometown in Texas and wants Ben to come out for the funeral.  Since he doesn't want to tell the brother that it was just a meaningless hookup, Ben goes to Texas.  While the death was reported as an overdose, the brother thinks it was murder and wants to avenge her.  Ben starts to make it into a podcast called "Dead White Girl."  But as he spends time with the girl's family and friends, he starts learning more about the culture down there.  There's some comedy, but probably not as much as you might expect.  There are also some poignant moments and kind of real talk about the divide between red states and blue states.  Ashton Kutcher's soliloquy about that old trope of the hero getting the villain on tape rings pretty true when you consider we had someone elected president who was caught on tape saying he grabbed women by the pussy.  It's just another reason that trope needs to be retired from movies, TV, and books. (3/5) (Fun Fact: Talking about blue states and red states made me think of this Dan Bern song: )

The Old Man, Season 1:  This FX series stars Jeff Bridges as a former CIA agent who disappeared after the first war involving America in Afghanistan--the one where Osama bin Laden was a "good guy."  About 35 years later he's widowed and living alone and at first you think the show will be about him struggling with dementia or something.  But soon he and his two Rottweilers go on the run from his former handler John Lithgow.  And at that point you might think the show is about him trying to get away and rid himself of his former bosses like the Bourne movies.  But wait, there's more!  There's unfinished business with a guy in Afghanistan and a daughter who it turns out is a daughter in a way to three different guys in the show.  By that I mean one is the biological father, one raised her in her early years, and the other mentored her during her career.  Who is who?  Watch to find out!  There are a lot of twists and turns and there's some action though it's not as frantic as a Bond or Bourne movie, because these main characters are in their 70s, so come on, what can you expect?  There are a lot of plot threads and I was surprised when it ends on a cliffhanger because I just assumed this was a one-off.  But FX is gambling that its elderly stars will still be alive this year for another season.

The thing that most annoyed me (besides the cliffhanger) is that it often switches place and time without telling you where or when things are.  While the first episode is mostly in the present, subsequent episodes start flashing back to Afghanistan in the 80s and about the only clue you have is there's a younger guy who obviously isn't Jeff Bridges.  They couldn't just pop some text on the screen saying, "Afghanistan, Then" or something like that?  Otherwise it can be disorienting for a few minutes, especially when they don't show characters up close at first.  I'm just saying. (3.5/5)

Black Adam:  I finally watched this when I accidentally got a Vudu gift card from the Movie House app instead of an Amazon one.  So this was only $1.  It was worth that at least.  Actually it wasn't bad.  It might have been better if it had focused on Black Adam instead of shoehorning the Justice Society in there.  (Like Eternals, putting the JSA in there just makes you wonder where the hell they were during all the other stuff of the DCU.)  But Pierce Brosnan as Dr. Fate does lend some gravitas to the thing.  The two kids (Cyclone and Atom Smasher) were underdeveloped while they hardly did anything with Hawkman's backstory, which since he's existed since the 40s is pretty intricate by now.  

When they get to Black Adam's real origin story it was a good and touching twist that made me think they should have focused more on that kind of material than setting up sequels and crossovers that likely will never happen.  It also explained why he was so protective of the one kid.  Most of the plot is about Teth Adam being awakened after like 4600 years and fighting Intergang, who have taken over the country of Kahndaq.  There's also a crown that creates the demonic creature Sabbac, who's like an evil version of Shazam.  While the JSA at first try to arrest Black Adam, they have to team up against Sabbac--your basic Peter Griffin Bigger Jaws plot.  If you like superhero movies you'd probably like this and if you don't then you probably won't. (3/5) (Fun Facts:  I was surprised to learn Aldis Hodge plays Hawkman because in the crime caper show Leverage he was always the dorky computer hacker who can't fight and in this movie he's all buff and stuff.  He also has a mansion with an underground lair that a cool plane rises up out of like Charles Xavier.  As most people already know, the cookie scene was the final appearance of Henry Cavill as Superman.  The scene then really contributes nothing; really they should have done something with Zachary Levi's Shazam since he's Black Adam's traditional rival and his movie is the next one up.  They could have done both with the Shazam one as like an end credits cookie scene where maybe he--or Billy Batson--sees something on the news or gets a message from the wizard or something like that.)

Black Panther:  Wakanda Forever:  The Black Panther franchise was dealt a serious blow when star Chadwick Boseman died in 2020 from cancer.  Some people suggested they just recast the role, but I agreed with the other side that they should continue--for at least one movie.  Unfortunately that movie was this movie.  What was probably needed was a serious meditation on what the Black Panther means to Wakanda and how they can go on without it.  And how T'Challa's family can go on without him.  But that wouldn't sell much merchandise, would it?  So we have to cram a bunch of stuff in there to move the Marvel agenda along.  There's the unpronounceable underwater kingdom ruled by a mostly unrecognizable Namor.  And there's Riri Williams, aka "Ironheart" who has existed in the Marvel Comics universe for about 5 minutes but for some reason needs crammed into an already packed movie.  This really fails to invoke the hope, optimism, and just outright coolness of Wakanda in the first movie.  Shuri is especially done a disservice as instead of the smart, sassy sidekick of the first movie she's shoved into the spotlight but mostly mopes around first because of her brother's death and then her mother's.  The whole thing is a dreary slog that mostly fails to connect on an emotional level.  Probably the most emotional moment is when instead of the self-indulgent Marvel logo they use entirely footage of Chadwick Boseman's T'Challa.  There's another decent moment later when again they show T'Challa as his sister grieves for him.  But for some reason they never use his voice.  

I have to say that even the unpronounceable underwater kingdom isn't as good as what DC did in Aquaman, which itself was largely creating an underwater Wakanda.  And there's something kind of disturbing about Wakanda going to war with essentially an underwater counterpart full of blue people.  If you think about it, they've never had Wakanda fight white people.  First it was essentially a civil war.  Then against Thanos's monsters.  And now against the less rabbity Na'Vi people.  Kind of think someone at Disney is concerned about offending racists by having white people be the villains against black people.  Or maybe concerned about giving black people the idea they could defeat white people.  Maybe I'm overthinking it. 

And something that occurred to me later:  what about "the Blip?"  T'Challa was "dead" for 5 years already when Thanos killed him and billions of others at the end of Infinity War.  So in that 5 years, Wakanda would already have been without him and the Black Panther.  So why is everyone acting like this is a new thing they're totally unprepared for?  Why doesn't anyone lament how unfair it was that he came back to life only to die again?  It makes no sense!  (2/5) (Fun Fact:  the mid-credits cookie scene decides we need to cram in a secret son of T'Challa with Nakia.  I guess they just didn't feel the need to mention this at all in essentially 2 movies.  Yeah, sure, real believable.  Eye roll.)

Babylon:  the more apt title might have been:  Degradation in Early Hollywood.  If Marquis de Sade had been able to write about early Hollywood, it might have looked like this.  In the first half-hour we have elephant diarrhea, a golden shower, a pile of coke, tons of nudity, a woman singing about stroking her lover's pussy, and lots more debauchery.  This is in 1926 and we meet the main characters at a movie studio head's party:  Jack (Brad Pitt) is a big star, Nellie (Margot Robbie) is a girl from Jersey who wants to be a star, Manuel immigrated from Spain to work in the magic of movies but is only an assistant, and Sidney is a black jazz musician yet to make it big.  Manuel helps Nellie into the party, where she winds up getting a part in a movie while Jack hires Manuel as his new assistant.  Soon Nellie is a silent movie starlet and Manuel becomes more involved in the business.  But the "talkies" ruin Jack and Nellie's careers while Manuel becomes a studio exec and Sidney becomes a star.  But even success kinda sucks.  At one point, Manuel has to convince Sidney to basically wear black face for the movie he's working on.  The idea being that even though minorities could have money and a title, they still didn't have respect.  The very sluggish ending kills two characters while the other two sink back into obscurity.  For all the debauchery it gets pretty dull.  Not a lot of new ground is covered unless you're not really familiar with Hollywood history. (2/5) (Fun Fact:  Tobey Maguire produces the movie and appears as a drug kingpin near the end.)

Downsized:  I had this on my Hulu queue for a while but never got around to watching it.  Then I saw it on Paramount+ and gave it a look--and wished I hadn't.  The concept is the sort reserved for wacky comedies like Honey I Shrunk the Kids:  a Norwegian scientist invents a device that can make people 5 inches tall (about the size of an action figure) and so Matt Damon gets this done.  Hilarity ensues?  Nope.  Instead we're treated to a lot of ham-fisted social commentary about class warfare and climate change.  You know something is up when early on Matt Damon's wife (Kristen Wiig) bails on him when they're supposed to get shrunk.  So instead of a couple trying to navigate this new world, we have Matt Damon moping around until we awkwardly introduce the love interest:  a shrill Vietnamese house cleaner with one leg.  Yay?  Anyway, while well made by Alexander Payne, who previously made movies like About Schmidt, Election, Sideways, and Nebraska and with a good cast also including Christoph Waltz and Jason Sudeikis, the movie takes a fun idea and then mutes it all to dull gray sludge.  It reminded me of Being John Malkovich that had a fun concept but immediately took it to the nasty sex stuff and so wound up not being as fun as you'd think. I have to partially blame myself for not looking close enough but also probably the film's marketing that probably just used the few fun parts in the trailers. (2/5)

Mayor of Kingstown, Season 2:  The first season introduced the city of Kingstown, Michigan, where incarceration is a big business and Mike McClusky (Jeremy Renner) takes over his family business of doing favors for family and friends of those inside the prisons.  But things start going south until there's a riot that basically destroys one prison.  Season 2 picks up after that with the prison inmates being cooped up in tents while violence floods the streets.  In a desperate attempt to restore order, Mike has the leaders of the main gangs in the city go to prison to work out a peace.  But when the leaders aren't released like they're supposed to, things start going south again.  Meanwhile, the evil kingpin Milo is out and looking for millions he hid before going to prison.  And Iris, the hooker Mike loves, dumps him to go work in one of Milo's brothels.  It's not as good as the first season but still has plenty of twists and turns with a lot of gunplay and other violence and gritty drama.  I'm not sure if or when a season 3 might happen since Renner's real-life injuries in a snow plow accident. If it ever happens, there are still loose ends that can be tied up. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  I think the writers must have listened to people like me saying there's no death penalty in Michigan because there are no mentions of Death Row or anything in this season.)

Ka-Bluey!:  This was I guess you could say an absurdist indie comedy from 2006 I watched on the Movie House app.  A socially awkward guy (the writer/director) goes to live with his sister-in-law (Lisa Kudrow) when her husband is sent to Iraq.  She has two extremely bratty bordering on psychopathic boys that he sorta helps with.  Then she gets him a job at a failing Internet startup.  They have him dress up in a mascot costume that looks sort of like if you painted Marvin from Hitchhiker's Guide all blue.  For some reason they drive him out by a field to hand out fliers for office space.  I mean, wouldn't you want him to stand on a busy corner or something in a city?  That's where the absurdist part comes in.  Watching this I kept waiting for something to really happen but while his struggles with the costume are kind of amusing, there's not a lot that happens until the end when he teams up with a grocery store cheese mascot to take down Lisa Kudrow's cheating boss (Jeffrey Dean Morgan).  Then it sorta ends with a whimper.  Some animated segments during the credits are actually a lot more entertaining than the movie itself.  I think it's the kind of movie that just needed to lean into something instead of just kind of wandering around for most of the 90-ish minutes. (2.5/5) (Fun Facts:  Chris Parnell of Archer and Rick & Morty appears as someone named Frank and a fat Teri Garr appears a few times as a former employee who freaks out whenever she sees the blue mascot by the road.)

Schitt's Creek:  I watched the first episode on the CW app a couple years ago and wasn't overly impressed so I never got around to watching it until last January when I just wanted something for about a half-hour that I hadn't seen before.  So I started watching it and it was better than the first time.  It's like a nicer, Canadian, soapier Arrested Development as the wealthy Rose family loses everything and has to go live in the eponymous town, which they own.  They get put up in the local motel and then try to make something for themselves.  Some episodes are better than others as you'd expect.  There's a little less zaniness than Arrested Development and a little more relationship drama, which usually isn't too bad.  A couple of episodes it seemed they had too much going on though.  In one the local waitress is holding a murder mystery party but no one wants to go until Moira, the Rose family matriarch, gets people to go.  And then...we really don't see anything of the party to know how it worked out.  Similarly in another episode Moira is going to do a number to raise money for asbestos removal and eventually her son David agrees to help.  They start doing a Christmas number and...the episode just ends.  In those cases it seems like a lot of build-up for no real payoff, mostly because they juggle too many plotlines with the 4 members of the Rose family. And when Alexis goes back to finish high school, why would she go to school with the kids and not take adult night classes to get a GED?  Even a small place like Schitt's Creek and its neighboring Elmdale probably have adult ed classes.  I thought at the end they would sell the town or maybe find a buyer and keep it or maybe sell it to the townspeople, but instead there's no mention of them owning the town after season 1.  Really after the first season it becomes less about their struggles to survive in the small town and more about the relationship drama of the two kids.  (3/5) (Fun Facts:  The show was created by Eugene Levy and his son Daniel, who plays his pansexual son David in the show.  Moira is played by Catherine O'Hara who besides the Home Alone movies also appeared in a few Christopher Guest movies with Eugene Levy.)

Welcome to Flatch, Season 2:  I watched the first season last spring and it was OK but not great.  Not really a very believable story of life in a small town but it had some funny moments.  I was surprised it even got a season 2 because mid-mid-season replacements rarely get renewed.  Anyway, this season kicked things up a notch by adding Jaime Pressley as Barb Flatch, a distant relative of the town's founders.  She was supposed to be a bigshot in high school and then went to Florida and returns to start a real estate business.  Kelly, one of the main characters from last year, becomes her protégé while her cousin Shrub seems to find his father in Louisville.  There's also relationship drama between Father Joe and the town reporter who also has a bunch of chickens.  Overall I think it was a step forward.  It's not as good as Parks & Rec yet but it's an OK diversion for half-an-hour. (3/5)

Animal Control:  I'm not sure if this took Flatch's time slot, but I think it's on the same night Flatch was.  Anyway, this show stars Joel McHale, who I've liked since The Soup days on E! but he's never really found a good starring vehicle for his talents.  Even Community, which was supposed to be built around him, he got upstaged by Abed and Troy.  This still might not be that starring vehicle but it's not a bad show.  As you'd expect, it's about animal control officers in Seattle.  McHale is the grizzled veteran who gets a new partner in "Shred," a former snowboarding champion.  There are some funny encounters with wildlife and office pranks.  It's one of those shows that's probably not as good as it could be just yet.  Like Flatch, Schitt's Creek, or Ghosts on CBS it's the kind of show I'll just watch if I need something to fill a half-hour here or there but wouldn't really make the time or effort to watch it live. (3/5)

Happily:  Speaking of Joel McHale, he stars in this indie light drama.  McHale and his wife are a couple madly in love with each other even after 14 years.  It really pisses off all their "friends."  Then one day a weird guy (Stephen Root) shows up with a briefcase containing two syringes and claims he's going to make them "normal."  Instead, the wife kills him and they bury the guy in the woods.  Then they go to a rich guy's house where they and their friends are going to spend the weekend.  Some mild mayhem ensues.  The end is pretty disappointing as it doesn't really tell us a lot about who Stephen Root's character really is or what the deal with the syringes is or anything.  And there are a bunch of guns shown in the house but only one gets any use, kind of bucking that old adage.  Anyway, I guess this wasn't a great star vehicle for McHale either.  Or anyone else. (2.5/5)

Lies & Illusions:  I guess the other title could have been:  Gender Swapped True Lies On 1/1000th the Budget.  Shot in Spokane, Washington, it stars Christian Slater as a self-help book writer whose wife seems to die.  A year later he finds out she was a thief and a bunch of bad people (including Cuba Gooding Jr) wants some diamonds and a list of bad guys she has hidden in a safe deposit box.  Some cheap mayhem ensues!  It was about as good as your average Nic Cage or Bruce Willis straight-to-streaming/Redbox movie only it mostly predates those as being made in 2009. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  I went to Spokane in 2014 but I think I missed a lot of the locations in this movie.)

MST3K Season 13:  After 2 seasons on Netflix, Mystery Science Theater 3000 Kickstartered its own streaming service called the "Gizmoplex."  Which I really had no interest in.  I mean they were doing 13 episodes but otherwise the classic episodes are on Pluto TV, Tubi, or other places and I own a lot of the really good ones on DVD or streaming through the Rifftrax app.  Anyway, this season came to Pluto TV in March and so I watched it free with ads.  Instead of one host, this season has 3: original host Joel Hodgson, Netflix host Jonah Ray, and recent live touring company host Emily Marsh.  A chunk of the intermission (or before and after) sketch time then is given to setting up the arrival of Joel and Emily, who each have their own SOL.

What really makes something like this (or Rifftrax) are the movies and when it comes to that I'm kind of a snob.  I like the ones from the 80s-2010s mostly because those are usually the worst of the worst.  I mean a movie from the 50s or 60s (even Ed Wood movies) are of course going to be lame because they're so old.  So the ones like Santo vs Dracula (or whatever it was called), The Bubble, and The Mask (1961) were pretty boring.  About all The Batwoman (no relation to the 1990s episode The Wild, Wild World of Batwoman) had going for it was the titular character (who puts the tit in titular!) who looked like if Yvonne Craig's Batgirl costume had just been Adam West's cowl and underwear.  Gamera vs Jiger was just another Gamera movie; if you saw any of them after the first one you've seen this one.  I literally fell asleep during Beyond Atlantis, another early 70s Filipino movie "starring" John Wayne's son.  And there were two already done by Rifftrax a few years ago, neither of which was that much fun to start with.  The Shape of Things to Come on Rifftrax was mostly funny for a couple of sassy captions, which obviously were not in the MST3K version.

The standouts to me then are the newer ones.  There are two Full Moon pictures, they being the studio who brought me such great films like the Puppet Master, Dollman, and Subspecies series as well as Shrunken Heads and the two Oblivion movies I actually like.  The first is Robot Wars, which is like the spiritual sequel no one wanted to the really lame Robot Jox.  The effects are still terrible and the story and acting are even worse!  Also, like Future War or War for the Planet of the Apes, there's not really much of A war, let alone several wars that would necessitate a plural.  The more interesting one is Doctor Mordrid, which was supposed to be a Dr. Strange movie, until the rights reverted back to Marvel during production.  Undeterred by this, Full Moon honcho Charles Band just changed the names and stuff slightly and then has the gall to claim it as an "original idea."  Jeffrey Combs of Reanimator and various Star Trek shows stars as Strange Mordrid who has to stop an evil wizard and does so in a pretty easy way.  In the process he hooks up with a police consultant who was Robocop's partner on the short-lived Canadian TV series.

Another one from the 90s was Munchie, a "family" movie with Dom Deluise voicing the annoying creature Munchie who's like a cross between Alf and the Genie from Aladdin.  A bored Loni Anderson co-stars as the mom of a kid who releases the annoying creature.  To use a Rifftrax burn, it makes me miss the quiet dignity of Mac n Me.

Those were from the 90s but there are two far more recent ones.  Demon Squad is listed as coming from 2019.  As I said on Facebook, your movie must suck if it's on MST3K only 3 years later.  I mean MST3K and Rifftrax can't afford to shell out a lot for these movies so they mostly use public domain ones.  This is the kind of movie you might see on the Movie House app as it's a really low budget urban fantasy about a PI battling demons wearing obvious rubber masks.  The ultimate monster actually uses the same mask as the main bad guy in the even lamer sci-fi movie Star Raiders.  If it had more money it might have been at least tolerable.  The final episode of the season is The Christmas Dragon from 2014 that isn't that bad except for the pretty bad CGI dragons.  And obviously there's not much acting talent.  Basically a group of orphans rescue a dragon and use it to save Christmas.  Hooray!

Overall it wasn't a bad season.  The three hosts thing was fine, though it got a little confusing in the first Joel episode because they use Emily's Tom and Crow, who have different voices from Jonah's Tom and Crow and then Joel changes Tom's voice to original Tom Servo voice J Elvis Weinstein.  But then it changes back for the rest of the season.  For me sometimes it got confusing too in that I don't know all these riffers that well so sometimes I wasn't sure if they were speaking or a character in the movie was speaking.

Looking it up on Google, I guess they have funding for a season 14, so that should probably start this year, though I don't really know who will be doing it.  While you don't really have to choose between this and Rifftrax, my loyalty is with Rifftrax because they have a lot of great bad movies and also not having all the skits and stuff makes it easy to rewatch the movies.  I mean sometimes I just want to watch a bad movie like Future War without all the sketches and stuff, most of which to be honest aren't that great.  The Rifftrax format lets you just get right to the movie, sort of like eating the filling of an Oreo first.  Also, Rifftrax doesn't have end credits for itself that go on for almost 10 minutes.  (3.5/5) (Fun Fact:  The only one from Rifftrax who appears in this season of MST3K is Mary Jo Pehl as Pearl Forrester.  She's the only cast member who gets to walk between worlds as part of MST3K, Rifftrax, and Cinematic Titanic.)

Suburbanite:  I watched this on the Movie House app one night.  It's a lower-than-low budget movie that is actually fairly watchable because unlike, say, Birdemic, Demon Squad, or Jurassic Shark on the Rifftrax app, it doesn't try to overreach and turn into a big-budget blockbuster.  Instead, like the much better The Outfit, it's more like a play in that it mostly takes place in one guy's house.  One night Guy 1 hires a corrupt cop to kill his wife.  Walking home drunk, he's hit by Guy 2, who takes him back to his garage.  Guy 1 is still alive but Guy 2 can't bring himself to kill him or take him to the hospital.  Then there are twists and turns, most of which aren't that bad.  So like I said, it's pretty watchable.  It'd be better if it had had the money for big stars and better sets and stuff. (3/5)

Australiens:  Another lower-than-low budget movie on the Movie House app.  This is sort of like Shaun of the Dead except it's in Australia, involves an alien invasion instead of zombies, and was made for probably 1/100,000th the budget.  Basically aliens invade Australia and a band of not-too-bright young people try to foil the aliens.  It's funny at parts and maybe more fun if you're Australian to understand some of the jokes like why the main character hates Tasmania so much that she literally has it wiped off the map.  If you can ignore the not-great acting and bad effects it's pretty amusing. (3/5)

Displacement:  A less low-budget movie also on the Movie House app.  It's about an attractive redhead who finds herself unstuck in time.  Her boyfriend ends up dead and some other bad stuff and she realizes she's the cause as she figured out how to travel back in time.  The "timeslips" keep taking their toll on her and she tries to find some way to stop it all from happening.  Unlike the previous two movies the effects were better and there were more professional actors like Bruce Davison, who was in the original X-Men and tons of other stuff.  Anyway, it's not bad.  Maybe not as smart as Primer but with more action.  And it avoids some of the time travel cliches.  It'd probably be good to watch it two or three times just to figure it all out.  Also, did I mention it stars an attractive redhead?  (3/5)

Silver Wolf:  This is one of the more professional movies on the Movie House app.  It's a 1999 TV movie starring Michael Biehn and Roy Scheider.  A teenage boy's father dies in a skiing accident and he moves to upper Washington with his forest ranger uncle (Biehn).  There he finds a wounded wolf he calls "Silver" and rehabs it.  Scheider is a rancher who wants to kill the wolf, so the boy has to save it with the help of a girl he meets at school who is also Scheider's daughter, though grandfather might have been more appropriate at this point.  It's family-friendly wholesome entertainment that unlike a lot of the stuff on that app has pretty good production values. (3/5)

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