Thursday, May 14, 2020

April 2020

April 2020
47 movies, finished 2 books and began reading 1

April is my birthday month and even though my birthday is at the end of the month, you better believe that I treat myself to a few weeks of movie watching. I got some reading done too!



First movie of the month 
The Exorcist - I know movies can be overrated and underrated but can they just be rated? I say yes and The Exorcist is a good example. It has a reputation at being an incredibly well made and terrifying movie and it lives up to that reputation. After watching this, I wanted to see the rest of the series.

Now, there is a film called Exorcist II: The Heretic but this is a very interesting series and actually has TWO films that are considered the sequel (and there are two versions of the prequel but that's a whole other story that I may explore in October). The author wrote a book called The Ninth Configuration which, per the author, is the real sequel to The Exorcist and he turned that into a movie so I watched that and skipped Exorcist II. Instead of a tormented priest fighting evil it's about a marine assigned to a military asylum and his desire to help a troubled astronaut (a character that briefly appears in The Exorcist) see that there is good in the world. It's strange but very good. 

We're back to demonic stuff with The Exorcist III. It's based on the third book in the authors Exorcist trilogy called Legion. This one is about a cop investigating a serial killer and it has ties to the original movie. It's a pretty good and creepy thriller. The Exorcist, Ninth Configuration and Exorcist III sure did make for an interesting watch and a hell of a way to start April.


New on streaming 
Extraction - Writer-director Joe Russo, actor Chris Hemsworth and stunt man Sam Hargrave all found plenty of success working on those Marvel movies. They were good, I sure liked them, but they leaned on the family friendly side of things. THIS MOVIES DOES NOT. This is Hargrave's directorial debut and while the story itself isn't anything new - Hemsworth protects a young kid, kills everyone else -  he sure does throw a lot of well choreographed action sequences in this movie. It is nearly packed with constant, brutal action and it rocks. 


Rewatched

Gone in Sixty Seconds - Cage, Jolie and many others steal and crash lots of cars

Deadpool - Ryan Reynolds passion project is a funny, violent, crass time

Rapid Fire - pre-The Crow Brandon Lee shows he could have been a big time action star

Marked for Death - Seagal and Keith David shoot and punch loads of drug dealers

Original Gangstas - Blaxploitation stars of the 70's unite for this 90's action movie

The Hangover - I laughed when I saw this in theaters, I'm still laughing at it now

Get Him to the Greek - more of a drama than a comedy and the leads are good

Zoolander - Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson's classic film about male models 

Can't Hardly Wait - I miss people, watching movies about parties helps

Last Action Hero - Arnold satire that misses as much as it hits but overall it's fun

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves - without Alan Rickman this would be forgettable





Rex Manning Day Viewing
The crew at a Empire Records are preparing for the arrival of a pop star named Rex Manning and at one point you can see a calendar that shows the date is April 8th. So on April 8th I watched that and other music based movies. 

 Empire Records - I love this movie. The music rocks. The cast is great. 

Grosse Pointe Blank - A hitman and a radio DJ attend their 10 year high school reunion

Baby Driver - a flashy car action movie with a killer soundtrack


Series I watched 

The Exorcist Trilogy - see above


The Man Without a Name Trilogy -

A Fistful of Dollars - A Classic

For a Few Dollars More - Clint Eastwood

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - Western series




Movies I watched on a particular day in April for no particular reason

How High - Method Man and Redman go to college, party hard 

Mallrats - Kevin Smith, working with a bigger budget, hangs out at a mall

Half Baked - Dave Chappelle and friends sell and smoke lots of weed

Dazed and Confused - the last day of school is quite a party for kids of all ages



Movies I love that I watched for my birthday



Broken Arrow - Travolta and Slater battle over nukes in the desert and I love it

Desperado - Banderas plays guitar and shoots guns in Mexico and I love it

Safe - Statham fights corrupt cops and gangsters in NYC and I love it

Enemy of the State - Smith and Hackman take on the NSA and the mob and I love it

True Romance - Slater and Arquette fall in love in a dangerous world and I love it


First time watching

Purple Rain - Prince was and still is the king of rock and roll

The Reunion - John Cena leads a recognizable cast in this silly adventure

In the Shadow of the Moon - weird Netflix time travel murder mystery

Extra Ordinary - funny supernatural thriller with Will Forte as a washed up popstar

Don Verdean - Sam Rockwell and other funny people search for Biblical artifacts

The Alibi - pretty good conman comedy from the writer of the Fargo TV series

New York Cop - a dumb, boring action movie supposedly based on a true story

The Kid - the tale of Billy the Kid has been told before and it will be told again 

The Alternate - my search for the worst Die Hard knockoff continues, this one is BAD

The Long Goodbye - fantastic 70's detective movie, Gould is as funny as he is cool

Meek's Cutoff - Oregon Trail: The Movie. Well made and (purposefully) painstakingly slow

Runaway Train - a great 80's prison break thriller with plenty of exciting action




Movies I own but haven't watched until now:

Trees Lounge - very bleak movie about a bleak bar in a bleak town

The Sum of All Fears - one of many Jack Ryan movies, this one stars Affleck

Eve of Destruction - Gregory Hines action movies are a rarity and this one is all right

Crackerjack 2 - another in a long line of bad Die Hard movies, this one stars Judge Reinhold

The Man Without a Name Trilogy - see above


What I Read


This took me a while to read. People love this series and while I really enjoyed the first book, I found this to be harder to get through. I thought it was going to answer some questions but it kept things just as as mysterious and I didn't find the lead character all that compelling.


Before quarantine I asked Kristen to go get me a stack of books by this author. The world he creates is bleak and cold but for some reason I find it easy to read. I still can't figure out why. I didn't think I had a 'style' and I'm still not sure what I prefer reading but so far I have enjoyed these Icelandic murder mysteries.


I'm going to take my time reading this one. These are dense books and take me a while to get through. I may have been underwhelmed with Authority but I only have one book left in this trilogy so I'll find out how all of this ends, eventually.


Wednesday, April 8, 2020

March 2020

March 2020
43 movies, finished 1 book and began another

Now, you might think that because we were quarantined in the middle of the month that I would revert to my old ways and start watching loads of movies...and you would be correct! Kristen and I got a stack of books from the library so I'm still focused on reading but I just can't resist the stacks of video games and movies I have in the immediate vicinity.


First movie of the month 

The Spy Who Dumped Me - There are so many action comedies out there and they usually skimp on the action, this does not. Kate McKinnon and Mila Kunis are hilarious as a pair of best friends who get roped into a globetrotting spy adventure. The fish out of water action story isn’t anything new but the movie is funny and the action is very impressive. There are plenty of laughs and several exciting action sequences that make this one of my favorite action comedies. 


New on streaming 

Spenser Confidential - I would have watched this in theaters. I enjoy less serious Mark Wahlberg movies and teaming him with Winston Duke and Alan Arkin to go up against corrupt cops made for a fun Netflix watch. Him and Peter Berg have made 5 movies together that vary in quality and critical appreciation and this is the lightest one so far, the rest have mostly been docu-dramas which I don't usually go for. 




Rewatched

Raw Deal - Arnold proves he's not an ideal undercover cop in this Chicago mob action movie

The Rock - Cage and Connery take on bad guys on Alcatraz in this classic

The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot - thoughtful character study with Sam Elliot as the U.S. governments greatest and most secretive hunter

Act of Valor - Real life Navy SEALs do not make great actors but the action is exciting

Three Kings - Great cast in a great heist/anti war movie

The Kingdom - Jamie Foxx headlines an exciting Middle Eastern thriller

The Mask of Zorro - A fantastic adventure film with peak Banderas having a blast

Blood Father - over the hill Gibson as a guy no one likes caught in a drug war

Falcon Rising - Michael Jai White knows how to fight and proves it, repeatedly

EuroTrip - I will never not laugh at this 

Hunt for the Wilderpeople - an instant classic adventure from Taika Waititi



St. Patrick's Day Viewing:

 The Boondock Saints - offensive, ridiculous, violent and something I'll always enjoy

The Boondock Saints II: All Saint’s Day - more of the bad stuff, less of the good stuff

Last Man Standing - Irish mob v Italian mob v Bruce Willis

The Muppets - it ain't easy being green, but it sure is fun (might be a stretch as a St. Pats movie)

State of Grace - Irish mob movie that ends in a shoot out at a bar during St. Patrick's Day Parade



Series I watched 

Universal Soldier - decent movie influenced by Robocop and Terminator

Universal Soldier: The Return - silly influenced by Robocop and Terminator

Universal Soldier: Regeneration - violent influenced by Robocop and Terminator

Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning - amazing movie influenced by Robocop and Terminator


The Expendables - Dumb movie with famous action stars

The Expendables 2 - Fun movie with famous action stars

The Expendables 3 - Dumb fun movie with famous action stars


First time watching
Bedazzled - Peak Elizabeth Hurley and Brendan Fraser in a very funny and very 2000's comedy

The Reunion - John Cena leads a mediocre dysfunctional family action dramedy

Line of Duty - Remember Aaron Eckhart? He makes direct to video action movies now

Sister Act - funny, touching, music fueled movie with a lot of heart

Hunter Killer - a competently made throwback Gerard Butler action flick

Villains - clever indie home invasion thriller with a good cast

Blindspotting - awesome drama about gentrification with bursts of humor and music

The Brave - a mindless Netflix action movie made for people who like mindless action

Transcendence - dumb and boring movie with a big cast and big budget

Jay and Silent Bob Reboot - not the best of it's kind but still kind of fun

Traveller - lesser known but cool Mark Wahlberg and Bill Paxton grifter movie

Bad Samaritan - David Tennant is a fun bad guy in this bad movie

Double Tap - Remember Heather Locklear? She made a a bad action movie 23 years ago



Movies I own but haven't watched until now:
Outbreak - Watched this before things got real bad, it ends well! Hopefully this will too

The Big Chill - 30 years ago famous people did not practice social distancing

Hidden Assassin - Dolph Lundgren in a very dumb 90's European thriller

The Bad Pack - D list action stars in their own D list Expendables 

Blast - one of the worst Die Hard knockoffs ever


It took me a while to finish but once I did, I thought it was great. It was quite the heady material for me to read while I was in the midst of a very stressful few weeks at work and on top of that there were growing fears of the Coronavirus. The book features an unreliable narrator who, through the organization known as Southern Reach, goes on a research expedition to investigate the mysterious Area X. She can’t trust the people or environment around her so I connected to the character with my own personal thoughts of ‘what the hell am I doing and what the hell is going on?!’ 


I began to read this before the quarantine was put into effect so I read a good amount of it on train rides into the city. Now, while at home, I can’t read more than a few pages before dozing off. I will finish it in a few days but it will be a restful few days. It picks up right after the events of Annihilation and we learn a bit about the mysterious Area X. The lead character is the new acting director of Southern Reach and is investigating the lead character from Annihilation. The mysteries deepen and the world gets more dangerous and confusing.

Wednesday, March 4, 2020

February 2020


February 2020

 30 movies, finished 3 books and began a 4th, 3 graphic novels, 1 live performance



First movie of the month:

The Night Crew - January 31st, 2020 was declared Danny Trejo Day in L.A. When I got home that night from a successful evening of bar trivia it was already February 1st but I still wanted to celebrate Trejo Day and did so with this movie. I figured this would make for good background noise while I played video games but I actually wound up enjoying it. The plot was a basic chase thriller shoot 'em up but the characters were more fleshed out than usual, the action was pretty decent and, maybe because I wasn’t paying attention 100% (I was at maybe 55%), the twist in the end REALLY surprised me. I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone except action fans but it’s one of the better direct to video action movies.


Watched in theaters:

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) - It took some time for the DC Extended Universe to find their footing. The early films in the series were all dark in tone and not much fun. Suicide Squad tried to turn this around but the movie was a mess. The story sucked, the action wasn't great and it didn't fit in at all with the films that preceded it but it did have a couple decent performances - especially Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn. After Suicide Squad the DC movies lightened up a bit. Justice League was all right but Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Shazam! were all great. Fun, brightly colored and action packed. By abandoning dark and brooding tones they proved they could make some pretty good movies. This brings us to Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn).

This was a female led, directed, written, starring, produced R rated action movie. A rarity for movies as a whole let alone comic book movies and action movies. It’s funny, loaded with fun characters, skeezy villains and the action was awesome! The fight scenes looked great, the shootouts were cool, the car chases were nuts, the explosions were ridiculous. Harley is a villain but she’s a damn fun one and the crew she puts together is great. This also has Mary Eliabeth Winstead - one of my all time favorites - as a crossbow wielding vigilante and it rules.


Sonic the Hedgehog - a good video game movie used to be an incredibly rare thing. The best you'd have was something like Mortal Kombat which, while silly, was loyal to the very simple formula the game was based on. Then Doom came along and put in a lot of effort into one action scene in particular, but not much else. Silent Hill was freaky and well made but not for the masses. I can't quite tell when things started to turn around but it definitively was recent. Tomb Raider is a movie based on a video game that deserves more praise. It was ignored but it's a very cool action movie with plenty of adventuring, I'm very happy we're getting a sequel (from a very surprising director-writing team). Last years Pokemon Detective Pikachu is probably the best video game movie yet. The story is charming, the character design is amazing and overall it's a good movie.

Sonic the Hedgehog had a bit of a bumpy ride to the big screen but the creators turned in a very fun, predictably fast paced and very silly video game movie. Starring James Marsden as a small town cop with big dreams, Jim Carrey as a manically evil scientist and Ben Schwartz as the voice of Sonic this is great for anyone looking for a fun movie and it's got plenty of call backs to the original video game. While it is a road movie that places Sonic in the passenger seat of a car for a decent amount of the run time he still does get to use his super fast speed pretty often. The animation looks great and the action is very fun. it also serves as an opportunity for Jim Carrey to go full Jim Carrey which is just wonderful to see.


Rewatched:

The Other Guys - I love this movie but somehow I lost my DVD! So I bought a Bluray of it and the day it arrives, it popped up on Netflix! Kristen and I watched it on Netflix but unfortunately they only have the original version. The original is still great, great enough for Craig and I to watch 5 days in a row when we first rented it, but the extended version is even better.

Resident Evil: Afterlife - This entry in the zombie series rips off Die Hard, The Matrix and probably a few other movies. It's dumb and action packed.

Hancock - this is almost a great movie. Interesting premise, cool action but the story isn't all there.

Foreigner - Jackie Chan can still kickass and Pierce Brosnan will forever be cool.

Nighthawks - the abandoned French Connection 3 screenplay became this cool thriller where Stallone and Billy Dee Williams play NYC cops who go up against terrorist Rutger Hauer.

Peacemaker - I remember being very bored by this as a kid. 20+ years later and yeah, it's still boring. George Clooney is cool at times but the movie is way too long and pointless.

The Last Stand - I love this movie. It's Arnold's return to movies after leaving politics and it's a great and very busy action movie.

Crackerjack - a pretty lousy Die Hard knockoff that also manages to be a lousy Cliffhanger knockoff.

Rage - one of the best lesser known action movies from the 90's. Absolutely insane stunt work and a very ridiculous story.

Takers - Idris Elba and Paul Walker head up a crew of thieves going up against cop Matt Dillon and old crew member T.I. in this decent Heat wannabe.

Olympus has Fallen - the most brutal Die Hard knockoff has Gerard Butler killing a lot of people in, around, on top of and underneath the White House. 

Layer Cake - one of the coolest British crime movies ever.

Term Life - Hailee Steinfeld in yet another action movie where she's the best part.

Mr. Right - an action comedy where Sam Rockwell's dancing hitman falls for Anna Kendrick.

War on Everyone - Michael Pena and Alexander Skarsgard play the worst cops ever in this cringy crime drama comedy.

True Grit - funny, dramatic, exciting, wonderfully acted western.

The Faculty - one of my favorite horror movies ever.




First time watching:

Vantage Point - while giving a speech abroad the US President is attacked and several people witness the incident. We see the events play out from different perspectives and learn different characters' motives. It’s a dumb movie but in the end it abandons the repetitive story telling and becomes a pretty fun, yet still dumb, action movie.

Riverbend - Steve James was one of the best martial artists who popped up in a supporting role in several action movies during the 80’s. He unfortunately passed away in the early 90’s having only starred as the lead in 2 movies. One I watched last December, Street Hunter, and I finally watched Riverbend this past month. If I can’t rent it or stream it and I really want to see it I will buy it (for less than $10) but a copy of this proved quite difficult to find (BetaMax copies of this are more readily available than VHS) so I had to watch it a on Youtube. The the movie was not great but I was happy to finally see it.

The Phantom of the Opera - Gerard Butler can sing! Kristen and I watched this on Valentine's Day and I loved it. I want to a deeper dive into musicals and since the lead and director are no stranger to action movies I found this a good place to start.

Tammy and the T-Rex - Paul Walker and Denise Richards are a happy high school couple until Walker's brain is stolen by an evil scientist and placed into an animatronic Tyrannosaurus. The movie is as dumb as it sounds and quite fun! It was originally released as one of the many low budget movies trying to make some money off the popularity of Jurassic Park. The original cut was so crass and violent that the producers edited it into a PG comedy. Then word of an R-rated version started gaining popularity and now the original version is available on Blu-Ray. It makes for quite the entertaining group watch.

Brightburn - I have done away with my Netflix DVD subscription (much more on that later) and was immediately drawn in by the rental selection at the library. It’s not Blockbuster but there is a pretty decent selection and I appreciate that it’s free and around the corner. The process of renting this film was more pleasurable than the film itself. The employees at the library are delightful and even though the label on the front said it was a 2 day rental, it rang up as a 7 day rental and they said ‘well, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth!’ and I was on my way.

This movie is a darker version of the well known Superman origin story - baby in a pod crash lands in middle America and turns out to be a superpowered being. The story of Superman is that he grows up to do good. In this one he’s on his way to be a friendly yet awkward 12 year old when his mind is taken over, possibly by whoever or whatever sent him to Earth (it's never explained). He then wreaks havoc upon his family and peers and animals in very cruel manners.

I like the idea of evil Superman but I didn’t care for this. It’s just a mean movie with some unexplored ideas. He can fly, has super strength, is bulletproof and has laser eyes but none of it is particularly entertaining. I really didn’t care for the kid actor playing evil Superman and the gruesomely violent tone was just too much for me.




Movies I own but haven’t watched until now:

Last month I went through a few of my action movies that I owned on DVD or VHS and hadn’t yet watched. This month I went through the Laser Discs that I was given a couple years ago. I played it safe and watched a few movies I felt I would probably enjoy. Maybe later on I’ll take some risks and watch foreign stuff.

Lone Star - I grew up hearing about this movie from my mom because it was during Matthew McConaughey’s rise to fame in the mid 90’s and when I’d start seeing his name on posters and I could say ‘hey, I’m related to him!’ which is always a fun talking point. He may not be in this movie all that much but damn it’s a good movie.

The Fisher King - Knowing the heavy subject matter I avoided this one when I was younger. I finally saw it and wow it’s amazing. Jeff Bridges, Robin Williams Amanda Plummer and Mercedes Ruehl are all fantastic. 

Ed’s Next Move - This fish out of water story where a young man takes a job in NYC deserves to be up there with the likes of Reality Bites, Empire Record, PCU and other great 90’s movies. I never even heard of it before finding it in my stack of Laser Disc's. It appears to be a forgotten film, it's not even on DVD, but it's very fun.

The Paper - Ron Howard is a good director but this movie about sensational headlines should have been taken a bit more seriously. It's about a group of reporters trying to handle a headline that could have a serious impact on two young men wrongfully accused of murder. That's serious subject matter but there is a bit too much humor.


What I read:

This Tom Clancy thriller is about The Campus, a secret agency operating in the shadows of the CIA and NSA, and The Organization, a group of terrorists who operate globally. The Campus is newly formed and training young recruits to track and kill targets that pose a threat to the U.S. Meanwhile The Organization plans and carries out a horrific attack on U.S. soil.

After the attack The Campus, working outside the law, sends an FBI agent and a Marine, brothers and nephews of Clancy’s most famous character Jack Ryan, to Europe to kill 4 targets who profited from and/or planned the attack.

I didn’t love the story telling. I found the violence to be ugly and cruel and the characters are all unlikable. It’s not without its thrilling moments but at 480 pages it is way too long with an unsatisfying ending that didn’t leave me too excited to keep reading more Clancy novels. My brother swears by the audio books so I may give them a shot someday.

A bleak Icelandic thriller where the lead character is a detective who is as cold as the frigid weather outside. He is a good investigator but not a people person. He and his partner are investigating the murder of an elderly man. What at first looks like a break-in gone wrong soon reveals itself to be a much darker story that has the dreary detective digging deep into several cold cases that are linked the murder victim. The storytelling is fast which I liked when compared to the drawn out Tom Clancy novel I read prior. The story is quite sad and the twists reveal even more misery but I liked  the writing style and the characters so I think I'll read a few more by this author. After reading this I found out there was a movie based on the book. That was a first for me. Usually I learn about the movie, then the book. I'm not in a rush to watch it because if it's anything like the book it will make for a tough watch.

Another story about the miserable but interesting detective from Jar City. I really like the simple and straightforward story telling. It's quite casual and I find that style adds some surprise to the twists. This one is just as bleak and cold as Jar City but the lead is more tolerant and friendly this time. He tries to connect with those around him and even goes on a date all while investigating a murder at a popular hotel with lots of secrets to hide. Again, things get sad and depressing but it turns out I don't mid that type of story if it's well written. I do not like sad and depressing movies, even the well made ones, so this is a new revelation. The first story had a lot to do with family and this one continues that theme but with a heavy focus on siblings. I wonder what the next one will be about.

Saga, Volume 1-3 - I love this series. It's so exciting. The characters, good and bad, are all interesting and you get to know them so well. It's a classic star crossed lovers tale but with assassins  and robots and space wars and horned people and flying people and ghosts and talking animals and all sorts of other crazy stuff going on. I love it. I keep several volumes downloaded at all times on my Ipad and I read these volumes while waiting for a book I had requested from the library.


Currently reading:

This came highly recommended from friends. I just started it but I'm having some trouble with it. The author describes everything with such rich and exaggerated detail to explain the other worldly events going on in the story. Every sentence is so damn busy I find myself rereading sentences very often and it slows me down significantly. The story is very cool and I like the lead a lot but the style it's presented in has taken some getting used to when compared to the two relatively simply written bleak Icelandic thrillers I've just finished. There are two more books in this series that make up the Southern Reach trilogy and I intend to read those as well. Might take me all of March though.

Live performances:


Girl From the North Country - my new job has some perks! Kristen and I had a nice date night in the city and went with several of my coworkers to see the new Bob Dylan musical. It's set in the 30's and isn't the most uplifting tale but the acting is great and the music is phenomenal. I found it hard not to sing along to the songs I knew, others in the audience seemed to forget they were in a theater.



Final Netflix DVD rental:

It’s been about a decade since the Blockbuster in Morristown closed. On its closing day I went home and Craig said ‘well, I guess we’re getting Netflix.’ Way back then they had little to no original programming, the search engine was a mess and the movie selection was like 25% good, 25% bad and 50% skippable. But it was something!

It also came with the DVD rental. While the streaming selection was lacking, the DVD rental selection more than made up for it. The first DVD I rented was Dark City: Director’s Cut. I can’t see when I rented it but I can see that I returned it 01/11/11. I rented 280 movies in the 10 years that I had Netflix DVD.

280 is a very small amount of movies for me, but it was by my own design. I’d find a movie, be in the mood to watch said movie, rent the movie, get it in the mail and then not feel like watching it, sometimes for weeks at a time. When I lived in Lyndhurst I never updated my shipping address so for 2 years the DVDs went to my parents house and I’d have to go physically pick them up.

Why did I do this to myself? Well, because when not sitting down watching movies I’m actually a very busy person. Also, as streaming platforms began to grow in popularity I had so much more to watch and I could do so instantly whereas with Netflix DVD I'd have to wait days for it arrive in the mail.

But I liked the Netflix DVD queue. Scrolling through the digital selections, going genre by genre, was the closest thing I’d have to getting lost in the aisles at Blockbuster, trying to decide on what to rent.

Since starting my new job the rate of watching my Netflix rental has dropped to nearly 2 movies a month. Because of this I decided it was time to cancel my rental subscription.

The last movie I rented was Dragon Squad, a forgettable action movie with messy direction and plot. The last movie I rented should have been Alita: Battle Angel because that I enjoyed.

While I’m on this track, here’s a little story about my 3rd to last Netflix rental. It was a direct to video action movie called Triplecross and it was in horrendous condition by the time I received it. I took pictures of it. In the top left is a blurry image of the letter I wrote to Netflix which I have typed out below.


Dear Netflix:

The Triplecross DVD I am returning seemed to have met an unfortunate end in it's journey to my house. It was supposed to arrive 12/30/2019 and only just arrived today 1/3/2020 and somewhere along the way was crushed and/or came in contact with corrosive material. I am writing this letter to apologize for the terrible condition it is in and including the address label which includes a “Received in damaged condition” stamp from the post office. Hopefully they will be more careful with the next one. Thanks for all the DVD’s and have a happy new year - Kyle


I can’t say I’m done with the DVD rental forever. I have plenty in my own collection, the library has some stuff (with a nice little New Releases section) and I can find much more on the many streaming services but for whatever reason I always found some interesting and lesser known movies available with the Netflix DVD. It picked up the slack when Blockbuster went away so I can’t officially call it quits. Not just yet.

Friday, January 31, 2020

January 2020


January 2020

 30 movies, 2 and a half books, 2 live performances




First movie of the year:

Search Party - On New Year’s morning, after everyone had left and Kristen went for breakfast with her sister, I managed to make it to the couch, turn on HBO and started watching the new Hellboy which put me right to sleep. I then turned this movie on after waking from my nap. It was all right. Lots of recognizable people and dumb jokes. A fine way to start the New Year!


Watched in theaters:
I don’t get to the movies as often as I used to but still make it to a couple movies a month.

1917 - this 2019 movie wasn’t released wide until early 2020 but it’ll probably be on my top 10 at the end of the year. It's a war movie with some big moments but for the most part it is a very small, personal movie about two soldiers on a mission to deliver a message that will prevent their side from entering an ambush. 

The film is shot as if it’s all done in one take and with some clever editing it works quite well. The scenes of sniper battles, crossing No Man’s Land, a plane crash, falling into a rushing river are all tense moments and when the camera captures it all in real time (or edited to look like real time) it pulls you into the drama and journey.

Bad Boys for Life - I remember being underwhelmed by Bad Boys when I first saw it. I watched it on TV as a kid and it was light on action and most of the humor was missing from the TV edit. I watched it recently and still found it to be light on action but it makes up for that with humor and entertaining character interaction. What action it did have was pretty exciting and overall it's a good feature film debut for Michael Bay.

Bad Boys 2 has too much of everything and it’s spectacular nonsense. This holds a special place for me because it may be the last film I sneaked into as a teenager. I remember seeing it and being so happy that other people were having as much fun as I was having. It’s crazy, it’s crass, it’s violent, it’s offense, it’s truly unfiltered Michael Bay madness.

This brings us to Bad Boys for Life which finds our boys a good deal older and they are starting to grow up. Lawrence and Smith are still as funny as ever but their history of violence is catching up with them and now Smith is being targeted by someone from his past and it puts those he cares about in the cross hairs. The action isn’t as crazy and the comedy isn’t as outlandish as 2 but it’s still hilarious and action packed. The most surprising thing about this is that the dramatic moments really land. Lawrence and Smith bring their A game here.

The Gentlemen - Guy Ritchie is at his best when making crime movies like Snatch, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Rocknrolla (he also made a movie called Swept Away and Revolver but no one really talks about those).

For more than a decade Ritchie has been making big budget movies like Sherlock Holmes and the sequel, Aladdin, King Arthur and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. It’s been 12 years since Rocknrolla and Ritchie is back with another violent comedy about the criminal underworld.

Matthew McConaughey is a weed dealer in London who maintains a criminal empire thanks to his right hand man Charlie Hunnam and wife Michelle Dockery. After years on top he decides he wants out but rival criminal organizations and a sleazy reporter played by Hugh Grant make things difficult.

It’s not as great as some of his earlier films but overall it’s a very funny and twisty crime comedy with terrific performances, especially from Grant and Colin Farrell as a boxing coach who gets involuntarily pulled into the world of gangs, drugs and guns.


Rewatched:
If I like a movie, chances are I’ll watch it a lot. I have no idea how many times I’ve seen some of these.

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping - one of the best, funniest movies

Pokemon Detective Pikachu - fun, creature filled mystery

The Departed - appropriately popular cops and crooks drama

Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle - best NJ movie ever

Ratatouille - this movie makes me so hungry

Set it Up - funny and charming, Kristen and I love it

Bad Boys - not as action packed as the rest but still damn funny

Bad Boys 2 - seriously one of the craziest movies ever

Airheads - The Lone Rangers were the greatest 90’s band

A Knight’s Tale - the movie that showed me the beauty of anachronistic music

Sky High - Disney made the best X-Men movie years before buying Fox

The Accountant - as cool as it is ridiculous, one of Affleck's best



First time watching:

Some movies I just haven’t gotten around to watching until now. Some movies have only just been made available on streaming.

Anastasia - Kristen and her siblings love this movie. It was fun watching the Tomasicchio’s sing along to the music. I was unfamiliar with the true story and history of Anastasia (spoiler alert, it’s sad) but it sure is interesting. This may be about Rasputin and a talking bat friend trying to kill a young woman but it's a very fun, heartwarming and family friendly adventure.

Alita: Battle Angel - James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez join forces for a fun, expensive looking, sci-fi thriller starring Rosa Salazar as a kick ass robot in a future world. The plot shares similarities with other movies about cyborgs who learn to think for themselves (think Robocop, Terminator and all of their subordinates) so the story is nothing new. The action, however, is very cool. There are all sorts of killer robots with different abilities and it includes a very violent version of roller derby where cyborgs annihilate one another for entertainment. It looked great on the small screen and I wish I saw this in theaters.

10 Minutes Gone - if you scroll through what's available on streaming or check what’s new in the Redbox you may see Bruce Willis’ face a lot. I don’t quite know why he keeps taking small roles in crappy direct to video action movies and I don’t know why I keep watching them. This one has Michael Chiklis as a thief in a robbery gone wrong trying to figure who set him up and why. I recently watched the entirety of The Shield and like Chiklis but he hardly makes this movie worth watching. Willis plays the man who hired him and, according to IMDb trivia, shot all of his scenes in the hotel where he was staying. So you can imagine the effort be gives to his 5 minutes of screen time.

Killers Anonymous - Found on Hulu this thriller looks as if it stars Jessica Alba and Gary Oldman but they are hardly in it at all. A group of killers (some assassins, some seemingly ordinary people) meet to discuss murders they’ve committed and how they feel about it. That premise actually sounded interesting to me but then a lot of plot twists are tossed in and things quickly begin to make no sense at all. It’s a frustrating mess of a movie that isn’t trying to be anything special and yet thinks it’s something special all at the same time.



Movies I own but haven’t watched until now:
As a collector of physical media, I accrue movies faster than I watch them. People often get rid of their DVD’s, VHS tapes and, in one case, Laser Discs in bulk and I’ll take it all (until I run out of space in my basement). This year I’m going to try and watch a bunch of the movies that I’ve owned for a while and haven’t yet watched. In January there was a special focus on the action movies that have been stacking up.

Action Jackson - Carl Weathers was cool in Mandalorian, but he’s always been cool

Riot - Sugar Ray Leonard costars in an action movie about a riot on Christmas

Fifty/Fifty - Robocop and the pilot from Airplane bicker and shoot guns

Firewalker - Chuck Norris wanted to make an Indiana Jones movie

Beyond Justice - Rutger Hauer takes his time orchestrating a rescue mission

Bloodfist V: Human Target - underrated martial artist Steve James’ final movie

Bail Out - Hasselhoff and Linda Blair star in a mediocre action movie

Medicine Man - Sean Connery in a boring movie from the director of Die Hard

Excessive Force II: Force on Force - a forgettable sequel to a forgotten movie.


New releases watched on streaming:
New releases that go straight to streaming used to be and indicator that the movie is bad (like the movie I watched this month) but then you have things like The Irishman.

Bulletproof 2 - besides ‘don’t watch’ I don’t know what else to say about this. The original is an action movie with Daman Wayans and Adam Sandler and is a bad movie that I watched so much as a kid. 20+ years later they’ve been replaced by two recognizable but lesser known actors in this pointless sequel that, much like the original, contains lots of juvenile comedy and bloody violence.


What I read:
As my mom often reminds me, I used to read a lot. After watching 517 movies in 2019 I felt it was time to get back into reading. I’ll still watch TV and movies and play video games (don’t worry about that!) but I’ll be cutting back on watching anything during my commute in and out of the city. Instead of holding a phone or Ipad inches from my face, most likely damaging my eyes, I’ll be reading a book!


Alien 3
I was given this months ago when a friend of mine was doing a deep dive into the Alien universe. When he gave it to me I was in the middle of my 2019 continuous movie watch and did not get around to it. When 2020 rolled around I decided it would be the first book I read this year.

The backstory to Alien 3 is more interesting than the movie itself. The trivia behind the making of his movie tells quite the tale of disagreements and difficulties so, long story short - the novelization I read does not match the finished film. The story finds Alien and Aliens survivor Ripley in an escape pod, still floating in space after the hell she experienced in Aliens. A malfunction, caused by a surviving alien, damages her escape pod which makes an emergency landing on a nearby planet killing everyone in the pod except her.

The planet she lands on is actually a prison planet owned by the corporation that sent her on her two previous missions. It's inhabited by about 25 prisoners, a couple guards and a doctor. The prisoners are mostly docile due to having found religion which is good since there are so few guards and they are unarmed. The prison is an abandoned mining facility and when the alien does strike, about 100 pages in to a 214 page book, it navigates the mining tunnels which are confusing and easy to get lost in.

So much time is dedicated to two  things - making it clear  that the tunnels are confusing and making it clear that the prison isn’t all that bad a place for those residing there. This is mildly interesting but more attention should have been paid to the actual creature. It’s not without its thrills and scares and while I'm interested in watching the movie again, I’m more curious about reading other versions of the screenplay. The most famous version is by Willaim Gibson whose screenplay was recently turned into a comic book and apparently it’s quite a different take and would have made for a very different movie.


Grown Ups 3
I’m counting this because I want to talk about it. Tom Scharpling, writer and producer for TV shows like What We Do in the Shadows, Difficult People, Nathan for You and Monk, wrote a screenplay for Grown Ups 3 just for the fun of it. The story has Adam Sandler and most of the actors you associate with Adam Sandler play themselves during the production of Grown Ups 3. They are all older now and their egos are getting in the way of having fun. Sandler, frustrated by this, rents a lake house where they continue bickering until a masked killer arrives.

Scharpling clearly has an appreciation for Sandler, his famous friends, and the movies they make. He gets their voices spot on and the violence hits hard and fast. It is a very silly idea which has been getting some positive attention ever since Scharpling shared the script early this year. It would be so cool if Sandler helped this get made and between the newfound attention following Uncut Gems and a new deal with Netflix he can pretty much do whatever he wants!

Driven
Being a big fan of the movie Drive I was excited to learn of a sequel to the book it was based on. I should probably read the first book but having seen the movie many times and after reading this it seems to me that the creators of the film stayed pretty true to the world the writer creates, the tone he sets and the voice his characters have.

After hired goons kill his girlfriend the nameless protagonist only known to the reader as Driver deals with waves of assorted heavies and hitmen who seem to always be on his tail no matter how far he runs. While on the run he stays in contact with an ex-soldier who does some digging to find out who and why people are trying to kill him.

This is an exciting story but it’s all about the dialogue. Characters say a lot, Driver says very little and it all takes place in a world where crooks, cops and everyone in between speak in a very highfalutin manner out of an old detective story and it mixes w
ell with the realism and ugliness of the world it all takes place in.

The Teeth of the Tiger
My brother Jake is a big Tom Clancy fan and when I asked him for a recommendation he told me I should start with this one.

It’s a dense, detailed thriller where every character you meet is fleshed out and it's longer than everything I’ve read in January put together. I’m mostly familiar with Tom Clancy because of the Jack Ryan movies and TV show. This book is about the second generation of Ryan’s - his son and his nephews - joining a covert team called The Campus.

The Campus operates in the shadows of the better known government agencies like the CIA and NSA. Jack Ryan Jr. talks his way into a desk job at The Campus and is placed in the accounting department to oversee money transactions worldwide from shady individuals. Meanwhile the nephews, a marine and an FBI agent, are recruited after performing well in their respective fields and are trained to carry out an assassination, which makes each of them a little uneasy.

The antagonists are a terrorist organization utilizing their criminal connections to sneak into America to carry out an attack. I’m at about the midpoint now and the attack on America is incredibly disturbing.

The writing really puts you in the mind of each character and you spend a few paragraphs with one before jumping to another. I found the structure a bit hard to follow and so much time is dedicated to building up to something but many characters, and the reader, are kept in the dark which gets frustrating after hundreds of pages.

It still mostly an exciting read and I’m curious about other Clancy novels.

Y: The Last Man 
I started reading this comic after years of people telling me it’s really good. The premise is that one day every male, human and animal, on the planet dies. Except one man and his pet monkey. While trying to figure out why he and his pet are the only survivors he encounters lots of dangerous people. I’ve only just finished the 2nd issue so I'm not sure where this is all going but I like it!


TV shows:
Finished the first season of Killing Eve and started watching Carnival Row and The Witcher

Killing Eve is twisty, violent fun and I look forward to watching season 2. I'm only a couple episodes into the fantasy/period piece Carnival Row but I like it a lot and I still have to finish the first episode of the The Witcher but it's pretty cool.



Live performances:

Umphree’s McGee: Outside of Furthur and moe. I haven’t seen many jam bands but I had heard that Umphree’s McGee was the most metal jam band so that piqued my interest. I would still classify them as a jam band but wow they sure can rock out. I hadn’t heard much of their stuff but that probably helped as they didn’t really play many songs except for a Rush cover to honor Neil Pert. They mostly just jammed for 3 hours and it was awesome.


Monster Jam: I highly recommend seeing a monster truck show but go to an outdoors venue if at all possible. We saw this at Prudential and it was loud and dusty but still awesome. There were  monster trucks balancing on two wheels, flying through the air and we even saw one do a flip which was apparently the first time that occurred in Prudential so that’s neat. They also had quad and dune buggy races. It was a very fun show.