Aroused - Tom Vek

Today is January 14th, 2025. The song of the day is "Aroused" by Tom Vek.

Crazy - Alanis Morissette

Today is January 13th, 2025. The song of the day is "Crazy" by Alanis Morissette.

You Can (Maybe) Do It - Psychostick

Today is January 12th, 2025. The song of the day is "You Can (Maybe) Do It" by Psychostick.

If You Could Read My Mind - Gordon Lightfoot

Today is January 11th, 2025. The song of the day is "If You Could Read My Mind" by Gordon Lightfoot.

My Body - Young the Giant

Today is January 10th, 2025. The song of the day is "My Body" by Young the Giant.

Screenwriter's Blues - Soul Coughing

It is 5am. And you are listening... to Los Angeles. Today is January 9th, 2025. The song of the day is "Screenwriter's Blues" by Soul Coughing.

Smile - Nat King Cole

Today is January 8th, 2025. The song of the day is "Smile" by Nat King Cole.

All Day And All Of The Night - The Kinks

Today is January 7th, 2025. The song of the day is "All Day and All of the Night" by The Kinks.

Ironic - Bo Burnham

Today is January 6th, 2025. The song of the day is "Ironic" by Bo Burnham.

The Sign - Ace of Base

Today is January 5th, 2025. The song of the day is "The Sign" by Ace of Base.

Memo to Human Resources - They Might Be Giants

Today is January 4th, 2025. The song of the day is "Memo to Human Resources" by They Might Be Giants.

What's on Your Mind (Pure Energy) - Information Society

Today is January 3rd, 2025. The song of the day is "What's on Your Mind (Pure Energy)" by Information Society.

Free money!

 Here's all the cash I found just lying on the ground over the course of 2024...

That's 163 pennies, 26 nickels, 27 dimes, 15 quarters, I think and a 5 dollar bill. For a record breaking*  $14.38 total. 

*Record breaking since 2015 when I started keeping track. Even without the fiver, the change beat last year's record of $8.18. 

Mother Mother - Tracy Bonham

Today is January 2nd, 2025. The song of the day is "Mother Mother" by Tracy Bonham. EVERYTHING'S FINE!!

2024 books

Books read in 2024. final sentence spoiler tagged in parenthesis after my thoughts. Last word is not tagged.

1. Mister Magic by Kiersten White - 30 years ago, a bizarre children’s show called Mister Magic stopped airing. There are no recordings of it online, and the adults who remember seeing it all sort of feel as though it were a fever dream. Some remember the host as a puppet, some remember him as a very tall, kind man. Most remember the songs that the children would sing and the lessons that Mister Magic taught them. It’s become a bit of an urban legend online, and Reddit and discussion boards obsess over the final circle of friends - Val, Jenny, Javi, Marcus, Isaac, and Kitty. Val has been living on a ranch in Montana with her father for the past three decades, and has no memory of being on the show, until, at her father’s funeral, three men who seem vaguely familiar to her show up. They’re Javi, Marcus, and Isaac. They let her know that they’re on their way to see Jenny at a house in Utah where a podcast will be talking about Mister Magic. As Val tries to regain her memories, the weirdness that was Mister Magic becomes more and more apparent. This was engaging and creepy and had me gripped for the first 2/3rds or so. And then it just got FAR too abstract and metaphorical for me to keep following. Pity. I think if the landing had been stuck, I’d be raving about this book, but as it is, I doubt I’ll remember it by year’s end. (Open the doors.)

2. Whalefall by Daniel Krauss - Moby Dick, with daddy issues. This was actually quite good… although bits of it were dense. But, basically, Jay Gardiner has had a contentious relationship with his father, Mitt, for several years. Mitt is …emotionally distant would probably be an apt description. And an alcoholic. And a perfectionist, who expects his son to follow his footsteps (but gives his daughters passes). Mitt is also a bit of a misanthropist, who prefers ocean life to that of humanity. Mitt has taught Jay tons of oceanic facts and has also trained him on how to be a professional diver. After Mitt dies in a mysterious diving related accident, Jay decides that the best way to get closure is to retrieve his father’s remains. While diving into the Bay where his father passed, he encounters a giant squid… which unfortunately gets eaten by a sperm whale, with Jay entangled. Jay has limited amount of oxygen and has to use his father’s knowledge and his own wits in order to survive this ordeal. The emotional side of Jay and Mitt’s relationship hit VERY close to home (tears were shed, at least twice). So why did I only give this 3 stars on goodreads? Well. The scientific accuracy of the novel is a double edged sword. Learning the facts and lingo of deep sea diving and whale anatomy WAS interesting, but also, for me, anyway, also sometimes difficult to parse. I loved the emotional aspects, and the scenario that Jay found himself in was compelling and frightening, I just wish bits of it had been told in a slightly dumbed down manner.  (Sleeper, arise!)

3. Starter Villain by John Scalzi - Charlie Fritzer is a 30-something millennial living in his deceased father’s house, trying to make ends meet as a substitute teacher. He’s divorced, and lives alone - with only his cat, Hera to keep him company. His estranged uncle, Jake Baldwin, was the CEO of a company that makes parking garages. When Jake dies, Charlie is notified he’s inherited his uncle’s business. Which, it turns out, is much more than parking garages. Jake was actually a multibillionaire villain, who had a volcano lair and research and development teams. But there’s also an entire league of supervillains that Jake was competing against, and Charlie has inherited those problems as well. Fortunately, Hera is there to help Charlie learn the ropes of being a villain, cuz all good villains have a cat with them. This was a light breezy fun little romp. I laughed out loud at several parts of it. (Time for us to go home.)

4. Holes by Louis Sachar - Stanley Yelnats (the 4th) gets sent to an all-boys detention center where the boys have to dig holes in a dried up lake bed, and alert the Warden if they discover anything “of interest”. Oh, and avoid the deadly lizards and rattlesnakes that reside there. While there really isn’t a lot of plot to this - the boys dig; there’s eventual backstory to the history of the lake and some (surprise!) treasure that was lost there that gets dribbled out to us while the boys dig and deal with the adults who oversee them - the story was compelling enough that I kept going. (Fly high, my baby bird, my angel, my only.)

5. The Anomaly by Michael Rutger - Nolan Moore hosts a Youtube channel that is a mix of The X-Files and Indiana Jones. Led by reports from an expedition in 1909 about a mysterious cavern in the Grand Canyon, he and his crew head into the canyon, not truly expecting to find anything, but hopeful nonetheless. Once they DO find it, though, they discover that perhaps there was a reason the 1909 expedition lied about how to find this place. This took a while to actually get going - it felt like getting to know the crew and them getting to the cavern was about 100 pages. Not that that was bad, per se… just took a LOT of buildup to get there. But once they get in, it gets very tense and claustrophobic. And then it takes a massive hard swing into scifi land for the final 50 pages or so, which requires an enormous amount of suspension of disbelief. However, it was all in all an enjoyable read. Apparently, he’s got a sequel… MAYBE I’ll check that out. We’ll have to see. (We walked together back into the courtyard, and we stayed there for a very long time.)

6. 8-Bit Apocalypse: The Untold Story of Atari’s Missile Command by Alex Rubens - what should have been an article in BuzzFeed stretched out to fill 250 pages. Very little actual history (the beginning sections about Atari’s foundation were probably the closest thing that could be described as historical) and if there were any revealed secrets, I missed them. There were so many instances of Rubens repeating himself with the wordage slightly altered, it felt EXTREMELY like someone in highschool needing to hit a quota and not having enough to actually say.   I mean, it wasn’t ALL bad, there were some bits that were interesting - I was mildly intrigued with the story of Tony Temple and his interactions with the jackass Roy Shildt. And the first time I heard about developer Dave Theurer and his desire to implement an anti-war message into his game, it was sorta interesting. Having it repeated 700 times in slightly altered ways made it less so. But, I just kinda wish I had spent the time I used reading this book actually PLAYING Missile Command instead. (Though it appeared dead after declaring bankruptcy in 2013, the company has since reemerged as Atari, SA, with a focus on “new audiences.”)

7. Big Time by Ben H. Winters - I’ve enjoyed most everything I’ve read by Ben Winters, and this was no exception. But… the resolution WAS pretty abrupt, and I got major “this will become a series” vibes at the end. Too much was left open-ended. And honestly, the majority of the characters are people i wouldn’t mind spending another book or two with. But there was no indication that this was “book 1” or the start of a new series, so those feelings may be way off base. It was just the overall sense i got at the end of the book, because it was so… unsatisfying. For 90% of the book, though, I was having a great time. It starts off with a young woman named Allie escaping her would-be kidnapper, and worrying about her baby, whom the kidnapper…has no memory of. After that short prologue, we move on to our main protagonists, Grace, and her family - her elderly mother, Kathy, and her teenage nonbinary child, River. Grace is middle-aged and dealing with all the existential dread that comes along with realizing that… yeah, this is pretty much as good as its gonna get. Then, her path - thru work coincidences - crosses with Allie, and Grace gets rapidly sucked into a conspiracy with sci-fi elements. I love how Ben is able to combine genres so seamlessly, and I just really enjoyed all the characters in this. The sci-fi plot takes some suspension of disbelief to accept, but the ride is fun enough that I was (mostly) able to do so. I truly felt like this could have been about 50 pages longer, to provide a better resolution. But, hey, if it turns out that in a year or two, Grace and River are back to solve another mystery, I’ll be down with that as well. (River raised the remote to do so as Ajax looked directly into the camera and the future he’d made.) 

8. Everything is Fine Volume 2 by Mike Birchall - more murder, Big Brother surveillance and paranoia abound… along with giant cat heads in this second graphic novel collection of a webcomic. (Besides, it’s not like you murdered my husband, right?)

9. We’re Not From Here by Geoff Rodkey - At some point in the future, Earth becomes inhabitable. A small amount of humanity managed to move to Mars, but that isn’t sustainable either. Fortunately, scientists have found Choom, a planet that IS hospitable. It’s also already inhabited by 4 other species - the Zhuri (who resemble giant mosquitos), the Krik (who look like miniature werewolves), the Ooroo (giant marshmallows) and the Nug (I forget what they looked like). But, a few families opt to be the first to move there. They go into suspended animation, 20 years pass, they wake up…and find out that the Zhuri have changed their minds, and DON’T want humans living on the planet anymore. (Hey, we’re all in this  together.)

10. Freaks by Brett Riley - Hate read thru this. Around page 50 or so, I said out loud to Steph, “I hate this, but I can’t stop reading it”. Bits were okay, I guess, but overall, the writing was subpar and the story wasn’t anything great either. Characters were all flat and not really likable. The basic plot - in some hick town down in Arkansas (I think) there are 4 outcasts in high school that get bullied pretty much daily. One of the group has an uncle who was into the occult. They dig out his books, and start messing around with them. As a result, they obtain super powers, and open a dimensional portal bringing a four armed super strong vampire type creature into our world. There are two sequels to this, but I’m not anywhere near interested enough to get them. (And if those kids got in the way, not even God could help them.)

11. Geiger vol 1 by Geoff Johns - Graphic novel that collected the first six issues of “Geiger”. In 2030, nukes go off, Tariq Geiger survives the blast, and gives him super radioactive powers. 20 years later, he’s become a myth - The Glowing Man. In Las Vegas, the survivors have devolved into fiefdoms. The Prince wants to murder the Glowing Man (the last time they met, the radiation left the prince disfigured), and there’s political backstabbing at play as well. The first few issues of this were …kind of confusing and not super great. It started to pick up around issue 3 when Geiger meets up with some orphaned kids on the run from the Prince, and he becomes their adoptive father figure. Around this time we also start getting hints that there are OTHER superhero type folks out there (and sure enough - there’s other series out there that focus on some of them - Redcoat, and Robot Joe, for example…) Anyway… once it kicked into gear and sort of found its voice, the story was…okay. But nothing super exciting. I don’t know taht I’ll actively seek out the other Unnamed books, because this didn’t wow me, honestly. (How about we all discuss it over some pre-war whiskey.)

12. Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere by Maria Bamford - Oh, crud. I didn't write anything after I read this, and now I don't know what I really thought. Maria Bamford is an acquired taste, but I've certainly acquired it. If you like her standup, you'll most likely enjoy this memoir. (In practice, it’s me answering questions about my beliefs and behaviors, looking for patterns in my life (like illegal parking [or procrastination or compulsive whale-watching]) that create chaos and what I might replace them with.)

13. You Like It Darker by Stephen King - Short stories! Overall, a good collection. A few were duds, most were pretty good, a few were excellent. Here are the stories and the final sentences:
    Two Lucky Bastids - We start off the collection with a pretty good yarn. Main character’s dad was a famous writer, who didn’t get famous until late in life. He had a best friend who became a famous painter, also late in life. After his dad passed, he found out that there was a secret to how and why the men obtained their fame. I liked this a fair amount, but the Judge Judy anachronism -which, of course, others online have noticed and criticized as well - took me out of the story, and was enough of a mistake that it dimmed the overall tale. It truly should have been caught by an editor or proof reader. (I tell myself that, and mostly I believe it.)
    The Fifth Step - ehhh. One of the ones that I didn’t care for. It was super short, and had a twist ending, but overall …didn’t seem to have a point? Like it was just designed for shock value, maybe? (“You’ll be in my prayers tonight,” Jack said.)
    Willie the Weirdo - this one ALSO was short and had a twist, but it stuck with me for a few days. Later I saw some people online criticizing it as having been almost an exact copy of a short story King had written years ago. Perhaps… I haven’t gone back to reread that story, so I can’t compare the two. But this one, while not having a lot of substance, was written intriguingly enough that I enjoyed it. (“Yes,” Willie said, and stroked the skin between his lip and nose with one finger.)
    Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream - one of the top tier stories, and the longest of the batch. Danny Coughlin has a psychic dream about the location of a murdered woman. It bugs him enough that he goes to investigate, and discovers that, yep, there’s a dead body there. He calls it in to the cops, and promptly becomes their prime suspect. This felt like a nice blend of King’s delve into crime novels with a pinch of supernatural seasoning. The nitpick of the victim being a hitchhiking young woman (!!??!!) was one that didn’t ping on my radar at first, but Steph pointed out to me, and, yes, does seem QUITE unlikely, but overall, not enough to truly ruin the story for me.  (There's nothing to say.)
    Finn - another one that was …not exactly my cup of tea. The extended torture scenes felt excessive. (Then he pushed off.)
    On Slide Inn Road - a family takes a short cut through a pretty deserted area, and encounters some ne’er do wells. Things do not go as anyone could have expected. This wasn’t great, but wasn’t bad. Pure mid grade King.(And Frank does.)
    Red Screen - HATED THIS. (In the dark, Sandi Wilson smiles.)
    The Turbulence Expert - an okay speculative semi-supernatural type story that didn’t quite feel fleshed out enough. Sort of like he had the idea and …kinda slapped a bare bones story around it. (The turbulence struck over Oklahoma.)
    Laurie - Gots to be careful when walking in Florida. (Then he put his dog down to go about her business.)
    Rattlesnakes - Lots of people are calling this a “sequel” to Cujo. It’s been YEARS since I’ve read that, so I don’t know if that’s an adequate description. It DOES follow up with some of the (human) characters from that story, so, there’s that. I’ve often said that ghost stories aren’t ones that particularly scare me. And while this didn’t really provide a lot of scares, it was a compelling read. Although the “falsely accused” motif from Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream seeped into this too, which felt.. Like, why you going to that well so often?  Still. This wasn’t bad at all. (God help me!)
    The Dreamers - Revival-lite. Good stuff, though. A Vietnam vet volunteers to help a doctor doing dream studies. Turns out the doctor is tinkering with nature of the universe…and is finding things that are best left alone. (Not for me.)
    The Answer Man - Made me cry. I’d say it’s the best story of the collection. And…possibly one of the best short stories King has ever written. A young lawyer in the 1930s comes across a mysterious man who claims to be able to answer any question for a small fee. Is knowing the future all it’s cracked up to be, or is part of the joy in life the mystery of how it will all unfold?  This was just an all around wonderful short story. (It was yes.)

14. The Need by Helen Phillips - Molly is a paleobotanist and a mother of two young children. One night as she is preparing her kids for bed, she thinks she hears an intruder in the house. (The first chapter, alone, by the way, was a super effective short story just by itself, but it kept going  and I really enjoyed this book.)This short novel was well written, and kept me guessing the entire time. It continuously walked the line between creepy and mundane, with Molly’s daughter Viv being a rich source of “Is she saying this because of what’s going on, or is it just a 4 year old being a weird 4 year old?” This was largely a character study, and an investigation into motherhood, and the stress of being a mom, and a woman with a job, and …I’m rambling. I liked this a lot, is all I’m saying. I don’t want to spoil things, because truly - going in blind is absolutely the best way to enjoy this novel. Some of the events that happen would not be half as shocking if you knew about them beforehand.  My only criticism is that the ending was a little TOO ambiguous for my liking. Maybe i’m just dumb (maybe??) but the final couple of chapters and the epilogue… just didn’t click with me. (But the children were not alarmed, for they were with her, safe and she bore them onward.)

15. The Downloaded by Robert J. Sawyer - I usually enjoy Sawyer’s novels, but this novella about two groups of people who had their minds uploaded to a computer, and their bodies cryogenically frozen (one was a group of astronauts going on a journey to build a new world, the other was a set of convicts doing prison time) didn’t quite work. It was still entertaining enough, and certainly had cool concepts, but the character development wasn’t there, and, while I’m as liberal as Sawyer is, a lot of this DID come across as preachy or shoehorned in. I think, honestly, if this had been a longer work, and had allowed the characters and world to breathe some, that I would have enjoyed it more than I did. (“It certainly is.”)

16. How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix - Another one where I didn't jot down my thoughts at the time, only to discover NOW that I didn't. I liked this. A brother and sister who are somewhat estranged have to put aside their differences after their parents die to sell their childhood home. Which, turns out, has some supernatural shit going on in it. (When that happened, she called her brother.)

17. The War of the Givens by Daniel Price - The trilogy of the Given sisters - as well as 97 other “orphans” rescued from our timeline and brought into AltAmerica by scientists from a far flung future comes to a close. Like the previous two volumes, this was 700 pages of timey-wimey fun. I can not even imagine the amount of planning and notes that must have gone into writing this entire thing, but my hat is definitely off to Daniel Price for pulling it all off. I think overall, it might not have been *perfect* (keeping track of this enormous cast was a struggle, and once the inevitable war finally kicked in, and deaths started happening, some of them didn’t hit as strongly as they probably should have) but it was close enough for me to be in complete admiration. I think this series will probably be one I think about from time to time (heh) for the rest of my life. The Pelletiers, Ioni, Amanda and Hannah, and Evan (among others) are characters that I spent enough time with that they’ve become like real people to me. (It was time.)

18. The Tally Stick by Carl Nixon - This was good, but it was rather depressing. In 1978 the Chamblain family is going to be moving from London to New Zealand for the father’s new job. Two weeks before, they decide to go on a vacation around the country. They get into a car crash, which kills the mother, father, and youngest child instantly. The three remaining kids - Katherine, Maurice, and Tommy - survive, but, spoiler - are never rescued. In 2010, Maurice’s remains are found near the ocean. Among his belongings - his father’s watch, and a “tally stick” - which is a piece of wood used to keep track of debt. Forensic tests indicate he died sometime in 1982. What happened in those 4 years between the crash and his death? And where did he get the tally stick? And why did he have it with him? We jump back and forth in time to get these answers (and others) and like I said, while it was well written and compelling, it was dark material. (His last indignant protest hung in the salted air alongside the sharp cries of the gulls.)

19. A Thousand Steps by T. Jefferson Parker -Laguna Beach, California, 1968. Matt is 16, and a typical teenage boy - got a paper route, a girl he’s interested in, and an interest in art and drawing. His older brother, Kyle, is serving a term in Vietnam, and his older sister Jasmine is about to graduate senior year. But Matt’s idyllic summer is ruined when a schoolmate ends up dead on the beach. Her body showing signs of drug abuse. Things get worse when Jasmine has an argument with their mom, and doesn’t come home. As the days go by and there’s still no sign of Jasmine, Matt tries to get the police to investigate, but to little avail. He takes it upon himself to locate his sister. I liked Matt a lot, he was a good kid, growing into a good man. I didn’t care for Matt’s deadbeat father, and when he came back into the picture, I was wishing Matt would ditch him completely.This coming of age story/mystery was okay, but I sorta wished it was just a little bit shorter. And while the author has written like 30 other books, I don’t know that I’ll seek any of them out. (Bitchen.)

20. Phantom Road volume 1 by Jeff Lemire - graphic novel about Dom and Birdie in some sort of strange limbo carrying what might be an alien life form in Dom’s tractor trailer. The two meet after Birdie and her fiancee are in an accident, where they hit the alien …thing. Dom almost hits Birdie when she is recovering from the car wreck, and the two of them put the …whatever it is… into Dom’s truck. Unfortunately, they also find themselves in some sort of dimension between realities being chased by generic zombie type creatures. The portal between worlds seem to be thinnest at Bernie Bear truck stops, so they’re heading to the next one. Back in our world, an FBI agent named Weaver is searching for them. She has flashbacks to her childhood when she entered the limbo zone, so she knows more about it than most people. This was just the first volume, so we’re really only getting introduced to the world. I’m intrigued enough to keep going… (Shlunk!)

21. Phantom Road volume 2 by Jeff Lemire - more backstory is provided for Dom, Birdie, and Agent Weaver, and the Other Place gets SOME more info dripped to us, although it remains frustratingly ambiguous. There is some added mystery in both the Other Place and the real world (with cape guy and Hugo Hamm, respectively), that boht seem like potential for rich storylines, however, it appears that the series is on hiatus, and so who knows if we’ll ever get conclusions. (And I’d like to welcome you both to Project Jackknife.)

22. Fever House by Keith Rosson - This was super fun! I love me a good genre-blending, and this did that pretty darn well. It started off as a noir/crime book, focusing on Hutch Holtz and his partner, Tim, going to collect money - and maybe break a few bones, if necessary - for their boss, Peach. But when they go to a methhead’s apartment who doesn’t have the cash, and discover a severed hand in his freezer, things start to get a little weird. Things get weirder as they quickly discover that being near the hand causes people to feel intensely aggressive and violent. Peach orders them to bring the hand to him. This would probably be interesting enough, but we soon find out that a top secret government agency is currently hunting for the hand as well. Because up until a few months ago, the hand was in their possession. It worked its mojo on one of the people guarding it, and he ended up losing it in the public. The agency also has Saint Michael - who has (among other things) the ability to remote view - up his sleeve to help them locate the hand. I really enjoyed the characters in this - everyone is three dimensional and flawed - and I greatly enjoyed the world building (and eventually, heh, the world destroying). There’s a sequel that came out this year, which I’m glad of, because this did end with very little actual closure. So, I’ll definitely be reading that when I get a chance. (Katherine runs through the night,toward her son.)

23. Bubble by Jordan Morris - graphic novel that was geared more toward Millennials and Gen Zers. About a group of young ‘uns making their way thru life on a hostile alien planet that has bubble communities wherein people live their everyday lives, and are only occasionally interrupted by aliens attacking them. When that happens, Morgan (and people like her) steps up to save the day. Morgan was raised in the “Brush” - outside of the bubble - and therefore knows how to neutralzie the threats of the native wildlife. Not all the humor landed for me with this - the jokes were chuckle-worthy, but not hilarious - and most of the characters felt…fine, but not anyone I was especially enamoroued with, ya know? I felt like those failings (“failings”)  were more due to me being aged out of the target demographic, and not necessarily the fault of the story. I don’t know. The artwork was pretty great, and this wasn’t *bad*, just didn’t win me over as much as it maybe would have if I were 20 years younger. (You certainly are special boys, aren’t you?)

24. What We Mean By Yesterday vol. 1 by Benjamin Marra - graphic novel that is a collection of webcomics. Bruce Barnes - high school teacher, and all around loser - gets into situation after situation where the world causes him to eventually lose his shit and go into a rage. This was like 550 pages, but each page was just a four panel comic, and many of them were dialog-free, so it went extremely quickly. I think I zoomed thru it in maybe an hour? Slightly less? I spent much of the time hoping it would get better, or that Bruce would become someone I could actually root for. Neither happened.Since this is an ongoing webcomic, it didn’t have a conclusion to the “story”, and the place where it cutoff was also pretty much a cliff hanger. Even so, I won’t be picking up volume 2.(Because it’s too early to call Wombat a missing person.)

25. Not All Robots vol 1 by Mark Russell - graphic novel set in 2056 where robots and humans co-exist, but not particularly easily. Robots do all the work, humans…just live and let them, basically. There’s tension between the bots and humans, as a lot of the bots see themselves as unappreciated and on the verge of being replaced with mandroids (upgraded robots that look exactly like humans, and can be customized). Anyway, all very basic satire about …well, pretty much everything we’ve been living thru in the 2020s so  far. There were enough twists and amusing enough jokes and sympathetic characters that I’m on board with seeing where this goes. It also DID get progressively darker as it went on with actual stakes (the bots accidentally (?) asphyxiate the entire bubble city of Orlando!!). Hopefully there’s more to this to come. Lord knows there will be enough real life events to provide material. (And build something new.)

26. The Devil by Name by Keith Rosson - the sequel to Fever House. I liked Fever House a great deal, and I LOVED this. There were flaws, for sure - there was a prophecy at about the midway point, and so after that point, it became a “how is this person going to get to this location” situation of just moving chess pieces around. And the ending felt a bit rushed. But, I didn’t care. The writing is just so good, and the world building was SO good. And the characters felt so SO real. I don’t know. Fever House started off as a couple of mobsters getting involved in something supernatural, and then found its footing and just said, “Screw it, I’m a zombie apocalypse story”. And this was like, “Hell yeah. I’m a zombie apocalypse story. Let’s see how things would really freaking play out, shall we?” This takes place 5 years after Fever House ended, and it’s simply amazing at the thought that went into the world building here. I loved seeing how people have adapted to actually living in a season of The Walking Dead. And the idea that there’s a girl - in France, of all places, lol - who has the ability to cure the fevered was brilliant. Naomi has this gift that she doesn’t understand, and is just trying to make it in a shitsack world. Her captors, Denis and (Christine, I think it was?) are horrible people, even if they did rescue Naomi from ANOTHER set of horrific monsters. Bonner is back from the first book, and he’s in his own sort of hell, since he is, at least partially, to blame for everything being the way that it is. If he’d acted quicker, so many lives could have been saved. He’s seen his death due to the Eye, and so he knows that he has a bigger role to play in the apocalypse, whether he wants to or not. And Katherine. Oh, poor Katherine. Her ex, Matthew, was TRULY the cause of it all. And her son, Nick, has become a fevered. She torments herself by keeping him chained up, because she can’t bring herself to kill him. And then there’s Dean, the ragman, who might just be the epitome of a good person. This was contained enough that it was the end of the story, but there were also enough open ended threads that if this were to be a trilogy, I would be there in a heartbeat. Any chance to get to spend some more time in this world would be fine by me. (And the three of them begin making their way toward the woman in the wire.)

27. The Beast You Are by Paul Tremblay - Collection of short stories. As usual, it was a mixed bag. However, I'd say that these were, mostly, ones that I either didn’t care for or down right disliked. They weren’t ALL bad, but, overall it wasn’t a great collection. Tremblay is an interesting writer. I think he’s got some real talent, but, he’s also got a tendency to go EXTREMELY meta, and also indulge in ambiguity. Both of these traits rub me the wrong way, and I think moving forward I might be a tad bit more cautious seeking his stuff out. For now… here’s the 15 stories from this collection, along with the final sentences:
Ice Cold Lemonade 25¢ Haunted House Tour: 1 Per Person - Middle aged Paul is going through some boxes of his old stuff, and comes across a picture that causes him to remember back to his teenage years. As a teenager Paul has a crush on a neighbor girl, Kelly. She, and her younger sister, are out front selling tours of their ‘haunted’ house. He opts to go on the tour, and the girls walk him through their house, with Kelly telling Paul various stories of people who supposedly died in their home over the years. This was a decent story. (As I slowly walk out of the TV room and up the stairs toward the suddenly-alive-with-sound second floor, I don’t know what I’m more afraid of: seeing the ghost I stile grinning in the dark or seeing myself.)
Mean Time - super short (like a page and a half) story that had creepy elements to it, but just …didn’t come together for me? It’s just a telling of story of a possibly mentally ill neighborhood man who would draw lines of chalk around the ground. This is essentially what I mean when I talk about his ambiguity being a problem. I don’t know what this was supposed to *mean*. (I watched him until my parents came in and found me asleep and curled up in the windowsill.)
I Know You’re There - Silas and David were married for years, until one day David died of a heart attack. Silas recounts the story of discovering David’s body to friends and family, with each re-telling of the story being slightly different, and increasingly creepier. This one drew me in, but, again, didn’t quite seem to stick the landing. (In Silas’s later days and years, the same feeling (if he were to describe the feeling for someone else, though he never will, he’d say it was a knowing and not a feeling), the same certainty will overcome him, the certainty that David is there, around the next corner as Silas paces their home, or David is there, behind a door about to open or the door that was just closed, or David is there, behind the shower curtain or David is there, hidden by a tree only a few paces from the hiking path, or David is there, on the other side of the bad with Silas lying on his side and unable to sleep, and every time, when Silas turns with a whisper a scream on his lips, he sees nothing.)
The Postal Zone: The Possession Edition - One of the other …facets that Tremblay has, is to go back to A Head Full of Ghosts characters. Almost like he’s trying to do the Stephen King thing of having everything connect to each other? It…doesn’t work for me. Whenever he brings in Merry and Marjorie and Karen Brissette, I get more annoyed than excited. Like, just let that story be, and stop picking at it, dude. ANYWAY. This was like a spin-off of that, where it was letters to the editor talking about The Possession, which was the fictional reality-TV show that was at the center of AHFoG. This story felt sort of like Tremblay dealing with people nitpicking the novel somewhat? I don’t know. It was…okay, but I really do think dropping that universe would be for the best. (Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!)
Red Eyes - heh. Of course, immediately after that, this story is another Marjorie/Merry tale. Sigh. It seems to be another story that Marjorie told Merry about a giant monster with red eyes. Whatever, dude. (Perhaps they had always been red.)
The Blog at the End of the World - okay, this one worked for me pretty well. It’s a collection of blog posts, so it’s mostly chronologically backwards, other than some of the comments on the posts, which, the majority of are immediately after the post, but a few are sprinkled in months later. The entire thing therefore becomes a sort of warped maze wherein events from earlier pay off as you dig further into the past. I don’t know, I'm not explaining it very well, but it felt very clever to me, and it just worked. The story itself is about the blogger having a friend -who was convinced of conspiracies about the world ending via pandemics - dies mysteriously, and them dealing with their grief over that. (The windows in the doors were dirty, black with grime, and I didn’t see anything.)
Them: A Pitch - Err… This was not really much a story, as it was …a pitch for a graphic novel that would be an adaptation of the movie Them! Yeah, the one about the giant ants. Ambiguity strikes again!! (What do you think?)
House of Windows - a man notices a building that gets bigger each time he walks past it. (That’s when everything changes.)
The Last Conversation - sci-fi-ish tale of a person (“you”) waking up with no memory in a strange room and a woman (“Anne”) helping you get your memories back. I liked this one quite a bit, despite the experimental writing aspect of it. (You consider the origin of this time during which you’ve been awake and not-awake and conclude it is, for the moment, unknowable.)
Mostly Size - another really short one (about 2 pages total) that …just wasn’t developed enough? It’s about a kid named Max doing school work while a giant monster rampages his city. (And when the end came, it was still there.)
The Large Man - um. This one was just weird. A reporter (Mr. C___) is investigating strange deaths from a large man who may be composed of animals. (We begin with the Great Swarm that issues from Mr. C___’s mouth.)
The Dead Thing - Teenage girl in an abusive home gets worried when her younger brother, Owen, brings home a shoebox with something inside it that is presumably a dead animal. (nothing)
Howard Sturgis and the Letters and the Van and What He Found When He Went Back to His House - I liked this one. Howard Sturgis is an elderly man who works as a substitute teacher. One day, he finds a letter from a company he’s never written to, The CIRCE Group. The letter says how excited they are by what Howard sent them, and that with that information, they’re going to invent something that will change the world. Howard is intrigued, but since he knows it's a case of mistaken identity, he writes back to them telling them so. The CIRCE Group does NOT take this news well. I felt like I would have enjoyed this being, if not a novel, at the very least expanded into a novella. The idea of someone discovering a creepy-ass organization by accident and getting involved in a larger than life conspiracy, and then having to figure out what to do is just really compelling. And the ending of this was one of the creepiest out of the collection. (It had been improved, just as he was improved, just as we’ll all be improved.)
The Party - a couple attend a party with an “end of the world” theme. Which is played off as ha ha, “end of the world” hipster-ish…but as the night wears on, becomes pretty evident that is rather serious. (She raises the tumbler in the air, tipping it out toward Frances, toasting her.)
The Beast You Are - siiiiiiigh. 200-ish pages of free-form poetry. Written, supposedly, by K. Bristle. It’s an epic poem, and, I’ll admit that bits of it worked. But, it was also very very much a chore to get thru the entire thing. It’s about a village called Bevaur that is made up of animals. Every 30 years, the animals have to make a sacrifice to a great beast named Awn. The three sacrificial animals are supposed to be drawn by lottery. It’s -much later - revealed that the lottery is rigged by the politicians in power. As children, Magg, Mereth and Tol were chosen. Tol is killed by Awn. Magg grows up researching the history of Awn. Mereth grows up to become a murderer, every few years killing politicians and members of the Cult of Awn as a form of revenge. (While waiting impatiently
for an answer that would never come,
Mereth paced and muttered and flexed her claws
working out her next move,
and she did not notice
the physical transformation
had already begun,
and at some time during
that eternal evening,
Mereth stretched,
swelled,
crossed over,
and ceased being
who she had been,
and became
something else
that someone else
had already named.)

28. Second Coming by Mark Russell - Graphic novel that was hilarious, and …sorta deep? I’m not nearly as into trashing religion as i was in my younger years - i largely just don’t give a crap WHAT the truth is about the afterlife - but I know that I would have fucking ADORED This take down of the Christian God. (I still liked it quite a bit now, lol) So, anyway, yeah, God is presented as this clueless, although mostly well-intentioned, buffoon who has a good mix of toxic masculinity in him as well. His solution to overpopulation caused me to literally laugh out loud because it was so genius and idiotic at the smae time. ANYWAY. God’s pretty fed up with humanity, and has mostly turned away from them. But Jesus - portrayed as forgiving to a fault, and maybe a bit naive as well - has decided he wants to come back to earth to give it another go. God decides his only son needs someone to help show him the ropes on how to not have things go poorly like they did last time, and decides to have Sunstar (a Superman stand-in) be the one who will be Jesus’s watcher, bodyguard, and mentor. Hijinks ensue. This was a lot of fun, and I wish our library had the other two books in the trilogy, because I want to see what else happens with these yahoos. (I’m pregnant.)

29. Lost Time by Tas Mukanik - Graphic novel, probably for a preteen audience. Evie ends up separated from her family by getting sent back in time to prehistoric times. She befriends a pterosaur and has to survive the wild and try to find a way to get back to her present time. Art work was adorably cute, the story/plot was somewhat shallow, seeing as who the intended audience was, but this was a harmless little distraction that I zipped thru. (I’ll show you.)

30. I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin - The dude who wrote the “John Dies at the End” books (I enjoyed the first, felt like the second was diminishing returns, and don’t think I got thru the 3rd) is back with a standalone novel about a Lyft driver named Abbott who gets involved with a young woman named Ether who asks him to help her transfer a mysterious box across the country to a man promising to pay them a large sum of money. Three’s Company-level of misunderstandings occur -mostly on the internet- resulting in the FBI and a violent biker to pursue them. This was amusing for a good portion of it. Having Abbott espousing some incel-adjacent viewpoints was….a choice. Ether’s off-kilter way of looking at the world and society was endearing. The internet’s cluelessness caused me to laugh a few times. The ending …didn’t quite stick the landing, but I don’t know how else it could have ended and still maintained the overall light tone. (I want it known that I just wish to be friendly and that I’m not just looking for somebody to hold my ladder.)

Lollipop - Mika

And the bonus song of the day is "Lollipop" by Mika.

The Town That Lost Its Groove Supply - The Minus 5

Today is January 1st, 2025. The song of the day is "The Town That Lost Its Groove Supply" by The Minus 5.

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.