2024 movies

It's that time of the year!!



Here are a list of the movies I watched this year, with some thoughts (and possible spoilers, although for the most part I keep things vague, or try to.)

Movies seen in 2024.


Barbie - I liked this a lot, but, weirdly, I don’t really have a lot to say about it. It was very enjoyable.


Corner Office - Adapted from the short novel (“The Room”) that I read a few years back. It stays pretty faithful to the book - as far as I can remember, anyway. Jon Hamm plays Orson (Bjorn in the novella), who is a bit of a judgemental jackass. (Same as in the book). Danny Pudi is in this too, so that was another treat. Anyway, Orson starts a job at some company, and clashes with his co-workers. Then he discovers an unused office, which he begins to utilize when he needs to take breaks from working. Except, the office doesn’t actually exist. Whenever Orson goes there, his coworkers see him simply standing in the hallway. Decent adaptation of a decent short book, but not really anything to be completely wow-ed by.


Deadstream - Shawn Ruddy is a youtuber who does jackass style stunts for the views. At some point, he crosses a line, and gets himself demonetized. After an apology video and six month’s probation, he’s back up, and his stunt this time is to spend the night alone in a haunted house, with the caveat that he HAS TO CHECK OUT anything that seems suspicious. Shawn is an extremely obnoxious personality that certainly takes some getting past, but this is a brisk 88 minute long film, so even if you hate him, you’re not spending TOO much time with him. The scares are …decent, and there were a couple lines that were amusing enough that I kept going through this whole thing. Certainly wasn’t as bad as I was expecting.


Evil Dead Rise - I like (but don’t fanishly love) the Evil Dead franchise (I did enjoy the Ash vs. Evil Dead series quite a bit, probably more than the movies, honestly). Anyway, this is the latest installment in those - no Bruce Campbell in this one. And very very little humor, either. A LOT of tension and a LOT of blood and gore. This one focuses on two sisters - Ellie and Beth - who haven’t seen each other in a while due to Beth being on the road with a rock band. Ellie is a mother of three children - Bridget, Danny, and Kassie, the youngest. Beth comes back to visit Ellie and her nieces and nephew, only to discover that the apartment they’re staying in is being condemned in a month, and Ellie’s husband has left the family. So, there’s family drama going on. An earthquake opens up an undiscovered section of the building, and it contains a Book of the Dead. Hijinks ensue. This was a solid movie.


Dogma - rewatch…This wasn’t really that funny back when it first came out. Mildly amusing? Pretty much felt the same way this time around, too. I think I liked the idea of it more than the actual execution. It really is too busy for its own good. I suspect that if it had been a series, it might have had time to let things breathe.


Saw X - Decent installment in the never-dying Saw franchise. It was a LITTLE too long, but overall, probably the best they’ve done in a while. Having ACTUAL John Kramer back as the focus helped a ton.


Puppet Master - I’m sure I had seen this as a kid/teen (or, at least PARTS of it?) but figured it was time for a rewatch. It’s a lot better in THEORY than it is in execution. There was a dude who was able to give life to puppets. His secret power is discovered by Nazis, who are going to torture him to get the answers. He kills himself before they can get it. 50 years later, a dude named Noel Gallagher dies. He was a psychic, who hung out with a bunch of other psy-powered folks. His friends gather at his place of death, wondering why none of them felt his passing… While there, the puppets begin to murder them one by one. Neat enough idea, if a LITTLE over-complicated, but, whoo, boy, anytime the puppets aren’t on screen, this thing is SLOW as shit.
But evidently, the idea is one that people really liked, as there are something like 11 other sequels/spinoffs of this. I…don’t have the patience or interest to delve into them all, though.


Skinamarink - oooof. WAY too “art film” for my liking. Two young kids - Kaylee and Kevin - wake up (after we’re told that Kevin had taken a fall down the stairs) to find that they can’t locate their father, and that the windows and doors in the house are no longer there. This COULD have been a very effective very disturbing 10 minute short. Instead, it’s a tedious hour and forty minutes. It’s filmed in low light, and uses grainy video and audio distortions to fuck with your head. Others online have described it as an accurate depiction of a child’s nightmare. And, yeah, I get that. Dreams - and nightmares particularly - provide an aura of unease and are absurd and hard to make sense of. But… they’re also…kind of dull? LIke, really, the truism about dreams not being interesting unless you’re in them is…kind of true. And holds here as well. The long shots of lego bricks or clicking flashlights can only hold one’s interest for so long. And if you want payoff or answers of some sort, well… look somewhere else, bucko. This is ambiguous and “spooky”, and providing logic or making sense of anything would ruin the illusion. Anyway, hard pass on recommending this.


The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - STILL don’t think that this needed to be a freaking trilogy. And with each one 2.5 hours… But, it is what it is. And I mean, it’s enjoyable enough. We’ll see how I’m feeling after the other two, I guess. For now, revisiting MIddle Earth for a bit hasn’t been too bad.


The Creator - Sigh. I so badly WANTED to like this. And visually, sure, it was impressive. And the concept of the world seems like it was there. But, my god. The story and the characters were so freaking lifeless and boring. In a nutshell - in an alternate timeline, AI was developed much earlier than ours, and so by 2065 robots that think and act like humans coexist with us. Then, the AI nuke LA - for …reasons - causing the US to ban all AI and go to war with them. The world also has turned their backs on AI, except for “New Asia”. So, the robots basically live just there. The US is hunting them down and genociding them all. They have one massive weapon that they’re planning on using to take them ALL out, but the AI have created a counter-weapon. Which turns out to be in the form of a little robot child. Anyway, this started off somewhat intriguing, but it’s far too long and as said, there’s nothing to really take from this other than the neat visuals.


Escape From the Planet of the Apes - I’d seen this before, but it had been a LONG time, and I wanted to rewatch it. Since the previous iteration ended with the earth being destroyed by nuclear weapons, how could a sequel be possible?? Well, you introduce time travel, of course. Zira and Cornelius manage to time travel back to 1973, long before apes could talk. Hijinks ensue. Seriously, it’s amusing how much of this is played up as fish out of water humor…until a scientist starts seeing the apes - and the future they came from - as a threat to humanity. This was an EXTREMELY 70s movie, but probably my favorite of the original Planet of the Apes pentalogy.


Escape From Pretoria - based on the true story of Tim Jenkins a prisoner in South Africa who protested Apartheid and was arrested and sent to a prison in 1979. He and a few other inmates plan a prison break, using wooden keys (!!) and other ingenious methods of getting out. Daniel Radcliffe is the leading role. Really well done film, especially considering how little actually happens.


The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug - someone out there has to have cut the Hobbit trilogy down to an acceptable length, right? There is NO NEED for this story to take 7.5 hours. Also… ending your movie at the point they ended this movie is akin to ending a novel midsentence.


The Freedom Writers - sure, a lot of this is familiar tropes - white teacher comes in and helps a group of inner city kids realize their potential - but this one just hit different, somehow. I even cried a few times. I think it’s just… having someone care enough to actually SEE and HEAR you can be pretty powerful. It can’t change everything. It can’t change everyone, but the people it DOES change can have an amazing impact. Hilary Swank was the lead role, and Imalda Staunton (Dolores Umbridge from the Harry Potter movies) was one of the antagonists, which was amusing to me, once I realized where I recognized her from. Anyway, good movie, would recommend.


Fargo - rewatch. God, what a great movie. The characters are all so… real. Fucking terrifying in some instances (Steve Buscemi’s and ESPECIALLY Peter Stormare’s characters)- and pure fucking awesome in others (Frances McDormand’s Margie). While it felt like maybe the accent angle was being played for laughs (and perhaps it is), it didn’t really work in that regard for me this time around. I remember being amused by all the ‘yah’s and ‘heckdoyoumean?’s on this watch, and instead just focused on the film, which, as stated, is just really really good.


Star Wars: A New Hope


Fall - Becky and Hunter, two athletic twenty-something friends, decide to climb a 2000 foot tall abandoned television tower. All good, until they get stuck up there. Then they have to face the elements, lack of food, and (sigh) secrets. This was by no means a GOOD movie, but it kept me entertained throughout, and there were a few (unintentional?) laughs along the way, so can’t complain. And I had read that when it was screening in theaters that people were experiencing vertigo. I can believe it. There were scenes that caused some panic in me, and I was watching it on a small screen.


Star Wars: The Phantom Menace - so… yeah.


The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies - I fell asleep during bits of this.But, got the overall gist. I think I was just hobbitted out by the end. (And, as I've stated with each of these, it really was overkill having the ONE story turned into a trilogy.)


Final Destination - I’ve somehow never actually watched the Final Destination movies, so, figured might as well. I do love me some cheesy goodness (and badness). And this certainly provides it. Overall not horrible. It’s entertaining enough to watch death play with its rube goldberg machines. Wish the characters were a little more fleshed out, but, whatcha gonna do?


Final Destination 2 - one of those really rare situations where the sequel…might just be better than the first. Or, at least equally as good. A lot of it works BECAUSE it builds off the first one. The concept is pretty fun - having someone who is having premonitions of a massive horrible accident, people avoid it because of that vision, and then the survivors start getting killed in creative and ludicrous ways… It’s pure popcorn flick, but sometimes that’s what you need.


The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring -


Donnie Darko - Rewatch. I mostly felt sad this time through. None of the comedy really worked (and, yeah, the comedy was always dark, but still… the tragicness of this story just overshadowed everything for me this time around.) As for the time travel elements - meh. It …was there. Did it make perfect sense? Probably mostly not, but enough that it didn’t bother me. Anyway, plot: Donnie is a teen with emotional problems living in suburban america in 1988. One night, Donnie sleepwalks out of his room, and while he’s out, an engine falls off an airplane and crushes his bedroom. Shortly after this, Donnie begins hallucinating an evil 6 foot tall rabbit named Frank who tells him that in 28 days, the world is going to end.


Final Destination 3 - Hmm. The franchise is starting to wear out its welcome. Or maybe it’s just that the characters this time around weren’t as enthralling. (NOt that the kids in 1 and 2 were fabulous people or anything, but there was just hardly ANY likeable characters in this insallment.) The roller coaster accident set piece was pretty great, though.


Talk to Me - fucking good. Oh, man. Mia lost her mom two years back, and has since been spending most of her time with her best friend, Jade, Jade’s Mum, and her younger brother Riley. At a party, a ceramic hand is brought out, which, if you do the correct ritual, will allow a person to contact the spirit world. The only caveat is to break connection before 90 seconds so that the ghosts can’t stay in our world longer. Mia (and all the teens) become addicted to doing this, but, man…don’t mess with the dead for fun. It does NOT end well. This felt a lot like Hereditary - another movie that was superb with it’s ability to make you feel dread. Both films contained a nice balance of supernatural horror (and, dude, it really really is horrific) and emotional drama (all of the relationships Mia had with everyone else felt so authentic, that when bad things started happening to them all, it was, in many ways, worse than what the ghosts were doing.) This was easily the best horror movie i’ve seen in a while, and probably the best movie I’ve seen all year so far.


Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker - didn’t hate it AS much this time around. It’s still not a great movie, and is certainly the worst of the sequel trilogy, but it wasn’t as awful as I remember it being. (Or maybe I just am not as emotionally invested in Star Wars as I used to be, and so watching a mediocre action movie isnt such a big deal anymore.)


The Final Destination - they really should have just called this Final Destination 4, but whatever. This was certainly the weakest of the series so far. The 3-D effects look cheesy and stupid (but that’s almost always the case) and the storyline being the same every time is starting to truly wear thin. Some of the deaths were decent, but not nearly as exciting as the previous films.


Final Destination 5 - Okay, got some life pumped back into the series! (heh) And now I’ve seen all of the franchise (to date - apparently a 6th installment (possibly a reboot?) is coming out later this year). But, yeah, same plot and story beats as all the others, but after the dip in quality from 3 and (especially) 4, it was cool to have it rebound some and become a bit more enjoyable. Having more Tony Todd in your film certainly helps matters. I also appreciate that EVERY Final Destination movie was kept around 1 hour 30 minutes. No need to drag your crap out. This one also had (slightly) fewer assholes in it than most of them, so that was nice.


The Flight of the Navigator - rewatch. Holds up decently well. Before it gets all wacky and kid friendly,(Oh, and, yeah, Paul Reubens being the voice of Max… I can 100% guarantee that I mimicked the crap out of that and I know that “Compliance” entered my vernacular for a while as a kid too.) it’s got some surprisingly nightmarish situations - David is transported 8 years into the future but from his point of view (and ours!) he’s only been gone/knocked out for maybe a few hours. Imagine being 12, coming back to your house, and discovering some random strangers living there. And then eventually being reunited with your family, and all of them are eight years older than they should be. That’s some scary crap to contemplate! And the movie actually stays with it for a while. There were bits that haven’t aged well - a kid uses the “r” word, there’s a couple totally unnecessary fat related jokes, the slight flirting of Sarah Jessica Parker toward a twelve year old… but overall, this held up pretty well, for being almost 40 years old… I don’t want them to reboot it (I saw an article from like 4 years ago saying that a reboot was in the works, but, since that hasn’t actually come to fruition, maybe wiser heads have prevailed), but I wouldn’t mind seeing a darker take on the IDEAS that were presented in this story play out somehow.


41 - low budget scifi flick about a young man who discovers in the corner of a motel room a wormhole that allows him to go back in time 12 hours. After his ex-girlfriend winds up killed in a car crash, he decides to try fucking with the timeline a bit. Nothing about this was really that unpredictable or novel, and the acting and dialog really aren’t that spectacular either. And yet… I sorta liked it? It was like comfort food, sort of?


Freaks - Gooble gobble, we accept her, one of us!


Freaks - 2018 mid-budget flick about society hunting down ‘abnormals’ (folks who have super powers). Chloe is 7, she lives with her father, Henry, who keeps them living on the downlow, trying to teach Chloe how to blend in with everyone else. Mostly by keeping her isolated. When she ends up engaging with the outside world, she meets her grandfather, who lets her know that her father hasn’t been entirely honest with her about …well, anything. This took a little bit of time to get its bearing, but I’m glad I stuck with it. Pretty different take on a worn-out trope of us vs them. And seeing Chloe grow into her powers was terrifying and also engaging as hell. I would absolutely watch another movie set in this world. It was like the Marvel universe, but way more realistic and low-key.


Kiki’s Delivery Service - a young witch moves to a big city, makes friends along the way. This is a Studio Ghibli film that I’d seen before. It’s charming.


From Dusk till Dawn - rewatch. Tarantino is still slime. But this is pretty fun. And I do appreciate movies that are able to switch genres midway like this one does.


Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3 - i was distracted while this was playing, so maybe that’s why I wasn’t super into it. Or, maybe, as I’ve said before, I’m just over Marvel flicks. It was decent, it just didn’t TRULY connect with me. I could tell it was tugging at heart strings, and going for laughs, and wanting to wow with action… but for the most part this was just a collection of pictures and sound that I let wash over me. I enjoyed it, but didn’t ENJOY it, if that makes sense.


The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - rewatch; I fell asleep during some of the human bits, because, let’s face it, they’re kinda boring. Gollum is still simultaneously sympathetic and horrifying (and…maybe more leaning toward sympathetic? It’s truly not his fault that the Ring did what it did to him. His fate could just as easily have been Frodo’s. Or Bilbo’s.). And Gollum’s effects still hold up even 22 years later. (Wait, what??) When we watch Return of the King, I’ll do my best to remain awake throughout.


The Dead Zone - kind of one of King’s lesser works; and kind of one of the lesser adaptations. Christopher Walken makes Johnny Smith just on the edge of creepy - you know, because he’s…Christoper Walken - which …I don’t really remember if that was a trait the character had in the book or not. But, regardless, he’s still pretty compelling. Just …maybe not someone I’d choose to hang out with? Anyway. Martin Sheen as Greg Stillson was fantastic. And the story itself isn’t a bad one, overall. Dude gets into a car accident, goes into a 5 year coma, wakes up, and discovers he can get the occasional psychic flash. Tries to live his life despite this unasked for power, but …fate’s got other plans, apparently. And when he sees the future that a politician has in store, well… some things you just can’t let happen.


The Gate - I know I’d seen this as a kid, but had forgotten the majority of it. Because holy shit, this movie was boring as hell. How do you make opening a gate to hell and releasing demons dull? This movie found a way. Did I like this as a kid? …I honestly don’t remember. I sure as hell hope not. The cover art is absolutely the best thing this movie has going for it.


Galaxy Quest - rewatch. This is SUCH a good movie. The cast of a tv show about a crew of space explorers get mistaken as ACTUAL space explorers by an alien civilization being killed/threatened by an evil conqueror. So, essentially, Three Amigos, but with Star Trek. Which, if that doesn’t sell you on the movie, I don’t know what to tell ya.


Glorious - After his relationship with his girlfriend Brenda comes to an end, Wes gets incredibly drunk. He finds himself hung over and throwing up in a bathroom at a reststop in the middle of nowhere. A voice coming from the next stall over (J.K. Simmons!) engages him in conversation. And things get WEIRD. This was definitely a unique story, and I give them credit for keeping it nice and short. It almost felt like they could have done MORE with it - and, in fact, how things end with Wes is probably my only minor criticism. But more movies in this vein would not be a bad thing.


Dreamscape - I had seen this as a kid, but iddn’t remember much about it other than the Snake man (because as, like, a 10 year old, that shit was terrifying). Dennis QUaid stars as a psychic who gets roped into a government program that allows people to enter another person’s dreams. When it’s discovered that killing someone inside the dream results in their death in the real world, Quaid realizes that the implications of this power are pretty earth shattering, and he decides to stop it. This movie wasn’t half bad, considering it is a forgotten 80s sci-fi thriller. It was kind of the proto-Inception. (Although, I think that this was, in a lot of ways, better than that movie. Dreams should be weird - and nightmares scary - and this film understood that.) I’d ALMOST like to see a remake of this, with the types of effects that could be applied to it now.


Totally Killer - horror comedy that was essentially “Back to the Future” meets… Scream, I guess. Jamie’s parents survived the “Sweet 16” killer back in 1987, although he was never caught. When Jamie’s mom is attacked by the killer in 2023, Jamie goes back in time (just roll with it) in order to prevent the original murders from happening, and also figure out who the killer is. This was fun. It was dumb, but fun.


Pearl - the prequel to “X” which I thought was okay, but not as awesome as the hype surrounding it led me to believe it would be. This definitely helped make X a better movie, weirdly. Mia Goth made me feel extremely bad for a murderous young woman, who just wants to be loved. We see how Pearl is trapped on her family’s farm with her overbearing mother, and infirmed father. She wants desperately to escape from this life, but being a woman in 1918 with no education and no money, her options are limited. This, coupled with her emerging mental illness, result in some rather horrific consequences for people around her.


Morbius - i wasn’t really paying attention while this played in the background. I’m actually somewhat annoyed that “It’s Morbin Time” is not actually said. The movie itself was… I don’t know, there, I guess. I doubt if i’d devoted my entire attention to it that I’d have enjoyed it any more.


Clerks - well, this certainly didn’t hold up. Back in 94 I thought this was hilarious. Rewatching it now…er. No. It does have some decent lines - “This job would be great if it weren’t for the fucking customers” and “I’m not even supposed to be here!” and even some of the “37” jokes are amusing - but overall, this was just…really dated, I guess?


Clerks II - hadn’t seen this before, but I wasn’t missing much. The clerks all being in their 30s… Randall’s just a piece of shit, and Dante would be better off without him (I mean, Dante is no great dude, either.). Jay’s shtick got old VERY fast, and it was just …kind of a chore to get thru this. There’s one more, and, I will watch it, but my hopes are SEVERELY limited.


Clerks III - crappy movie trilogy concludes…with maybe the best of the bunch? It didn’t make me laugh, but I did get a few small smirks out of some of the meta-ness (it’s been about 24 hours since I’ve watched it, and I’m having a hard time recalling any of the jokes/lines that caused a reaction, but I know I did think a couple of times, “Okay, that’s semi-decent.”). Watching them all be in their FIFTIES now (or near it, anyway) was nice and mid-life-crisis-alarming, but it didn’t really make any of them different characters or any better people or anything.


Abigail - group of criminals kidnap a 12 year old girl to get the ransom from her very rich father. Except she’s not a 12 year old girl, but a centuries old vampire. It doesn’t go well for the criminals. This was fun. Gory, action-filled, actually funny… I do wish that the trailers hadn’t given away the reveal about Abigail’s nature, because, man, having that be a twist would have been EPIC. But, even so, it was an entertaining movie.


Graveyard Shift - When this started, I was like, “This is SUCH an 80s movie.” It was made in 1990. So, that was a little weird. It totally had an 83-85-ish vibe going on. But, whatever. It was not great. Brad Dourif is in it, but even he can’t really elevate it. It’s based on a STephen King short story, which I’m sure I’ve read, but…I really don’t remember. Anyway, gist is -giant rat lives under a textile mill. Crew gets picked off one by one. Yawn. This isn’t even good in a B-movie sort of way. Just …meh.


Disturbing Behavior - This had major “The Faculty” vibes, and even though this came out a year before that movie, The Faculty was just MUCH better. But, yeah, James Marsden moves to a new town, uncovers a conspiracy in his high school wherein students are being brainwashed into becoming perfect kids. Katie Holmes was in this too.


Destroy All Neighbors - horror comedy that didn’t really work for me. Will is a prog rock musician who lives in a crappy apartment with his girlfriend, Emily. A new neighbor, Vlad, moves in, and Will takes an instant dislike to him. An argument with the guy results in Vlad accidentally being killed, but Vlad’s corpse continues to harass him while Will tries to cover up his manslaughter. This wasn’t horrible, it just wasn’t nearly as funny as it thought it was.


The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King - I cried again during the end scene (“My friends… you bow to no one.”) But, good LORD the non-hobbit parts are truly dull.


Grave of the Fireflies - hi. I’m an unfeeling monster, apparently. Everyone on the planet talks about how this is the saddest animated movie of all time. But…. I mean, it was sad, sure. But… I didn’t cry. I didn’t even tear up. Seita and his younger sister Setsuko are orphans after their city is firebombed, and war is hell…but, I just …didn’t FEEL anything when watching this. Am I broken? Or is this movie just overhyped on exactly how sad it is? I think probably a little from column A, a little from column B.


Dream Scenario - Nic Cage plays Paul Matthews, a completely boring average middleaged college professor. Two kids, a not great relationship with his wife, he wants to write a book, but can’t find an agent (and also, hasn’t actually WRITTEN anything yet). He’s a bit of a loser, but not a horrible person… he’s just one of those everyday people. Until. He starts showing up in people’s dreams. Not …doing anything in them, exactly, but just …there. It starts with people who know him, but soon begins to spread to the larger population. Once it becomes common knowledge, Paul becomes world-wide famous. Fame, however, has its downside. And once the dreams start to turn nightmarish, the real life consequences for Paul and his family do as well. I enjoyed this a lot. It did seem to flounder a bit in the 3rd act, but overall this was a visually unique story that I’d recommend to anyone looking for something a little offbeat.


Enemy Mine - rewatch. Liked this quite a bit as a 10 or 11 year old. Watching it now, I found “Jerry”’s makeup distracting (the head looks good, but the area around the lips? Seriously??). Also, I thought Jerry was in this much longer than he actually is. Huh.


Hatching - Finnish horror movie about 12 year old Tinja who finds a strange egg in the forest, which hatches into some sort of horrible bird-like creature she names Alli that bonds with her. This bonding does not go well for people who hurt or criticize Tinja. Like her bratty younger brother, or her mother who is forcing Tinja to do competitive gymnastics. This was largely predictable, and was really only worth watching for the Alli effects/puppetry.


Hard Candy - Ellen Page plays a 14 year old named Hayley who catfishes a 30-something dude named Jeff. When Jeff takes Hayley back to his apartment and offers her drinks… the evening does NOT go how Jeff had planned on it going. Because Hayley is VERY smart, knows a LOT about Jeff, and…let’s just say she doesn’t approve of his past behavior. Watching a teen torture and humiliate a suspected pedophile is …I don’t know. It appealed to a lizard part of my brain, and the acting is top notch, but I don’t know if this was a GOOD movie or not.


Electric Dreams - rewatch. A flick from back in like 1984 about a home computer that becomes sentient after the owner - Miles - spills champagne on it. LOL. This has got elements of Cyrano in it - the computer and Miles are both pining for the same woman, Madeline, and she is entranced by the computer’s music playing. However… it’s…not very good? Or just really REALLY dated, maybe. A LOT of the movie’s screentime is eaten up with computer graphics that are just supremely embarrassing looking. (I mean, yeah, they’re 40 years old at this point, but …yeesh.) I don’t know, maybe I’m being too harsh on it. I did seek it out to rewatch it after all these years, so, I guess it made SOME sort of impact on younger-me. I just think that I probably didn’t need to do a rewatch after all…


Cloak & Dagger - another rewatch. And another flick from 1984. That also had computers in it pretty heavily. Huh. But, this was one I definitely (mostly) remembered, and was looking forward to. All about Davey, a 10 year old who has a very active imagination. He enjoys playing D&D type games involving his hero, Jack Flack, who is the typical 007-spy type. He does this a lot because his absentee father is …well, not there for him. (Both his dad and Jack Flack are played by Dabney Coleman) Things get EXTREMELY serious for Davey when he receives a game cartridge of Cloak & Dagger that contains top secret military info on it, and actual spies are trying to kill him to retrieve it. It’s kinda insane how much death there was in this “kids” movie, but, the 80s were different. Anyway, I felt like this movie definitely holds up.


Brats - documentary made by Andrew McCarthy about the “brat pack” - the group of young adult actors from the early to mid 80s who were in some movies together: Andrew McCarthy, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy, Emilio Estevez… a few others who were grouped in there. This was extremely navel-gazey, but also hit a lot of nostalgia buttons, so we ended up watching the whole thing, despite at various points feeling it was MUCH too whiny. It was sort of interesting, though, seeing how people deal with life in different ways. Like, McCarthy definitely held on to the trauma of being labeled a “brat” much more deeply than I would expect a person to, and others embraced it, or just moved on. A lot of this felt like an extended therapy session for 50-60 year olds for events that occurred nearly 40 years earlier. The main thing I took from it was that trauma only has the amount of power that we give to it.


The Hidden - dude! This was a fantastic ride. I mean, it was made in 87, and it was just a mid-budget flick, but it held up pretty well. And I’d never even heard of this before! (I don’t remember how I discovered it, exactly, but I’m glad I did.) It’s a sci-fi thriller where the cops are tracking down a brutal killer/bank robber who the week before was just a normal average guy. The FBI sends an agent - Kyle MacLachlan - in and he gets paired up with the lead cop on the case. Eventually we find out that the killer is actually an alien parasite that the FBI agent has been hunting for a while. A lot of the plot beats were predictable (probably from plenty of other stories having similar tropes), but the overall ride was definitely enjoyable and worth it. I’m just really amazed that this isn’t more widely known.


Heat - rewatch. It’s nearly 3 hours long, but, my word, this 1995 crime drama with Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro playing cat and mouse with each other is SO good. I think it’s just watching two characters who are both superbly good at what they do - one a master thief and career criminal, the other a homicide detective - battle wits against each other. The fact that they are both awful with their personal relationships makes them both …not necessarily more sympathetic…but they do feel more realzied as people that way, I guess. It is interesting that I felt that it was a tragedy that DeNiro’s downfall was due to his pride, and if he’d just listened to his mentor’s advice, he would have had a happy ending. Pity.


Heavy Metal - I’m fairly certain teenage (or maybe tweenage?) me caught bits and pieces of this when younger. It felt like the movie equivalent of looking at Playboys. Part of that, no doubt, is because of the amount of boobs in this. Anyway - animated movie that was a collection of vignettes about a mystical green orb that is “evil incarnate” taht moves thru time and space, corrupting people, and largely melting them like Nazis looking at an Ark. The animation largely…sucks. The stories are all rather crappy, too. And, the aforementioned excessive (female) nudity is just …monotonous. Some of the tunes are good. Devo’s “Through Being Cool” is in here, for example. But overall, this was just …not great.


Hellboy - rewatch…ish. I’ve seen this before, I’m sure, but both times i watched it, I found my attnetion not completely focused on the film. Which is weird. Because I like Del Toro. I like Ron Perlman. I like comic-y/action-y/comedy type movies… but Hellboy (2004) doesn’t work for me as a whole. We’ll see how 2 and the 2019 reboot shape up when I watch those.


Hellboy II: The Golden Army - This one, despite - or maybe because of? - it going FULL weird and insane, held my interest more than the original. I liked the villain more in this - he felt more sympathetic and also, more threatening. Bringing Hellboy into the public’s knowledge was interesting move, and opened up a lot of potential story ideas. The Manilow bit was hilarious (and touching!?). I just overall liked this better than the first. I …kinda want a 3rd one? But I guess that’s unlikely since they rebooted it with David Harbour in 2019. Which is up next for me. (Edit - I got about 20 minutes into the reboot and turned it off. It was just too freaking dull.)


Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga - prequel to Fury Road, which I loved. This was …okay? Hard to live up to the high bar that Fury Road set, so not super disappointed that it doesn’t quite do that. The action was still great. Furiosa is a fantastic character, and all the actresses who played her were wonderful. I read an opinion that the better movie would have been focusing on making it a sequel to Fury Road - have Dementus (also a fun character, although Chris Hemsworth did cross the line into hammy-ness a few times) as the main villain attempting to disrupt her newfound security… and I think taht honestly, I probably would have loved that more. But, then we wouldn’t have gotten Anna Taylor-Joy, and that would’ve been a pity. Anyway. Top notch action, decent story, good characters… overall, can’t complain. I’ve seen a WHOLE lot worse…


Howard the Duck - rewatch… I watched this SO many times as a kid. The first half of it, upon rewatching, has so much adult stuff that (mostly) flew over my head back then. (Obviously, the duck breasts were impossible to miss - and how freaking WEIRD is that?? They’re DUCKS. Why would they have mammary glands?? And the scene with Beverly and Howard in bed certainly kickstarted my puberty. But the condom? And the jock itch commercial? And the job Howard gets in the adult theater? And the attempted sexual assault in the alleyway? ALL of that stuff were things I hadn’t noticed/understood when watching it 30+ years ago.) ANYWAY. Does it hold up? Um. Well, no. It’s not a good movie at all. I really liked it as a young one, and so it’s got some of that going for it, but, that’s about ALL it has. (Although I will say the bit with Philsie and Howard trying to get him out of the cop car - “Window?” “Let me check the door first.” - DID make me chuckle.) But, yeah, this has a reputation as being one of the worst movies ever made, and while I wouldn’t go THAT far, I also wouldn’t really fight that too hard either.


Late Night with the Devil - set in 1977 on a fictional late night talk show, this “found footage” of Jack Delroy’s final broadcast (wherein he has on a psychic, a skeptic, and a woman who rescued a young girl from a satanic cult) was a little bit of a mixed bag. It LOOKS fantastic, and for a large part of it, had the authenticity of an actual talk show from that era. But it went on for a little too long, and while the climax was some “holy shit!” (heh), it took a little too long to get there, and then had a confusing denouement that didn’t gel with the rest of the film. Huge props for attempting to pull off a unique story, just too bad that it wasn’t a bit tighter and didn’t quite stick the landing.


Hulk - rewatch…ish? I’d seen bits of this before, I think, but never all the way through. To be honest, I didn’t really watch ALL of this this time either. It’s just far too long and meandering. The action scenes are a combination of “okay, cool” and utter cringe - the Hulk dogs, for example, were just BAD. But the escape from the facility and the desert tanks/helicopters fight was engaging enough. It’s just that it took FOREVER to get there. A lot of the nearly hour and a half (!!) to get to where Bruce finally REALLY becomes the Hulk was just mind numbingly boring. I guess this can kinda be considered the training wheels of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It wobbled so that the later movies could run.


The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes - this was good - like the series has been - but …not as special as the first. And this probably could have been tightened up a bit. I don’t think it needed to be 2.5 hrs long. Still, a good overall series, and this was an enjoyable, although somewhat predictable entry.


Hunter Hunter - a family (Joseph, Anne, teenage daughter Renee, and dog Tova) living out in the wild have their lives interrupted by a wolf getting closer to their cabin, stealing their food, and avoiding the traps they’ve set up. While hunting for the wolf, Joseph discovers that there may be a more dangerous animal out there, too. There is, of course. I thought this was decent, with a bit near the final 20-30 minutes that were quite intense. Followed by a ridiculously bleak and stupid finale that felt like a writer that wanted shock value, rather than being able to tie things together in a better fashion.


I.S.S. - This was basically "Among Us: The Movie". Six astronauts - 3 Americans, 3 Russians - on board the International Space Station are working together, then nukes get dropped on earth and both countries send orders to “take control”. Paranoia ensues. This was pretty damn good for the first 2/3rds or so. The final act - and the ambiguous (by necessity, i’m sure) ending didn’t do it any favors. But when you don’t know who to exactly trust, or what information people have or are lying about… that was some good stuff. Especially since all of the characters are confined to such a small space, and dealing with zero g on top of it. Once actual murders started taking place, it became less believable and less engaging.


The Incredible Hulk - a sort of sequel/reboot from the Hulk movie that I watched earlier. This was… mostly forgettable? I mean, it ties in to the MCU - Tony Stark makes an appearance at the end, but even Marvel seems to have decided that this wasn’t actually worth keeping as canon, since Banner and the Hulk were both recast (and the storyline essentially rebooted again) with Avengers. Edward Norton is okay, I guess, but I am ultimately glad that was the decision they made.


Practical Magic - watched this just before the “Free With Ads” podcast covered it. Wasn’t bad! I mean, it wasn’t anything that I’ll likely remember a month from now, but it was charming enough. And the ending (probably in part due to the music) did give me the warm fuzzies. So, yeah. Glad I got to view it.


The Incredible Shrinking Man - a little lackluster ending, but a good ride up until then. The effects, amazingly, hold up pretty well! Crazy how there’s a good chunk of this movie with no dialouge.


The Incredible Shrinking Woman - rewatch. There’s some extremely 80s stuff in this (the housekeeper is maximum cringe, and the kids sneaking out to listen to their parents have sex is just…weird) but overall, this was still pretty fun. Lots of interesting jabs at consumerism that flew over my head as a kid.


12 Angry Men - i had somehow never seen this before. I’m glad that I remedied that. For a movie that is like 70 years old now, this holds up quite well. Heck of a lot of smoking in it, though. ;)


Holes - adaptation of the YA novel. This was enjoyable, just like the book. Can’t really analyze/think of more to say about it, as I watched it the day after the election, and my mind is sort of still fuzzy. It was a decent movie.


Innerspace - rewatch. Dennis Quaid is an alcoholic womanizer who signs up to be a pilot in a miniaturization experiment. When a rival group breaks in to the lab, Quaid ends up injected into Martin SHort. Hijinks ensue.Ebert said in his review of this that the film can’t quite decide if it wants to be a comedy or a thriller. Fair. I’d say that, for the most part, the comedy is …eh. Not as horrible/dated as I thought/expected it to be, but just …not laugh out loud funny, either. The thriller/suspense/sci-fi aspects were actually more intriguing to me. Either way, I enjoyed this more than I thought I would, although I’d still say that it’s not anything I’d rank as a fantastic movie.


Deadpool & Wolverine - by far the most enjoyable Deadpool movie. The jokes worked for me, the action worked for me, the raunchiness (the aspect of Deadpool that I find the most eyerolly) was at a level that worked for me. I’m no comics NERD, so a lot of the references/metaness flew over my head, but I didn’t care. My friends, at the end, I *cried*. How can a DEADPOOL movie work my emotions hard enough to cause actual tears? Am I truly that manipulatable? Or was it just a particular moment that worked particularly well? Well, whatever. I had a good time for 2 hours, and with the hellscape we find ourselves in, that’s more than enough for a movie to provide, as far as I’m concerned.


In a Violent Nature - I had higher hopes for this than what I got. A slasher that focuses on the killer’s POV for the majority of the flick with no music? Sure. I’m on board with that idea. Turns out, that just means a lot of walking thru the woods. A LOT of walking thru the woods. So, yeah. Our killer - Johnny instead of Jason - does have a purpose for killing his victims - his mother’s locket gets taken from off his burial site, and he’s just hunting down and killing anyone that might possibly have it. Which, again, SOUNDS like it could be an intriguing idea, and at least makes it so that the killer has a little bit of empathy. But, oof. This was just not my cup of tea. If you took out all the walking shots, you’d go down from a 90 minute movie to probably 20ish minutes. And those would not be great 20 minutes either. None of the characters are particularly likeable or well developed, and teh dialog is garbage (as is the acting). Even the kills, something that, obstensibly, is what gore hounds are there for are nothing worth writing home about. There is one that is probably Terrifer-ish in its over the topness, but all the others are …relatively mild? Heck the first is off screen! Point is that this movie was a disappointment in all sorts of ways.


It’s a Wonderful Knife - Winnie lives in a small town with her family. The mayor of the town is awful, and on Christmas Eve of one year, he murders 4 people before being killed by Winnie. A year later, and most everyone has moved on, but Winnie is still grieving (understandably so!!) She makes a wish that she’d never been born, and finds herself living in a parallel universe where that’s the case. As a result, the mayor has killed a lot of people, and is still alive. It’s now up to her to figure out a way to stop him and get back to her real timeline. Neat concept, and this was charming enough. It didn’t really do anything that I wasn’t expecting it to, but it felt…comfortable.


The Great Dictator - Charlie Chaplin’s first “talkie”. He plays dual roles - a nameless barber with amnesia, and a Tomanian dictator, Adenoid Hynkel. THe mockery of another dictator with the initials AH is obvious. The ending speech didn’t quite make me cry, but it came close. This was only the 2nd Chaplin film I’ve seen, but I’m into seeing more of them.


Alien: Romulus - a sort of blended remix of all the previous Alien flicks. Andy was, without doubt, the best character (funny how often the androids become the character we care the most about in this series…). Overall this was a pretty solid installment. Don’t know that it was super memorable or anything I’d want to watch again (even the first 4 Alien movies (yes, even Resurrection) are ones I am able to view multiple times) but, who knows, maybe 10 years from now I’ll rewatch it and appreciate it more.


Blink Twice - ehhh. Frida and her friend Jess wind up on an exotic island with a billionaire and his buddies. Lavish parties and lots of wine and drugs happen, everyone’s happy, right? Except things …seem off for some reason. The women begin to question what exactly is going on, eventually discovering the horrific truth. (Spoiler - it’s a rape island where the woman are all being roofied into forgetting their assaults each night.) I’d say that this was just serviceable. Nothing that I’d recommend, and I’m sure i’ll forget most of it in a month or so. (Oddly, a few days after typing that initial response, the movie's stuck in my mind a little bit longer than I thought it would. I still don't know that I liked it - I really do think that a lot of it was ...hm. On the nose? I guess, might be the phrase I'm looking for? Like the speeches the girls were giving each other while they were figuring stuff out was just...cringy, sorta? Like I GET what they were saying, but...it felt ...unnatural? Or like scriptwriting. Or an internet screed. And then when the woman started getting revenge on the men, it ..felt like a movie, and not in a good way. Eh. Whatever.)

86. JCVD - Jean-Claude Van Damme is not someone whose work I've ever ...seeked out. I saw TimeCop, and ...possibly parts of Bloodsport? Otherwise... [shrug]. But, he does give an AMAZING performance here. He plays himself - or a fictionalized style of himself, perhaps. He's back in Brussels, his hometown, where he is aging, struggling to be taken seriously as an actor, nearly broke, and going through a custody battle in a bitter divorce. What's a guy to do? Well, his day's about to get a WHOLE lot worse, when he happens to go into a post office that is in the middle of being robbed. This non-linear meta-filled parody/homage of action movies was truly a unique movie. I'm glad I saw it.

87. Smile 2 - Started off amazingly strong. About 20-ish minutes in I predicted how it was going to end, and was hoping I was wrong. As the movie progressed, it seemed that my prediction WAS wrong, and it was going to go in some very VERY different direction. And then it decided to end with a "twist" ending that pissed. me. off. AND ended up making my prediction be true. UGH. Severely disappointed that they went that way, and especially after laying the groundwork for a much more interesting story. (Or at least a happier one. This went on so long it began to feel like watching someone bully a defenseless bug or something.) Anyway, less vagueish: Smile 2 continues to tell the story set up in Smile - a demon/entity "infects" someone who saw somebody kill themselves - usually in a very gory fashion. The demon causes the infected to see horrific events, causing them to go insane, until they finally lose their mind, at which point the demon takes over that person's body, kills themselves in a gory way in front of a witness, who is now infected with seeing the demon. Watching someone slowly lose their mind is varying degrees of entertaining, and I felt like this movie WAS better than the original (marginally) until the crap ass "we have to have a sequel" ending.

Down to This - Soul Coughing

Today is December 31st, 2024. The song of the day is "Down to This" by Soul Coughing.

Turn a Square - The Shins

Today is December 30th, 2024. The song of the day is "Turn a Square" by The Shins.

Untouchable - The Murmurs

Today is December 29th, 2024. The song of the day is "Untouchable" by The Murmurs.

Hello - Lionel Richie

Today is December 28th, 2024. The song of the day is "Hello" by Lionel Richie.

March Into the Sea - Modest Mouse

Today is December 27th, 2024. The song of the day is "March Into the Sea" by Modest Mouse.

All I Wanna Do - Sheryl Crow

Today is December 26th, 2024. The song of the day is "All I Wanna Do" by Sheryl Crow.

It's All About The Pentiums - Weird Al Yankovic

Today is December 25th, 2024. The song of the day is "It's All About the Pentiums" by Weird Al Yankovic.

My Best Friend's Girl - The Cars

And the bonus song of the day is "My Best Friend's Girl" by The Cars.

This Used To Be My Playground - Madonna

Today is December 24th, 2024. The song of the day is "This Used to be My Playground" by Madonna.

I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony) - The New Seekers

Today is December 23rd, 2024. The song of the day is "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)" by The New Seekers.

How Could You Want Him (When You Know You Could Have Me?) - Spin Doctors

Today is December 22nd, 2024. The song of the day is "How Could You Want Him (When You Know You Could Have Me?)" by the Spin Doctors.

Sixteen Saltines - Jack White

Today is December 21st, 2024. The song of the day is "Sixteen Saltines" by Jack White. Dude's so cool he can make plain crackers sound amazing...

High of 75 - Relient K

Today is December 20th, 2024. The song of the day is "High of 75" by Relient K.

Nowhere Man - The Beatles

Today is December 19th, 2024. The song of the day is "Nowhere Man" by The Beatles. (Go get a Pepsi!!)

Social Suicide - Bad Religion

Today is December 18th, 2024. The song of the day is "Social Suicide" by Bad Religion.

Macho Man - The Village People

Today is December 17th, 2024. The song of the day is "Macho Man" by The Village People.

If You Could Only See - Tonic

Today is December 16th, 2024. The song of the day is "If You Could Only See" by Tonic.

99 Revolutions - Green Day

Today is December 15th, 2024. The song of the day is "99 Revolutions" by Green Day.

HandClap - Fitz and the Tantrums

Today is December 14th, 2024. The song of the day is "HandClap" by Fitz and the Tantrums.

The Sound of Winter - Bush

Today is December 13th, 2024. The song of the day is "The Sound of Winter" by Bush.

Under Pressure - Queen

And the bonus song of the day is "Under Pressure" by Queen.

You Can Stay But You Gotta Go - Quasi

Today is December 12th, 2024. The song of the day is "You Can Stay But You Gotta Go" by Quasi.

Drink! - They Might Be Giants

Today is December 11th, 2024. The song of the day is "Drink!" by They Might Be Giants.

X.Y.U. - The Smashing Pumpkins

Today is December 10th, 2024. The song of the day is "X.Y.U." by The Smashing Pumpkins.

(And in the eyes of the jackal, I say Ka-BOOOOOM!! Fuck yeah!!)

Dr. Feelgood - Mötley Crüe

Today is December 9th, 2024. The song of the day is "Dr. Feelgood" by Mötley Crüe.

Polka Power! - "Weird Al" Yankovic

Today is December 8th, 2024. The song of the day is "Polka Power!" by Weird Al Yankovic.

Head Over Heels - Tears For Fears

Today is Decmber 7th, 2024. The song of the day is "Head Over Heels" by Tears For Fears.

Thoughts and Prayers - grandson

Today is December 6th, 2024. The song of the day is "Thoughts and Prayers" by grandson.

I'm So Excited - The Pointer Sisters

Today is December 5th, 2024. The song of the day is "I'm So Excited" by The Pointer Sisters.

Californication - Red Hot Chili Peppers

Today is December 4th, 2024. The song of the day is "Californication" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Nobody But Me - The Human Beinz

Today is December 3rd, 2024. The song of the day is "Nobody But Me" by The Human Beinz.

Stompa - Serena Ryder

Today is December 2nd, 2024. The song of the day is "Stompa" by Serena Ryder.

Love Plus One - Haircut 100

Today is December 1st, 2024. The song of the day is "Love Plus One" by Haircut 100.