The Blog Year in Review

Here's a curious fact:  Before August 10 I only had 2 posts this year with 100 or more views.  Since then every post through November 23rd had more than 100 views, with some having more than 300.  And yet there was no increase in comments, so can I assume it was search bots finding my blog posts?

Here are the posts the bots liked most in reverse order:

• Sims I Like: Anime Babe (334 views)
• Luke Cage Packs a Powerful Punch (334 views)
• Goliath is the Legal Thriller I Hoped "Better Call Saul" Would Be But Isn't  (338 views)
• Things I Thought I Shouldn't Think (356 views)
• Sims I Like: Ms T (362 views)
• You Don't Get the Swag if You Ain't Got the SPAG (363 views)
• The World of Amazon Can Be a Shady Place (369 views)
• 6 1/2 Years of Blogging: What's the Point? (371 views)
• More Comic Book Reviews You Won't Read & Don't Care About (378 views)
• Stuff I Watched: September Edition (380 views)

The weird thing is they're all clustered together from September 26th through October 14th with the "Goliath" entry as an outlier on October 24th.

Make of that what you will.  Happy 2017, y'all!  (Will it be worse than 2016?  Probably.)

Movie Round-Up 8/29/14: The End

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Movie Round-Up 8/22/14

Brace yourself for more movie reviews that you don't care about.

World's Greatest Dad:  This movie is dripping with unintended irony now as the plot involves Robin Williams as a dad named Lance whose son kills himself via autoerotic asphyxiation.  To spare his son (and himself) embarrassment he ghostwrites a suicide note and fakes the kid hanging himself.  But when the note goes viral it inadvertently gives Lance everything he ever wanted--except his son.  Despite how cheerful the title might seem, it's a darkly comic movie that takes to extremes how we tend to gloss over all the bad stuff when someone dies.  (Or like how we pretend Robin Williams had been relevant in the last 10 years.)  For obvious reason I might not have liked this pre-Williams's death, but now it has a lot more relevance.  It is unfortunate that near the end you get a peek of his (or his stunt double's) junk.  Did not need to see that.  (3.5/5)

Bad Words:  As the title indicates this kind of follows the Bad Santa premise, only with spelling bees!  Jason Bateman is a 40-year-old who thanks to dropping out of school is able to compete in the national spelling bee against kids.  While he might have dropped out of school he does have an idiot savant type talent for spelling.  And is good at psyching out opponents.  Along the way he makes friends with a dorky Indian kid.  Why he's in the competition is revealed near the end.  Anyway, it's a fun raunchy comedy with some heart.  Of course since it was released by Focus Features no one got to watch it in theaters so get it now from Netflix or Redbox. (4/5)

Sabotage:  It's over-the-top in terms of gore and testosterone with a fairly weak plot.  So basically your typical Ahhh-nold movie on steroids.  Except he isn't really the good guy in this.  There really are no characters I cared about.  Maybe it's because everyone--including the women--is so oozing testosterone that it becomes kind of a turnoff.  Basically there's a crew of DEA agents who raid a drug kingpin's house and in the process decide to take $10 million for themselves by tying it to a rope and stringing it down the sewer.  But the money goes missing!  And then later the team starts dying.  Who stole it isn't that much of a surprise, though how he manages it is less clear.  Anyway, as I said I wasn't all that interested in the characters and the plot is one of those that tries hard to be twisty but probably just ends up fooling itself. (1/5)

Batman:  Assault on Arkham:  While this says Batman it's really a Suicide Squad movie.  If you had read my review of the New 52 Suicide Squad in my last post (which you didn't--for shame!) then you'd already know who they are.  Basically it's a team of villains with bombs implanted in their heads and used by the government for secret missions.  In this case it's to break into Arkham and get something from the Riddler.  Or at least that's how it starts out.  But then there are twists and turns and many of the villains being killed--that's why it's called Suicide Squad.  Batman does show up to sometimes hinder and sometimes help their cause.  As with the first go-round of the New 52 comic, Deadshot and Harley Quinn are the center of the team.  Most of the Batman villains are styled after the Arkham video games so ones like Bane and Poison Ivy look a little weird.  Anyway, it's a fun movie if you like superheroes and heists. (3/5)

The Island:  This was I think Michael Bay's last movie before he hit paydirt with Transformers.  It's pretty much what you'd expect:  chases, explosions, and plot holes.  The biggest plot hole is why they need this whole little colony populated by clones with the promise of "The Island" and threat of a "contaminated" world to keep them in line.  The "explanation" is that if you just freeze people the organs will die.  Um, yeah, right.  So if you can suspend all that disbelief then the rest is tolerable. Though at the end it's kind of unclear what's going to happen to everyone. (2/5)

Flight:  This was the Denzel Washington movie where he plays a pilot who like Sully Sullenberger made a heroic crash landing.  Except unlike Sully, the Denzel Washington pilot was high on coke and booze at the time, which makes things problematic even though that didn't cause the crash and it's unlikely anyone else would have saved the plane.  Mostly this is a movie about addiction and recovery.  Contrasting Denzel's refusal to take responsibility and get clean is a heroin addict named Nicole whom he meets in the hospital.  They spend a little time together and she seems to get her shit together while it's much more difficult for him.  John Goodman has a funny cameo as Denzel's drug peddler while Don Cheadle cashes a paycheck as Denzel's lawyer.  Since this was a Robert Zemeckis movie we should all just be glad he didn't use that stupid Polar Express/Beowulf animation on this. (3/5)

Stage Fright:  The logline for this movie would be:  It's Scream meets Glee!  A killer terrorizes a theater camp, dressed like a kabuki version of the Phantom of the Opera.  Though it really takes over half the movie for him to start killing anyone.  There's some fun musical numbers, gory murders, and you can see Meat Loaf get chopped up with a circular saw.  (The singer, not the food.)  So there's something for everyone! (3/5)

Candyman:  This was supposed to be a slasher movie, yet most of the slashing seemed to take place off screen.  For the most part this was really boring.  Virginia Madsen researches the legend of some dude called Candyman.  Why they call him that I never figured out since candy really has nothing to do with it.  He was some black guy in the late 18th Century who was killed by a lynch mob for getting involved with a white lady.  They chopped off his right hand and then lured bees to sting him to death.  Supposedly he goes around after that killing people with a hook if they say his name in a mirror 5 times.  When it seems Candyman is terrorizing the projects of Chicago, Virginia Madsen gets involved and then framed for murders.  Other than some gross bee stuff and gallons of fake blood there wasn't much gross about it and the scares were mostly just stuff jumping out at you, which makes it probably scarier than those Paranormal Activity movies. (1.5/5)

I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer:  A completely unnecessary third chapter in this series.  Only none of the original characters are involved.  Some idiot teenagers decide it'd be really funny to stage an attack on the local carnival by "the Fisherman" the hook-wielding killer of the last two movies.  Except someone gets killed and they hush it up until the Fisherman comes after them.  Spoiler alert:  don't waste time trying to figure out who the Fisherman is because he's like some evil demon summoned by them trying to hush up the death.  So that was lame.  I fell asleep in the first half of the movie, but that was OK because I didn't miss anyone being killed.  That all happens in like the last half-hour.  (1/5)

Cougar Club:  This is the kind of late night movie where I wish I had fallen asleep.  Curse you, insomnia!  Basically two idiots graduate high school and go to intern at a law firm headed by Joe "Fat Tony" Mantegna.  At the same time they start something like Fight Club only it's for young guys to fuck older women.  I found that completely unbelievable, not in that something like that couldn't exist (and probably does in real life) but that these two asshats could actually organize it with the help of a third idiot friend.  Then stupid shit ensues, almost none of which involves sex or cougars.  And at the end the one idiot guy doesn't even hook up with the chick he was chasing through most of the movie.  Instead he hooks up with someone else who only shows up at the end.  SMH.  If this weren't free I'd want my money back. (-5/5)

Women in Trouble:  This is one of those ensemble movies like Magnolia or Love Actually.  It starts with a legendary porn star finding out she's pregnant.  She goes to the doctor's office and gets stuck in an elevator with a woman whose daughter is going to a shrink whose husband is having an affair with the patient's aunt.  There are some other threads too that are all interconnected in a way and as the title suggests all feature women in trouble.  It's fun with some raunchy humor.  Other than Josh Brolin (channeling Russell Brand as a British rocker) and an appearance by Joseph Gordon-Leavitt in a post-credits scene there's not a lot of big names.  (3/5)  But it does make me think of this song, which is also about the interconnectedness of things:

Movie Round-Up 8/15/14: Guardians of the Galaxy & More

Guardians of the Galaxy:  When this was first announced like most people I thought, WTF?  Especially when people mentioned this involved a talking raccoon and a living tree.  So I wasn't all that excited to see this.  But in some ways it was better than The Avengers.  Since they all pretty much had their own movies with their own girlfriends, there wasn't much in the way of romantic tension in that.  But with Guardians there's some between Star-Lord and Gamora.  Really when Star-Lord sacrifices himself to save Gamora or when Groot sacrifices himself to save everyone it was actually more more moving than anything in The Avengers.  I guess as Andrew Leon said it's because they actually become a real team, not just a bunch of people crammed together.  Since Chris Pratt had only been a comedic second banana to this point I wasn't sure how he'd do in a leading role, but he was good.  I was surprised too that Dave Bautista wasn't completely terrible.  Rocket Raccoon was kind of annoying, but it is awesome to see a raccoon with a big frickin' gun.  Overall it was a good time and I'd be more excited for the eventual sequel. (4/5)

A Birder's Guide to Everything:   I know you haven't heard of this, so don't bother saying it.  This is a charming indie coming-of-age movie about four teenagers who go on a quest to find a supposedly extinct Labrador duck.  David used to go "birding" with his mom, who died of something.  When he sees a duck that's supposedly been extinct for 150 years, he and his friends (and a girl with a camera) "borrow" a relative's car and head into upstate New York to search for the duck.  A nip slip and a bag of drugs found in the borrowed car keep this from being a total PG Disney-type movie.  And portions of the end might make you sad.  There's probably no one in this you've heard of except for Ben Kingsley as a veteran "birder." (4/5)

I Know Who Killed Me:  This was the movie where like Miley Cyrus's twerking, Lindsay Lohan was going to show the world she wasn't a Disney princess anymore.  It's probably not as bad as people said it was, but it wasn't very good either.  A goody-goody high school kid is abducted and has her hand and leg cut off before escaping from a serial kidnapper.  Except the girl they find claims to be someone else.  This girl worked as a "stripper" who like Jennifer Aniston in "We're the Millers" somehow manages to not actually strip.  Eventually they find the kidnapper and the link between the two girls...isn't really explained.  Maybe because it was late and I was kind of drifting off, though I doubt it. (1.5/5)

Chronicles of Riddick:  I had tried to watch this a couple of times but never finished it.  Which was just as well I suppose.  When the evil Necronomicons (or whatever) try to take over the universe the only one who can stop them is Riddick...because he can see in the dark, or something.  Half the movie is taken up with Riddick and some girl of his trying to escape from the planet Crematorium, which is pretty much what it sounds like.  There wasn't much point to all that in the long run.  And I'm not sure why one of the bad guys (Batman's dad in "Batman Begins") gives Riddick his ship and then walks out into the burning sun to die.  Nor do I know how Judi Dench got roped into this.  The special effects were also anything but special most of the time, with a lot of bad CGI.  Anyway the way it ended was supposed to be the start of a trilogy, but it flopped so it took like seven years to make a half-assed sequel. (2/5)

When A Stranger Calls:  You know that old urban legend about a babysitter getting prank calls and then the cops say the calls are coming from inside the house?  Yeah that's literally what this movie is.  Except it's not an ordinary house; it's a weird post-modern Frank Gehry lake house.  The girl is kind of a shitty babysitter as she doesn't even check on the kids until the movie's like 60% over.  You'd have to think the bad guy was using a cell phone; the part I never understand about that urban legend is how could the phone ring if you're calling from inside the house?  Unless you have two lines.  Anyway, I was disappointed Clark Gregg was only the girl's father.  Agent Coulson terrorizing babysitters would have been awesome.  In fact that should be Season 2 of "Agents of SHIELD."  The end sequence of the movie borrows heavily from "Carrie."  Overall it was OK but not great. (2/5)

Kung Fu Hustle:  I had heard OF this movie a while back but never gotten around to watching it.  It takes a while for the plot of the movie to really become evident.  Basically there's this evil Axe Gang in Canton, China in the 40s.  They want to take over the village of Pig Sty, but a couple of kung fu masters get in their way.  Maybe if I'd watched a lot of kung fu movies I'd have gotten more out of it.  There was a lot of cartoonishly exaggerated kung fu fighting that's pretty amusing.  And once you finally figure out who the main characters are (about halfway through) it becomes more watchable. (3/5)

The Raid:  Redemption:  Did you think Die Hard just didn't have nearly enough violence, blood, and machete fights?  Then this movie is for you!  Police in some Asian country raid a tenement where a drug kingpin is holed up.  Much violence ensues.  It's in subtitles but that hardly matters since most of the dialogue is grunting and screaming.  What this movie sorely lacks is Bruce Willis's charisma.  As it is, I didn't really care if the cops lived or died, even the one with the pregnant wife, a fact they only reference at the beginning and then forget.  Anyway, there are some awesome machete fights, so that's something. (2/5)

Shy of Normal:  The framing device for this low-budget movie is that a writer is having a problem coming up with a story.  When someone tells her to go out and observe people for ideas, she does so and comes up with three ideas that were I guess plays.  One involves two couples having babies, one a redneck couple and the other Vegan liberals.  Another story is about an uptight woman possibly becoming the roommate of two middle-aged women who are still in college.  The last is about the manager of a fast food restaurant trying to commit suicide but the dang phone won't stop ringing!  The first was better than the last two. (2.5/5)

Movie Round-Up 8/8/14 Tomb of the Unknown Movies

8 it a great day for movie reviews?  Sorry.  I doubt you've seen any of these movies; except I'm pretty sure Tony Laplume has seen one.  Basically I'm past the bottom of the barrel at this point, to like 10 feet below the barrel.  Too bad for you.

A Night in Old Mexico:  Robert Duvall is an old rancher who's lost his land and decides to visit Mexico for one last wild night.  His estranged grandson tags along.  Things are complicated when they give a ride to a couple of guys who stole money from a drug dealer.  The dealers of course want that money back, so mayhem ensues.  It's not quite as dark as "No Country for Old Men."  Duvall is funny as the cantankerous old cowboy; at this point every movie he does might be the last one, so enjoy the legend while you still can. (3/5)

Grand Piano:  A pianist (Elijah Wood) returns to the stage after a nervous breakdown five years earlier.   As he starts to play, he finds someone has threatened to kill him if he plays one wrong note.  But while first it seems the nut job (John Cusack) just wants him to play the piano really well, it turns out there's an implausible "Die Hard"-esque scheme going on.  For the most part this was good; they do what they can with the claustrophobic setting of being on a stage performing on a piano.  And it also reminded us that Alex Winter (aka Bill S Preston, Esquire) still exists, though the years have not been kind to him. (3/5)

The Recruit:  This is one of those I probably would have watched sooner but never got around to it.  Basically Colin Farrell is recruited by Al Pacino to join the CIA.  And then is given the job to spy on the hot chick in his class.  But there are some twists that are kind of obvious.  Though I liked at the end when they put a twist on the old "bad guy incriminates himself talking into a hot mic" cliche.  I really, really hate that cliche so I would have marked the movie down if that had been what actually happened. I still don't have Tony Laplume's love of Colin Farrell and Al Pacino is basically every Al Pacino character since like 1980.  Overall though it's a decent enough thriller. (3/5)

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel:  This is one of those I heard people saying was good a year or two ago, sort of like Grand Budapest Hotel this year.  But I didn't get around to watching it until now.  Basically a bunch of old Brits go to India to the titular hotel that is of course a dump.  Some of them learn something, some don't, and one dies--probably not the one you'd expect.  It gets to feel a little too long, but there are some funny parts amidst the drama. (3.5/5)

Veronica Mars:  I never watched the TV show, but that doesn't matter so much as there's a prologue to catch you up on it.  But maybe if I had watched the show I might have given a shit.  It never really rises above the level of a TV movie mystery.  You know in the end she's going to find the bad guy and he/she/they will confess.  In this case when an old friend of Veronica's is framed for murder she has to leave her successful new life in New York to help him out.  Bet you can't guess how that will work out.  Oh, right, you can because as I said it's a TV movie mystery, like those old Columbo movies and such.  Except thanks to that Kickstarter campaign getting this in theaters, it can use the f-word and gets a gratuitous James Franco cameo.  But you have to think fans were hoping for something a little less dull.  I guess when you donate to Kickstarter campaigns, be careful what you wish for.  If you do want a hint to the end think I Know What You Did Last Summer meets Natalie Wood's death.  (2/5)

Hot Blood Sundae:  This movie starts by answering the age-old question:  can you stab a bimbo to death with a waffle cone?  Common sense says no, but common sense is not much on display with this movie.  Basically a guy decides to open the ice cream version of Hooters.  And then the bimbos start being hacked to pieces by a guy in a Scream ghost killer costume only with a bucket over his head.  The whole thing looked as if it cost $1000 to make and so little of it made sense.  Like, what kind of ice cream shop has a locker room and showers?  But to go all Andrew Leon on this, there's a writing lesson here:  when writing a slasher story, you need more than a collection of bimbos; you have to have that one goody-goody virginal main character people can root for.  Otherwise, who gives a fuck?  Basically not even all the nudity and gratuitous whipped cream fights can save a completely idiotic movie. (1/5)

The Black Knight Returns:  This is about as low-budget as any fan film.  It reminds me a little of the Scarlet Knight series as it was first conceived in that there's a secret society of knights from Arthurian times who protect the world.  There's something about bad guys and some toxin..then I fell asleep. I doubt I missed much except really badly choreographed fight scenes.  (Inc.)

Movie Round-Up 8/1/14

Some more movie reviews you probably don't care about.

Timeline:  I read the book version of this when it first came out about 15 years ago.  I remember thinking it would make a good movie.  This was both a compliment and insult as the ending had a little more punch than many of Crichton's earlier works, but at the same time it fell more into cliches.  Such is the case with the movie as well, which strangely I never got around to watching until now.  Basically what happens is some scientists are trying to teleport stuff and find a wormhole to 1357 France.  Then they lose some guys there and send some archaeologists to rescue them, sort of like Jurassic Park if they had traveled to dinosaur times.  From there it's kind of predictable and cliche, but there are some nice medieval battle scenes.  I'm not sure if this counts as the secret origin of Gerard Butler or not, but it's probably one of the first big American movies he was featured in.  It also features the late Paul Walker, though I think this was post Fast & Furious.  (2.5/5)

Beowulf:  This was the 2007 version that uses that Robert Zemeckis animation like "Polar Express."  It occurred to me that for Zemeckis it's like my Sims 3 characters; he thinks it's awesome and everyone else just thinks it's fucking creepy.  I mean these people who look almost real, but not quite real.  It's weird.  So that gives this movie points off going in.  Then basically the movie just makes Beowulf seem like a complete ass.  He runs around fighting Grendel naked and shouting, "I am Beowulf!"  And then doesn't kill Grendel's mommy so he can be king, which he realizes eventually sucks.  And Grendel's mommy is an especially creepy Anjelina Jolie who's sort of naked, but covered from the neck down in gold and has built in stiletto heels.  It's hard to believe Neil Gaiman wrote and executive produced this.  Well, they can't all be winners. (2/5) "The 13th Warrior" is still my Beowulf movie of choice.


Down in the Valley:  It's like Last Action Hero or Pleasantville only with porno movies!  Chris Pratt and some other guy are beamed into an alternate universe where all the women are busty bimbos and the guys are super hung.  It sounds like it should be awesome, but it's complicated by a dominatrix cop and a super hung male cop who keep chasing them for barely defined reasons.  It was pretty funny at poking fun of porno movie tropes, though like many pornos it could have used some better production values. (3/5)

All Cheerleaders Die:  This seemed like the kind of silly movie I'd watch late on Friday or Saturday (see above) but unfortunately the stupid USPS didn't get it to me until Monday.  Anyway from the title it seems like it's a slasher movie where someone is killing cheerleaders.  In actuality it's Pet Semetery--Cheerleader Edition.  Basically some cheerleaders die when some jerk football players run them off the road.  But one cheerleader has a stalkery friend into Wicca and using magic crystals she brings them back to life as flesh-eating ghouls.  And for some reason two sisters switch bodies.  And then mayhem ensues.  It was, to say the least, pretty odd, even for me. (1.5/5)

The Baytown Outlaws:  It's basically The Boondock Saints meets Smokin Aces.  If you've never seen either of those movies it's about redneck brothers who work as sort of  hired muscle for the local sheriff in an Alabama town (actually Louisiana).  After they kill a bunch of Mexicans in what turns out to be the wrong house, a woman shows up offering them $25,000.  They take the job to get her godson from evil crime lord Carlos (Billy Bob Thornton cashing a paycheck) except there's a hitch:  the kid is in a wheelchair!  They then end up getting chased by colorful outlaws:  killer hookers, black pirates, and Native American bikers.  And in the process the rednecks learn about tolerance, except for gays and most women.  It's a serviceable action movie overall, but it's a shame they couldn't find Billy Bob Thornton more to do than be the stereotypical bad guy.  He does have one great rant comparing his crime organization to Wal-Mart but from recently watching the "Fargo" series you know he can be way more badass. (2.5/5)

Comics Round-Up July 2014

So far I haven't read that many comics recently.  I've been busy reading and writing and stuff like that.  But there are still a few:

Injustice Gods Among Us Vol 1:  This is based on the hit(?) video game that I've never played because I don't own a PS4, PS3, XBox One or XBox 360 and fighting games annoy me anyway because I don't feel like exhausting mental space learning combos.  I remember back in the 90s I rented a similar game for the SNES and I always liked playing the Flash because I could remember one of his combos.  Anyway, I guess this comic is a prequel to the game.  Basically the Joker decides that he's lost enough to Batman that he's going to move on to Superman.  By creating a scenario where Superman accidentally kills Lois Lane (and her unborn child) the Joker plays perhaps his biggest joke on the whole world because this unleashes Superman, who decides that he will put a stop to crime everywhere.  Which brings him into conflict with Batman.  This is just the first 6 issues or so of a series that's been running for like 2 years now.  Anyway, it's not exactly a new concept for Superman to decide to become more proactive, see Red Son and For Tomorrow for examples that I've read.  Anyway, it's just a Marvel-ish way of getting the heroes to whale on each other, which is the point of the game. (2.5/5)

Captain America:  Escape from Dimension Z:  I reviewed the first part of this story probably around the start of the year.  Fourth of July they put the rest of the series on sale so I finally got around to reading it.  Basically in the first 5 issues Captain America was transported to "Dimension Z" a dimension ruled by the evil Zola.  He adopted a baby as his son and like 10 years went by.  And then these 5 issues are pretty much all one day.  Most of it Cap is whining about how hurt he is.  It's all pretty much, "I'm dying!  But I've got to save my son!"  Which he really doesn't.  A major character is "killed" and really as it turns out this whole thing was a setup to get rid of Steve Rogers...again.  Has any major superhero died or been retired, etc. than Steve Rogers?  Yeesh.  So...not so good.  (2/5)

Superman:  Last Son of Krypton:  This was co-written by Richard Donner, the guy who made the 1978 movie and most of Superman II, so this isn't really an in-continuity story.  Basically Superman finds a little kid who happens to be Kryptonian.  And then General Zod shows up.  Mayhem ensues.  It was pretty good, though I will please Tony Laplume by saying it's not as good as Grant Morrison's All-Star Superman series, which this seems to share some DNA with in how they both try to work in a lot of different elements of the Superman mythology.  Still it's probably better than Man of Steel.  (3/5)

Batman & Son:  The plot starts off largely the same as the recent animated movie.  Talia al-Guhl, the daughter of the evil Ra's al-Guhl has made a "genetically perfect" son with Batman.  She dumps the kid named Damian on Batman for a few days, during which Damian tries to kill current Robin Tim Drake and usurp his place.  The end is vastly different than the movie and is somewhat unsatisfying.  One thing to note is that the "new edition" I bought includes Batman:  The Black Glove which I'd already read and was previously also a trade paperback.  Which was kind of a gyp except I got it on sale for $2.99 so I suppose the 4 issues that make up the Batman & Son arc were worth that. (3/5)

Movie Round-Up 7/11/14

Here's what I watched since last Thursday:

Authors Anonymous:  I will talk more about this movie Monday on this blog and Indie Writers Monthly.  Basically it's a mockumentary about a group of would-be authors who meet in person.  When a ditzy blond named Hannah actually gets published, the ensuing jealousy and rivalry shatters the group.  While a lot of movies that involve writing and books get it wrong, this one gets a lot right, though it still has kind of a snobby legacy author view of self-publishing and ebooks.  Definitely a great movie for the struggling writer in your life, which if you're reading this is probably you. (4/5)

Lone Survivor:  Non-spoiler alert, Marky Mark survives a mission gone wrong in Afghanistan.  (It is called Lone Survivor.)  Basically him and 3 other SEALs are supposed to kill some evil Taliban guy, but when some goat herders stumble on their position, all Hell breaks loose.  A good thing is that the four guys don't look that much alike, so you can actually tell them apart during the fighting, unlike when I watched Blackhawk Down and I couldn't keep track of who was who.  And then it turns into Saving Private Ryan as we send in a bunch of guys to get the guy, which means like a dozen people dying trying to save one.  Which on one hand you admire the courage of these brave heroes and on the other it seems pretty reckless.  But if I'm the lone survivor then by all means send all the Marines, Army, Navy, and Coast Guard to get me.  Anyway, it's nice this shows a somewhat nuanced picture of the situation.  Though the SEALs are all really good and the Taliban guys are all really bad, they do at least show that not all Afghans are evil and at the same time they're not all sitting around hoping for us to "liberate" them. (3/5)

That Awkward Moment:  This is the kind of movie that you think from the commercials/previews is going to be funny.  And then...it's really not.  The bloopers in the credits were pretty much funnier than anything going on in this.   It's basically Sex and the City only with dudes.  Zac Efron is the confirmed playa, some guy who looks like young John Cusack is his confirmed wingman, and then Michael B. Jordan is a married doctor who finds his wife is cheating on him.  Then Zac Efron meets some girl who ends up working at the firm where he makes book covers.  And young John Cusack starts hooking up with a girl affiliated with their circle.  And Michael B. Jordan tries to work it out with his wife.  After a while I found myself drifting away from this.  It was just cliche upon cliche and very predictable.  And then everything gets all heavy and maudlin before the cliche Big Romantic Gesture.  Yawn. (1.5/5)  But this does explain why so many book covers feature shoes--it's because when women see shoes, it stimulates their brains.

Superman: Unbound:  In the "Silver Age" back in the 50s/60s there was this goofy notion that a Kryptonian city called Kandor had been shrunk down and stored in a bottle.  Later this was tied to Superman's nemesis Brainiac, who basically goes around like the Borg, only instead of assimilating people, he just puts a representative city in a bottle in his ship.  And when he shows up on Earth, mayhem ensues, with Superman and Supergirl having to fight the evil robot horde.  Though it turns out that Brainiac is a bit like Howard Hughes.  It's kind of weird to think a sophisticated alien lifeform can be defeated by mud.  But there you go. (3/5)

D.E.B.S:  Did you ever think it would really be awesome if Charlie's Angels went around in schoolgirl uniforms all the time?  That's essentially the premise of this movie.  A group of four schoolgirls try to apprehend the evil Lucy Diamond...except one falls in love with her.  Overall the hammy acting, clunky dialog, and sub-Sharknado-level production values made McG's movies look like Spielberg.  And I still have no idea what the fuck DEBS stands for or why anyone would think that girls in schoolgirl outfits would make good spies.  I mean, is there anything more conspicuous outside of a strip club than a hot young girl in a schoolgirl outfit?  And how would a multiple-choice test show you're good at lying?  I mean do you answer the questions wrong?  Then how do you differentiate between good liars and idiots...wait, that explains some things.  But I'm sure Sterling Archer would love to work for an agency with that dress code for female agents.  Anyway, I'm sure this never made any Michael Clarke Duncan retrospectives after he died.  With good reason.  (1/5)

Movie Round-Up or I Watched These Movies In the Last Month and You Should Watch Some of Them Too and Some You Shouldn't, So Read This Entry to Find Out Which is Which!

Last month's post's comments were generally, "Wow you watch a lot of movies."  Which is true.  But that was also most of the movies I'd watched since like February.  So this entry won't be as long...probably.

Crave:  a movie I have no idea how it got on my queue.  It sounds like a good zombie movie title, or something about drug addiction, but does not involve either one.  It's kind of like that Walter Mitty movie only the main character is a crime scene photographer who envisions himself saving damsels in distress or killing people who piss him off--in one case with a chain saw.  Fantasy starts bleeding into reality when he finds a gun at the scene of a robbery and pockets it.  It's kind of slow, but most of us introverts have probably felt like this guy, only maybe not the part about cutting Edward Furlong in half with a chainsaw.  (2.5/5)

The Toxic Avenger:  I'd heard OF this movie, but never actually watched it.  Then late one night I did and soon wished I'd put on something a little better like "Galaxy of Dinosaurs"--see last month's post.  Basically a skinny guy who looks like he could be Jon Heder's dad falls from a window at a health club into a barrel of toxic waste.  (Because the truck company doesn't bother to put lids on barrels of deadly radioactive toxic waste.  Well I guess it was the Reagan era.)  Then for whatever reason he starts beating up bad guys.  There was really no aspect of this movie that was well done:  used car dealer commercial-level acting, a horribly cheesy 80s workout theme song that we get treated to during the opening AND closing credits, the way the Toxic Avenger's voice is clearly dubbed, even the nudity because the women who get naked really needed to work on their tan lines.  It's hard to believe there are at least 3 sequels.  Having watched part of the other three (before I fell asleep) I guess the only reason to watch is for the cartoonishly inventive ways he kills and/or mutilates bad guys like crushing a guy into a ball and playing basketball with him.  (0/5)

Blue Jasmine:  I haven't loved Woody Allen movies all that much, but I guess since Netflix kept advertising this on the disc envelopes I decided to put it in my queue.  It was pretty bad.  Not in the same way as the Toxic Avenger, which is just bad bad.  This was more pointless bad.  Basically Cate Blanchett is the wife of Alec Baldwin, who's like a Bernie Madoff-type con man.  After he gets busted she goes to San Francisco to stay with her lower-class sister.  What I could never figure out is if we're supposed to be glad the snooty Jasmine is getting her comeuppance or if we're supposed to hope she gets her shit together.  And it's one of those where at the end we're pretty much little farther along than the beginning, so thanks for wasting 98 minutes of my life, Woody Allen.  Also I really hated that awful torch singing or whatever that stuff from like the 20s was that he used for the soundtrack.  Basically I could sum it up by saying that an hour in I checked the time and saw there was still half-hour left and thought, "Oh God, there's really that much time left?" Really you should just watch/read "A Streetcar Named Desire" which this is pretty much borrowing from, though Bobby Cannavale is no young Marlon Brando to be sure.  (1/5)

Gravity:  I know I already reviewed it earlier.  I just wanted to note I liked it as much on the small screen as on the fake IMAX screen in 3D.  It probably is the best disaster movie I've seen. It did occur to me watching it again that a disaster movie is what this movie is at its heart, which if the Academy had thought way maybe they'd given it some more Oscar love.  (5/5)

Sex Sells:  Have you ever wanted to know how a porno is made?  That's the subject of this mockumentary involving a veteran porno maker who's making one last film featuring film's largest orgy scene.  The heart of the movie though involves the relationship between the veteran porno actress and a new girl with a secret and the documentary filmmaker who comes between them.  For a low budget movie it's surprisingly entertaining. (4/5)

DCU:  Son of Batman:  This is a loose adaptation of the 2000s comics by Grant Morrison where it's revealed Batman has a son with the evil Talia al Guhl.  The son named Damian comes to Gotham after Deathstroke nearly wipes out the League of Assassins.  Eventually Damian becomes Robin, which Batman hopes will help rein in some of that assassin training.  It was OK but I never got that much into it.  BTW, at the moment Damian is dead in the comic book universe; I'm not sure if they have plans to adapt that. (3/5)

Funny People:  Sometimes you know a movie is going to suck--and then you're completely not surprised when it does in fact suck.  It starts out all right as Adam Sandler basically plays Adam Sandler:  an aging comedian who's gotten rich via a bunch of terrible movies.  Or similarly he's like Krusty the Clown in the Simpsons.  Then he's diagnosed with a rare disease and the movie gets all maudlin for the next 90 minutes.  At about 2 1/2 hours this is much, much too long and not nearly funny enough.  About the only good thing to come from this was it finally slowed the Apatow train down; it was really annoying that every comedy was advertised as "by the guys who brought you Knocked Up!"  Unfortunately Apatow learned nothing from this movie as his next movie "This is 40" was just as bloated and similarly he uses his entire family in major roles.  There needs to be an intervention against people like this in Hollywood who keep shoving their kids into major parts--I see you, Will Smith!  Anyway, life imitated art as after this dud Sandler went back to making crappy movies like "Jack & Jill." (1/5)

Her:  I liked the core concept but at 126 minutes it's really slow.  A lot of times it felt like I was watching an Apple commercial, one of those "What's your verse?" ones with all the montages to dreamy indie music, which I guess makes sense since Arcade Fire did the music.  As much as I want to rip on the dude for falling in love with a computer, it's really the ideal scenario for me, so I hope Apple or Google makes it happen soon.  Come on a Russian computer just passed the "Turing Test" so let's get cracking on this!  This does suffer from a couple of typical movie problems.  First, for a guy who has a nothing job like writing fake letters, he lives in an apartment that probably costs over $2000 a month and he has all these fancy gizmos.  Similarly Amy Adams is a terrible documentary filmmaker and she is also living high off the hog.  In LA?  Yeah, right.  Second at one point the computer sends his letters off to a publisher and of course they decide to publish them as a book.  Come on, unless you're a celebrity you haven't been able to just mail in a book and get it published in probably 40 years!  A movie  has to be slow to really pay attention to that stuff. (3/5)

Pompeii:  The pitch meeting must have gone like this:  "It's Gladiator meets Volcano!"  "Genius!"  Most of this does pretty shamelessly rip off Gladiator, like when he teaches them how to use a shield and fight together and then rides a horse around the arena.  They even use the same joke when the battle reenactment goes awry.  Then finally the volcano erupts and it becomes a disaster movie.  Which really I thought the eruption happened so fast that people were actually frozen by the ash having dinner and so forth.  The whole thing was lame and cliche, which is to be expected from Paul WS Anderson; he's not Uwe Boll but pretty close.  Poor Jon Snow (who I thought in the commercials was Orlando Bloom) is probably doomed to be typecast in sword-and-sandal type movies. (1/5)

Batman Mask of the Phantasm:  This was from the mid-90s based on the animated series of the time but I'd never gotten around to watching it.  It was really good, more aimed at adults than kids really.  It presents yet another Batman origin only in this case he adopts the Batman disguise because of a broken heart.  Awwww.  The identity of "the Phantasm" was pretty easy to figure out, but really there were only 2 possibilities I suppose. (5/5)

Unknown:  Liam Neeson punches his way through Berlin on a quest to figure out why his identity has been stolen.  It was fine except then the big twist near the end is a ripoff of "The Long Kiss Goodnight" or maybe "Total Recall" with maybe a little "Bourne Identity" thrown in.  So that was kind of lame.  He doesn't kill as many people as the "Taken" movies, which is a good thing or bad thing depending on your point of view. (2.5/5)

The Time Being:  It probably would have helped to read the description before putting this on.  I mean at first when the old guy (Frank Langella) has the young painter (Wes Bentley, the creepy kid from "American Beauty" all growed up now) film kids on a playground and stuff you think he's going to escalate his weird demands into filming a murder or kinky sex or something terrible.  But actually this is a heartwarming story about art, artists, and family.  Kind of like "Finding Forrester"--only with painting!  It's a little slow but really enjoyable. (4.5/5)

Don Jon:  I'm not sure there's much more uncomfortable for straight guys than listening to a dude talk about how many times he jacks it.  Which is mostly what this is about.  Joseph Gordon-Leavitt writes, directs, and stars in this movie about a Jersey Shore type guy who despite nailing lots of hot chicks still jerks it to porn about 5 times a day, even when he's nailing Scarlett Johannson.  Really I think if you jerk it 35 times in a week you'd have serious chafing issues.  So um I guess it's a PSA about porn addiction?  Gross. But there are plenty of beefcake shots for those who aren't straight guys. (1/5)

Nurse:  A movie about a sexy nurse who also murders people seemed like right up my alley for late night watching.  Basically this nurse works in a hospital where they still wear those old school sexy nurse outfits because I guess they never heard of scrubs.  And the one named Abby likes to go out and murder cheating men.  Then a new really dumb blonde nurse shows up and Abby becomes fixated on her.  Mayhem ensues.  As I said the blonde was so dumb that she can't see the obvious going on right in front of her.  And the evil nurse really needed some makeup to hide the bags under her eyes. (2/5)

3 Days to Kill:  One side-effect of "Man of Steel"'s success is that it reminded people Kevin Costner still exists.  So this was the second of 3 Costner movies released this year and I think it did the best of the three.  Basically he plays the Liam Neeson role in another reliable action movie from the Luc Besson factory.  Costner is a CIA agent in Paris who is dying and has (you guessed it) 3 days to find and kill some bad guy known as "the Wolf" and also to bond with his estranged daughter.  There are some kind of corny situations as he teaches his daughter how to ride a bike and dance intermingled with numerous gun fights, elevator fu, subway car fu, and the mandatory car chase.  Overall it's OK, but not as good as "True Lies" for instance. (2.5/5)

Jobs:  The problem with biopics is that people are complicated and thus it can be hard to paint a full picture.  (Or some like "The Social Network" just throw out most of the facts to make reality fit their hackneyed script.)  I think the one thing this does right is depict the contradictions of Steve Jobs.  On one hand he was visionary and he could really motivate engineers to create great products.  On the other hand he was a prick.  Most of his old friends who helped him build the company he cut out of it once they made it big.  For years he refused to his see his illegitimate daughter.  Most of the movie is dedicated to the creation of the company and the dirty corporate politics of the mid-80s and mid-90s.  It would have been nice to get a little more of the personal stuff.  I mean like when they show him in bed with some woman and I think, "Who the hell is that?"  And while it's nice they didn't gloss over all the bad stuff, I still can't wish they had a better actor than Ashton Kutcher.  It'll be interesting to see what the more official Jobs biopic looks like. (3/5)

(And I also wonder if at this point Apple isn't back to the late 80s after they pushed Jobs out, when it became far more corporate, which led to stagnation and then falling market share.  If so they're in trouble, unless they find a way to reanimate Jobs's corpse.)

Bonus:  TV I watched:

Fargo:  I could never remember when this was on FX so I just watched it On Demand.  Which I think worked better since each episode on TV was 90-120 minutes whereas On Demand it was 60-70 minutes, so do the math to see how many commercials they jam in there.  Anyway, this isn't exactly like the 1996 movie but there are certain elements that are similar.  The female deputy is brought into it when a car goes off a road in a snowy field in Minnesota.  Who was in the car and left to freeze to death soon is revealed and is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.  It also involves a crime concerning a mild-mannered middle-aged guy and his wife, though it's not a kidnapping gone wrong.

This manages to replicate the feel of a Coen Brothers movie with the mixture of graphic violence and deadpan humor.  While there are a number of characters and plots I find every scene not involving Billy Bob Thornton's diabolical hitman Malvo to be largely a waste of time.  I'm sure at some point someone will count just how many people he kills in the course of the 10-episode season.  At one point he kills about two-dozen in one fell swoop.

One thing I really didn't like was in the middle of 8/10 episodes they suddenly jump a year.  So here we are like 4/5 of the way through the season and all the sudden have to adapt to another reality.  It is a bit confusing to say the least.  I'm not sure why it was necessary, though maybe it's because it's "based on a true story."  Well that's what they say and then Oliver Platt finds the money Steve Buscemi hid in the movie and I start to wonder just how much poetic license they're taking.

The final episode was pretty disappointing at the end because the female deputy who was to that point the only one to really know what was going on isn't involved in the captures of the two bad guys at all.  Her husband, a mailman who before the one year jump had been a cop who let Malvo go, doesn't exactly tell her "No, this is man's work" but pretty close to it.  It's like, you're going to put up with that and just stay behind barefoot and pregnant?  Really?  Frances McDormand wouldn't have taken that crap; she was right there at the end when Steve Buscemi got fed to the wood chipper!  So I guess the whole thing was really about Colin Hanks getting his balls back by taking down Malvo.  Who knew?  (3/5)

Comics Roundup

BTW, today through Sunday you can get the second Scarlet Knight "collection" The Wrath of Isis for only 99 cents!  That's 5 huge books for less than a buck.  (Seriously they're all over 100,000 words, especially the last one.)  The first collection is only $2.99 in case you haven't bought it yet.  


I know you still don't care about comics.  Objection noted.  But if I review these then it sort of legitimizes my purchases so I feel less guilty about wasting all that money.  So here we go:

Marvel 1602:  This predates steam power so maybe you'd call it horsepunk.  Is that a thing?  I just made it a thing!  Me and Neil Gaiman, who wrote this story set in (duh) 1602 mostly in England.  It features Elizabethan versions of Nick Fury, Dr. Strange, Thor, the Fantastic Four, Dr. Doom, the X-Men, and Brotherhood of Mutants.  Peter Parker and David Banner appear as their human selves.  Weird things are happening in England, continental Europe, and America while Queen Elizabeth is dying and James of Scotland is likely to take the throne.  It's a fresh take on the Marvel universe, though the concept starts to wear a bit thin after 8 issues. (4/5)

Spider-Man Reign:  This is the Spider-Man version of The Dark Knight Returns.  Only instead of 80s Reaganism it's concerned with post-9/11 paranoia.  In this case in the future New York's autocratic mayor is about to cut the city off from the outside world via "the Webb" which is some kind of force field.  When an ancient J Jonah Jameson pays the elderly Peter Parker a visit he has to swing back into action.  Though he spends about 3/4 of it whining about Mary Jane dying from his irradiated sperm.  (Seriously)  Like TDKR the art leaves a lot to be desired. (2.5/5)

Fray:  This is basically Joss Whedon taking Buffy and setting it in a more Blade Runner-type universe.  Melaka Fray, a 19-year-old thief, is chosen as "the Slayer" to kill a bunch of "Lurks" (ie vampires) in a futuristic city.  Mayhem ensues.  The whole idea of conflicting ancient orders, the way she's chosen, the snarly trainer (in this case a weird goat demon dude), and the age of the heroine  reminded me of my Scarlet Knight series--the second volume of which is only 99 cents if you recall.  Though Melaka is a lot different than Emma Earl, being a loudmouth with purple hair and a bunch of tattoos, which I suppose is more what people think of as a tough female lead.  This was written in 2003 so I must have ripped Whedon off.  But seriously I am as great as Joss Whedon, so there Marvel, go give me a multi-million dollar franchise to helm. (3.5/5)

Transformers:  More Than Meets the Eye, Vol 1:  If you read my post back in April called Xenophobia then you'd know I wrote some Transformers fanfics back in the late 90s during college.  I must have been a genius because this comic book series kinda uses the ideas from both my series.  The first being that the Autobots have won the war and Optimus Prime has stepped down as leader.  Only instead of humans being pissed about Autobots on Earth it's about neutral Cybertronians who return home and get pissed at the Autobots' seeming military dictatorship.  The second was a group of Autobots exploring deep space.  In mine it was a Voyager-type situation but in this Rodimus Prime and some others go out to look for the mythical "Knights of Cybertron."  Anyway, this seems like a kind of Marvel-ized version of the Transformers, featuring a lot of bantering and quipping.  It would be better than the crappy Michael Bay movies for sure.  It would probably help if you'd read the IDW comics that come before this, but I hadn't and I still got the gist of it.  The art is a lot better than the last batch of old Transformers comics in the early 90s when Andy Wildman would draw the Transformers with drool and spit despite that they're fucking robots.  The designs for a lot of the characters have been tweaked from their toy versions to make them look a little more streamlined and futuristic, but not as weird and clunky as the Bay movie versions.  (4/5)

Transformers:  Robots in Disguise, Vol 1:  This is the B-side to the More Than Meets the Eye volume.  It focuses on the Autobots who stayed on Cybertron to deal with the influx of refugees and remnants of the Decepticons after the war.  Ostensibly Bumblebee is in charge but like Tyrion Lannister on Game of Thrones even though he's smart and capable, Bumblebee has a hard time being taken seriously because of his size.  He struggles in vain to create a coalition government with a refugee named Metalhawk and the ever-shifty Decepticon Starscream.  Meanwhile Prowl tries to deal with renegade Decepticons with help from the female Autobot Arcee, who is his bad ass assassin.  I should give this to my brother to read because Prowl was one of his favorite characters and in this he's kind of a Batman figure as in he does what he thinks is right to keep order, but it tends to piss off a lot of other people.  What I really like about this and the other volume is that it focuses only on the Transformers; there are no humans at all in the book.  That's the problem with the movies where the Transformers are used largely as props to create destruction, like smaller versions of Godzilla.  But true fans know that the Transformers have their own culture and are in many ways like humans; while they're robots they can actually feel and hope and dream like we do.  And they have personalities that are more than ethnic stereotypes used for comic relief.  I'm just saying.  (5/5)

Hellboy:  The Midnight Circus:  When I bought this "on sale" from Amazon I just assumed it was a graphic novel.  Not really.  At about 58 pages it's really like two plus-sized issues or maybe 3 smaller-sized issues.  For $2.99 it was a gyp.  Anyway, the story itself was good.  Young Hellboy runs off to a weird circus that brought to mind Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes.  The problem as noted is this is so short it's over before it even begins.  There was obviously a lot of material to work with, but this just scratches the surface. (2/5)

Journey Into Mystery, Volume 1:  Much like Superman started in Action Comics, Batman in Detective Comics, Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy, etc. Thor began in Journey Into Mystery.  It's actually very different from the Thor we know today from the Marvel movies.  Basically it starts as a pretty straight forward superhero story.  In Norway, a visiting American named Dr. Donald Blake is being chased by rock monsters from Saturn (this being the early 60s, before there was a Neil deGraase Tyson to point out how inaccurate everything is) when he finds Thor's hammer in a cave and becomes Thor.  But only when he's holding the hammer; if he lets it go for a minute he changes back.  Maybe since Stan Lee didn't actually write all of these early issues (he's credited with "Plot" on most of them) there seems to be some inconsistencies about how the powers work.  Anyway, it's not until the 3rd issue that he runs into Loki and not really until the second time Loki appears that the idea of them being brothers is mentioned.  Though I don't understand that since the dude isn't really Thor, is he?  I suspect there will be some retconning on that soon.  Other than Loki there isn't much of a rogue's gallery, just random space creeps and the occasional mob guy.  It's fairly typical of the Marvel comics of 1962.  Hard to believe these were cutting edge at the time, or that this character could last over 50 years. (2.5/5)

X-Men Age of Apocalypse Volume 1:  I'd been waiting a while to read this hoping the second volume would go on sale at some point but it hasn't so finally since I saw the recent movie I decided I might as well read this.  This is from that time in the 90s when Xavier's son killed him in the past or something and so Apocalypse takes over America and Magneto is leading the X-Men.  The problem with this book is since this story spanned all 15 or however many different X-Men titles at the time there's no real cohesion to the story, which makes it hard to know what's going on.  At one point Rogue mentions a husband and it's like, "When the hell did she get married?  And to who?"  It's probably Magneto since they're a couple in this (ick) but she was also with Gambit a lot, so I dunno.  Then there are these side stories about some kid brewed in a laboratory from Cyclops and Jean Grey's DNA and Blink going to the Negative Zone and stuff like that.  From the Goodreads description there are issues from 1995-1997 and then the 4-part Blink series is from 2001, which is probably why it seemed to have a more modern Marvel universe feel.  On Amazon I think people complained you should really start with Volume 2 and maybe they're right because most of this seems like filler you'd put last.  (2/5)

Movie Catchup

In case you don't remember, I watch a lot of movies.  Yet like books even though I've read a lot of books compared to the average American there are still plenty I haven't read and someone on Twitter will always mention some author I've never even heard of like that person is a bigshot, which then makes me feel dumb.  Anyway, I reviewed a couple of movies I watched already but here are some others:

Elysium:  The message is as subtle as a two-by-four to the head and it's ironic you have a bunch of multi-millionaires saying rich people are bad.  But the robot suits are pretty neat.  After this and "District 9" I'd have rather had Neil Blomkamp doing the new Star Wars than JJ Abrams, but whatever. (3/5)

Ender's Game:  Action-wise it's OK but drags a little.  I read the book like 13 years ago so I don't remember how well it compares, though I think the character of Bean was almost all wrong.  And Harrison Ford cashes another paycheck.  I guess that alimony must be expensive. (2.5/5)

The Heat:  This was supposed to be a buddy cop movie only with two women instead of two dudes.  It dragged on soooo looooong that it became annoying.  Seriously, comedies should be around 90 minutes, not over 2 freaking hours. (2/5)

White House Down:  Basically "Olympus Has Fallen" with more humor and a slightly more plausible takeover of the White House.  Again a little too long. (2.5/5)

Getaway:  Ethan Hawke is an American in Bulgaria (WTF?) who has to drive around reenacting "Speed" in a new Mustang.  They even reuse the bit from "Speed" where they loop video in the car to fool the bad guy.  Oy vey. (1.5/5)

Escape Plan:  Sly Stallone and Ahh-nold Schwarzenegger cash paychecks as two old criminals trying to escape from a weird prison on a boat run by the guy who played Jesus in "Passion of the Christ."  Mayhem ensues. (2.5/5)

The Family:  What I learned: peanut butter is hard to find in France  (Buy it off Amazon, geniuses.) and Michelle Pfeiffer is still alive.  Robert de Niro cashes a paycheck playing a caricature of every gangster role he's done and Tommy Lee Jones plays a caricature of his "The Fugitive" role.  Much yawning ensues. (1/5)

Wreck-It Ralph:  I don't usually watch animated kid's movies but when I do they reference old video games.  I would have liked more references and less time spent in Candy Crush Land. But still it was a lot of fun. (5/5)

Blue is the Warmest Color:  It's French and it's 3 hours long, but it's about hot lesbians and features a lot of graphic sex, so time flies.  But like my book "Where You Belong" it illustrates that yes gay people have the same relationship problems as straight people. (5/5)

Cloud Atlas:  I'd probably need to watch this a few times to figure it out, but at over 3 hours I'm not going to.  It's creepy and kind of racist I suppose when white actors like Tom Hanks or Hugo Weaving play future Asian versions of themselves or whatever.  Anyway, I'm sure the book would make more sense. (2.5/5)

Contraband:  Marky Mark Wahlberg is going straight but of course there's one last job to lure him back into smuggling stuff in a container ship.  Mayhem ensues. (2.5/5)

42:  The Jackie Robinson story reminding you that racism was around before Donald Sterling and his girlfriend.  Still it's probably the best baseball movie not involving Kevin Costner in decades. (5/5)

Mortal Instruments:  City of Bones:  Argh this was sooooo boring.  And I was perpetually distracted by the main girl's bushy black eyebrows with dark red hair.  Really big time Hollywood make-up artist, you couldn't do anything about that?  Other than that it's like every YA paranormal cliche strung together. (0/5)

Nebraska:  A delusional old guy goes on the road with his son to cash what he thinks is a winning lottery ticket.  It gets stuck a little too long in one town where the old guy grew up, but otherwise a lot of this felt very close to home. (5/5)

Justice League War:  It's basically a retelling of the first volume of New 52 Justice League comics, only poor Aquaman is replaced by Captain Marvel or Shazam.  Darkseid shows up and Earth's Mightiest Heroes (DC Version) get together to stop him.  Mayhem ensues. (3/5)

Oldboy:  Spike Lee cashes a paycheck remaking a Korean thriller about a guy (Josh Brolin) who's abducted and locked away in a prison that looks like a Motel 6 room for 20 years.  Then he's mysteriously released to track down who put him there.  Some creepy Game of Thrones-type shit ensues.  Or if you're familiar with Oedipus it's sorta like that.  Weird and too long.  Maybe the Korean version is better? It'd have to be. (1/5)

The Counselor:  You'd think when you team up Pulitzer-winning Cormac McCarthy with Ridley Scott and cast the likes of Michael Fassbender and Javier Bardem you'd get a really good movie.  You'd be wrong.  McCarthy's dialog was so pathetic, full of stupid philosophizing that never sounds real at all.  The only cool thing was this machine they have that you put around someone's neck and it slowly cuts their head off.  No matter how you fight against it, you can't stop it because the line is made of diamond or adamantium or vibranium or something.  It would have been awesome on "Breaking Bad." In this, not so much. (0.5/5)

12 Years a Slave:  A free black man in the 1840s or so makes the mistake of going with some white guys to DC.  He's sold as a slave for you guessed it--12 years.  I guess there was already an 80s version starring Avery "Captain Benjamin Sisko" Brooks, which might be interesting to watch to compare.  For Michael Offutt, basically what happens to the guy is like what happens to Theon Greyjoy only without the gelding.  Anyway, slavery is bad in case you didn't realize that. (4/5)

Prisoners:  Someone kidnaps Wolverine's daughter but unfortunately Hugh Jackman doesn't have Wolverine's keen smelling abilities or this movie would mercifully have been much shorter.  It's not as stupid as "The Lovely Bones" but it's close. (2/5)

Saving Mr. Banks:  Andrew Leon said this originally was not a Disney project and I wish they hadn't assimilated it because then it might have had a little more edge.  There's a nice moral but it's all too nice and well-mannered really.  Only Colin Farrell as the lady's father gets close to doing anything PG-13 rated.  I'm sure another studio wouldn't have homogenized it to the point of blandness. (3.5/5)

Closed Circuit:  Two English lawyers (who aren't really English, at least Eric Bana is Australian) get involved in a case about a terrorist.  Britain has some weird legal thing where the male lawyer is supposed to represent the guy in a public trial and his former lover represents the guy in a secret trial.  Or that's what's supposed to happen but doesn't so the whole thing is as pointless as those stupid old-timey costumes they wear in court. (2/5)

Carrie:  Did you see the original from the '70s?  Good then you don't need to see this as it's almost a shot-for-shot remake.  Other than a new soundtrack about the only new thing added was putting the "plug it up" incident on YouTube.  And appreciate the irony of poor defenseless Carrie being played by the girl who was previously Hit Girl in the Kick-Ass movies. (0/5)

Captain Phillips:  It takes a little while to get going, but the ending is really taut and fraught with tension.  Even though you know Phillips gets rescued (oh, spoiler alert, he doesn't die) I still couldn't feel like anyone was safe.  I thought Tom Hanks really nailed Phillips' attitude after he's rescued, the way he's all freaked out and disoriented yet still trying to be polite and somewhat normal.    How awesome are Navy SEALs, though?  They save Captain Phillips and kill bin Laden.  Suck it Delta Force and Green Berets.  (4.5/5)

Philomena:  It's a little uneven, sometimes veering to comedy in how the old Irish lady (Judi Dench) is so clueless about the modern world while other times veering into drama with the plight of the "Magdalene Girls" who were essentially enslaved to nuns in Ireland.  There's an older movie I think called "Magdalene Girls" if you want more of a focus on what actually went on in those concentration camps, er, abbeys.  (4/5)

Avengers Confidential: Black Widow and Punisher:  The Punisher kills a bunch of bad guys SHIELD was going after, so he's forced into helping Black Widow find some intel on some gang making super soldiers.  There were some times it wore on a little too long, like when Black Widow and this bad guy she used to date spend like 10 minutes saying how much they loved each other--we get it already, you loved each other!  Iron Man, the Hulk, and Captain Marvel (Marvel version) get cameos. (2.5/5)

Out of the Furnace:  A much-too-long drama in rural Pennsylvania where the former Batman (Christian Bale) and the future Batman's brother (Casey Affleck) are brothers until Affleck gets himself killed after some illegal bare-knuckle fighting in the redneck part of Jersey.  (There's a redneck part of Jersey?  I thought they were all like the Jersey Shore people.)  And then very slowly Batman takes revenge on Woody Harrellson.  (You know if they want another Joker, Woody Harrellson would probably be good at it.  I'm just saying.)  For some reason Forest Whittaker as the police chief talks in a growly Mr. T voice.  And Zoe Saldana cashes a paycheck as the woman, because we need a woman even if she contributes absolutely nothing to the plot. (2.5)

American Hustle:  I thought of seeing this in the theater but never got the chance.  I wasn't disappointed.  I might have given this the Best Picture Oscar as entertainment-wise it's better than 12 Years A Slave, though social message-wise not as much.  The former Batman (again Christian Bale), Lois Lane (Amy Adams), Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) and sometimes Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) try to ensnare Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) in a bribery scandal that soon spins out of their control.  Robert de Niro makes an uncredited appearance as yet another gangster character.  In the credits they refer to "Mr. Tellegio's dresser" and such as if we don't know who Robert de Niro is, because we haven't watched movies in 40 fucking years.  Anyway it was a lot of fun as con artist capers usually are--or should be. (5/5)

Captain America:  The Winter Soldier:  The only one of these I've watched in a theater.  I thought in some ways it was better than "The Avengers" because it actually has more of a story.  I'm sure you've all seen it so I'll just say I really liked it and hope for more. (5/5)

X:  This had everything I wanted in a late Saturday night movie:  violence and gratuitous nudity.  It was a surprisingly decent thriller about two Australian hookers in Sydney.  One is a hot blond who's been in the business for a while and is taking one last job before she goes off to Paris.  For this job she needs a brunette so when she runs into a young girl who's come to the big city to make some money selling her body, it seems like a perfect match.  Except the job ends with the john being murdered by a dirty cop and then the hookers are on the run.  I suppose part of the reason I liked it was I kept thinking the brunette would make a perfect Stacey Chance.  I wonder what her agent's number is?  (3/5)

(Incidentally it's really dumb to use only a single letter for your title.  I mean let's say one of you wants to actually watch this movie; there's no way in Hell you can find it because you type "X" into a search box and you'll get thousands of results.  The only way I found it was scrolling through the newly added movies on Amazon Instant Video.  This is why I caution authors about using one-word titles, which seems the in thing to do thanks to Twilight and the like.

Apparently they realized this as looking it up on IMDB via one of the actresses' names they tacked on the subtitle "Night of Vengeance" which made it a little easier to find on Amazon.)

Student Bodies:  Another late Saturday night selection that disappointingly did not feature gratuitous nudity but feature some violence.  It's a 1981 horror movie spoof where a would-be Michael Myers known as "The Breather" stalks high school kids having sex and murders them.  Then he calls the school, talking through a rubber chicken.  Um, yeah.  It's amusing, though not really as good as a Mel Brooks movie. (2.5/5)  Though it's funny that apparently in 1981 a single f-bomb got you an R-rating.  Nowadays that's only true for dramas; action and horror movies would only get a PG-13 rating.

Rush:  This was better than I thought it might be.  Though I'm not sure who they thought would actually be interested in this movie.  If it hadn't been Ron Howard and Brian Glazer at the helm it probably never would have been made.  I mean if a nobody like me were pitching this movie it'd be like:

Me:  So it's this movie about 2 race car drivers...
Exec:  NASCAR?  Because that's big.
Me:  No, Formula One (aka the European version of Indy Car)
Exec:  Um, OK and these two drivers, is one a woman or something?  Cuz I got Katherine Heigl's agent on speed dial here...
Me:  No, it's two guys.  One's British and one's Austrian...
Exec:  Austrian?  Like Schwarzenegger?  So it's an action movie?
Me:  Well, sort of.  But really it's about the complex relationship between these two rivals...
Exec:  I don't see any money in this.  What else you got?

I think I'm only exaggerating that a little bit. It's another example of prior success giving you carte blanche to make movies about early 60s folksingers or mid-70s Formula 1 drivers or other stuff no one really gives a shit about.  (3/5)

The Fifth Estate:  It's funny that this movie co-stars Daniel Bruhl, who was the Austrian driver in Rush and I inadvertently got them at the same time.  Anyway, this movie was slow and there's really not much drama to drive it.  They gamely try by focusing on a rift that grows between Assange and his right-hand-man Daniel Berg as well as later Dr. Bashir as a Libyan scientist who faces death when Wikilinks outs him.  But the end hardly bothers to deal with Assange's tryst in Sweden that led to a warrant for his arrest and flight from the authorities, relegating it to a word card and reenacted interview footage.  Um, maybe that was sort of important?  A movie about journalism really shouldn't bury a lead.  (2/5)  (BTW for David Walston the new Doctor has a minor role as a UK newspaper editor!  So there's that.)

The Guest House:  An Avril Lavigne-type kid (spoiled suburban girl who tries to act all Goth to piss off Daddy but then sings shitty Disney Channel pop) is home alone one weekend until an older girl shows up to stay in the guest house for the summer.  They start hanging out and blah blah blah finally kiss and then fuck.  To get all pervy on this, the cliche ridden script and wooden acting would have been tolerable if there had been some decent nudity but when they fuck the camera gets all shy and they keep their bras on.  It's like come on, I can see more watching Game of Thrones, consarnit.  What, you think you're making an "art" film here?  Anyway there's some message about following your dreams and stuff but if my dream ends up with me playing crappy Disney Channel pop in a shithole nightclub in San Francisco then maybe it's time for a new dream. (1/5)

Riddick:  Whenever Vin Diesel's popularity ticks back up we get another Riddick movie.  I haven't actually watched the first two, though I watched parts of the second one--enough to realize it sucked.  Through some overly complicated means Riddick ends up stranded on a harsh planet where he has to fight a bunch of weird creatures and ends up domesticating a jackal-type thing.  Then he finds a mercenary rest stop and sends out a distress call, which brings a bunch of people who want to kill him.  But when the planet starts trying to kill everyone, they have to work together.  I'm never sure if Riddick is supposed to be a good guy or a bad guy.  It is the kind of movie where you have no idea who to root for.  Really this wants to be one of the Alien movies but fails miserably.  The overly complicated flashback to get Riddick to the planet could have been shortened Alien 3-style to where he crashes on the planet and of course is the lone survivor.  But at least we get some gratuitous nudity out of the flashback.  (More than the movie above.)  Anyway, this might be one of the most pointless "trilogies" ever, along with "The Hangover" movies. But if you watched the Battlestar Galactica reboot and wanted to see Starbucks's boobs, there's that.  (I didn't so I didn't but whatever.)  (1/5)

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty:  According to Andrew Leon this varies wildly from the short story by James Thurber.  Anyway, this is probably Ben Stiller's most serious movie (as a director at least) since Reality Bites like 20 years ago.  He plays the titular character who works for Life magazine and has to find an old school photographer to get a photo for the last issue.  To do this he goes to Iceland, Greeland, and Afghanistan.  As much as it seems to say you should go see the world, the movie seems to delight in making the rest of the world look as provincial as possible.  Apparently we could win the war in Afghanistan if we mailed them over some clementine cake instead of bullets.  While Stiller is trying to think some big thoughts here it really does just fall back on that hackneyed "follow your dreams" stuff.  Not to say it's not entertaining, just not a great film.  (2.5/5)

Dallas Buyer's Club:  From the title I thought this was about prostitution or something.  Actually it's about a guy (Oscar winner Matthew McConaghuey) with AIDS who starts a "club" for fellow AIDS patients to buy vitamins and drugs they need to deal with their symptoms.  This brings trouble with the FDA, who are in the pockets of Big Pharma, who are pushing AZT, designed in the 60s as a cancer drug.  The problem with AZT is by itself in large doses it fries a person's innards.  I think since the 80s they've learned better how to use AZT in treatments, in part thanks to people who took on the FDA.  I was relieved this didn't turn into a courtroom drama and overall it was entertaining.  And the way he's diagnosed with AIDS was similar to how Frost's roommate Pete finds out in Where You Belong.  (4/5)

Homefront:  It's pretty much what you'd expect from a movie starring Jason Statham and written by Sly Stallone.  Statham is inexplicably a British guy who was in the DEA but then moves with his young daughter to the backcountry of Louisiana, where he runs afoul of an unrecognizable Kate Bosworth, whose brother James Franco is a local meth kingpin.  A lot of improbable white guy kung-fu fights and gun battles ensue.  (2.5/5)

47 Ronin:  This story was a lot simpler when an old French guy told it to Robert de Niro in "Ronin."  Basically the master of 47 samurai is killed so they become masterless warriors known as Ronin and then go take vengeance.  In this movie it's like they mixed that original story with "The Princess Bride" as the seemingly dead heroes have to go rescue the princess before she marries an evil jerk.  Briane Pagel would not like this movie because of the scene featuring a creepy purple spider.  Though if having one brown eye and one blue gives you magic powers that might explain how Tigers pitcher Max Scherzer won the Cy Young last year. (2/5)

A Dominatrix Story:  This is one of those titles like "Snakes on a Plane" or "Sharknado" that scrolling through movies late at night it's hard to pass up.  But I wish I had because it was really, really BORING.  Most of it is some frumpy middle-aged chick hooking up with some lame mediocre painter.  There's very little dominatrixing involved except she uses it on a couple of dudes who maybe helped kill her father or adopted father or something.  There's a tacked-on car chase and gun battle but by then it's much too late for me to care. It makes sense why the original title was apparently "Justify."  I suppose some marketing genius changed it after the fact, but if you're going to use a provocative title like that the movie behind it has to deliver the goods.  (0/5)

Galaxy of Dinosaurs:  In the early 90s "Lance Randas" and a group of terrible "actors" in the wilds of Ohio spent $1500 making a movie that makes Ed Wood look like a genius.  They literally splice together footage of the people in Ohio with 50s-vintage claymation dinosaur footage.  It results in possibly unintentional hilarity like when one guy backs into what's clearly a branch that becomes a triceratops horn.  Later someone else throws what's clearly a stick that becomes a spear.  The Ohio terrain and the mountainous background of the dinosaurs clearly don't match.  And the "story" makes very little sense.  Really I think this is so bad not even MST3K would touch it. (5/5 on the cheesiness scale)

I, Frankenstein:  On a list of known actors, Aaron Eckhart would be pretty far down there on my choice to play the Frankenstein monster.  Really I think you need someone big and musclebound like the Rock or Vin Diesel or some WWE wrestler.  Maybe they were busy.  Anyway the Frankenstein monster is still around in the 21st Century and is recruited by gargoyles to kill demons, who want to use Frankenstein's technique to reanimate corpses for a demon army.  Mayhem ensues. (2/5)

The Book Thief:  Sometimes I wonder if the world needs yet another movie about Nazi atrocities, but then you hear how growing numbers of people don't believe the Holocaust happened or have no idea what World War II was.  So I guess we need to keep pounding the message home.  This doesn't actually focus on the Holocaust, but rather an orphaned girl in Germany who at first is pretty much illiterate but with some help from her foster father (Geoffrey Rusch) she learns to read and then starts to "borrow" books from the burgermeister's wife.  At one point the family hides a Jewish guy in their basement.  I suppose there haven't been all that many movies focusing on the German homefront, which between the brutal Nazi policies, rationing, and Allied bombing was anything but a picnic.  I thought from the title she'd steal more books from the book burnings, but she only takes one after a bunch of books have been burned.  Overall it's kind of slow and the idea of DEATH narrating was pretty lame, especially since I kept thinking he sounded like Kevin Spacey in "House of Cards" though it was someone else's voice.  But I guess if you're one of those who can't be bothered to watch older movies like "Schindler's List" then you might find this fresh. (3/5)

Bonus:  TV shows I've watched:

Parks & Recreation:  I really enjoyed this show, though the first season of six episodes isn't as great.  It seems after that season they decided to dial down Leslie Knope's stupidity and make her more naive instead of dumb, which really works better.  Though my favorite character is Ron Swanson; I would seriously have a Claymore mine at my desk if I could find one.  It's not the best show ever, but it's usually pretty funny.  (4/5)

Star Wars The Clone Wars:  They added this to Netflix (along with an exclusive 6th season) so since I didn't have anything else to watch I started watching it.  Some of the first episodes aren't great but eventually it starts to get better.  I like how even though the clones are all based on the same person they find ways to make them different and give them different names and personalities so they aren't just cannon fodder.  Actually some of the best episodes revolve around the clones becoming more human, like the one where scouts Waxer and Boil find a little girl on the Twi'lek planet Ryloth and she helps them save the planet.  Or the one where Captain Rex runs into a deserter who's started a whole family with a Twi'lek chick on an Outer Rim world.  Unfortunately there's still Jar-Jar (who manages to be more annoying) but like the last two movies he's sparingly used, and there's still occasionally the Viceroy, and the droids who seem like they were programmed by the Marx brothers.  But Anakin is less of a whiny bitch and Obi-Wan is still the best Jedi character.  Though it's animated and aired on the Cartoon Network, it's not really for kids what with all the violence, clone troopers dying left and right and such.  Really though I think this show manages to be better than its source material at times--probably because it's not written or directed by George Lucas.  (3/5)

I also watched the Clone Wars movie that led into the show.  They just kind of throw you into it, expecting you to already know who Ventress is and stuff like that.  It felt a little on the long side, but it was Jar-Jar free so it's got that going for it. (2.5/5)