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Honestly quite a bit better than I thought it would be going in. I was kinda ambivalent about seeing this one but Scott had seen just about everything else playing so we saw this...and I actually liked it. Now it's not doing anything that's unexpected....it hits all the plot points of all the previous movies (new kid, bully, love interest that the bully also likes, competition that the protagonist enters in hopes of showing up the bad guy, there's even an evil dojo that doesn't get much screentime but it's where the bully practices at) but it sorta does them with a decent enough style. There's a new wrinkle in this one where our protagonist who enters the film already knowing how to fight more or less has to teach the forty something pizzaria owner (played by Joshua Jackson....Doctor Odyssey and Pacey himself!) how to fight even tho he used to be a boxer but he owes money to some bad guys and the protagonist also likes his daughter.

Jackie Chan and eventually Ralph Macchio enter the film offering help...Both are nice to see as is Pat Morita in the opening scene which is a flashback (nice of Pat to come back from the dead to cameo here) William Zabka has a tag at the very end. They're all welcome but it's the kid's story and because of that tho the film tries to make it about them.... it does kinda feel a little like they're being shoehorned in but that's ok. It's a likeable movie. I was pretty glad I saw it in the end as I definitely didn't think I would. Sometimes it's nice just to let a pleasant formula film hit the marks.

There's also a fighter seen briefly whom our protagonist fights billed as The Queens Tornado which you know fills me with that Queens pride baby.

Also LCD Sound system North American scum plays at one point over a fight scene and I was pumped hearing it pop up very unexpectedly. (I just did that at karaoke as a result and no one here outside of Scott and the dj knew it or cared but I was happy to do it...that song's great!!!)

"You got your precinct back"
"you got your freedom"
"if this is what freedom's all about...it stinks!"

Powers Boothe is great in this as an ex con who unexpectedly makes parole after police captain Billy Dee Williams puts in a good word for him on the condition that Boothe help him clean up the streets of his precinct which is littered with murders committed by his former associates including Michael Ironside who rose up and took Boothe's place as the no 1 drug kingpin in town while Boothe was inside. ("He's got things around here locked up tighter than a bedbug's butt") Boothe is tasked with riding around on patrol with two cops with the hopes of eventually using his connections to help stem the tide of violence in the streets. Much of this is Boothe sorta strolling thru the ol neighborhood--cops in tow--and learning to readjust to society. (There's a great scene where the two cops take him to a domestic disturbance and Boothe ends up beating up a guy who's beating up his old lady "Hey this is my house and this is my woman" "Yeah well this is my fist" "Hey this is against the law" "So am I!" (punch))

I kinda wish Billy Dee had a bigger part in this--he spends too much of the movie arriving at the scene after the action has already taken place. I wanted to see him and Boothe in action together--but Boothe handles most of the action that's in here alone which is fine but you know this could've easily made a good two hander with the slightest of changes. This is mostly fairly run of the mill crime drama genre fare as Boothe tries to rid the streets of the varying criminal elements. (In addition to the drug runners, there's also a group of Jamaicans extorting small business owners) It's about average quality wise overall but however tepid it is, I'd say that it's almost worth sitting thru entirely for Boothe who rarely got to have the lead role in something along these lines and I feel like he gets to make the most of it. He's just brimming with surly attitude throughout...it's a very solid star turn in a movie that doesn't remotely deserve it lol. (Meanwhile Ironside as the main villain isn't given quite enough to do tho as it's kind of a nondescript role and he's just not given as much of a chance to really put his stamp on this the way that Boothe is...tho he does get to utter the line "I'm gonna make jelly out of his eyeballs" at one point.)

(A very young Jack Black has a nothing part as a carjacker at about the 37 minute mark on the youtube I watched)

"I was wondering if you might like to have a chocolate chip cookie with me"

"They found the last guy who went undercover with O'Bannon floating in the river" "Yeah well they should've taught him how to swim"

Whoa the screenwriter of this also wrote No Holds Barred (and Bronco Billy!)

I said at one point while watching this that it was kinda like if The Lonely Island had gotten to make a kids movie....cause this has some of the hallmarks of some of their videos--it's very colorful and catchy and it's quite weird, but it's also somewhat accessible (tho I had a hard time making heads or tails of it at times--which to be fair isn't unusual for a Lonely Island video at times)

Not entirely sure what to rate this one. Jack Black is as exuberant as always, (he very much throws himself into this) and Jason Momoa as the taciturn pawn shop owner whom the main kid befriends is also pretty good in this. Black and Momoa spend a good portion of the movie together and they make a decent enough team together playing off one another fairly solidly enough. However it's hard to escape the fact that I had very little idea what was actually happening in this throughout. I mean I get that it's an adventure movie where this group of five get sucked into this magic portal that takes them to this land of blocks and magical pig creatures and chicken jockeys. (For the record that gets said by Black at the 70 minute mark) and the plot revolves around them trying to find a way back home which also requires them to defeat this evil pig wizard who wants to take over and enslave everyone. It kinda reminded me a little bit of Super Mario Bros 3--not the game exactly but more specifically the map where Mario and Luigi would walk to the little lands and warp into.

I didn't quite understand enough of this to be able to definitively declare if this was good or bad but it's fast moving, there's some action scenes and more then enough silly humor in this throughout that made me think I prob would've liked it a lot if I was 10. (Hell it wasn't too different in structure from the 1993's Super Mario Bros Movie and I did like the heck outta that when I was 10 so that kinda proves my point) I dunno, maybe if I knew slightly more about the game this might've made more sense to me??? As it stands tho it's a pleasing enough distraction tho it was (again) hard to shake the fact that I had very little idea what was actually happening here lol--but why let that stop you from enjoying the scenery and the Jack Black shenanigans??? Oh and Jennifer Cooledge has a fun recurring role as well

"I give this movie 2x4 stars!"--Phil C

Wings Ha is some sorta phantom carpenter murdering guys who bother the new tenant of this mansion who herself has just gotten out of a mental hospital (We're introduced to her continually singing "I Better Knock Knock Knock on Wood") She's got kind of a tenuous grasp on reality and a businessman husband who keeps going away for weeks at a time leaving her alone (with the occasional visit from her sister to keep her company tho she does take a job at a local hardware store shaking up cans of paint.) Being largely left alone tho makes her prey for Wings Ha's hunky carpenter character who keeps appearing making various noises with his carpenter tools in the middle of the night in her living room. I didn't quite grasp that his character was dead at first--i thought it was a "Hider In the House" (or "Bad Ronald") situation at first where he's like living there unseen (we see him kinda occupying the cellar) but no he's apparently a poltergeist of sorts. (I was surprised later in the movie when the sister ends up able to see him because up til then the only people who had been able to see him were our main character and the various people he murders--so it kinda led me to think it was a "The Ring" type situation where you only see him right before he brutally murders you)

It's pretty enjoyable for what it is. It's kind of a straightforward haunted house movie with more than a few hints of romance here. (It's clear that Wings likes our female protagonist and she starts like thinking fondly of him somehow despite the rather gruesome murders she sees him commit in front of her) (You'd think she would at least mind the blood staining her hardwood floors of the victims he dispatches but hey he's only killing them to protect her I suppose) I kinda appreciate that everyone is pretty much playing this straight--including Wings--i've seen him go to town on scenery before having sat thru "Vice City" and this isn't that--this is him pretty restrained. it definitely helps sell the material. Umm I gave "Hider In the House" 2.5 stars when i saw it maybe a week or two back here and while this isn't that much better a film--i think the main difference is that this has a slightly better handle on the Wings character--in "Hider In the House" i think we were supposed sympathize with the killer character and here there's no such problem--tho I guess it helps that this isn't being told from The Carpenter's point of view the way Hider In the House was. It's got some good gnarly kills too.

Clip Party Potential for the scene where she's like talking to Wings outside the house and every time the movie cuts back to Wings from her talking to him--he's got like a completely different carpentry project in his hands--it's very silly--which is something the rest of the movie is not so much somewhat surprisingly tho it does feature the line "You're filthy, you're dead, and you smell bad" at one point. (nods)

I kinda liked how relatively low stakes this is for the most part. Kevin Durant isn't much of an actor but he's affable enough playing himself here in a fairly low key manner. The movie involves him losing his talent after g a basketball to this teenage fan who ends up being the recipient of said talent. Most of the movie revolves around the teenager who has to learn the usual lessons of talent not making the man but man making the talent. He gets caught up in the usual trappings of the sudden popularity that being the star player on the team brings even tho part of him ends up yearning for the low key anonymity he had when he was just a wannabe star player.

There's a nice moment maybe an hour in where Durant ends up visiting the teen in the high school (because his manager has inexplicably figured out that his talent has gone to this high school phenom he's read about and recognizes him from the game he attended--so the manager sets up a meet and greet btw Durant and the high schooler) where the two of them are eating in the school cafeteria and everyone is crowded around them staring intensely at them and the teen is like "Do you ever get to used to this?" and Durant's like "not entirely"

Anyways I liked how rather than try to cook up some hysterical drama, the movie wisely has the teen and Durant trying to find a way for the teen to give the talent back to Durant--the teen doesn't really want the star status the talent has brought him anymore, and also being a giant fan doesn't like that his hero is having this huge slump that he unknowingly caused--so it was nice that the movie has the two of them in alignment rather than say the kid refusing to give it back or something. It helps keep the film more appealingly low key than you might expect a star vehicle for a non actor like this might be.

Jim Belushi and son Robert Belushi are both in this as the high school coach and his assistant. At one point towards the end Robert Belushi starts quoting the speech from Hoosiers which Jim immediately calls out and it's cute. (Jim's speech isn't as eloquent "Be good, don't be bad, 1,2,3...Don't Suck!")

I dunno maybe it's cause I had a relatively low bar for this when Lou said he wanted to see it because of the Thunder's current place in the NBA playoffs but it wasn't half bad. I was actually expecting something sillier and a bit flashier so I was taken by how lower key in nature this is than I had been expecting.

Conan has a cameo!!! (nods) Kid turns on the tv at one point and sees Conan making a joke about how bad Durant currently is.

Entertaining enough "end of the world" blockbuster with Gerard Butler, wife Morena Baccarin, and their young kid being given placement in a Presidential approved shelter after confirmation that a huge asteroid is set to hit Earth and I guess they've got a pre approved list for people to protect. For whatever reason tho they end up rescinding said approval when its found out that Butler's kid has diabetes and refuse to let him on the plane to the bunker--the wife naturally gets off with the kid, Butler for his part tries to get insulin to ensure that the kid can survive, but only finds out that his wife and kid got kicked off the plane after he boards so Butler immediately demands off the plane and spends the next little while trying to chase after them thinking he can find em amongst the pandemonium that's broken out from everyone who you know wasn't selected to ride out the end of the world in a fallout shelter.

I thought the rest of the movie was gonna be Butler trying to find his wife and kid-but the movie surprised me by having them reunite maybe an hour in with the rest of it them trying to find a way to Greenland which is where these varying shelters are (and supposedly the only place determined to be safe from where the asteroid is gonna hit) It's not like this is especially great but it's solid enough as a B grade destruction movie that could've very easily come out in 1997. (It stuck me as being reminiscent of something along the lines of Dante's Peak or Volcano which to my mind is a good thing) It's not doing anything original, but it moves quickly enough and it's like big and loud enough that it works as an adequate enough example of its genre of destruction.

Apparently Butler just filmed a sequel to this tho I have no idea who was asking for one (this didn't do much box office because it was a victim of the pandemic so we'll never know if this could've been an actual hit or not) If I'm measuring this by other Gerard Butler starring vehicles I've seen tho, I suppose it's about on the level of something like "Plane" (maybe slightly better cause the action isn't entirely relegated to the back half the way it was in that movie) it's no "Den of Thieves" but there's decent enough action here and there throughout. It's maybe a little square but I thought it was perfectly cromulent.

Pretty dull but the scenes on the spaceship with Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, and Kyle Chandler among others reminded me of "Gravity" which struck me as odd because George Clooney (who directed this) was in Gravity so why would he wanna remake it??? Ehh whatever, it's not terrible, terrible--i just found it too sluggishly paced to generate much excitement or engagement (i kept thinking "why is this two hours long???") The movie doesn't even follow thru on telling you the one thing it keeps teasing which is what calamity befell the Earth that made it inhospitable to human life (which is why the astronauts can't come home) We spend the whole movie waiting for some big reveal that quite literally never comes! (Now you're gonna tell me "but that's not what the movie was about--it's about humanity's will to carry on even when all circumstances look bleak and hopeless") (Yeah ok but you can still do that and tell me what happened right?)

STAR TREK VOYAGER'S TUVOK IS IN THE VERY BEGINNING OF THIS!!! TUVOK!!!! (That would be Tim Russ) THIS MOVIE NEEDED MORE TUVOK!!!! (BRING BACK TUVOK!!!!)

There's an interesting documentary to be made from this exact subject matter (Pitching an idea for a brand new board game to various different companies and execs at small outfits that could finance it) but for this to have been more successful they would've needed a different subject matter to follow around. I say this not to be mean but the guy this movie follows around comes across for a good majority of it as fairly unsympathetic and outright crazy at times. It takes about 28 minutes or so before he reveals that he used to be a patient at a mental hospital and when he starts getting into that (He's bipolar and he had some rather severe mental health episodes in the past including a car chase with the cops that landed him an involuntary stay) and honestly once he does it's like "Ohhh ok so this guy actually IS crazy and not just hopelessly detached from reality" because the last part of that sentence is kinda how he came across for much of that opening half hour as he just pinballs from one guy to the next and foolhardily asking them "so what'd you think of my game???"

The game he's pitching I should clarify is a board game about being stuck in traffic--which I suppose as an idea isn't the worst concept for a game tho as one guy he pitches it to puts it more or less "I can't imagine anyone wanting to sit down to play a board game about being stuck in traffic when that's something that just about everybody tries to avoid doing in their everyday lives"

I guess enough rejection finally seeps into his brain because he eventually tries to reformat it as a slightly different game (tho still road based) called "Turnpike" To my mind this is the best of the three he comes up with during the course of the doc (he has yet one more to unveil to us later on) I say this tho cause I live off of a Turnpike (and have for many decades) and so I see this and I think to myself "yeah i probably would buy a board game called Turnpike and never play it, but I would show it off" Turnpike is a little more questions and answers based. Probably not ideal for the players of board games who crave more competitive games but I don't know, I feel like as a kid I would've gone for something more along those lines where you can be somewhat creative.

This leads into the third game which doesn't have a very good title--it's like something called "Talk & Listen" or something which seems to consist of just rolling a couple different dice and following the prompts the symbols that you've rolled tell you to. (Honestly it's not that different than like Twitter prompts) As he goes about once again going to various people/companies and trying to explain what this is, he starts making it a bit more competitive as he goes along--like he starts talking about how there could be things like spells or powers that could stymie your fellow players--and i think it's only then that the people he's trying to sell this concept too start kinda leaning in and listening to a bit more intently. (I would've liked Turnpike)

Anyways if you're still with me, this is an interesting concept for a doc to have--this filmmaker just decided to follow this guy around as he pitches his own independently thought of high concept board game ideas up to people--and the frustrations that are inherent in not just being rejected but being rejected even after thinking about it and revising it so that it's more friendly.

Unfortunately once again the guy we're following comes across for much of this as a bit of a nutjob. I don't mean that in a negative way but just he has a monologue fairly late in the movie--maybe around the 75 or 80 minute mark where he's talking about how he found himself at Yale one night thinking obsessively about this tooth he has in his mouth that he thinks other people are looking down on him about so he talks about how he went and yanked it out of his own head one night while extremely high--and it's an insane monologue--it's like if nothing else the person filming this had to have thought to themselves "Oh i've made a huge mistake" here in choosing to follow this particular guy around. The guy is like Joel at times throughout! You can't have a documentary with a Joel like figure at your center--you're gonna lose the audience after awhile!

Even so it was an interesting enough concept that kinda left me thinking (mostly about unhinged this guy was but still...)

Surprisingly cute 53 minute documentary about competitive jigsaw puzzlers in the mid west. It plays quite a bit like a Christopher Guest movie but everyone in this is 100% serious about their love/affection/enthusiasm for their chosen hobby. Like there's nothing deadpan or winking about this--everyone's very on the level about how much they love jigsaw puzzles (and also how serious they take the level of competition) I was genuinely surprised at how endearing I found a lot of this but it's honestly very cute. (nods)
Thanks Batman & Jandro!!!

Watched on Friday June 6, 2025.

"Circuits don't fail me now"
"Time for a little robot chauvinism"
How on Earth has there been a movie that has Christopher Plummer and David Hasselhoff as father and son?!?!? Like what universe does that movie exist in? Apparently this one...Go figure!

This was pretty perfect for my semi comatose state of being post funeral/luncheon. My best friend Peter...his significant other died very suddenly last week... they were together for 16 years and today was the funeral...I crashed on his old friend Brian's couch so I could make the funeral cause there was no way I was making it otherwise but Brian was kind enough to lemme sleep here and then we rode there together and back because I left my stuff at his apt and because I really didn't feel like going back outside where it is hot, he's like you feel like a movie? Never in my life have I not felt like a movie so after pitching some suggestions he pitched this one and I had heard of it of course and it was on Tubi of course so he put it on and now I'm slightly less semi comatose so thanks Starcrash....you did your job irably. Also thanks Brian!

THIS WAS KEITH'S FAVORITE MOVIE AS A KID!!! (Ok it wasn't really)

"Somebody call for a rescue party with extra cheese???" (what?)

Kinda like a junior grade version of Mystery Men (or I guess Fantastic Four--Kate Mara is in both this AND the 2015 Fantastic Four) I'll bet anything Tim Allen and co were hoping for another Galaxy Quest combo of knowing comedy and genre movie & tv tropes--in this case it's superhero movie stuff and while there are some cute moments throughout, it's ittedly kinda weak on the comedy front tho Tim Allen tries to deliver a similar kinda performance. I'll say this for it tho--it's easy to watch and it looks good--it's all brightly colored and it doesn't look cheap. Wikipedia has this at having a 75 mill budget--and it grossed about 12 sooo that was prob a bad decision by Sony to invest so much in this--I kinda get it tho, on paper this feels like something that could've been a mid summer hit. (came out second week of August on a week where it's main competition was the first Step Up movie but this failed to even crack the top five alas--opened in 9th place!) The outline of the story is kinda similar to Galaxy Quest too with this unlikely crew being assembled together--and trained together/learning to work together as a team---and then they're forced to have to fight this villain on a hostile terrain that they're kinda not quite prepared for even tho they had plenty of training! The last act of this really is quite similar to Allen and co having to stand up against the hostile aliens in Galaxy Quest--even tho it's them standing up to his brother turned supervillain (Captain Concussion) which is resolved ridiculously easily. (It's like the supervillain knew how much time was left in the movie to resolve this and just gave up)

Anyways it's fine--if i was like 9 or 10 when this had come out (instead of 23??) I'd have probably enjoyed it--as an adult I can see how this kinda barely holds together as a whole (it's very much edited within an inch of its life) There needed to be more build I think cause when the kids have to escape the compound to go and fight the supervillain at the end--it feels very abrupt, as if the movie hadn't been building towards this outcome--because frankly it hadn't. Most of the movie prior to then had been Tim Allen trying to build them up as a team and getting them to work together and resolve whatever personal hangups they might have as individuals. For about an hour the movie works ok enough as sort of a kid version of that...and then it's like Rip Torn here playing a general reveals that he's gathered them together cause he's hoping to throw them out as a team against Allan's brother who had previously slayed Allen's team (Allen barely escaped being killed and it was bad enough that he hung up his cape and became a car salesman or whatever--the trauma of this is alluded to early on by Allen, but everything is rushed so fast it's easy to either miss or gloss over entirely) Courtney Cox is a klutzy scientist who was a big fan of Allen's Zoom character when she was a kid. (How old is Allen supposed to be here???) A nice little touch is that Allen's superhero exploits were documented in this comic book series which most people assume was made up but it's stuff that largely happened to Allen during his superhero days. Anyways because of this Cox has a little bit of a schoolgirl crush on Allen which Allen responds to with kinda typical Tim Allen grouchiness--tho in sitcom fashion he eventually comes around not just to her but to the team in general and learns to re-embrace his superhero altar ego.

There's like a zillion Smash Mouth songs that play throughout. (Smash Mouth actually gets credited in the opening credits with "Songs By...") It feels like a lot but apparently it's only six--including a cover of Queen's "Under Pressure" at one point.) (Most of these Smash Mouth songs are front loaded in the first half hour so when several non Smash Mouth songs pop up later on it's very noticeable) ("I guess they ran outta Smash Mouth material here")

Anyways it's ok--could it have been better? Sure. Could it have been funnier? Most definitely. Was it weird to see Chevy Chase turn up in a largely straight role? (the only comedic thing he gets to do is at one point the kids start messing with buttons in a weather controlled room he's in and they make him get hit with a bolt of lightning and he speaks Japanese immediately after getting hit--and then he does a Good, Bad, and the Ugly with an animatronic skunk who sprays him--why was he even in this???) Anyways did it appeal to the lizard part of my brain that still likes schlock aimed at kids? Very much so.

"Dylan would you like to come up to the board and finish Newton's equation?" "I think Newton can finish his own equation"

oh yeah Squiggy (David L Lander) pops up as an employees at Wendy's (the kids take a spaceship and drive it to a take out window at a Wendy's and he serves them thru the drive thru window and is gobstruck by having to serve frosties to a spaceship

"Who in the hell do you think you are?"
"He's the principal man!"
"I'm the principal man!"

Honestly I feel like this is a lot better than it has any right being. Even tho I grew up with (and liking) Belushi in much more lighthearted comedy mode (Mr. Destiny, Taking Care of Business, Curly Sue) I do think he's prob at his best when he's got something that he's gotta go up against that sorta rattles him a bit but also spurs something in him to rally. This role here is prob the best for him in that regard because rather than coasting on well honed loutish shtick, he actually has to dig deep--well deeper than usual in any case to believably play this guy...I mean this is still a movie that features him riding a motorcycle at multiple points and also opens with him being a very unrepentant asshole. It opens with him beating the shit out of a car his ex wife's divorce lawyer is cowering in--at one point the guy grabs the bat out of Belushi's hand and Belushi's like "Gimme back my bat!" and goes right back to beating up the car. (Lol Lou actually said to me "man...this dude is suppose to be our hero???") (Yes)

There's a character in here named White Zac. ("his name's too long to say--White Zac O'Shit")

I liked Troy Winbush here quite a bit as one of the young students Belushi honestly tries to set straight. Winbush has become a very omnipresent guest star on myriad tv shows, he was quite likeable as a detective on the recently cancelled Suits LA for example. He never quite found wider fame or a procedural of his own, but he's been bouncing around for decades and it's weird to see him so young and fresh faced here. Also in here is Esai Morales--whom Belushi tries to encourage in writing poetry. (nods)

Lou Gossett Jr. as the head of security and Rae Dawn Chong as a teacher whom Belushi grows a little sweet on are also both solid in their respective parts tho the parts are kinda stock.(Gossett gets to shine a little once he realizes that Belushi is actually serious and isn't just there to half ass the job while letting things stay the same.) Michael Wright as the scowling trenchcoat wearing head drug dealer is a little less good ("yo yo yo look man if you're trying to reach me, I'd just try to cut your hand off") but like he's effective enough in the part of scowling drug dealer whom Belushi has to get riled up enough to erupt in a murderous rage at the end. ("I expel you fucker!")

Look maybe it's not doing anything new or noteworthy (Dangerous Minds and The Substitute both leap to mind maybe cause this is sort of a cross of them even tho both came out some years after this did) but i think it goes thru the motions in an enjoyable enough manner. One of the reviews I liked by the people I follow on here compared this to a Western, and that is essentially what this is--Belushi is more like a sheriff than a principal come to clean up the town (in this case the school) There are a fair number of locals--here faculty and several of the student body who don't believe he can do it or scoff/are pessimistic at the idea of someone being successful at changing anything, (and there are many locals who just straight up tell him to go fuck himself-if you take a shot anytime someone cusses out Belushi, you will be fairly inebriated by the climax) but as he sets about doing just what he said he's going to--they come to respect him and try to aide him even tho plenty complain along the way as you know is standard in most Westerns.

("One of my new students urinated on the floor!" "Are those students on your attendance sheet?" "Yes" "Well then by law you have to try and teach them...You can't pick and choose your students you gotta take the students the school gives you and teach them the best you can--you can't just teach the easy ones and throw the rest in the garbage...every student that we leave in the hallway, every student that we leave in an alley, every student that we leave roaming the parking lot is another brick off the foundation of this school now look knives only hurt if they go thru you, and urine only smells if you don't clean it up now come on!")

He even has a couple extra teachers put on the payroll as deputies. ("They're teachers!" "They're BIG teachers!") (Who knew you could make a Western in a high school? Well i guess people who saw "3 O'Clock High" also from the same year this came out- since that's basically just High Noon in high school)

This honestly works in large part because of Belushi--I feel like he's believable as both someone foolhardy enough to think he can accomplish actual change, and also as someone smart enough to be scared by the head drug dealer pulling a gun on him and threatening to blow him away. Belushi is believable enough in the part that it makes the movie work by and large. As much as I love the low stakes comedies he made, I kinda wish he had gotten to do more parts that challenged him a little bit. Not that this capital A acting but he has several scenes throughout that actually require him to act more sincerely than usual and convey vulnerability. It's a fairly good performance in a part that could've easily been full of misplaced shtick. It's weird to think that this came out only two years after his time on SNL cause this is the kinda thing that actors usually try and do later in their career after they've exhausted their shtick, this seems to have come before. It's even pre K-9!!!

NO MORE!!!!

(Also I really like the cleaning up the school montage that features the song "Set It Off To The Left Y'all....Set It Off To The Right Y'all..") That's a good funky little montage here at about the 35 minute mark!

Shrug Emoji: The Movie

The movie is literally nearly 90 minutes of Norman Reedus and Djimon Honsou in an empty storage facility. I mean there's some drama here, but the whole thing feels like an empty acting exercise. What was this even supposed to be about??? (Apparently most of the population of humanity that's left is asleep underground because the air up above has become toxic to breathe and for some reason the two guys are standing watch) Hey it's not a bad premise but like not much happens beyond Honsou cracking up and Reedus being like "hey man, you're cracking up" "No i'm not, you're the one who's cracking up see?" (rinse and repeat) There's not really all that much of a movie here, and there's probably even less to talk about. It kinda reminded me of "engers" a little bit but at least stuff ends up happening in that movie! No rating for now because I honestly can't think of what to give it. (It barely feels like a movie is what I'm getting at)

alright next movie

You think Jim Davis has seen this one??? Can't believe a Garfield mask would play such a pivotal part.

"Those who cannot sacrifice for love will never get concert tickets"

"I dare you to keep going!" "I want to keep going" "Stop pointing!" "I'll point you to death cripple!" "Fuck you" "Fuck you too!" "Fuck you three!" "Fuck you four five six" "Fuck fuck fuck" "I hope you get syphilis"

"Your words will never hurt me because I've lost my mind"

"It's a waste to tell her you're the masked Garfield....Why not just say you're the American president?" "Maybe later... let's just sort this out first"

"I must beat up that karate fellow for calling me trash" "You are trash here take a look...come look at the trash....whaaa whohhh eeee... can't tell the difference... don't deny it." "To prove I'm not trash, I'll beat him up" "Well don't forget who trained you" "Teach me more kung fu" "I told you I lied to you! Why do this to yourself?" "I won because of your lies. Keep lying to me then" "You were lucky!!! Whether or not you believe me, please stay away from me now please get out of here" "Will you lie to me or not?" "No and there's nothing you can do" "I'll ruin your face" "I dare you"

This was a fun and quite wacky piss take on The Karate Kid (tho I kept thinking of "Sidekicks" weirdly enough. Maybe it's cause of how cartoon-y the villains are in this) Thanks Sebastian!

"Our pineapple buns really are made of fresh pineapple...Our French toast are made of real shit...if you don't believe me, Nagu...take a fresh hot dump for all to see"

("When Ngan came to me he was like a potato")

One of the producers seen on camera in this is named Bart Simpson!

Kind of a meta documentary about the difficulties and various hassles brought about by the Dole company to keep this guy's completed documentary (called Bananas) about these migrant workers who were very ill treated by Dole from ever seeing the light of day. It's about to be screened at a festival in LA when the Dole lawyers scare them into pulling it and that's just the beginning as the filmmaker funds himself beset by varied media hit pieces that demean him but of course only end up bringing more attention to his documentary.

So we watch the camera follow him as he tries to get the film screened somewhere and also attempt to fight back in court with a counter suit. I like that this is kind of an on the fly doc in that it was clearly unplanned but also functions as a ready made sequel to his doc about the migrant workers but this time with the camera turned on him. The villian still ends up being Dole tho more specifically this one particular exec whose very many cease and desist or we will be forced to take actions letters we see but we never do get an on camera appearance by. It's not quite "Roger & Me" but I was kinda gearing up for some confrontation along those lines as this battle for the right to show his film gets more and more heated.

I thought it was watchable enough as far tho if this were fictional I'd question the realism of how a random blogger who writes about hamburger ts in Sweden ended up substantially helping the filmmaker's case by noting how this particular burger chain offers Dole fruit cups which causes others to write in consternation to the guy who runs the chain who cancels his contract with Dole and this ends up getting noted by the European branch of Dole and somehow this comes to the attention of various of Swedish parliament who end up demanding to see the film so they could see for themselves if it demeans Dole and suddenly the filmmaker is a cause being taken up by national pride ("Who's this U.S. company to tell us if we can screen a movie here in our country made by a local???") Soon enough dominoes fall that it's like oh he might actually be able to get this screened without this mighty lawsuit pushing down on him after all and all it took was this random: popular hamburger blogger??? Lol truth is stranger than fiction....I don't think I would've bought that had it not happened. Even the filmmaker seems taken by surprise by this turn of events after a solid year of battling the Dole company lawyers for the right to screen it anywhere.

I'm fully ready to return it to you Justin.

Inscrutable at first but eventually things start to click into place somewhat???

Christian Slater is a Gordon Gekko worshiping hotshot lawyer at this huge firm whom after his old friend from law school gets killed ends up getting recruited by this big oil company CEO (played by Robert Loggia) to take his old friend's place helping to evaluate and secure the buy out of this huge Russian oil company for the U.S. to take over which would be a huge boon and a great relief for the U.S. (this takes place against the backdrop of a giant oil crisis resulting in a 6 dollar a gallon gas price evidently brought about by a three year lockout with the United Arab Emirate countries) Slater ends up being threatened by various parties who wanna scuttle this merger for their own nefarious reasons. (Angie Harmon keeps popping up throughout---could she possibly be one of those trying to muck this up???)

Colm Feore is a rival at the law firm who's insanely jealous over Slater scooping him on this deal that will be worth 25 million dollars to the firm ("I work in the oil and gas division, since when does he know anything about refineries???") Could he be trying to muck this up??? Some of the inherent rivalries and drama involving the competitive nature of the lawyers at the same firm trying to get one over on each other reminded me of something outta "Suits" but the stuff involving Loggia, the oil company, and potential love interest Selma Blair who's this one time environmental scientist who's lobbying for alternative energy tax credits ("we buy the tax credits that smaller non profit companies can't use and sell them to bigger outfits that could use them") (what? Is she trying to muck this deal up?) is all gibberish to me. It might as well be in a foreign language. As Slater does his due diligence he notices some chicanery on Loggia's part and also on the oil company's rough estimates of what their barrels of oil are supposedly worth and comes across the idea that the barrels of oil they've been importing are not coming from where they say they are.

This is one of those legal thrillers where frankly it's not very thrilling because even if you're very closely paying attention, this thing is so dependent on business and concepts that will absolutely fly over the heads of the common man (Ie: me) It's a little along the lines of say Margin Call or maybe one of those Mamet plays where it's more about the actors trying to sell the dramatics of what's happening more than what's actually happening if that makes any sense. I kinda understood the vague broad outlines of what was happening here, but like I'm not entirely sure I could explain it beyond "Slater starts out as a cocky hotshot and Loggia who's a big time connected player ends up dazzling him with dangling this deal worth millions and street cred...if it goes thru it'll give him very high level connections....but the more Slater looks into it the more he realizes how corrupt this deal is and I guess he has to ultimately decide whether to act in an ethical manner or plow right on ahead" (which is also very "Suits" actually--that show dealt a lot more with ethics than you'd think--it's one of the reasons why I liked it during its run and why I even liked "Suits: LA" for the most part as well.)

There's some degree of action in here but it's not like enough to make this work as a thriller. I dunno it all kinds builds up to this ending where Slater has to deliver this speech about why this deal isn't worth the paper its printed on and then gets disillusioned when it turns out that none of that matter so long as the U.S. gets its oil--any efficacy on how be damned. (It's a very "Forget it Jake it's Chinatown" kinda ending) It'd have been more affecting if I had more than a vague idea of what they were trying to say about what this means about our addiction to dependence on fossil fuels but big business will always win out in the end I guess--the machinery grinds on--is the point ultimately. (shrugs) Why I did watch this one again????

"No More Bad Jokes!!!"

This has soooo many terrible one liners and puns in it that it's hard for me to not give it more stars--but you know it still has the same exact bugs/features that all David DeCoteau movies have (endless montages, doofus-y characters, paper thin plotlines) and yet the core idea at this won my heart over (this teenage girl gets clobbered in the head with a horseshoe and can from then on understand the terrible endless one liners from her horse and after the horse suggests that maybe the others in her life will be able to understand him too if they also get hit in the head with the horseshoe--she then proceeds to do just that--well ok only to one guy--but it's very funny watching her bonk him on the head repeatedly) (this is a guy she likes too I should add) (He comes to and is like "Juliet, Wherefore Art Thou Juliet?" and she says "Sitting next to a pile of manure apparently")

Anyways this is very, very, very, very, very dumb and it's hard to say it's good but I can't not like any movie that features this many terrible horse puns. There's no horse pun too terrible for this not to feature--and frankly if I gave "Hot To Trot" five stars, this is at least worthy of half that rating (nods)

More montage than movie--but fun if watched with the right crowd. There are at least two endless montage scenes that both feel like they go on forever even if they only top around the ten minute mark or so. (only)

They actually try to do the "Person pretends to be their own twin" plotline for much of the running time here and honestly? I've definitely seen it done worse! The score here is great! You will wanna do the twist to it.

Did that woman ever cure her writer's block tho???? They set that up as like a major plot point early in the film and then they never really follow thru on it even tho the whole reason they set this at Easter (i think) was because she decides to write a kids book about Easter.

Dan pointed out in the chat that this has much more plot than David DeCoteau movies usually do--and I guess that's right cause this also throws in a stolen Fabrege Egg plotline as well tho it struck me as being fairly ill defined. That's like 3 plot lines--that's practically Robert Altman like for DeCoteau!

Kinda feels like this could've been a 20 years later sequel to "Bad Ronald" with an adult version picking right back up where he left off--but i will say that there's a very good reason that at 75 minutes Bad Ronald felt nice and tight and this at 108 minutes does...not. There's a point in this roughly around the time it hits the hour mark where the pace of this starts to slack and it's hard to maintain the level of moderate suspense the film initially has. (I think that first hour or so is actually pretty good and then it just deflates a bit as we watch the movie kinda spin its wheels for a bit)

This does start out promisingly enough tho with Gary Busey perfectly cast as an adult version of a Bad Ronald type getting released from a mental hospital and then immediately taking refuge in this random house that he sees being constructed. (He's just walking past it and the sounds of the construction draw his attention and he like practically wolf whistles at it) He ends up breaking into the attic and constructs a little fort there where he I guess decides to try and live out the rest of his days??? When a new family (husband, wife, two kids) moves in, Busey quickly becomes obsessed with watching their day to day lives (kinda like "Wakefield" a little bit) When Busey realizes that wife Mimi Rogers is being cheated on by husband Michael McKean (now how did HE end up in this one???) Busey sets out to bust up their perfect marriage in order to swoop in and I dunno have the perfect family he never got to have as a kid??? I was never really sure what his end game here was but long term strategic thinking was probably never really his strong suit anyways. Soon enough tho he's posing as just a friendly neighbor and casually running into Rogers here and there around the block and she's idly curious in what his story is (cause he's so good with the kids LOL) never suspecting that he's you know living in her attic!

This isn't remotely bad enough to be as fun as something with this premise (and Busey) should be, (I kept thinking it should be way stupider than it ends up being) Busey for one thing isn't as maniacal as you might expect him to be. I mean he's still creepy but because he's the protagonist (or anti-hero I guess?) he's kinda reined in more than he might've been had he been free to be the villain full stop. I mean eventually this ramps up to an ending where he gets to go full psycho but he spends most of it a little too tranquil for someone who has at best a fleeting relationship with reality. I guess this was a time where Busey was still trying to be an actor as weird as that sounds because watching this play out it seems like he's trying to find a way to play this to make his mentally ill character feel slightly more sympathetic. I particularly liked the strange character quirk he had of repeating "Gotta go babe" after seeing McKean say the same and leave the house. (Busey's like wearing a suit and just starts saying this over and over and play acting leaving the house like he's Tom Green--kinda reminds me of something I would do to be honest tho what that says about me I'm not sure I wanna know. "Gotta go babe!") The Lem Dobbs (!!!!) written script kinda helps him a little bit in that regard by establishing him as being the recipient of much abuse by his parents early on and trying to help the two kids here and there--he saves the little girl from drowning in the pool--and he tries to teach the boy who's being bullied how to stand up himself in aggressive fashion.

It feels wrong that this isn't more insane to be honest but this does have its moments--Busey killing an exterminator paid to fumigate the attic is an early highlight and I like some of the smaller moments in this like Busey tucking the family in at night while they're asleep (he's shown pulling the covers up on them lol) or another quick moment where he's shown sitting at the table of this fancy restaurant twirling a knife into his cheek like a psycho. There are a fair amount of some nice small touches like that here throughout but it needed a slightly snappier pace to really land the way it should but there's enough in here to like almost be good!

So good even Joel was into it!
(That literally almost never happens with a clip party mystery movie so good job Dylan!!!)

Solid early 80s TV Movie but it's insane to have to contemplate that OJ Simpson was considered a good likeable hardworking charismatic guy pre murders. Like it's legit hard to wrap my mind around which is why this otherwise very sturdy narrative (about a Vegas bound bus getting hijacked by bad guys in an attempt to kidnap this particular enger who may be worth millions leaving everybody else who isn't worth millions stranded in the middle of the desert with their shot bus and it becomes a can they survive? kinda tale) is hard to buy into. OJ Simpson is the friendly bus driver who will do anything to ensure the survival of his engers. OJ Simpson is the heroic everyday good humored guy who'll put the safety of others over his own. OJ Simpson is the good hearted guy trying to overcome his personal shortcomings to become the hero the other people on the bus need? OJ SIMPSON????

LOL yes.

It's basically Flight of the Phoenix except with a bus
The bad guys' kidnapping scheme is something out of A Simple Plan. (It involves trying to locate a stamp that's reportedly in the kidnapped person's possession)
There's a couple of pretty fun dune buggy chase scenes (the bad guys drive em and use em to terrorize others) It's a pretty good watch---in all seriousness, it's genuinely pretty good especially for a tv movie....it at times feels like it could've been theatrical-but you know you kinda have to overcome the fact that it stars as it's flawed protagonist trying to rouse himself to heroism....OJ SIMPSON which is kind of a hard thing to swallow but you know suspension of disbelief can be a beautiful thing...

From the director of Robot and Frank!!!!!!

Lol this is like the Marvel Cinematic Universe equivalent of Kurosawa's Pulse. (Or alternatively Marvel's What About Bob?) They turn a literal personification of one character's depression (that'd be Lewis Pullman's Bob)into the movie's big central villain at the end which was certainly a choice. I kinda liked it tho after the ultra generic Capt America Brave New World, it actually felt like they put in an effort at having this go into a fairly off kilter direction even if the first hour or so feels like an attempt at doing another variation of Guardians with the whole unlikely quartet of antiheros sorta forced to band together since they're all targeted for eradication by Julia Louis Dreyfuss' congresswoman whom spends most of the movie being the villainess but then that last act kicks in and it sorta renders her as the empty suit that she apparently is despite all the huffing and puffing that she does to show that she's not. She has a line in here at one point like "Righteousness without power is just an opinion" which kinda nearly sums her whole character's deal up. The funny thing is that I didn't particularly care for her one way or the other but she was alright enough as a menacing figure.

None of this would work tho if not for Florence Pugh or David Harbour who absolutely give this whatever semblance of depth it has. They're both first rate here as the cheerfully exuberant father and the struggling to cope mercenary (since she's still grieving her sister) who becomes the backbone of this new team alongside Wyatt Russell's former disgraced Captain America and Hanna Jane Kamen's phasing in and out of reality character (she's the one who kinda gets the least amount of character definition here) and eventually Sebastian Stan's Bucky Barnes who's initially only interested in them as a means of impeachment for the amoral Julia Louis Dreyfuss. (He wants to clean up Congress??? In this day and age???)

That leaves Bob who is both a part of the group but also outside of it. I feel like ultimately the strength or weakness of this comes down to him because he abruptly goes from quirky good guy to destructive bad guy who refuses to be controlled by Louis Dreyfuss' who sees unlimited power in his amorphously defined powers which seem to be going inside your mind and making you relive unpleasant memories??? Bob doesn't seem to have much definition to him....like it felt like he was good when the script needed him to be and then bad also when the script needed him to be but then they go into his brain to fight depression and I dunno man....Bob maybe wasn't the character to do that to since he felt so vaguely defined as opposed to everyone else here but maybe that's by design???

Whatever it was an interesting concept to stake this on and I'll take that over empty and generic any day tho I definitely had more fun at Deadpool V Wolverine.

"It's called grass"
"you mean i'm smoking somebody's lawn???"
(They had marijuana in the 50s--how's this Greaser teenager never heard of it before???) (Also how does a ghost get high?!?)

I hate to use the word cute to describe this, cause I feel like neither of the leads in this would wanna be called that- but i can't think of a better word choice. This is a silly (and nicely deadpan) tale of a 50s greaser (Lewis Smith) who dies in a drag race car crash and then finally gets sent back to Earth 30 years later with the mission of making this nerd played by Jason Gedrick cool. (He's literally been riding the subway for the intervening 30 years--he's forced to ride in a tram that just goes around and around and around until the afterlife finds a use for him as he can't move on until he's proven himself worthy of heaven--the idea of purgatory being represented by an endless subway ride to nowhere is I have to it incredibly apt for someone who regularly rides the subway and gets pretty grouchy if his commute takes more than two hours--which it regularly does if it happens to be past midnight--there's just no getting around how slower everything is at night)

Richard Mulligan plays the sorta head angel to the 50s greaser teen angel here. He gets to ride a motorcycle in the sky as opposed to having to commute via public afterlife transit. I kinda wish the movie let him loose a bit more--he's one of the wackiest character actors to have ever character acted but nobody outside of Blake Edwards ever quite knew what to do with him which is why we were all lucky that he got to have a hit sitcom that fortunately did know what to do with him. (Man why isn't Empty Nest on DVD?!?!? It ran seven seasons and won him an Emmy damnit!!!) Anyways this movie is no exception in that he's here but he's mostly relegated to the background safe for an occasional wisecrack--but as the Rufus like figure here it's cool to see him turn up.

Jane Kaczmarek is also on hand as the woman whom our 50s greaser teen was the boyfriend of--and would ya believe that she ends up showing up as the mother of the dork the greaser angel has to make cool??? (I mean she's third billed here so her turning up again after the opening scene should not much of a surprise)

It's not that this is especially funny but it is low key amusing at times like the initial attempts to convince Gedrick that he is in fact "not of this Earth" Gedrick just thinks the greaser ghost is a nut at first standing in front of an oncoming truck to prove to him that he is in fact a ghost. (The ghost jumping outta the way at the last second got a laugh outta me--"I may be dead but I'm not stupid") (I also very much liked the deadpan line "When you ed away, it couldn't have been in a car accident could it?" "Yeah how'd you guess?" "Oh just a lucky hunch") ("Hey Rome wasn't built in a day and let's face it you're definitely in worse shape than Rome was")

So it's very low key in its humor BUT it's got a very sweet nature quality to it that I found immensely appealing as the greaser kid tries to like show this awkward gawky teen how to be cool, but you know the ways that the greaser knows how to be cool are a little bit outdated which the alive teen tells him, but the pointers on how to pick a woman up at the local Sbarro's apparently work in helping his self confidence grow just enough for him to inexplicably land a date with his dream woman--this popular blonde he's had a crush on who always regarded him as a spaz but now he's got a newfound rizz--which happened via somehow winning a fight with her boyfriend??? It's kinda funny to watch him cop a bit of an attitude with his cool ghost mentor figure as his popularity and self confidence grows--at one point he drives off yelling something like "I don't need you anymore--I'm cool now!" leaving the ghost standing there. (How do you rebel against a ghost???) (Same way you rebel against anyone you consider an authority figure I guess)

Anyways this eventually leads to the teen getting challenged to a drag race and our cool greaser ghost has to find a way to prevent this from happening or else you know--the past becomes prologue.
(Trying to imagine this as a double bill with "The Wraith" now lol)

I dunno--either the inherent deadpan charm of this appeals to you or you sit here and think "Man this is dumb" Me it appealed to for the most part, but I could see it also going the other way for somebody else not prone to liking whimsy.

It's been noted here how this is a reverse Back To the Future with the teen from the past sent to help a kid out in the present--and what's funny is that this apparently played in theaters in the same month that BTTF opened. (This opened three weeks after on the last weekend of July, tho despite playing on over a thousand screens it only landed in tenth place at the box office the same weekend National Lampoon's European Vacation and Disney's The Black Cauldron did) This very much came and went tho it played a lot on cable--I had vaguely ed seeing this on tv as a kid so I think i caught the tail end of that wave)

(old guy sees awkward teen riding by himself in the enger seat of a bike) "Must be Japanese"
(same old guy sees awkward teen riding in the enger seat of a car driving around later on) "Must Be Japanese!"

(nods)

Live action Disney movie (released thru Touchstone) It's very, very cute but it's also about what you'd expect if you read the plot. (Married couple William Katt and Sean Young travel to Central Africa upon hearing rumors of there being real life dinosaurs still living there--meanwhile Patrick McGoohan is some sorta exhibitionist who wants to capture it and bring it back to the States to showcase it or something--they clash naturally because Katt and Young wanna do right by Baby once they discover the existence of it and McGoohan is still set on capturing it by any means necessary so soon enough the married couple is being chased thru dark caves with the baby dinosaur)

Actually scratch that, it's better because there's brief nudity early on. (they encounter African tribespeople and the females from the brief moments we see them are like topless)

It's cute, it borrows liberally from various other movies like King Kong (the most obvious one) but also Bambi, and even The Gods Must Be Crazy, but like it's cute--young ones might go for this. If it was funnier I might've gone for this a bit more myself but the humor that's in this is mostly of the visual kind--like there were some visual moments that made me crack a smile--like when Baby tries to sleep inside the tent with Katt and Young curling up in the middle of them like a big spoon. (I quipped something like "You know they say having a baby really changes a marriage, but this is completely absurd") But yeah this is all played very straight without any winking and I guess that's prob the right way to play this given the intended audience. It's an adequate enough kids adventure movie...if i were watching this with a 5 or 6 year old--i'd like to think they'd be entertained enough. I thought it was fine, but I could've used a little more meat here--there's maybe not quite enough for adults beyond iring the mechanics here.

Oscar winning screenwriter of Gosford Park (and the creator of Downton Abbey) Julian Fellows is 4th billed in this as McGoohan's right hand man/assistant.

Also worth noting that the director of this did the Kris Kristofferson/Gene Hackman movie Cisco Pike (and that this was also exec produced by Roger Spottswoode)

Apparently this played in theaters the same time as The Last Dragon and Mask but this only opened in 5th place.

"Everything is nothing and nothing is something and something is everything!!!" (I was not expecting a zen koan from this movie's bad guy a dude named Ice with tear drop tattoos and a penchant for yelling nonsensically--he's like very much losing it as the movie goes on.)

This is a very, very dumb female led version of Judgment Night but with Stefanie Powers from "Hart to Hart" instead of Emilio Estevez but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't mindlessly entertained by it. It's fairly bad but I laughed a couple times and I wasn't bored so it's marginally better than the "two star...this movie was flat" rating I might've given it otherwise. This aired as some network's movie of the week in January 1993 (Judgment Night didn't hit theaters til September '93 so it beat it to the punch!)

I wanna say that this movie has no real concept of where Gravesend is. These two middle aged women and this younger teenager get lost in that neighborhood driving back from Thanksgiving dinner and while looking for a gas station after unwisely getting off the highway they encounter this gang led by a sadist named Ice and his henchmen include a young Laurence Gillard Jr from season one of The Wire. (man he's always popping up in these 90s era movies) We know Ice is bad cause he has men spray paint a guy's face who took a wrong turn on his bike on their territory. (Can a person die from having their face covered in spray paint???)

The movie seems to think Gravesend is located in the 150 street section of Manhattan or possibly the Bronx...when it's factually in the Southern end of Brooklyn next to Sheepshead Bay (and right smack in front of Coney Island) The characters at the beg keep talking about not getting off the highway to get gas because it's in Gravesend but then when they're like running for their lives, it becomes increasingly apparent that its nowhere near the stretch in Brooklyn it's supposed to be is. I guess I can't expect TV Movies to get the geography straight but how hard could it have been to have done a little bit of research here??? (There's one point where they run down into the subway and like the 6 train flies by them and I'm like "The 6 doesn't even go to Brooklyn--it cuts off at the Brooklyn Bridge...it does however go thru the Bronx tho" "Ohh now I see the movie's not set in Brooklyn")

Anyways it's about what you'd expect more or less. It's not anything to write home about but it's marginally entertaining in a "this movie's very dumb" kinda way. To wit---(guy inside who used to be with Ice's gang but has instead decided to help the women in trouble)"Ice gotta take of you himself" (cut to Ice right outside the abandoned arcade where the women and the other guy are hiding) "Do i gotta take care of these bitches myself???" (Yes the script is that blunt)

There's a ridiculous runner where the movie occasionally cuts back to the precinct where the cops are apparently monitoring what's going on but are I guess waiting for it to get substantially worse before intervening--there's a patrol car that was sent to help but you can guess how little help they end up being. Pretty ridic. This aired on network tv???? (it says at the end of the end credits that it's produced by USA so I guess it was made for USA thus answering that question)

LOL veteran tv actor Currie Graham plays Ice which is very funny cause I just saw him as the long haired pretentious house contractor that George Wendt's wife is having an affair with in "Hostage For A Day"

RIP GEORGE WENDT!!!!

I ed seeing this when it aired on FOX in '94. It was a fairly big deal to me at the time because John Candy whose sole directing credit this was died only a few months prior so this and the eventual release of "Wagon's East" were much anticipated events for 11 year old me in '94. (I ed Fox even aired a little compilation of John Candy movie clips afterwards because this was made for Fox as a tv movie and they must've known they'd get some tune-in just for Candy alone) I ed being really hyped for this one....

Watching it today I really wish it were funnier. It's tone is more wistful and melancholic than funny as we watch George Wendt awaken to the fact how shitty his life is on the day he turns 41. ("Well see 40 gets all the publicity, but 41--that's when the real bomb hits see at 41 you're not paying any attention, you're thinking hey I got past 40 no problem but then you hit 41 and boom unfulfilled dreams, lost promises, regrets, shame...the whole kitten kaboodle") (Weird watching this and realizing that Wendt is supposed to be a year younger than me now)

Anyways something in him snaps and his reflection starts talking to him ("hey nice life you got here") and asking him all these questions and making remarks of the "is this really what you want from your life?" variety. So it's more of a story of a guy having a mid life crisis exacerbated by him running into a woman he had a crush on in junior high who's moved back to town--and while she's in a wheelchair because she was in a bad accident--she's living the life she wanted as opposed to Wendt who's stuck being the errand boy for his shrew of a wife (who we see cheating on him with a contractor remodeling their house) The shrew of a wife is remarkably unpleasant in the opening act here. (Gotta really hand it to Robin Duke who plays her for nailing the assignment) Wendt also works for his shrew wife's father--played by John Vernon who is very rich and imperious and doesn't think too kindly of his weakling son in law. (At one point he smells Wendt and is like "Why do you smell like my daughter?" "Oh I figure maybe it wasn't me that you hated, maybe it was my smell")

Pretty much outta sheer frustration (and some well justified murderous rage at his wife for stealing the money he had been saving over the years in a secret bank ) he takes himself hostage (he pretends these escaped Russians who were being transported thru town have stormed his house and have tied him up to a chair and planted a bomb on his lap) (Lou said to me at one point "Why did he do that? No one can see him inside of the house!") (It is true that he's by himself with only the dog and his reflection to keep him company) Soon enough tho this group of inept cops and SWAT team storm the neighborhood--led by comedic actor Don Lake and soon enough Wendt finds himself literally stuck in his house trying to negotiate with the cops outside while keeping the ruse up.

Things kinda escalate in a wacky farce like way, which generally tends to appeal to me, but I think I might've liked this a lot better when i was in junior high when I didn't have to contemplate how little sense a lot of this makes. I mean in the world of the movie it makes sense I guess, but you have to ignore how the cops are ALL entirely idiots for this to work. I mean there's a fair number of them here--you're telling me not a single one of them is smart enough to figure out that there's nobody else in the house??? (I'm reminded a little bit of the Nicolas Cage movie "Amos and Andrew" here which similarly had a number of bumbling cops surrounding a house involved in a faux hostage situation in a quiet suburban town--they're also all idiots but that movie had the police chief in it aware of the hostage situation being a staged one, so it wasn't as blatant a plot contrivance i guess)

Anyways I liked the messaging of this one with Wendt's mirror reflection trying to talk him into seizing control of his life and live the life he's always wanted to. He's always harbored a dream of moving to Alaska (his favorite movie as a kid is John Wayne's North to Alaska whose theme song plays here at one point) and I liked Wendt's performance in this a lot. He does a lot to try and ground this outlandish premise in some sorta emotional reality--and as someone who's only a year older than his character--the whole "Are you really doing what is is you wanna be doing with your life?" premise is certainly relatable. (Generally speaking I'd say "no not really" but what i wanted to do when I was a kid isn't really all that feasible as I don't think I'm gonna suddenly be a movie star at 42 here lol) ("Sure you could Matthew" I don't think so and also my definition of what I'd even want that to look like has changed significantly since i was like 12 cause I definitely wouldn't want it the way it is today)

John Candy himself pops up in this towards the end as one of the escaped Russian fugitives but once the two of them enter the narrative, it's kinda sorta long stopped working. (It doesn't help that the two Russians are like cartoons--Wendt literally bonks their two heads together at one point in an attempt to run away from them)

I dunno, this had potential, but it doesn't quite work the way I would've liked it to. It's not funny so it doesn't really work as a comedy when the tone veers more towards farce, and the downbeat tone kinda keeps it from being the kinda good time it could've been and while i liked Wendt a lot (and he really does do a heroic job of trying to anchor this in some sorta reality) how is he supposed to make this entire thing work by himself??? (Well he does spend a lot of it talking to himself) This is one of those movies where you find yourself asking "who was this for?" throughout--I'm sure there's someone out there of whom this could be their favorite movie--that whole "Am I doing what i wanna be doing with my life?" central premise is too resonant (and universal) to not make this work for somebody but you'd have to ignore all the stuff in here that doesn't work as well which kinda adds up.

I'd recommend it for the curious tho.

("This is the 90s...you don't pay, you re-organize your debt")

Watched on Wednesday May 21, 2025.

I kinda liked it in spite of the story being pretty basic stuff. This beat cop (Jason Gedrick) finds himself possessed by the ghost/spirit of a maverick hero cop (Gary Hudson) who got murdered and really wants to bring the murderer to justice. There's also a wife (played by NYPD Blue's Kim Delaney) and a kid left behind whom the beat cop at first unnerves by being too familiar with them but then they grow to trust because how could he know all these personal things about them etc, etc. (it's kinda funny that the wife doesn't trust him despite him knowing very intimate things about her, but the young kid immediately trusts him because the guy knows the secret handshake his dad had taught him)

So story's pretty basic, and the identity of the murderer is ridiculously easy to guess--it doesn't help that there's like three other people in this movie including the beat cop's female partner, Dennis Lipscomb (Gushie from Quantum Leap) as a scuzzy cop whom the dead cop used to have beef with, or the captain played by Lyman Ward (Ferris Bueller's Dad Himself!)

So the story and the characters are eh whatever, BUT it moves ok enough and I would say it's heart is in the right place. The emotions it tries to generate are sincere--It's a functional enough B movie even tho it's not quite great nor is it really funny enough to serve as a good "bad" movie. (It's a little too serious and not remotely campy in the slightest tho there are some nice moments that are kinda funny in how sincere they're played like the ending) I didn't mind watching it play out tho--sometimes a completely predictable B movie programmer is just good enough (It's serviceable filler baby!)

(I kinda wish there was a sequel to this tho--l really like the idea of The Force being an avenging spirit that goes from the body of beat cop to beat cop--I think that'd be kinda neat like in a comic book way)

Oh right this was directed by the guy who made "A Cinderella Story"

It's no Four Weddings And A Funeral I'll tell you that much.

I'm STILL not sure this wasn't one long CD-ROM infomercial.

EDIT: So I know what this was about in the future...this is a lethargically paced killer video game movie with a former dept of defense employee snapping and trying to kill people in a virtual reality space via nefarious video game called Expect to Die. These two cops try to track down the designer via the video game company that distributed it and eventually get captured by him and thrown in the game which seems to culminate in a giant chase and fight scene in a seemingly abandoned barn which I thought was another virtual setting but was apparently real? (How did the cop escape the game???) One of the cops wives is a video game expert who looks quite a bit like Nicole Kidman in Batman Forever. There's also some loose plot strand involving a monster played by a guy who looks like "an irradiated Kelsey Grammar" who has a piece of the backend in sales of this killer video game. The movie didn't seem to know what to do with him.
This sounds like it should be fun but it's glacial pace kinda kills it (if you're gonna make a killer video game movie you gotta make sure the game itself is fun first and foremost and the game here seems to barely ) but i thought it was intermittently amusing cheese here and there. Hard to resist entirely but it's no "Arcade" or "Brainscan"

The best thing I can say about this is that it's relatively quick. I didn't really care for anything that was happening in this, and somehow this had even less character development than Novitiate did. (At least they had a fair amount of ing characters--this has almost nobody else in it!) Anyways the plot of this has this young nun getting herself I guess impregnated by an evil cabal of oh forget it--it doesn't matter--it's just an excuse to watch Sydney Sweeney sneak/prowl around various dark locations trying to find a way out from where she's being held captive. They try to dress it up with theology and stuff but unlike say "Heretic" I didn't find any of this even moderately amusing or interesting on a basic story level. It's a lot like one of those found footage horror movies--same production values for the most part--just without any actual found footage but it's the exact same vibe as one of those. You could watch this alongside that whole slew of them that came out and it would fit right in. I think the only reason this isn't one star is cause of how loud she screams at the end here. Ear shattering level of screaming. Nice job Syd's lungs. I could not have cared any less for this if I actively tried, which fortunately for the movie I rarely ever do!

FULL METAL HABIT

(I couldn't help but note the point of comparisons between the rough initiation process of ing a nunnery and being whipped into shape by a drill sergeant in the army--like Melissa Leo's sadistic mother superior character here really and truly isn't all that far removed from R. Lee Ermey's sadistic drill sergeant--she even at one point orders someone to go down on her knees and it's like the nun equivalent of "Drop and gimme 40!")

Anyways this movie is very, very, very much NOT for me to put it mildly. but I was with it--well more accurately ok watching it play out without actively being bored and wishing for it to end I guess-- for roughly an hour and change which is about as much patience as I could realistically exude for this. I was ok with watching lead Margaret Qualley get put thru her paces alongside the other young wannabe nuns here but the last half hour here lost me entirely as it moderately shifts away from Qualley to being about Melissa Leo being all bent outta shape over the modifications made to doctrine by Vatican Two--which I could not begin to bring myself to care about at all. (In fact everytime someone said "Vatican Two" all i could think of was John Lithgow being super excited about "Christmas Two" in that 80s Santa Clause movie) ("We'll call it Vatican TWO!!!") I mean it's still Qualley's movie but like asking me to then also care about Leo's feelings when she had been this sadistic asshole the entire time did not gel with me at all.

Qualley is really good in this tho, definitely very believable as someone wrestling with doubts about the whole vow of chastity thing but also someone who was very determined to marry God even tho her mom played in a few scenes by Julianne Nicholson is aghast at her only child giving up on life to spend it in a convent. (To my mind, the scenes between Qualley and Nicholson were the strongest here but that could also be because it was a dynamic I understood and was able to invest in)

The way the movie is structured as a sorta coming of age/rite of age movie is kinda the smart way to frame this as its about how the young woman idealistic in love with God somehow ends up turning into the embittered hardened woman--also still in love with God, but also maybe possibly even more in love with the rules that they feel God investing his power in to ensure that others follow. Obviously one is gonna be more sympathetic a character to follow than the other, but at least you couldn't call this propaganda for nuns (Nunaganda?) as this definitely doesn't make them look good unless you're actively looking forward to ing a sorority where the initiation process seems to be never ending.

This was my tradefest assigned movie for the month (No i didn't just wake up and randomly decide to watch a two hour drama about nuns the day after watching both "Troll" films tho I do like to think I contain multitudes in my cinematic diet) I didn't hate it--but this is absolutely one of those movies where I felt like a little of it went a long way--that last half struck me as being tedious (that last half hour in particular felt unending) but I can't say i disliked it entirely--some of the dialog exchanges were nice and sharp. There's a really good terse scene between Leo and Nicholson (at one point Nicholson comes to see her about the scars all over her daughter's body when she went to visit her daughter--Leo keeps having Qualley flog herself--so the flogging scars become quite noticeable) That one scene between the mom and the mother superior ("Lady I Am Not Calling You Mother!") was very good--and definitely the kinda thing I wished this movie had more of because it's the kinda thing that calls your attention as opposed to the many scenes of the girls just going about their regular everyday activities. (and masturbating--there's a couple of scenes of the young novitiates pleasuring themselves which you definitely don't think nuns would do but I mean it makes perfectly logical sense--they're all young and curious about the sex that they've sworn off ever having)

Umm yeah the things here that threw off a couple of sparks for me just wasn't quite enough to compensate for how dull I found a lot of this but I generally tend to find movies about nuns to be dull outside of say Sister Act or Nuns on the Run. (Like I've sat thru Black Narcissus and I've sat thru that 2009 German movie Vision--God knows why I did but I actually saw it in a theater somehow--I've even seen the Audrey Hepburn movie "The Nun's Story" which gets name dropped in here by one of the young novitiates at one point) (I've also seen a handful of movies dealing with the male equivalent such as that 2010 French priest movie "Of Gods and Men" for example) so I kinda more or less know what these movies are like in general and tend to find them to be on the dull side--so while I'm not surprised that I found this to be lacking in momentum for my own tastes--I still found the actual watching of it to be moderately ok at first and then interminable as it went on eventually reaching its conclusion of Qualley and the others who made it thru the two year weeding out process of being a novitiate triumphantly marching down the aisle in bridal dresses because they were officially marrying God. (nods) (yawn)

EDIT: I do wanna point out that early on Leo has a speech in this that's very reminiscent of the "Always Be Closing" speech in Glengarry Glen Ross which made Lou type out something that I kinda wanna copy and paste for posterity here

“What’s my NAME? PEACE BE UPON YOU, that’s my name. You drove here in a $30,000 Honda, I walked here barefoot to show my penitence, that’s my name.”

Fucking hilarious!

Fun fast moving farce that features a lot of plates spinning in the air involving a knight and his uncouth assistant being thrown about 800 years into the future (from 1070 or something to 1992) Jean Reno and Christian Clavier are the knight and squire and Reno is nice and matter of fact while Clavier is very over the top in a wonderfully manic role. Of the two guys he's by far the least civilized so he's practically feral so the mere idea of having to bathe so that he doesn't offend with his smell (or that he could even smell to begin with) is just so foreign to him it might as well be Martian. Clavier has a dual role here as his own descendant who's a very prissy kinda snob...so seemingly the total opposite and yet they might not be as opposite as you might think. (One of the best running jokes is what things the slobby Clavier ends up taking to once introduced to them....like somehow he's able to grasp the concept of the telephone which Reno can't quite wrap his head around. Eventually he ends up gravitating to nightclubbing so it's like he might not be as uncouth as initially thought....that or there's not much separating some modern guys from their more primal self)

I'm getting away from the fact that this is a wacky as hell door slamming farce involving Reno trying to get his own great descendant....here a high powered female exec who's the first to recognize that he might be telling the truth about being a long dead relative...to help him access this treasure in his long sealed off dungeon that might contain the spellbook used to create the potion that unintentionally sent him ricocheting into the future in the first place. Along the way they bond big time natch and he helps her realize that her boyfriend is kinda terrible etc etc. She in turn helps him... actually I don't know what she helps him learn. Does he learn anything?? I guess not to use the whole bottle of Channel perfume when taking a bath.

This is very broad in its humor and while that kinda manic humor is generally my bread and butter (and it very much is here) I will it that whether it also works for you is variable. If you like wacky farces I feel like this'll work for you. I laughed pretty consistently throughout at a lot of the physical humor here as well as some of the unlikely turns of phrases in here. Is it the most memorable movie? Probably not but it's fun while it lasts and that's good enough.

This movie makes me wanna finally go see Sinners. I haven't seen Sinners yet but....this is basically Sinners right? Im just saying small town, barely populated, there's a revivalist kinda preacher who's sorta trying to stir up the newcomers, the townspeople aren't what they appear to be, there's supernatural elements overrunning the town, there's a grandfather who's helping them fight this great evil from the great beyond. (Lol one of the great runners here seems to be "is he corporeal or not?" cause he seems to be able to hit people with shovels at a couple points saving the grandson protagonist but it's like "Isn't he a ghost? What are the rules here movie?!?")

Actually before I thought of the Sinners comparison tho for real the movie this weirdly reminded me of was They Live. The townspeople are basically the Obey aliens from that movie more or less.

The only ingredient I can't quite square here is the crazy over the top witch lady obsessed with turning people into either plants or something resembling food for the denizens of the town of Nilbog. They don't eat meat. The preacher is like preaching against the evils of meat. The kid at one point towards the end manages to ward them off of attacking him by threatening to throw a baloney sandwich at them at one point. The witch lady is so far over the top she makes Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura look subtle.

Oh also for some reason the older daughter was trying to drag her boyfriend to go with her to this small town but he shows up late so he forces his two or three friends to get in a camper and go with him to the small town of Nilbog. Everytime the movie cuts back to them it's a very strange tonal whiplash cause everything with them is overtly comedic like in a more stereotypical kinda 80s movie way and while the other stuff here is anything but stereotypical....I should point out that one of the guys gets kidnapped by the witch scientist lady and turned into some sorta man plant hybrid and it's extremely hard to take seriously on any level but hey it's a heck of a visual.

Has a much different ending than I would've expected. Darker too. It's funny I wouldn't really call this movie dark exactly but this is a lot harder than the first one comparatively. If the first one is almost like a fairly straightforward fairy tale that could be a Disney movie, this is more like a fairy tale by way of The Brothers Grimm.

I dunno, I liked the first one better, it shouldn't go unremarked that no less than three different people told me before this started that Troll 1 is like a real movie and this is not so much. I understood almost immediately what was meant by that just from the opening scene and seeing the stilted acting of the mom. ("The death of your grandfather upset us all including I his daughter") (Nods) Ooook.

I'm glad I saw it, congrats to Adam who presented this in the back of a brewery and it was like standing room only (I stood in the back the whole time just so I could see the screen) The man might've found his new niche here.

Some real Ernest Scared Stupid vibes here (except without Ernest so it's just "Scared Stupid") Also you gotta love it when an 82 minute movie waits until minute 64 to drop this whole dense mythology on you. You had a whole hour to bring up that humans used to exist alongside fairies in two separate kingdoms until one fairy decided to raise an army to take back the world--why wait until the last 15 minutes to tell your audience this lmao.

That aside this was surprisingly pretty cute tho I may be grading a little on a curve here cause I was expecting something much more schlocky but this is largely decently made kid aimed horror fantasy. (It really leans hard into the fantasy element in its last act tho) I mean the thing is clearly on a budget, but between all the puppets and the creatures, it seems like the director made the absolute most of what he was able to work with. (Of course the director is famous for his work with puppet creatures like this--he was the guy behind the creatures in Ghoulies which these were all definitely reminiscent of--they could've been Ghoulies' cousins!)

I really liked how Michael Moriarty as the dad kinda starts out goofy and ends up being deadpan. I actually thought he was gonna be the central character here but it's really his son who ends up taking center stage. Well the son and the daughter as the daughter has been seemingly possessed (or possibly replaced???) by the titular Troll (who only gets a name in the last 20 minutes here as well--Torok!) The troll in the guise of the little girl ends up systematically killing off and replacing the tenants of this apartment building they just moved into which include Sonny Bono (as a kid hating swinger) and Julia Louis Dreyfuss who gets turned into some kinda wooden nymph/grass wearing hysterically laughing sprite like figure. (there's no way that Seinfeld didn't give her crap for her role here during her time on his show lol)

There's also June Lockhart who shows up as their upstairs neighbor who knows more about what's actually going on here than anyone else--and good thing too cause otherwise the teenage son would be completely scratching his head over why the fuck his kid sister is like alternating between hissing, growling, and laughing maniacally. (He initially thinks it's a Body Snatchers type situation thanks to late night tv) Lockhart also has a magical fungi lamp like creature named Galwn who's incredibly cute. If this thing ever had merch--it would 100% prominently feature Galwin. Galwin is as cute as the Troll is ugly.

Moriarty and Lockhart are probably the only two adults who get any actual characterization here (where as everyone else pretty quickly either gets killed or turned into some creature) (Actually wait that's not true Moriarty's wife manages to make it unscathed but has no personality as far as I can tell) Anyways Moriarty and Lockhart while only having brief interactions do have some fun moments together---I'm particularly partial to this exchange

"Everybody in the entire building is just disappearing that's all one by one"
"Well it is the weekend"
"Do you know what day of the week it was when they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima?"
"It was on a weekend wasn't it?"
"I don't know but it would be interesting to find out"

Umm I wasn't really expecting too much from this storied film--i'm positive i'd seen it as a kid but I didn't really a whole lot about it on a story level or anything so I gave it the rewatch because my friend is hosting a screening of the sequel tonight at a brewery so i figured if I'm ever gonna rewatch this stupid thing...It was OK!.

Really enjoyable but surprisingly played pretty straight...like for a Joe Dante movie the humor that's in here (which I very much loved) is fairly subdued largely reduced to things like shots of the Ginsburg book Howl on a guy's desk or a guy being shown eating Wolf Chili. One of the biggest laughs comes late in the movie from a character being given this big relieved greeting only for him to quickly say "No" in a completely opposite tone. There's very much laughs in here but they're fully like in the margins of the film or in character reactions as opposed to like quippy dialog. I guess to that end Dante rep player Dick Miller gets the best quips in a very quick scene as an occult bookseller who clearly doesn't believe in any of this shit. (Dennis Dugan....yes that Dennis Dugan who's here in a ing role....runs out with all the silver bullets in his fists...Miller runs after him shouting "Wait I gotta find out how valuable that is before I charge you!!!")

The plot that's here concerns a female investigative reporter whom upon a meeting with a guy who might be a serial killer in the back of a porno shop witnesses him transferring into a werewolf and freaks out....like she can't even speak on air at one point. The psychiatrist who does news pieces for the station recommended this retreat he oversees to reorient her senses and she brings her husband and well the people there are pretty strange...

See this is what I mean about this being fairly straightforward. With the exception of the very ending.... there's no real surprises in the story. From the second the reporter and husband gets there you pretty much know what to expect but the movie gives it to you in a fairly suspenseful way. I thought the tension and impending sense of dread/something not quite right here was well modulated. (Reminded me a little of The Wicker Man in that sense...lol which version tho)

Everything that's here is honestly super well done. I could not imagine a version of this story being any better or tighter and I mean that sincerely cause I thought about it. The guy who introduced it pointed out how it's the only werewolf movie where the central point of view character isn't the one undergoing the transformation into werewolf giving the movie something slightly different than the others in this particular sub genre but otherwise I felt like it had all the things you'd expect to find in a werewolf movie but done with the sense that the people making it knew the cliches they had to hit quite well.

About that ending I won't spoil it but it made me go "Oh Shit!" like three times in quick succession. Good ending.

Robert Picardo played the serial killer by the way. He was hard to recognize at first but when they showed his face in full it's like "oh that can't possibly be anyone else" Also Kevin McCarthy gets some laughs just by being irritated ("maybe she's pregnant") and John Sayles who is credited with the script shows up as a coroner in one scene. (I didn't recognize him it was Peter who pointed him out to me)

That was Meshach Taylor at the very end in the bar right??? I gotta assume that was him lol. (I saw his name in the credits and was like "he was in this?!?!?")

Man now I am accutely aware that I actually need a burial plot lest I get buried any old place.

Umm this was a very weird one, tho if I can compliment it, it was the most film school film I've seen in quite awhile. Like it reminded me so much of films along the lines of Lost Highway or Memento or Donnie Darko....complex films that were meant to be seen multiple times to ponder over afterward and parse what you just saw. I was trying to think of something I'd seen along those lines in the last year or so and the only thing I could really pull was maybe A Different Man. (lol i'm not counting Megalopolis here) I kinda miss those days of being challenged but challenged in a way that I was also largely entertained by. Like this takes some narrative left turns to be clear but very abrupt ending aside, it never actually lost me...I hung in there the entire time sorta wondering where this whole premise was gonna go and I appreciated the narrative puzzle it presented which if you know me is weird because usually my tastes tend to run a bit more broad but I was legit entertained by being slightly baffled by this.

Afterwards Peter and Scott mentioned Videodrome and Naked Lunch as points of comparison but to my mind this felt more along the lines of something outta William Gibson. ("It's like one of those things where the paranoia seeps in" to quote Peter) I specifically thought of New Rose Hotel at one point especially around the point where Vincent Cassel starts to tentatively believe Guy Pearce about there being some crazy far fetched conspiracy involving foreign agents tapping into his live internet feed of loved ones' corpses which Cassel is marketing to countries across the globe as a way to still be with your loved one even after death. Cassel is beyond reluctant to believe any of this because it seems so far fetched to him that anyone would wanna spy on the remains of other people's loved ones....but then he gets clued in on how foreign spies might use the feed to tap into the phones of people who have this app set up on it.

That's only part of the story, a larger chunk of this is Cassel having vivid dreams and flashbacks of his wife being in bed with him during the arduous process of her cancerous limbs getting removed by the doctor whom Cassel in the last act starts to suspect might or might not have been having an affair with his wife which kinda comes outta nowhere but I guess shows how susceptible he is to Guy Pearce's increasingly unhinged point of view. There's also a plot strand entailing his sister in law as well as one involving a mysterious half Korean half French woman who hires him on behalf of her own dying husband and setting something up for him akin to what he has with his wife's grave and well things happen.

I guess those are the three to four main plot strands here (weirdo conspiracy set in the present, dreams and flashbacks of his wife, stuff with the sister in law, and stuff with the new client which might or might not tie in to the weirdo conspiracy stuff) it's a hearty stew and it might or might not add up to something but the movie's brooding to the point of absurdist tone is perfect throughout. There were times when the audience I watched this with laughed and I myself laughed at Cassel being texted x rays of his wife's dental records by the dentist early on and Cassel staring longingly at them. Something that leans that hard into straight faced absurdity had to have been meant to be funny....I mean it just had to lol. ("Grief is rotting your teeth!") There were enough deadpan dry humorous moments like that throughout that you could almost mistake it for Jim Jarmusch (although if it were Jarmusch the soundtrack would've been a lot more noticeable--i keep reading reviews touting Howard Shore's score but I barely noticed there being one!)

I genuinely liked a lot of this even if I didn't feel like I understood the ending all that well. However up until maybe the last 15-20 minutes I never felt remotely lost, I always felt like I had more of a grasp on this than not. It's not that diffuse, especially since it doesn't really delve head first into the conspiracy nonsense largely leaving that in the background while Cassel is still having emotions and sexual longing. ("Will anything break if I hold you???") Cronenberg honestly I think made a pretty good one here, worthy of the inclusion in his rich filmography tho let's see how I feel about it upon the inevitable rewatch in a year or so's time. (I definitely think this has potential to grow on me significantly with repeated viewings)

"You and your fucking equations!!!"

Overly talky, convoluted murder mystery from Alex De La Iglesia (!!!) that I had to watch twice to figure out what actually happened cause the last act genuinely confused me. This stars Elijah Wood as a grad student who hero worships John Hurt who's here as a rumpled storied mathematics professor who of course loves the sound of his own voice. (He even straight up says "oh i talk a lot of rubbish" at one point to someone as a means of apology)

Wood jumps at the chance to go study with him at Oxford only to end up intertwined with him in a string of murders when he walks in to find the dead body of the landlady whose house he's staying in. Turns out she's an old paramour of Hurt's and together Hurt and Wood try to suss out who could've killed her and subsequently other people whom Hurt knows because the local inspector (played by Downton Abbey's Mr. Carson--the head butler) could use the help. Eventually the two guys in putting their heads together come up with a working theory that the killer is offing people of whom could be said to have been accidental deaths. Hurt calls them "imperceptible murders" and indeed the deaths that follow all seem to fit that descriptor..except for the climax but I'll get to that.

Complicating things is the fact that Wood's girlfriend who's a local nurse who's also a writer of mysteries used to be with Hurt sexually a fact Wood finds out when he finds a copy of Hurt's famed math textbook on her nightstand. ("He could be your father, your grandfather come to think of it!" "just like mystery novels, he was here for awhile, we had a laugh, I gave him a couple of my books and he gave me his. Can you get him outta your mind?") That turns out to be kind of a red herring tho the fact that she's into mystery crafting certainly turns out to be useful as Wood finds himself in the middle of one.

There's a couple of other wacky characters here as well whom all serve as plausible suspects natch. Burn Gorman is a histrionic fellow student who's convinced that Hurt stole a theorem of his, there's Julie Cox who's the landlady's daughter who has eyes for Wood, there's a crazy ranting guy who appears at the hospital whom Wood encounters who's the father of a girl awaiting a transplant, there's Alex Cox the filmmaker who's here as a paraplegic--(he's a colleague of Hurt's who appears mostly in flashbacks but he's here!) Also factoring in is the fact that Wood looks increasingly guilty in the Inspector's eyes and the more he freaks out about that and tries to not look guilty, well you know how this works. (That part reminded me a bit of that Ewen McGregor/Nick Nolte movie "Nightwatch" actually--very similar set up)

There's about three other murders in addition to the one of the landlady that kicks everything off, and then there's a crazy climax that involves this bus crash/explosion that doesn't fit in at all with the whole idea of the murders being imperceptible. (Indeed a bus explosion would be the exact opposite of that) So trying to tie that into the whole modus operandi of the killer requires an almost Herculean effort which to the film's credit it tries but at that point it becomes wildly convoluted and the nice simplicity that had been here kinda vanishes. (or maybe it was meant to give off the illusion that all the murders had been nice and tidy cause they had very much been up until that point.)

I didn't dislike it but it really required more concentration than I had initially wanted to give this. (I was hoping to just put this on and not have to pay attention to it) So i ended up watching it twice and while I did like this slightly more on the second go round, I still don't think the story added up so much, However simply listening to Hurt (and Wood for that matter) recite reams of dialog has its own pleasures. They both have very mellifluous voices--Hurt obviously has no trouble since he could do this kinda character in his sleep--but still if you're a fan of either actor, they both very much tower over the film (Indeed Hurt even gets to dress up as Guy Fawkes at one point much like he did in V for Vendetta) (" the fifth of November" "No I'm sorry, I don't ")

The two guys are enjoyable enough that this works at times as a kinda unlikely buddy whodunit--there's a great scene in here that I might wanna use in a future clip party where the two guys are playing Clue and discussing "the gap between what's true and what's provable" and "absolute certainty" (It's at the 35 minute mark) (There's also a nice little scene at about the hour mark where Hurt recounts an anecdote about "does the world's perfect murder exist?" where a guy writes in a diary of like a hundred different ways to kill his wife, and then his wife finds it and kills him instead) (So no?)

Ending aside from Wood that I also kinda liked:
"Numbers also lie, the truth is not mathematical as I once believed...it's absurd, confused, random, disorderly, and deeply unpleasant"

Fairly funny if low key (maybe too low key) Karate Kid/Never Back Down riff involving this high school senior having to start a new school and immediately finding himself the punching bag of this bully because he dared to talk to Christine Taylor in the library. Fortunately for him the school janitor is played by Billy Blanks who takes it upon himself to mentor the new guy in the art of self defense. There's a whole scene where he tries to teach him how using a mop and cleaning a toilet are like important skills in fighting and it's very "Wsx On...Wax Off" (Mop On...Mop Off???) There's a number of very silly montages in this that made me wanna give credit to Billy Blanks for keeping a straight face throughout it because he had to have known while making it how silly this would play as right? (right?)

Anyways the bully is like the protege of a sadistic guy who runs the local dojo (which is apparently a popular spot where all the kids go to to see the fights on Friday nights) and wouldn't you know that the sadistic dojo owner has a personal beef against janitor Billy Blanks? He blames Blanks for the death of his brother which happens in the opening prologue when Blanks is a cop who shuns the use of guns. (it is entirely coincidental that the brother of the guy whose death has haunted Blanks all this time would end up owning a dojo in the same town Blanks washes up in but there you go) Patrick Kilpatrick (what a name) really truly goes for it as the dojo master. Just has a "veins popping in his forehead" level of anger consistent throughout--very believable as an unhinged lunatic who gets off on beating up high school students every week.

So most of the movie is concentrated on the travails of the high school senior as he goes back and forth between being beaten up by the bully (who seems to punch him every single time he dares gets spotted in public even talking to Christine Taylor) and goofing around with his friend who's a goofy Anthony Michael Hall type and training with Billy Blanks. It does not go unnoticed that the new guy is spending an inordinate amount of time hanging out with the janitor. (He's being tutored in the janitorial arts) The bully for some reason notices this and reports this to his mentor--the crazed dojo owner who recognizes Blanks from photos taken by a noticeably large camera (the bully is like "this guy is getting too good at fighting back--he must be getting help from someone--could it be the janitor he suspiciously hangs out after hours with???" "I KNOW this janitor!!!") So it's only a matter of time until the crazed dojo owner demands retribution on Billy Blanks--indeed he sends some henchmen to the school after hours to attack him which will absolutely have you asking "Wait so does the janitor live at the school???"

(There's a great fight scene where the bad guys chase Blanks thru the school auditorium and they fight thru all the stage sets for the new school play which Batman joked might be "A Doll's House" based on the props Blanks throws at them)

Brion James plays the school principal who doesn't seem to have much control over his student population. (A lot of his role seems to just be roaming the halls or the space just outside the building yelling at people to get to class)

Um it's pretty basic stuff but I was moderately entertained by it but it's pretty silly and definitely takes itself a bit too seriously...but it was also pretty fun in its own low key way. Billy Blanks either seems like a really good sport or someone who has no discernible sense of humor. (I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's the former and not the latter)

I didn't even mention that this was from the director of BOTH Best of the Best movies! (nods)

Cute 45 minute thing (It was a Disney Channel original) that has Chunk from The Goonies is an inventor (he invents a magnetic basketball early on and then eventually a flying bike) When he demonstrates a surprising business acumen in addition he also somehow ends up with a seat on the board of this toy (but also weapons????) company after demanding having some say in how one of his inventions which the company bought gets used (that would be the flying bike)--and irritating this one other board member who schedules a Board meeting during school hours (how dare he!) so Chunk can't attend. Glynn Turman and Ray Walston are also in this. Somehow Chunk ends up with 85 grand which he blows part of on hiring Kareem Abdul Jabar show up in his gym class to dunk on the other kids there. (He also hires a limo to take him to and from school) His mom is aghast at this but mostly relates this to Chunk by telling him about her friend Pam whose job with the company is in danger.

It's cute, I dunno that it makes a ton of sense but it's relatively cute.

This namechecks a character in ing named Jerry Winkleberry who put a Kleenex box on his belt.

J. LOBOT

The rating for this is more for the first half then the second. I was fairly into the first half of this when it was more about J.Lo going into space to round up this rogue terrorist robot who was programmed with her adopted parents' technology that she grew up hero worshiping (so you know it was personal for her to reign them all in lest they give the work her parents did a bad name) But this thing bogs down big time in the second half as J.Lo gets pummeled in an explosion and has to rely on her A.I. installed in her robot mecca suit to sorta nurture her back into fighting spirit. It's a little weird how this movie with lots of explosions and robot on robot violence hinges on J.Lo coming to with past trauma she endured--the A.I. even says to her at one point after a climactic tearful breakthrough "It's Not Your Fault!" which made me chortle quite a bit.

So yeah this is a bit like the A.I. has to play therapist to J.Lo after she's been beaten all to hell so she can man up and get back in the fighting spirit that she was sent to the other planet for in the first place. (so it's kinda sorta like I Robot meets Good Will Hunting which is an insane thing to merge together but here we are)

I'll say this tho--this is the exact kinda movie I would've seen with Scott in the theater and been like "Man I wish I hadn't left my house for this one" and now here I am watching this at home and thinking "I wonder if I would've liked this any better on the big screen" (Will mankind ever find contentment???) This is from the director of "San Andreas" and "Rampage" and when I discovered that I actually started having some hopes for this because those two at least had a fairly good sense of humor about the kinds of movies they were but this thing bogs down in dourness so that it's not the kinda dumb fun this should've ideally been. Why did they have to make the second half so glum here??? Oh well--next time baby!

Watched on Saturday November 21, 2020.

Not terrible, but notttt a whole lot happens here once you the half hour mark let's say. I mean ok there's a giant crocodile terrorizing these three people who in great haste decide to climb up a tree and well that's pretty much the entire rest of the movie. The three are stuck in the tree while the croc is down below kinda slowly circling underwater. There's only so much tension that can be milked from this situation on a cinematic level before it drains away leaving one to slowly wait to see if anything else is gonna happen here. (Not really no, there's a climax that uses the "final showdown" cliche here--as the only one left finally tries to confront this thing head on because what else is there left to do aside from wait for death) I dunno, it's well made enough for what it is, but you know if stuff like "Open Water" isn't the height of suspense for you then you prob won't find this to be all that much better. (I kinda liked it in theory, but watching it also kinda feels a bit like watching it playing out in real time which is you know less than ideal)

This Rocks!

The whole last half of this "Most Dangerous Game" but in an Australian supermax prison is pure carnage and it's great. Fuck ton of kills and explosions! What more could you ask for??? Starring Steve Railsback and Olivia Hussey (RIP)

(200th Movie Logged This Year Baby!!!)

(Bonus points for being from the director of BMX Bandits--the greatest Australian movie ever made) (...that's not also Young Einstein)