Stuff I Watched Last Year

 Happy New Year (again?)!

Here's stuff I watched in November and December, which probably isn't a lot with watching holiday movies and all that.

The Last of Us:  That I binged this whole series in the previous two days is in part because Disney foolishly hoarded the college football games on only ESPN and also because it's really good.  Based on a video game I never played, it's about a present in which a fungus began turning humans into violent creatures 20 years ago--or 2003--and since then humanity has survived in various "Quarantine Zones" or scattered in small pockets to avoid "the Infected" and--often worse--human raiders.

Ellie is a girl in Boston who seems to be immune to the fungus.  Joel is a former soldier and father who's tasked with taking Ellie out west, where he also hopes to find his brother.  Along the way they have to avoid Infected, deal with various humans, and ultimately bond through tragedy.

A lot of people would probably compare this to The Walking Dead but I prefer to think of The Girl With All the Gifts in that it involved more of a fungal infection and featured a seemingly special girl who's accompanied by normal humans on a much shorter journey before having to make a decision that could affect the future of humanity.  Like the book of that at least I really enjoyed it.  In this case Ellie and Joel play off each other great with Ellie bringing back Joel's humanity and Joel guiding Ellie through some tough times.

Though really the two best episodes don't involve the main story that much.  The first details the relationship of Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank.  Bill is a survivalist who builds up his own little fortress only to have Frank to show up one day--and basically never leave.  Of course in this world there has to be a tragic ending.  The other episode is about Ellie and her friend Riley sneaking into an old mall to have some fun--until everything goes south.  These are some great character moments.

Anyway, as far as video game adaptations go, this is the best I've seen.  It might help I never played the game, but it does seem pretty popular otherwise.  (4/5) (Fun Facts:  The Bill & Frank episode features a montage with "On the Nature of Daylight," a piece of music that I really like that's been in movies like Arrival and Shutter Island.  Episode 8 features Troy Baker as a henchman; he played Joel in the video game.  Episode 9 features Ashley Johnson as Ellie's mom; she played Ellie in the video game.)

Violent Night:  This came out in theaters for Christmas of 2022 and didn't arrive on streaming until March of 2023 so I hadn't bothered to watch it.  Then in December of 2023 it was on Amazon Prime, so I finally did watch it.  I was not really disappointed.  The high concept is:  what if John McClane of Die Hard had been Santa Claus?  Only instead of Nakatomi Plaza it's the mansion of a rich old woman (Beverly d'Angelo) who has a bunch of stolen cash in her safe.  Santa (David Harbour of Stranger Things, Black Widow, and the Hellboy reboot) is at the house to deliver gifts on Christmas Eve when he falls asleep in a massage chair.  He wakes to gunfire and when the reindeer take off, he's stuck there.

Mayhem ensues as he tries to rescue a little girl and her family--and ostensibly the old woman and the rest of her douchey relatives--from John Leguizamo and his holiday character-named henchpeople.  Besides Die Hard, you have bits from Home Alone and an origin more along the lines of The Northman.  It's mostly fun though a bit over-the-top with the violence and gore in parts.  Because of that it shifts in tone a few times from cynical comedy to heartwarming to violent splatterfest.  But I'd add it to my list of anti-Hallmark holiday movies like Bad Santa and The Ice Harvest. (3.5/5)

A Murder in Venice:  This was Disney/Fox's second ghost movie flop in about two months after the Haunted Mansion remake in July.  About six weeks after it came out, Disney put it on Hulu so I watched it.  There are more old horror movie clichés than in the previous two Branagh Poirot movies but since it's Poirot you know there's going to be a rational explanation behind everything.  The story is that in 1947 a retired Poirot is called to an old "haunted" house for a séance with a woman's dead daughter.  The medium (Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh) is killed and then Poirot is nearly killed and much later someone else dies.  Poirot does his usual thing of talking to everyone and then putting together the clues so despite the seeming ghosts and occasional jump scares it's really not paranormal.  If you liked the old-fashioned kind of mysteries like the last two movies then this is good, though maybe not great.  While Poirot is seemingly retired, the end leaves it open for more, though I doubt it with the performance of this one. (3/5) (Fun Facts:  this is based on Agatha Christie's Halloween Party if you want to read the book.  Michelle Yeoh is only in the movie for about 15 minutes.  In the Rifftrax Live of the Vincent Price movie House on Haunted Hill, comedian Paul F Tompkins does a bit about the cliché of a monster sneaking up behind someone in the bathroom mirror; this movie uses that old cliché about 13 years later.)

Meg 2:  The Trench:  The first of WB's underwater sequels that wasn't a hit, though unlike the other one it wasn't really a flop.  I couldn't find a review of the first movie but it was OK.  This was just dull.  It spends 2/3 of the movie before it gets to Jason Statham improbably killing giant sharks and squids and tiny dinosaurs.  I guess to save money on effects, most of it focuses on some evil humans who have stationed themselves in "The Trench" to mine vibranium or unobtainium or something like that.  I'm not sure it's ever really said.  By the time it got to the stuff anyone would actually want to see, I had lost interest. (1/5) (Question:  did the Chinese lady with a daughter die in the last movie or did they kill her off-screen because she wouldn't be in this one?)

The Winter King:  I mentioned in another entry how excited I was to be able to see this.  The first two episodes were on Amazon Prime but since the rest was on MGM+ I had to wait until a deal on Black Friday to get that.  I wasn't hugely impressed but I wasn't hugely disappointed either.  Like the novel I loved in the 90s, this is a more realistic story of Arthur in Britain of the 5th Century.  A landless bastard, Arthur becomes a warlord in Gaul (France) before returning to Britain to defend the "Edling King," young Mordred, Uther's son.  This is complicated by the continuing invasion of the Saxons from Scandinavia , rivalries with other kingdoms, and his love for Guinevere.

There is also Derfel, a former Saxon slave whom Arthur saved from a "death pit" when he was a boy.  Derfel grows up with Merlin and his protégé Nimue in Avalon and then joins Arthur's band.  But soon Derfel's loyalty is tested.

It's important to note this is historical fiction and not fantasy like Game of Thrones or Rings of Power.  There are no dragons, hobbits, magic rings, or stuff like that.  It's also not Excalibur or anything like that.  There's no Holy Grail or Round Table or all that, though there is Excalibur after a fashion.  I didn't really mind all that.  What is lacking are some great battle scenes.  There's basically only one and a couple of duels.  But as I recall, there weren't a lot of the epic "shield wall" battles until late in the first book or into the second book because a lot of this first book is Derfel growing up and becoming a warrior.  Still, I think the budget probably kept them from doing a lot of big fights--yet.  Maybe they can increase the budget for a second season.

Other than a couple of annoying casting decisions I'll talk about next month, there's not much negative to say about that.  Other than Eddie Marsan in the first two episodes there aren't really any big names either, but competent acting and decent effects--when they're needed, which isn't a lot since there aren't dragons and such.  There's a little sex and relationship drama, but not as much as Game of Thrones and other than one rape not as much debauchery either.  Like I said before it's more like Vikings or The Last Kingdom, which was written by the same author and is actually a couple of centuries after this.  While I might have hoped for more, it doesn't embarrass itself. (3/5)

Marlowe:  I believe Tony Laplume recommended this one and when I saw it on MGM+ I decided to watch it.  The movie is based on a book not by Raymond Chandler; it's by some Irish author who won a Booker Prize for something else and I'm not sure then why he decided to essentially write a fanfic.  The weird thing is that novel is set in 1959 while they set the movie in 1939; the former would have made more sense since that would be late in Philip Marlowe's career and Liam Neeson is pretty late in his career as well.  Anyway, a dame walks into Marlowe's office (what's new?) and asks him to find a guy Marlowe quickly finds out is supposed to be dead but she thinks he's alive.

From there it moves at a brisk pace with most of the things you'd expect in a Chandler story except stolen jewelry.  Marlowe sticks his nose into things and gets bonked on the head a couple of times and yet no one kills him so he's able to solve the mystery.  Overall it's a decent mystery and simulacrum of a Chandler story but not really a good neo-noir thriller.  For the almost 2-hour runtime it moves pretty fast though. (3/5) (Fun Facts:  The book this is based on is called The Black-Eyed Blonde and a poster for a movie of that can be seen in the background at one point.  The author of the book is Irish, star Liam Neeson is from North Ireland, it also features a chubby Colm Meaney, the Irish co-star of Star Trek TNG and DS9, and parts of the movie were shot in Ireland.  So maybe watch this on St. Patrick's Day.  Faith & begorah!)

Gen V:  I thought of doing a separate entry to this but then figured no one would care.  This spinoff from The Boys on Amazon is basically their version of Fox's final X-Men movie The New Mutants.  There's a special college for "supes" where they learn important things like marketing and branding and maybe some stuff to actually help with crimefighting.

The newest student is Marie Moreau who found out when she got her first period that she can control blood.  She accidentally killed her parents with it and wound up in an orphanage or juvenile detention center for supes.  When big man on campus Golden Boy (Patrick Schwarzenegger) seems to go nuts and kills a popular professor (Clancy Brown from Highlander and more recently one episode of Ahsoka), Marie becomes a celebrity for seeming to stop him, though it was actually Jordan, who has the power to alternate between male and female selves who both have powers (maybe different ones?), and Cate, who has the psychic power to "push" people to do her bidding when she touches them.

From there there's uncovering a whole conspiracy at the school to experiment on supes that involves many important people.  In some ways it's actually better than The Boys because it's less focused on murdering supes and more on the superhuman community itself.  Like Starlight in The Boys, Marie is the nice girl who's trying to be a hero but finds it increasingly difficult.

It starts a little slow but gets more interesting as the mystery about "The Woods" and Golden Boy's brother deepens.  What really holds this back--and The Boys as well--is this juvenile need for gratuitous blood, gore, and graphic sex.  I don't hate those things but a lot of it in this is just gratuitous.  Basically the writers seem to think, "We have a character with X power; what's the grossest shit we can do with that?"  So of course the shrinking character uses her power (which is triggered by puking/eating) to have sex with dudes, which was already done in the main show last season even more graphically.  And of course Marie blows a guy's dick up.  That's on top of many regular people being maimed, decapitated, or otherwise mashed into a pulp.  The more you do this the less shock value it has, which is why you should go sparingly.  But I suppose a lot of fans expect it by now.  The puppet or Muppet fight was pretty funny though.  The other thing was a potentially epic fight between Homelander and Marie was wasted when he essentially sucker heat-visions her.  Lame.

Anyway, the end leaves plenty of room for a Season 2 and a cookie scene with Billy Butcher promises a crossover with the parent show. (3.5/5) (Fun Facts:  The more Cate uses her power to "push," the more red her eyes get.  It reminded me of Syfy's Invisible Man show from 2000-2002 where the more he used the invisibility gland, the more red his eyes got.  Jason Ritter plays a hallucinatory version of himself as "TV's Jason Ritter" and he really looks like his more famous father.)

League of Superpets:  A complete 180 from Gen V, I also watched this on Amazon Prime though it is still probably on Max.  Anyway, it was the first released DC project to feature the Rock as the voice of Krypto the Superdog, who is Superman's dog.  Things have been great until Krypto finds out Superman is planning to marry Lois Lane.  At the same time, orange Kryptonite lands on Earth that gives a hairless guinea pig psychic powers she immediately uses for evil.  Ace the Bathound, Chip the Squirrel, PB the Pig, and Merton the Turtle also get superpowers.  When Krypto accidentally swallows green Kryptonite and loses his powers, he has to team with Ace, Chip, PB, and Merton to save the Justice League.  Pretty predictable but mostly fun with some references and Easter eggs and whatever.  I watched Strays on Peacock a few months ago and this is sort of the same thing only a PG version--with superpowers.  Not really as good as Lego Batman, Into the Spider-Verse, or The Incredibles but fun enough for all ages to waste 90 minutes or so.  (3/5) (Fun Facts:  One cookie scene teased a new bad guy team-up to set up a sequel that will probably not happen.  Another brought in Black Adam and his Egyptian dog, which was a nod to the Rock playing Black Adam in the failed live action movie.  Fun Speculation:  With James Gunn developing Tom King's Supergirl Woman of Tomorrow, we might see a "live action" Krypto.)

Around the time the movie came out, Amazon Vine had some of the toys so I got a set with most of the main characters (I lost the guinea pig and one of her henchmen that came with it) and a larger talking Krypto.  I also have a talking Black Adam, both with the Rock's voice.

Nobody:  I had wanted to see this one for a while but while it was made by Universal I'm not sure it went to Peacock.  I think it went to some other one I didn't have.  Then I was buying myself a birthday gift on Target and I could either buy something for about $6 for "free" shipping or pay $6 in shipping.  Since this was only about $7, I bought it.

Anyway, I was a little disappointed.  The trailers made it seem funnier than it actually was.  There are a couple of funny parts but it's drier than I would have thought.  The basic idea is if John Wick had retired and become a family guy.  Only it's Bob Odenkirk of Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul who used to be a guy with a particular set of skills but retired to live a dull suburban life.  Then two people break into his house and his daughter's "kitty cat bracelet" goes missing so he hunts them down.  From there his bloodlust is ignited and he takes out some Russian assholes, which puts him at war with the Russian mob.  Mayhem ensues that involves him buying his employer's company to use the headquarters like Kevin McCallister's house in Home Alone.  It's an OK movie but if I'd been able to stream it or if I'd rented it from Redbox I wouldn't have bought it. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  Besides Odenkirk the cast features Connie Nielsen of Gladiator, Christopher Lloyd, a chubby Michael Ironside, and Future War/Santa's Summer House star Daniel Bernhardt as a bus goon.)

Fool's Paradise:  I hadn't heard of this until it popped up on Hulu one day in November.  Charlie Day of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Horrible Bosses, and Pacific Rim directs and stars as a mental patient who just so happens to look like an actor making a movie.  So a producer (the late Ray Liotta) has the mental patient stand in for the guy and even though the mental patient doesn't speak and doesn't know how to act, he somehow finishes the movie and becomes a star.  Then it just keeps going with his rise, fall, and comeback all while he's completely baffled and doesn't say a word.  Along with him is a cut-rate publicist played by Ken Jeong.  There are also a lot of recognizable names like Adrien Brody, Kate Beckinsale, Jason Sudeikis, Jason Bateman, and John Malkovich who show up here and there.  Always Sunny co-star Glenn Howerton and most of the supporting players in that show also have cameos.  But in the end it's really a one-note joke played out for 90 minutes: everyone in Hollywood is a phony, self-absorbed boob.  This really could have just been an SNL skit or a half-hour TV episode tops.  Maybe in Always Sunny Charlie could have gotten bonked on the head or something and gotten lost in Hollywood before coming to his senses and returning to the bar.  As it is, the premise wears thin pretty quick and just starts to get tedious. (2/5)

Run & Gun (2022):  Basically the last night I had Paramount+ I looked around for any movies I hadn't seen yet that I might want to.  There wasn't anything really so I watched this cheap thriller starring nobody except veteran comedy actor Richard Kind as a gangster.  Basically some Australian guy is a former criminal going straight with a girlfriend who has a kid.  He uses his experience to help with claims at an insurance company because who understands a criminal better than a criminal?  Then he's abducted and forced to work for Kind to deliver some money...or something.  He ends up at an old factory in New Mexico where there's a big burly security guy who captures him to find out where the money is--and has a deal to traffic a young girl too--and a lot of mayhem ensues!  It was OK for a cheap movie starring almost no one.  Like a lot of those I watch on Hulu or Amazon only without some former A-lister like Bruce Willis, Nic Cage, or John Travolta.  Which in a way is maybe better when you don't have someone slumming for a paycheck. (2.5/5)  (Fun Fact:  There's a lot in this about "the Mandela Effect" and a nonexistent movie called "Shazaam" starring Sinbad.  Look it up on Snopes or some other site.  Apparently Richard Kind was buying tapes that were supposed to be of that--or something.)

Clean:  This 2018 movie I watched on Hulu stars Adrien Brody, who also co-wrote, produced, and did music for it--including a rap in the end credits.  Maybe this was intended to be some great comeback for him, but it never really rises above a cliché cheap action movie.  Brody is "Clean," a garbage man who still drives one of those old-school trucks with the compactor in the back.  He picks up trash at night and has some unusual hobbies like fixing up old appliances to sell to a pawn broker (rapper RZA who was also in Nobody) and fixing up crack houses.  Not to flip the houses but just so they don't look so bad.  He also provides meals and rides for a young black girl who reminds him of his daughter--or something.  Then he runs afoul of the local mob that operates out of a fish market.  To save the black girl from the mob he has to come out of retirement and use his particular set of skills.  I think you know where that's going.  It's slow in the beginning before it gets to the fairly cliché ending.  Not really great but not bad either. (2.5/5) (Fun Rant:  I'm not sure this kind of old-school garbageman still exists except maybe in poor neighborhoods that don't have dumpsters or those big plastic cans.  The garbageman for my apartment complex won't get out of the truck for really any reason.  Stupid people don't seem to realize this and so will throw stuff next to the dumpsters that just sits there until someone--not the garbageman--throws it in the dumpster.  One time we had a whole furniture store outside when people dumped like 3 couches and a love seat next to the dumpsters that had to eventually get cut up by the maintenance staff and thrown in the dumpsters, which then jammed those up for days.  Some genius recently thought they'd be cutesy and hang one of those metal signs people put on walls between two of the dumpsters.  Knowing that would only cause the garbageman not to take the dumpsters since he couldn't get the forks into the holes of the dumpsters, I snatched the metal sign up and tossed it in a dumpster.  Problem solved.  If you're not going to throw your shit out properly then take it to a Salvation Army-type place instead of tossing it next to a dumpster and hoping someone takes it eventually.)

The Naughty Nine:  The last couple of years I've done an Advent calendar of holiday movies.  Last year I came up with the idea of adding three "wild cards" to the other movies.  One of the wild cards was just to watch some random movie.  Someone's blog mentioned this one so I decided to watch it.

Like I said on Facebook it's basically a silly Y7-rated Ocean's Eleven.  A naughty boy (who looks like a young McLovin from Superbad) doesn't get the video console he wants so he and his friend recruit a team to rob Santa.  I guess in this world kids who are in fourth grade still think Santa is real.  Anyway, it uses most of the heist movie tropes only in a young kid friendly way.  There's only some mild violence, no sex, and no cursing so it's perfect for kids under 8 but probably too silly for kids older than that--or adults.  But still, I appreciate a decently-crafted heist even if no one has ever risked so much for so little.  I mean the grand total of what they want to steal is probably less than $2000.  They could have just held up a couple of convenience stores or something and just buy the stuff. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  the only recognizable star plays Santa.  Unfortunately it's too Y7-rated for him to say his most famous line, "I'm getting too old for this shit."  Maybe in the sequel they tease at the end.)

Return to Oz:  I watched part of Barry Mahon's late 60s Wonderful Land of Oz on Rifftrax and then remembered this 1985 sorta-sequel to The Wizard of Oz was on Disney+.  I hadn't watched it since probably not long after it came out, but I vaguely remembered it was kinda creepy.  And it is!  In some ways worse than Mahon's super-duper-cheap version of pretty much the same story.

Gone are the songs, bright colors, and Munchkins.  Instead it's Dorothy and a talking chicken trying to survive a post-apocalyptic Oz.  A lot of it feels like a faded copy of the original:  the chicken for Toto, Tik-Tock the robot man for the tin man, Jack the Pumpkinhead for the Scarecrow, and then they bring to life a "Gump" that's sort of a green deer or elk for the cowardly lion.  You have Mombi for the Wicked Witch, the punk rock-inspired "Wheelers" for the flying monkeys, and the Gnome King for the Wizard--if he really were a bad wizard.  The setting in a mental hospital and Mombi with her interchangeable heads is a little too creepy for young children.  And without the songs and bright colors and all that, it is sort of a dreary slog instead of a fun adventure.  Like I posted on Bluesky, I wonder how much blow Disney execs were snorting back then to think this was a good idea. (2/5)  (Fun Thought:  At some point I should read the books and then see whether this movie or Mahon's movie is more accurate.  I suspect the latter.)