Okay, I watched this new-fangled TV series, which I told y’all I was pretty psyched about several months ago, (and ya’ll should be really happy because this time I actually did what I said I was gonna do), and overall, I can say I was not disappointed. It was very good. I heard it’s probably getting a second season, and I’ll take a look at that.
Amazon moved the date of the release up one day, so I watched it this Wednesday evening, conveniently right before I had a day off, so I could binge watch this all night. I guess most people didn’t know about the early release time on Wednesday, so most people waited until Thursday morning, and some are watching it Friday. There are eight episodes and I finished them sometime around four in the morning of Thursday. I don’t binge watch stuff very often because I usually don’t get that type of open time, but I did this week, and except for a couple of slower episodes that seemed to be treading water, even though they were still important to the backstory, I very much enjoyed it.
There are several iterations of Fallout in game form, and I haven’t played a single one of them, so I understand the worldbuilding on the show based on the experience of someone who has never played the games. I did watch a few videos explaining the lore, after I watched the series, because I had questions. Like: How many Vaults are there? Are all the vaults as messed up as the one I saw in the show? What are ghouls, and how do they happen? What were the monsters I saw? What’s up with that dog? (It’s just a regular dog, as far as I can tell.) After watching the series and looking at it from the point of view of someone who has never played the games, I can understand why some of the lore was changed, like the making of the zombie-like creatures we see in the show. I was seeing a few comparisons to the HBO series The Last of Us on my YouTube thumbnails, asking if the show was better, worse, or as good. I can honestly say I don’t think its as good as TLOU, but it is a lot more fun, very compelling, and I was intrigued and captivated enough to keep watching one episode after another. I don’t know that this will make my “best of” list at the end of the year, ( I think that distinction will go to Shogun) but it was alright!
The series literally starts off with a bang! We meet one of the primary characters in a flashback on the day of multiple atomic bomb explosions, on an alternate Earth. One of the things non-gamers have to understand is this is not our world. It’s an another reality where atomic bombs have been dropped on countries more than once (there is a war in the Middle East over oil, China invaded Alaska, the US has annexed Canada) and the technological, and some of the cultural foundations, is that of the fifties, with an international war over basic resources, and the invention of cold fusion, a perpetual energy source, all of which is the base plot of the entire series. There are several things that are very different about this world. One of those is that there was no Jim Crow, or MLK, I guess because interracial marriages are widely accepted, and people’s greatest concern is the coming war between China and the US. There is no McCarthyism, but people are paranoid about their colleagues and actors being Communists. There is a certain level of fantasy 50’s technology too.
We then meet the main character we saw in the trailer named Lucy. The show moves back and forth in time, covering the backstory of the three primary characters, Lucy (played by Ella Purnell), The Ghoul (played by Walton Goggins), and Maximus (played by Aaron Moten). Each one of these characters gets a backstory, a clear character arc, and a mystery or goal they need to solve before the end of the season. The episodes move from the adventures of one character to another and occasionally back in time. The Ghoul’s story is told entirely in flashback though because that explains who and what he is in the present. The show is directed and written by the same people who brought us Westworld, Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, which I was happy to see, because the two of them are very competent at weaving multiple story threads together. There is no confusion about where we are in the story, what’s happening to who, and/or why.
The primary story, which takes place 200 years before we even meet Lucy, involves a company called Vault Tech, which created over 100 bunkers designed for the survival of the human race after WW3, but not all is at it seems. Most of that is the backstory of The Ghoul, because his wife plays a large role in the creation of this future. The show then shifts 219 years in the future, where Lucy’s story begins as she is about to get married to a member of another Vault (#32) that’s connected to her own. Lucy is from Vault 33 (hence the numbers seen on the backs of the character’s blue radiation proof suits.) Her marriage goes tits up when the wedding party is massacred and her father is kidnapped, which prompts Lucy’s exit from the Vault in an attempt to find him. Along the way, she meets Maximus who is a member of a faction called The Brotherhood of Steel, who have taken it upon themselves to act sort of like the cops of the nuclear wasteland beyond the Vaults. Lucy and Max become allies. Interspersed with Lucy’s story is how Max came to be a member of The Brotherhood.
There are several other factions and creatures that Lucy interacts with outside Vault 33. She eventually meets up with Goggin’s character, who is simply called “The Ghoul”, who has lived an unnaturally long life (over 200 years) thanks to being exposed to radiation and a special serum he needs to constantly procure, in order to remain sane. Remember, this is an alternate world based on what people believed about technology in the 1950s, so in this world people can survive severe radiation damage by becoming what we would essentially call “zombies”. They can keep their minds from deteriorating by ingesting a special drug. Without it they turn into what others call Ferals (basically the wild, people-eating, type of zombies).
All three characters converge in an effort to take the bounty on a Scientist from another faction, called The Enclave, whose worth is stored in his brain. After he is dead, all that is needed is his head. These three characters, and a couple of others, spend most of the season chasing after it, beating the crap out of each other, and falling into various adventures, over this man’s decapitated head.
The worldbuilding is well done. Not every image gets an answer this season, as they are holding back a lot of information for the second, and what you think is a tiny scrap of information has significant resonance later, even throwaway characters turns out to be important detail to the worldbuilding, like Lucy’s father (played by the always excellent Kyle McClachlan). You do get thrown in the deep end, with some characters and mysteries being presented along the way, and a cast of interesting and occasionally disgusting, creatures like giant cockroaches, giant aquatic grabbers, organ stealing robots, brains in jars, irradiated mutant bears (ugh!), a Snake Oil Salesman who f**ks chickens (???), a Ghoul dog, people who hate Ghouls and Vault Dwellers (they do not have the best reputation in this world), and a faction of Vault raiders.
Some of the most interesting things (that are non-spoilery) is the show’s approach to sex. The women in the series are shown as enthusiastic initiators of sex, happily jumping guys bones if they are also willing, which is something I found both remarkable and deeply funny. It’s an element of storytelling that is rarely thought of or shown, in favor of showing women as semi-reluctant prey, or sexual assault victims. Walton Goggin’s character is married to a Black woman and the two get pretty frisky, sometimes in front of other people. so this particular contingent of human beings seem to have very healthy attitudes towards sex, although one must note that I had not noticed any gay or lesbian characters. Lucy is especially interesting in this regard. At one point, she just comes straight out and propositions Maximus, who, having never even been told about sex, (since he’s been raised by an order of violent, but celibate, monks) has no idea what the hell she’s talking about.
Next to all the other somewhat gray and villainous characters in the series, Lucy and her fellow Vault Dwellers tend to be what we would call “annoyingly wholesome”, in that they wear their hearts on their sleeves, believe in old 50s American values, and are refreshingly honest about their feelings, even when they’re villains. The only other gray character in the Vault is Lucy’s brother, because he’s always shuffling quickly around like he’s furtively holding onto a secret, but he’s not a villain, and it’s for a good reason.
No doubt, the star of the series, and the character most people are tuning in to watch is Walton Goggins, The Ghoul, mostly because he is professionally ultra-violent bad ass, who is the most mysterious, and we love Bounty Hunters! How did he get that way? What series of events allowed him to survive the nuclear events in the opening scene? What happened to his wife and daughter and are either of them Ghouls like him? I guess we’ll find out next season, and I hope there will be, because the series has received some very good reviews, and Amazon has been offered a deal for more episodes.
I would say more, but then I’d start getting into spoiler territory. I don’t have a problem with giving spoilers (the series is kind of hard to spoil, really), but I want y’all to watch the show, and some of the episodes have some really nice and very funny surprises. Yes, the shows is darkly humorous, so it’s okay to laugh at some things. Of course Mr. Goggins gets ALL the best lines, but the other actors aren’t phoning it in, and some of the situations these characters get into are dangerous, but still very ridiculous.
Usually when I fall in love with a series I hope for at least three to five seasons, which is just enough for a show to hit its stride, and gets most of the viewer’s questions answered, all without getting too bogged down in minutiae, or getting boring. So here’s to two more seasons of Fallout!
Next up:I wanna talk about Shogun ,which may turn out to be the best show of the year, and the movie Poor Things, which I greatly enjoyed.
I do not necessarily mean that I’m hotly anticipating these movies. Somebody, somewhere is though, and since I just went on YouTube to see what new trailers came out, this is my list. Some of these are movies I mentioned before, but there’s a couple of new ones here, or just new trailers for stuff I’m still excited about!
But, you will definitely know which ones I’m excited to see.
Alien: Romulus
I finally got hold of a trailer for this and the trailer looks good. It looks genuinely frightening! My anxiety levels shot up to about 9.5 on my Nope-a- Meter, which means I will not be sitting in a dark theater watching this movie.
It’s directed by Fede Alvarez, the guy who brought us The Evil Dead remake and Don’t Breathe, two films I really liked. It was initially set to be released on Hulu, but that was changed to theaters, and I hope it succeeds as a hit. I will rent it on Amazon or something as soon as its on streaming, so I can watch this at home, and turn it off when it gets to be too much. I love Horror movies but some Horror movies can be too scary. Speaking of which, its probably time to make another post about movies that are too scary, even for me!
Furiosa
Yeah. Yeah. I know. This is really just a cash-grab, (even though we were kinda asking for this) but dayyum, y’all!!! This movie looks like FIRE!!! I’m really starting to fall in love with Anya Taylor-Joy, where she appears to be successfully channeling Charlize Theron, and I am interested in Furiosa’s backstory. This is one I want to see in the theater. I think I’ll invite one of my nieces.
Boy Kills World
This movie looks crazy. I really want to check this one. Its giving off Suicide Squad, John Wick, The Crow vibes, and I’m here for it. I dont think its going to be playing in a theater near me, because its kind of indie, but I will definitely be checking this out when it streams.
Fall Out
I ain’t gonna lie! They had me with the first trailer, with this beautiful imagery, and the opening strains of Nat King Cole’s I Don’t Want To See Tomorrow. I’m always a sucker for King Cole. This is definitely “hot” and “anticipated” by me. It doesn’t hurt that this is by the same guy that brought me so many hours of in-depth thinking in Westworld.
This is based on videogames I have never played (although I have looked at the game art books), so I had to do a quick 101 on the world of the game, which was fun. I found out some interesting things like ghosts and other eldritch beings exist in this universe. I wasn’t expecting that. I thought it was a straightforward apocalyptic drama type of thing, but apparently, it’s a lot weirder.
Rebel Moon Pt. 2
I didn’t find the first part of this movie satisfactory, but tried to keep in mind that its just the first part of a movie and this is the part where all the characters and stakes are introduced. It felt unfinished because it is…get this…unfinished! So, when the second part of this gets released next month I’ll be watching the two back to back. This is the longform trailer for the second half. I really really like this trailer, even though I feel Zack Snyder should maybe cool it on the use of slow motion.
The Crow
I’ve been hearing loyalists to the first movie panning this one already, and I’m not listening. Thye can dismiss this if they want to but I won’t. I absolutely love the first movie. Me and my Art school friends loved that movie multiple times! I went out and bought any books associated with the franchise over the years, because there’s a ton of books out there about The Crow, and although the first movie was perfection (even with the tragic death of the lead actor), just about any kind of story can be told using this motif.
I’ve said it before, that its hard to improve on perfection, and that first movie was as well made as it could possibly get, but I’m not sure this is that kind of remake. It has a different plot for one thing. So far, I’m liking Skarsgaard, and Danny Huston is always a draw. I just really like him. I don’t know much about FKA Twigs other than she’s a rapper/performer and I’ve listened to a couple of her songs. She has a cute accent in this movie though. I like the music in the trailer and the action looks wild, so I’m gonna be there in the theater, popcorn in hand, hoping to have a good time.
I don’t know that I’ll go see this multiple times, but I will invite my nephew to see this with me, since he really loves the Moon Knight TV series and the John Wick movies.
The Wild Robot
This some beautiful wholesome stuff that I can take my youngest niece to see. She hipped mt ot the Disney film Elemental which I really enjoyed a lot so I’m going to return the favor and ask if she wants to go see this. Her tastes are pretty wide ranging. She likes children’s cartons like Despicable me, Horror movies like M3gan, TV shows like Stranger Things, and some romantic comedies.
I like that she’s not limiting herself to just one or two types of films. She’s willing to try different things until she finds something she likes, but that also makes it hard to suggest something she will be excited to see. I kinda have to wait until she demands (because she does not believe in making requests) that we go see something. I really want to see this so I’m going to ask her.
The 3 Body Problem
This based on the Science Fiction novels of Chinese writer Cixin Liu. I have read some of his work, although not this particular one. He also wrote The Wandering Earth for those of you who are fans of that series. I have not watched that one, but I plan to watch this one since I’m always up for a good First Contact drama.
Interview With The Vampire (Season Two)
I’m ready to fully immerse myself in the world of Interview With the Vampire once again. I’ve been waiting to see a longer trailer for this second season of the series. There is a new Claudia because the last actress ahd to move on to some new things but I like this new girl so far. The actor playing Louis is his usual exemplary self, and at the end of the last season we were introduced to his long-time lover, The Vampire Armand, and naturally all of the copies of this book have just been checked out at my library!
I hope, at some point, we will get Armand’s backstory, where we will be introduced to Marius who is one of my favorite characters. (He also has a most fascinating backstory.) I skipped the Mayfair Witches series because I didn’t care for the rather bland lead actress, and I have never found witches to be particularly interesting characters. Vampires, on the other hand, are always fascinating.
The Acolyte
I missed the last Star Wars series, Andor, and I didn’t get a chance to finish Ahsoka, before something that was shinier distracted me. Both series are in a backlog of other shows I have not had the time to watch because I keep watching things I already watched whenever I’m idle.
But I like this trailer and I’m curious to see what this series is about. Its interesting to see Jedi fighting without lightsabers, and I wonder what that’s about or if this is something unique to that particular character. Of course no story about the Jedi would be complete without the addition of some Sith. I am told that this story takes places about a hundred years before the rise of the Empire and the birth of Anakin Skywalker.
Kaos
Imma be honest, they had me at Jeff Goldblum. Thas all they had to say, and they put that right at the top! I have no idea what this is about, nor do I care, even after watching this trailer several times, because it’s JEFF! Goldblum!!
No, seriously, I don’t even care what the plot is about.
Harold and the Purple Crayon
I’m putting this here because I have very fond memories of reading this story as a child. It was one of my absolute favorites. I will not be going to the theater to see this though. I will watch it when it streams, but I am very excited that a trailer was finally released for this movie, and I thought you guys might get a big kick out of seeing it, especially those of you who remember this story as happily as I do!
Deadpool and Wolverine
My nephew and I made a pact to go see this all the MCU films together, so this one is on the list. See, movies are not just about a film being good. A lot of the reason I love the films I love is because of the memories and people associated with it. There are a number of films I love not because they are great films, but because I watched them, for the first time, with my Mom, and she loved them, even though the film might not have been to my taste. We shared a thing, and watching it again brings back memories of having these moments with her.
Fortunately, my nephew and I are huge Marvel fans, although our love for the superhero genre comes from different places. Mine comes from having read all the comic books as a kid, and his comes from the movies themselves and informational videos on Youtube, but his love for the genre is genuine, and we both share this thing. I am not an MCU fan just because I’m excited to see superheroes I read about as a child on the big screen. I love these movies because this is something I can share with the people I love.
Borderlands
Well, this trailer looks pretty zany, and its got Cate Blanchett in it. I love Cate, but I’m probably not going to see this in the theater, unless one of my family members says lets go see it, which I very much doubt will happen. I really do like this trailers though and I love the cast, which includes Kevin Hart, and the movie looks like a fun time. I know Kevin Hart is not everyone’s cup of tea but Imma fan because he has made me laugh on a consistent basis often enough (Jumanji) that I trust he’ll make me laugh during this movie.
This is the movie my nephew and I are most looking forward to watching this Summer. We’re both big Deadpool fans, we both like Wolverine, so… Not sure how this movie is going to play out, but I’m hopeful that it will be as much fun as the first two Deadpool movies, and at least as much fun as the comic books.
The Quiet Place: Day One
This is going to be a great year for Horror movies, starting with one of my favorite franchises, The Quiet Place. I greatly enjoyed the first two films, which, while full of some pretty scary moments, and are definitely considered Creature Features, I still classify as being more alongside the Action genre. It also happens to star two of my favorite actors, Lupita Nyong’o and Djimon Hounsou. Despite loving the movie American Fiction, I actually do like watching movies with multiple Black actors where the subject doesn’t revolve around racial issues. It should be a perfectly normal thing to see Black actors in all kinds of different movies.
Interview With the Vampire Season 2
I greatly enjoyed season one of this series and I’m excited to immerse myself back in this world again. Even though the actress who played Claudia has left the show, (she was a lot of fun), I’m still ready to watch this. I loved the characters and their interactions with each other, and the season left off on something of a cliffhanger.
Dune (Pt. 2)
Again, I enjoyed the first part of this and I’m excited to enter this world of Dune again. Denis Villeneuve has done an excellent job with this franchise.
Fallout
I’ve never played these games and know almost nothing at all about the lore of this world, so I had to take a quick crash course to understand some of the images I saw in the trailer. I’m excited to visit this place based solely on the strength of the trailer! I hope it’s as interesting as the trailer suggests.
Shogun
I already mentioned my love for the original film, so I’m eagerly awaiting the premiere of this remake next week.
Avatar
I think we can all agree the movie was a disaster, but based on the trailer, this series looks pretty good, and faithful enough to the original to merit a look-see.
House of Ninja
I have not started this series yet, but it looks like fun.
IF
I think I will prefer this over the Horror movie about imaginary friends. Don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely going to check out the Horror movie, but the addition of Ryan Reynolds makes this one look more fun.
Furiosa
I am not sure we needed a movie about Furiosa’s backstory but this looks very exciting and she is such a beloved character that I guess the filmmakers simply couldn’t resist. I am becoming a huge fan of Anya Taylor-Joy, too. I don’t know that I will see this in the theater. I probably will if one of my nieces would like to join me.
Monkey Man
I am deeply in love with Dev Patel and it is very exhilarating to see him in an Action film ala John Wick style! It does not hurt at all that one of the Producers behind this gem is Jordan Peele, who, as far as I’m concerned, can yet do no wrong onscreen. I am definitely going to see this one in the theater.
Borderlands
I don’t know anything about the original source material (a videogame) on which this movie is based, I just love the idea of this cast (Cate Blanchett, Jack Black, Kevin Hart, and Jamie Lee Curtis) all starring in this silly, cheesy looking, Guardians of the Galaxy/Mad Max ripoff! Pure Popcorn!
The Ones Who Live
I have not watched any of the other Spinoffs from The Walking Dead, but I am invested in the romance of Michonne and Rick, and hope this offers all the feels I’m looking for in a TV series this Spring!
Honorable Mentions:
Axel F – This is one of those Netflix originals type of things. I’m a fan of the Beverly Hills Cop movies and it will be fun to visit with Axel Foley again!
Space Man – I’m not sure I like the idea of a giant talking space spider, but I’m going to watch this because I’ve enjoyed Adam Sandler’s previous non-comedic work.
Rebel Moon Pt. 2 – I hesitate to say this was a good movie because it had some story drawbacks. On the other hand, the story is not finished, so hopefully, the second half of this movie will flesh out the problems of the first half of this movie. The visuals were gorgeous, but that means nothing if the story behind those visuals is lacking.
Road House – I talked about being a fan of the original cheesy film, and this is streaming on Amazon Prime, so I don’t have to worry about spending money on a theater experience. It looks kinda cheesy and fun, like a Saturday afternoon “popcorn/on the couch” event.
Sting – I’ve heard this is a comedy. I will not be seeing this in the theater because again…giant spider!
Abigail – My niece has expressed some interest in watching this vampire ballerina movie. I get it. She loved that Megan film, and seems to have this thing about movies with little girls behaving badly. I’m not sure I want to see this movie but since she has trusted my judgement on choosing movies to watch, I’m trusting her judgement on this.
The Fall Guy – I have memories of having watched the TV show on which this movie is based, but I cannot for the life of me remember anything beyond that it starred Lee Majors, (from The Six Million Dollar Man), who was once married to Farah Fawcett. I like Ryan Gosling. That’s all I got.
Nosferatu – I do not have a trailers for this but its a remake of the original 1920s Silent film by one of my favorite directors, Robert Eggers! It looks as if this will be dropping in December/
War of the Rohirrim – I know nothing about this movie other than its based on Tolkien’s writings and it too is dropping in December. I dont even know who is starring in this yet. I don’t even have a trailer or even an announcement that this is happening. It just showed up on FirstShowing.net
Woo! I need to make up for not posting for so long, I guess.
Here are some more trailers for movies that I’m excited to see this year (and maybe a couple I’m not too excited about but you might love). It looks like this year is going to be a mix of cheesy fun (Godzilla X Kong) and deeply serious films (Dune 2), and I’m here for both these things, although I am still very much in my lighthearted phase of television viewing.
Argyle
I am not especially excited to see this movie, but it does look like a fun ride for someone. I’m sure some people are gonna have a good time watching this, although I am a lot more interested in the cat.
The Tiger’s Apprentice
This is the type of movie I’d enjoy watching with my nephew who loves martial arts movies. This looks like a fun afternoon at my sister’s house.
Spaceman
I have deeply mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, Adam Sandler is bringing it in his more serious roles, so I’m looking forward to his acting here, but the other character is a giant talking spider, and I don’t know that I want to subject myself to that for an entire movie.
Furiosa
This is very obviously a cash-grab, but I don’t care. I loved the 2015 Fury Road movie so much that I’m willing to sit through this to find out more about the lead character of that film, Furiosa. I hope it lives up to the hype of this trailer.
The Monkey Man
This is a movie that’s produced by Jordan Peele but it doesn’t look like a Horror movie. It looks more like one of his more comedic entries. I’m a huge fan of Dev Patel, and I really enjoy seeing him branch out into all of these rather odd roles, as he navigates his path through the Hollywood typecasting machine. I’m willing to pay money to see this team-up at the theater.
Road House
I liked Patrick Swayze’s silly original and this seems to capture at least some of that vibe, so I’m willing to check this out if its on a streaming service but not if its in the theater.
Godzilla X Kong: New Empire
I got nothing!
I don’t know what to think about this one except I’m sure it looks like great cheesy fun to someone.
Enjoy!
Abigail
This kind of reminds me heavily of the movie Megan only with vampires. I will probably end up watching this with my niece (the little sister of The Potato) who loves to see movies about little girls behaving very badly. I have to admit I’m not immune to that topic myself. Once again, it looks more than a little cheesy but it also looks like great fun.
Nosferatu
Well, I think the original film is deliciously scary, I’m a big fan of Robert Eggers, and I really loved the Last Voyage of the Demeter with Monster Dracula, so I’m looking forward to yet another serious take on the Dracula Mythos. I have not seen the 70s remake of the is film but I’m going to watch both the 1927 version and that remake before I see this one at the end of this year.
Avatar: The Last Airbender
I’m looking forward to this in the hopes that it will correct the mistakes of the movie version. So far, it looks pretty accurate to the cartoon, and I really like the visuals. My only drawback is that it still has the Netflix look that all their films have which has the unintended side effect of making all their live action anime remakes blend together.
Despicable Me 4
This looks like something my niece would enjoy. I might enjoy this too, since she forced me to watch a couple of the other Minions movies with her. I’m starting to trust her judgement a little bit more about what kinds of films are okay to watch. She definitely has an eye for the kind of stuff she likes and is willing to sit through, and seems to want to return the favor of me recommending movies to her since she was very little. There have been three or four movies that she strongly suggested I watch with her and so far she’s been right each time. I did enjoy all of them, even though a couple of them were just a little bit out of my usual comfort zone.
I was going to write one of my typically long intros, but you know what? Its Holiday season and ain’t nobody got time for that.
So here, in no particular order, (as usual), is my short list of highly (or sometimes just mildly) anticipated television and movie projects. I got a little bit of everything here, some kids stuff, some history, a little SciFi, some drama, Action, and some Comedy.
And I’ve already decided that one of my New Year’s resolutions is to watch more International Horror films, like Piggy, and When Evil Lurks, which are two of my favorite Horror movies this year. (Coming soon: My favorite watches of 2023!)
Dune - Trailer #2
I’m still mad about the date getting pushed back on this, because I was all set this week to watch this movie, and now I have to wait. Phooey! In the meantime, they keep teasing me with trailers which I simply cannot resist watching because,
like a toddler, I have low impulse control, and also I’m really excited to see this movie.
Handling the Undead
I read the book this was based on several years ago, and even though I found the premise very intriguing, I was not particularly impressed. Nevertheless, I will make an attempt to watch this series. All I can tell you is that, while it is a zombie film, it’s not a typical one. There’s no screaming and running and shooting happening in the story. It’s very moody and lowkey, and its strength lies more in the territory of placing people in untenable situations in a what would you do kind of way.
Since the passing of my Mom, this story (if it close to the book version) will probably hit very differently today and I’m curious to see what effect it will have on me. I’m not enthusiastic but I am intrigued.
Beverly Hills Cop 4: Axel F
This is a movie I’m very excited about, since Beverly Hills Cop II is one of my all-time favorite Eddie Murphy movies. As soon as I saw the opening shot I got hit in my 1980s feels, which frankly, is cheating. But damn!, it sure felt good to see these characters again.
The makers of this reboot absolutely understood what a nostalgia bomb this is, and should be duly ashamed of themselves for deploying it in such a fashion. None of us had any warning this was going to happen and we were not ready. They just dropped this surprise trailer on everybody this week!
Out of Darkness
I like the look of this film, and I like these ancient historical survival things so, while I probably wouldn’t watch this in a theater, I would definitely check this out on a streaming service. I also do not think I am ready to watch Horror movies in the theater yet. I’m pretty much only interested in Action and Comedy for that.
This movie heavily reminds me of Valhalla Rising, which starred Mads Mikkelson and had some elements of Horror, as well.
American Society of Magical Negroes
There are a lot of problems with this movie in both the premise and the title. Its as if someone heard about the concept of the Magical Negro by rough description, thought it was a funny idea, and just decided to make a movie about it with no awareness of what the term Magical Negro actually means in the real world.
I was initially interested but after giving it some thought, I decided this is probably not for me because I am definitely going to overthink this movie, and not in a good way. I won’t go into details about everything wrong with this trailer but I think The Book of Clarence is a much better bet than this.
IF
I’m not a huge Ryan Reynolds fan. I don’t hate the guy or anything, (in fact, he’s very likable), but I don’t go out of my way to watch the things he stars in, outside of the Deadpool movies. So I will be seeing the next Deadpool movie because I really enjoyed the last one, and I may or may not take my niece to see this movie, which looks really cute.
My niece greatly enjoyed Disney’s Elemental, and she kept pestering me to watch it, so I did, nd I rather enjoyed it. That movie was really cute and this trailer reminds me of it a lot. Plus, I like all the colorful little monsters. I can’t relate, because I did not have imaginary friends, but I’ve always been fascinated by the idea.
Echo
I remember Dave McKean’s gorgeous artwork for this character, from the comic books, but I have mixed feelings about this show, because the character was not especially compelling in the books. I remember her as a foil for the Daredevil character. She wasn’t (isn’t) exactly a villain. She mostly seemed misguided and it had nothing to do with her lack of hearing or her prosthetic leg. She just happened to have beef with Daredevil and a disability. On the other hand, I do like the disability representation in this character. There are a number of superheroes with disabilities in the Daredevil books and I hope to see both characters Hawkeye make an appearance though.
Deep Sea
This anime is from China and its just soooo friggin’ KYUTE!!!! China has slowly, quietly, stepping up its game in the animation department, and this cartoon is the fulfillment of all those many years of hard work and its absolutely gorgeous, and a clear rival to Ghibli’s Ponyo.
Jeanne Du Barry
I’m not enamored of Johnny Depp, as of late, but I cannot deny that he has always been a compelling actor. I also know something about the basic story behind Du Barry, so now I’m interested.
The Brothers Sun
All they need to do is show that Michelle Yeoh is in the movie and they got my attention! This is a comedy about a mobster style Taiwanese family. I love to see Michelle play semi-villainous characters, and I actually laughed at this trailer, so maybe I will laugh at the movie.
True Detective
I’ve been a fan of Jodie Foster since I was about twelve, and first saw her The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, so I will watch anything she stars in. I know there’s going to be some quality acting on her part. It is my understanding that the young lady seen with her in the trailer is some kind fighter or boxer. I’ve never seen her in anything, but she appears to be able to hold her own next to Foster, and I admire her already.
I liked the very first season of True Detective. I skipped season 2 and showed up in the middle of season three, which was pretty good. Hopefully this one is just as good as the first season.
I don’t have trailers for these next three projects but they sound interesting and I might check them out if I have time.
Alien Romulus – It is my understanding that this is a television series streaming on Hulu next year. There is a huge, rich, history of comic books, and novels about the Alien Universe, which I have never read, so I’m walking into this one with no knowledge beyond the handful of movies I watched.
The Crow (Reboot) – Not sure how I feel about this yet. I like the idea of a reboot of the movies and the TV series. Really, I’d forgotten all about the TV series, which starred a merely okay Mark Dacascos back inthe 90s, so yeah its time to introduce a new generation to this idea.
A Quiet Place: Day One – I liked the first two films, and I even like the concept behind this one, but I don’t think I will go to the theater to see this. There’s just to much anxiety in it for me. Now, I realize that is the point of a Horror movie, but I do not want to be trapped in a space where I can’t turn the movie off, and my only option is to waste my money by walking out.
I don’t normally talk about these subjects on this blog, as it’s usually a place to give people a break from heavy topics by talking about the frivolous things that make me happy. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to post this, since its so personal, but here goes.
Every now and then, I’ll mention something about my personal life, but usually only when it intersects with some piece of popular culture which has emotionally affected me, and The Flash was that bitch! And I was neither expecting nor ready for that.
My mother died in hospice in 2021, just a few days before Thanksgiving, and I am still in the mourning stage, and probably always will be. Her death was somewhat prolonged in that she’d been sick off and on for years with various ailments like kidney disease, respiratory illnesses, cancer. But when her death finally did come, it was relatively quick, happening over the course of about two months. In the movie The Flash Barry’s mother dies suddenly and unexpectedly, his father is blamed and jailed for it, and Barry’s decisions are affected by these two events for the rest of the movie.
Barry finds out he can turn back time, and thinks if he goes back far enough he can save his mother from this sudden and unexplainable death which is the traumatic event that shaped the man he became. At the beginning of the movie, Barry has a conversation with Bruce Wayne about going back in time to save his own parents, and Bruce tells him that traumatic events can make us the person we become, but we can’t let those events define who we are. This distinction is very fine, but there are multiple examples of it in the movie.
One of Barry’s early memories of his mother is her telling him that not every problem has a solution, and this is said later in the film by an alternate version of Bruce Wayne, who also tells Barry he can’t always save everyone. This is illustrated multiple times in the movie with Barry not being able to save an endangered child’s father or not being able to save any of the people he has come to care for by the end of the film, but at the beginning of the movie, Barry is put into a nearly impossible situation in which he successfully saves a roomful of infants, a therapy dog, and a nurse from a falling building, so riding high off that success, he believes that his mother’s death is something he can actually prevent as well, so he travels to the past to do so. He is successful at saving his mother but ends up creating a universe that only ever ends in disaster for everyone because he never existed as The Flash in that place, and this was a universe in which Earth was slated for destruction because the Justice League that existed in the Zack Snyder universe didn’t exist either. Superman never existed in it and General Zod, (the villain from the Man of Steel movie), won.
Because Barry’s alternate self in that universe avoided the trauma of his mother’s death and his father’s imprisonment, and as a result he is a subtly different person than this universe’s Barry, being silly, immature , and irresponsible. The latter part of the film is that universe’s version of Barry destroying his mind and body when he finds out that his Earth, and hence his family and friends, are all slated to die, and he simply refuses to accept that knowledge. He keeps traveling back in time for years in a desperate attempt to save what cannot be saved. At one point, Barry tells his alternate self that he must let it go, and in that moment he truly recognizes himself, and the steps he has to take to fix the situation.
He has to let his mother stay dead. He has to let her go. He has to undo the events he set in motion which means that even though he knows he can save her, he shouldn’t, because all that does is result in the deaths of everyone else he interacted with in the attempt, Batman, Superman’s cousin Kara, his mother and father , and finally, his alternate self.
I recognized myself in Barry’s story. In the last few weeks of my mother’s life I was an emotional wreck who refused to accept that she was dying. I pleaded and bargained with the universe just like Barry did in the movie. Give me just a few more years. Give me five. Give me two more. Hell, just one more year of living with her, and I’ll be ready to let her go (which is a lie, because no matter how much time I was allotted, it would never have been enough). I didn’t want to acknowledge it was happening and kept clinging to the delusional hope that she was going to come home.
Like Barry, I kept making the decisions that I thought could save her.
She was never going to come back home.
You cannot save everybody.
Like Barry, I was riding high off of my success. I’d spent the past twenty years as her primary caregiver, which meant making sure she took her meds, taking her to all her appointments, and towards the end when she couldn’t get out of bed without help, I exhausted myself, used up all my vacation and sick time from work, and took time off from work altogether to feed, bathe, clothe, and care for her full time. I wasn’t alone. I did have help, but it wasn’t until all that was over that I realized how incredibly traumatized I was by what I had put myself through. I’m not gonna lie. I did it to myself because I could have asked for more help sooner, and at least some of that trauma could have been avoided. But I thought, as her eldest child, I was the one who had to do it. I thought it was my responsibility.
When she was finally in the hospital and the doctors were doing everything they could think of to save her, I had to make some seriously difficult decisions (that I’m still not okay with having made) in my attempt to keep her alive. Now, I realize those were the correct decisions to make, but in the weeks and months after her death, I questioned all of that because I tried so hard and in the end I thought I failed.
But here’s the thing – I was supposed to fail.
The message in this movie hit me really hard because I identified with Barry, just like I was supposed to do.
I did eventually make the right decisions because I wasn’t supposed to save her. I was supposed to let her decide.
It was time for her to go, she was ready to leave, and I just didn’t want to accept that. I didn’t want to let her go and kept holding on to her.
Not every problem has a solution, and not everyone can be saved.
Sometimes you have to let go.
I’m not unique. Everyone on Earth who has someone they dearly love has probably gone through this is, or is going to at some point, and this is something each individual person must experience on their own.
Notes:
This is a deeply personal movie for me, as all good stories are personal. Because of the circumstances of my life, being black, a woman, and growing up in poverty, the way I coped with difficulty was by anchoring the events in my life to stories, and those are the surest way to teach me something about myself. If you can craft an effective story, I will probably learn whatever lesson you’re trying to teach me. The use of stories, whether it was horror novels and movies, or soap operas, were my mother’s way of coping with a difficult life, were a comfort to her in her final months, and she passed this coping mechanism (one of several) to me. We all find ways to deal with life’s difficulties and uncertainties. So when I’m going through hard times, sometimes I will view what I’m going through through the lens of storytelling and what are movies but visual stories writ large?
When I was a child, I had a teacher who expressed a concern that I was reading too much in an attempt to escape difficulties. She worried I wasn’t developing proper coping skills. I’ve seen how other people coped with their problems, through drugs, drink, work, denial, and delusion, and quite frankly, reading books is probably one of the better coping mechanisms. Quite frankly, that teacher was wrong. I wasn’t reading just to escape my life. I was reading to have adventures I knew I would never experience, learning how to look at the world and people, critical thinking skills, and how to cope with life’s problems.
One of the reason I don’t engage in ranking movies and stories on this blog from better to worse is not just because my mind doesn’t think that way, (there’s no objective way of saying a story was good or bad). A story can be badly told, or badly executed, or even a premise with which you disagree, but the story itself isn’t better or worse than another story. For me, there’s no such thing as a good or bad story. I need to ask how well was it executed. Was it visualized well? Did it successfully achieve what it was meant to? Did that comedy make me laugh? Did I learn anything important? Do I think about some issue a different way? Did that romance make me feel romantic? Was I horrified? Was I thrilled? Was I not entertained?
The Flash was a great movie for me because it set out to do what I expected it to do and gave me a little something extra on the side. That’s what the best movies do. Give you not just what you expected but surprises you with something you didn’t.
So, I’m sitting in this movie theater, crying over a superhero movie, and trying not to in front of my niece and nephew, because I don’t want to alter their experience of the movie with my tears, and all that because I was finally ready to listen to a message that I’ve heard in countless stories since my mother died, but was unwilling to listen to before that day.
The power of story is such that it cannot be qualified into simply good and bad. There is only what stories personally affect you according to the mindset you brought to it.
The Flash was an excellent movie because of how it felt TO ME!
Once again we have a bit of a mixed bag although there were really no “bad” episodes this season. Some of the episodes were, for lack of a better term, uninteresting as far as story, but at least had interesting characters or interesting animation styles.
This season has gone global and I think this makes it better than last season. The styles of story and animation are very different from the first season, and many of them are reflections of the cultures of their creators. The episodes are large;y aimed at children since children are either the focal points of the stories and many of the animation styles are sort of aimed at kids with either soft colors and/or rounded non-threatening forms. There were similar themes throughout with hopeful (or cynical) adults inspiring children to be their best, or having to let them grow away from them, or children finding the strength to save themselves or their loved ones. The Sith and Jedi don’t feature in all of them, which is sort of what I was expecting, although most of the episodes take place during the Imperial era. Not all of the episodes are Force related as Westerners understand the use of The Force.
My all-around favorite episode was the first one called Sith (1) by a Spanish animation studio, and while the story was kind of lackluster, just a tidbit of a story that echoes other episodes, the animation style was spectacular and reminded me heavily of the Spiderverse film. My second favorite was Screecher’s Reach (2) because it had a bit more story attached to it, and is by the same Studio that did WoldTalkers and Secret of the Kells. My third favorite was the very culturally specific The Bandits of Golak ( 7) which has a distinctive Indian flavor. Plus, there was a lightsaber-wielding grandmother that I absolutely adored. She’s one of the characters I’d love to see more of in the Star Wars universe because I sensed a helluva backstory there.
These were my top three favorites but as I said none of them are truly bad, only less interesting than the others. I mostly checked out of the Korean-inspired, Journey to the Dark Head (5), although it asked some interesting questions and compared the Jedi’s use of The Force with the basic tenets of Buddhism. The story was mildly intriguing but the animation style was mediocre, and then there was the infinitesimal storyline of the 9th episode called Aau’s Song, which I really wanted to like because the characters looked like animated Teddy Bears, but it simply didn’t capture me the way the earlier episodes did, or maybe I was just tired.
Children will probably love the other 3d animated episode called In the Stars (3), or the 2D Spydancer (5) episode, both of which I thought had some lovely animation, but the story in Spydancer was a little too much like the Sith episode. While I found the idea of nightclubs for Stormtroopers kind of ridiculous, I understood the parallel the writers were trying to make between pre-WW2 Germany and the New Republic. In the Stars came very close to being a top favorite but just missed it, coming in as a fourth-place favorite because it had some good action scenes and a rah-rah moment towards the end.
One of the middle episodes titled I Am Your Mother (a play on Darth Vader’s statement to Luke Skywalker) was drolly funny but involved drag racing scenes and my brain automatically checks out when it comes to that subject. I wanted to like it, since it was created by Aardman Studios, the makers of Wallace and Gromit but it just didn’t capture me. My least favorite was titled The Pit. I’m just not ever in the mood to watch slavery-adjacent stories.
I do have to admit that watching this season was a little more frustrating than the first because all these episodes serve to do is show these tiny snippets of what Star Wars could be, the kinds of characters we could be having, and I’m sure there are some really interesting backstories for some of these characters like the woman from Sith, who has left both the Sith and Jedi Orders to become a painter on some backwater world. I liked her, and speaking as a former painter the animation style was inspired.
It would have been hard for any other episode to top that one for me but Screecher’s Reach came the closest, not because of the animation style but because of the story, which is about a little girl discovering her Force abilities by going toe to toe with an old Sith villain in a cave. I do wish some of the episodes hadn’t focused so much on fight scenes but the ones that didn’t do that didn’t offer much else to fully grab the attention though.
Overall, I liked this season marginally better than the first one. There’s still just a bit too much sameness between the stories and I’d like the stories to branch out a bit more and not be so much about fighting but it was a satisfying watch.
Okay, I admit it. I was the one who actually wanted these trailers and I can’t truthfully speak for the rest of America. At the top are a listing of the television shows and a couple of movies I’ll be filling my head with this Summer and Fall, and below that are the movies I definitely have no plans to watch. By “have no plans” to watch I mean I have no intention of spending money to see them. If one of my family members would like to treat me to a movie, I’ll watch just about anything that’s free. I know that sounds like I’m being sarcastic but no, I have no pressing need to see them.
Must Watch TV
American Born Chinese
Well, I see we’re getting the old band back together again. (Speaking of getting the band back together I think it’s time for my annual re-watch of The Blues Brothers!) Coming to Disney this Summer is this series, which I thought seemed rather hastily put together, although maybe it isn’t, starring most of the cast of Everything Everywhere All At Once. Michele Yeoh plays the Goddess Guanyin, and one of my favorite Asian actors Daniel Wu from Into the Badlands is starring as Sun Wukong (The Monkey King). I’m always up for watching Monkey King movies, so why not a TV series? Stephanie Hsu and Ke Huy Quan also star, and I’m here for it. This looks like a lot of fun, the fight scenes look dope, and just I like a good Chinese Action series. I watch Chinese Action films at night for the same reason that most people watch reality TV. I don’t have to think too deeply about the plots and there’s always lots of movement and color, which is about all my brain can handle by 8pm on a work night. Sometimes I do some light reading or some knitting while something like this plays in the background.
I’m also gratified to see that Hollywood has stopped the bizarre hatred of Asian actors it was engaging in for several decades, (along with its bizarre erasure of Black women characters) because I absolutely hated that whole Hollywood trend of hiring famous Asian actors like Jet Li and Jackie Chan to star in vehicles with unknown white teenage boys as the stars, because reasons…and this series kinda feels like what Netflix’s Iron Fist should have been.
Fubar
I’ve been rather enjoying Arnold’s career as a Senior actor. He’s a lot funnier than he was when he was younger and seems a lot more willing to laugh at himself and the ridiculousness of his career. Does anyone else think it’s weird that he was once Governor of California and is now acting in these odd little Action comedies again? I’ did watch the last couple of Movies he’s done like Terminator Dark Fate (where I thought he was hilarious), and Killing Gunther. Anyway, this is only about two hours of my time, so this is going on the list of movies I say I’m going to watch, and then I don’t watch them because I’m asleep!
I am happy and surprised to see how well Arnold does in dramatic roles, as I was one of ten people that seemed to like him in the zombie flick, Maggie. What is it about aging male actors that they all decide to become Action stars in their later years, and seem to be more or less succeeding at it? The man is in his 70s! I’ve never been attracted to Arnold, to be honest, although I think I’ve seen ALL of his movies, but now that he’s gotten older, I find myself drawn to his films for a different reason, and now I think he’s actually handsome/sexy. Maybe it’s the beard! Anyway, he seems to be aging gracefully with a minimum of horrible scandals (compared to some others for example). I can only hope he doesn’t turn into a loudmouth troll like Charlton Heston.
Star Trek Strange New Worlds
It’s almost time for me to sit my butt down in a seat and watch my future ex-husband, Anson Mount smirk and agonize his way through another season of Strange New Worlds. The first season was rather hit or miss for me. The real attraction for me was Mount and a couple of the cast regulars, not the plots, which I found somewhat mediocre. The episodes weren’t bad, but I can think of ways they could have been better, and a couple of them were actually stinkers that I didn’t finish, and I hope the writers have improved on the mistakes of that first season. Anyway, I’m looking forward to this new season! I mean…look at him! The man is gorgeous! I also want to see the new guy they’ve got to play Captain Kirk and check out his interactions, if any, with Spock and Una.
The Muppets Mayhem
I’ve been a long-time Muppets fan since I was a little kid watching the TV series which used to come on in the evenings in the 70s, and I’ve been here for every iteration of The Muppets this franchise has been through. I like that we’re finally getting an Animal-centric show because he’s one of my favorite characters. I’m a little less interested in the band led by the guy I call Dr. Teeth although I don’t know if that is actually his name. I laughed quite a few times during this trailer so I feel confident that this TV series will be fun and funny. I guess this is going to be one of those Disney-centric summers for me. I’m probably going to have to break up all this sweetness with some grit at some point.
Star Wars Visions 2
Here we have yet another Disney series I’m going to be checking out. I talked about this one in one of my previous posts but I didn’t have a full trailer. I think the animation looks awesome.
The Equalizer 3
Okay, here’s that grit I was talking about, but it isn’t released until Fall, and I’m going to need it after all the sweetness and light I consumed all Summer. I watched the previous Equalizer films and more or less enjoyed them, although I think the first one was better because of the novelty. Here we have yet another over-65-year-old man who has decided to become an Action hero, although I think Denzel is still doing dramatic roles from time to time. These Action roles are probably what pays for that other kind.
For some reason, I had the impression I was one of the few people who remember the original television series on which this movie is based. There is also a remake TV series starring, of all people, Queen Latifah! which I still have not watched, but I’ve been told I should check out because it’s really good and I’m a Latifah fan.
I think what we need to do is get all these geriatric men together and make a movie of them blowing up stuff, but maybe we already got that with that Stallone vehicle called The Expendables? I don’t know. I think if we added a few more women like Halle Berry and Helen Mirren, along with Danny Glover and Morgan Freeman, it would make a hilarious little franchise, and they could all crack jokes about being “too old for this shit!” while wielding mobility scooters as weapons.
Young Ip Man
I just finished watching the Donnie Yen franchise of Ip Man, so watching more Ip Man is not out of my wheelhouse. I already watched one version of a young Ip Man earlier this year.
I don’t know about y’all but I’m not getting tired of these Ip Man movies of which there appear to be about fifty a year. I don’t know how many movies they can make about one man’s life. I think at this point Chinese directors are just making up fantastical stories about enemies he defeated at this point, like the Wong Fei Hung movies. If anyone ever decides to get all of these different real-life characters together in one movie (Wong Fei Hung, Wong Kei Ying, Yip Man, Bruce Lee, Huo Yuanjia along with the fictional Chen Zen) we’d have a great movie if it was choreographed by Yuen Woo Ping.
Things I Ain’t Looking At
The Boogeyman
Not that this isn’t interesting, but I feel no urge to watch this.
Fast X
Yayuh…no!
White Men Can’t Jump
And its the big Nope-a-dope for me on this one. Quite frankly, I wasn’t all that hot about the original movie, which starred Wesley Snipes, and my brain keeps comparing this movie to that one, and coming up short.
And by America I pretty much just mean me! I want to watch these movies and shows because they look pretty interesting and/or fun. I’m all about sweetness, bright colors, and light, this Summer.
I’m looking for wholesome. I’m looking for people of color to do interesting things. I’m looking for some amount of novelty (but not too much). I’m looking for lovely and loving messages. Some of the darker stuff on this list isn’t released until August, which is when I start looking towards a more solemn Fall viewing list, in preparation for Halloween Month, of course.
But from May until then, “Don’t nobody bring me no bad news!” because Hot Girl Summer is out. Hot Movie Summer (all thirty minutes of it in the Midwest) is in!
Summertime (Whooo!!!)
Polite Society
Okay, this looks novel and deeply funny. I’ve never watched a Bollywood, martial arts movie, so I’m up for watching this. I will not be seeing this in any theaters though. This one is just for at-home viewing only. I’m here for Hindi Action Girls even though I have issues with watching dance routines breaking out in the middle of Action movies. This seems like the kind of movie where breaking into a dance simply makes sense though.
Queen Cleopatra
This actually turns out to be a kind of live-action documentary. It’s funny that this trailer showed up right after I read a mystery book that prominently featured the character, so I was somewhat informed about Cleopatra’s background before watching it. This is not a person that I’ve ever paid a whole lot of attention to really, so I don’t know much about her backstory, but this looks gorgeous, and hopefully, it will be informative and worth the watch.
I like that they cast a Black woman in this role although I kept hearing from historians that she was Greek and Iranian. I mean, that doesn’t rule out her being at least part Black nd here she looks like a woman of mixed ethnicity, but you know it’s just gonna bring out the racists and bigots who are sure to be mad about it, and while I do my best to ignore them (since their rantings have affected nothing in Popular entertainment), I’m still very tired of them.
Star Wars Visions Season 2
I have mixed feelings about the first season of this series. I liked maybe half of the animation in the first one. I hope that the ratio of good to bad cartoons is better this season, although the novelty has worn off. I hope it’s not all one style of animation. I like to see different types. I’m also hoping to see a lot more Old Republic-type stories, too. We got a little bit of that in the first season, but I hope to see more.
Ahsoka
I love to see Latinas in Sci-Fi and love seeing them get the full hero treatment. I’ve been a huge fan of Rosario Dawson since she starred in Men in Black twenty years ago. Ahsoka has been a favorite character of mine for a while and I’m always happy to see her whenever she makes a cameo (The Mandolorian) but here she’s got an entire series that’s all about her and I’m here for it. What kind of adventures is she having? Where has she been? I’m looking forward to finding out.
The Marvels
This looks really colorful and fun, and I’m looking forward to hunkering down in the theater with this movie, some popcorn, and an Icee! It definitely looks more appealing than the first movie, which I thought was okay, but not great. The addition of Kamala Khan is going to be great for the movie since I enjoyed the sensibilities of the series. I just liked how bubbly she was and the series felt happy in general.
I liked Kamala’s family a lot. I liked that they are from the Islamic faith and that they’re mostly onboard about Kamala’s superpowers. The Peter Parker days of keeping it all a secret mostly appear to be over. Nowadays the hero’s parents and friends all seem to know about their status as heroes, and that’s kind of refreshing since I was never into the idea of superheroes leading these kinds of double lives. Daredevil I can understand but a lot of others just seemed to be pointlessly having a secret. Also, I haven’t seen Monica since Wandavision and I really like her. I’m glad to see Photon, the original Captain Marvel, is making a comeback, and wonder what she’s been up to. I also like Brie Larson’s cocky little Carol Danvers who is so much like that in the comics. This is a character who has POWER, knows it, and carries herself like it, and I’m good with that.
Also, I love it when my favorite characters team up.
Secret Invasion
I have mixed feelings about this series. I was never a fan of the Secret Wars and Invasions series in the comic books so I have no particular urge to run to my TV to watch this. But it is novel in that it’s the first time I will get to watch Samuel L Jackson star in his own TV series. The action scenes look really cool and it’s got a lot of cameos, so that looks like fun. It does look like it might be confusing though and my fried-up brain doesn’t want to go near that. I don’t hate it but I’m not loving it either. We’ll see how I feel when we get close to the release date. I mean some shows seem okay but you just don’t know if you want to make that kind of long-term commitment. A two or even three-hour movie is a fling, but a six or eight-hour TV series is a love affair!
Autumn:
I’m really looking forward to at least a couple of these this August and September.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter
I was feeling mixed about this when I first heard about it. I was wondering why it was being made, but I like this trailer, hope the movie lives up to it, and by August I’m probably going to be looking forward to some grim and dark movies for Fall anyway. The title sounds appropriately dreadful and it’s been a minute since I’ve watched some good Horror/History.
I will not be taking my niece and nephew to see this unless they specifically ask, because I think it looks too scary for them. On the other hand, my nephew did watch all of the Halloween movies, so we’ll see if I will be watching this in the theater alone.
The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster
This looks like an interesting take on the Frankenstein’s Monster movies of my youth. It’s not every day we get to see Black girl mad scientists. I don’t know that I’m enthusiastic to watch this, but I’m putting it here because it’s just different enough from the other Horror movies that it bears mentioning. You can see that the lead character is reading a copy of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. I read that book when I was somewhere near that character’s age and I was unimpressed, although I did like the Kenneth Branagh version from the 90s.
True Detective Night Country
I’ve been a True Detective fan since the first season, (with season 2 being the weakest of the three) even though I don’t normally make Detective series a regular part of my viewing habits. Most of the time it’s because I don’t care for the sometimes obnoxious personalities involved, although the series Psych is an exception to that. I don’t think you can get any more opposite of the Psych style of TV series than True Detective though. It looks very dark (literally in this case) and gritty, and about as close to Horror as a show can get without actually being classified as Horror. I’m also partial to shows and series set in snowy environments (I blame the excellence of 1982s The Thing remake for my rather odd taste.)
The novelty is this will be my first time watching Jodie Foster star in her own series. The last time she was in a TV series was when she was a child in the 70s. I’ve been a big fan of hers since we were both kids and I wasn’t supposed to be up late watching her movies. I’m not “jazzed” about it, mostly because this doesn’t seem like the type of show one gets jazzed about, but I am looking forward to it. I don’t know who her co-tar is so I had to look her up. She is a boxer who is an Indigenous Rights activist and has won some award nominations for her acting debut in Catch the Fair One, which I have not seen (and not likely to see since I am not in the headspace to watch it right now. But it looks great and yall should check it out). I kinda like her already because of her “fuck around and find out” facial expression.
So far, there’s no release date for this, but I’m expecting it to show up in the middle of high Summer.
The Penguin
This series is not set to be released this year but I’m looking forward to it anyway. Apparently, that is indeed Colin Farrell, who I just don’t see in this character, no matter how many times I’m told that’s him. He is completely unrecognizable! (Although I think they’re doing the most on his makeup.) I did like the last Batman movie but I had a couple of misgivings about the villain. I liked the aesthetics and some of the messaging. I also liked the hyperrealistic gritty Gotham that was presented in the movie. This trailer sort of reminds me of a classic mob movie like The Godfather or The Untouchables, something that should be starring Robert DeNiro or Joe Pesci.
The Continental
This is a series a lot of people are eagerly anticipating. The world of John Wick is just a very intriguing sort of place and I’m interested to find out how it works, how it got that way, and how deep all of this goes. One of my friends pointed out to me that she couldn’t get into it because there is no law enforcement in this world, even though it looks very much like ours. I think I pointed out to her that there are quite a number of things that are NOT in the Wick-verse, (like McDonald’s and Soda) and that I liked it because it had some unique worldbuilding, which, in the best instances, is like getting a glimpse into an alternate universe where the police simply never evolved. These other organizations (the Assassins Guilds and the High Table) are the ones that keep order apparently.
Unfortunately, the addition of the racist and anti-Semitic Mel Gibson greatly reduces my enthusiasm for this series. I’m not boycotting the series or anything. I’m just saying that my enjoyment of it will be severely impacted by his presence, which I find deeply distasteful, and I really wish the creators had chosen another actor. I realize he’s got to work somewhere. I just wish he was starring in something I didn’t particularly care about, so I’m going to wait to see how much of him is in it before I commit to watching it.
Next up: Movies (and TV) I had no intention of watching but will probably end up looking at on some idle Saturday afternoon.
These are not smart films. I actually made a small list of those films a couple of years ago and I’m reasonably certain none of these movies were on there. What constitutes a “dumb” movie could be lots of things, but mostly it’s the plot and characters. I really hate dumb characters and by that, I mean characters that do very obviously stupid things, that no one in their right mind would do, but this character has to do it to move the plot forward. Sometimes it’s a plot that is entirely hinged on how stupid the characters are.
Sometimes it’s not the entire movie that’s dumb but one major plot point that takes me entirely out of the movie and makes me yell at my screen. Normally, I hate dumb movies, but sometimes a movie has at least one redeeming quality that allows me to sit through it with a minimum of fuss, while I just laugh at the dumb sections. And yeah, there’s a reason why all of these are action movies. It’s easy to compile a list of dumb action films, but harder to make a list of dumb action movies I will watch multiple times because I like the actors, or the action is really good, or just because of the lead-up to that one scene.
Sometimes the movies are stupid, but a great deal of fun, usually due to the strength of the personalities involved. The Rock and Nicholas Cage, for example, could star in just about anything, and I’ll watch it. It’s always great fun spending time with either of them, just don’t always expect an intelligent plot. In some cases, like Scorpion King, don’t even expect a coherent plot. Some movies are very well-made but are corny and/or silly, like Independence Day, although Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum manage to save it.
Cobra (1986)
Cobra is a Sylvester Stallone joint from 1986. Now, Stallone is no stranger to making dumb films and the 80s are pretty much famous for dumb Action movies so this was bound to happen. I remember watching this movie late one night when I was probably supposed to be asleep and thinking, “This movie is deeply stupid.” Which was true but it was also deeply funny with lots of happy and mindless ultraviolent fun. It’s one of those dumb movies that gets repeated viewings on the strength of Stallone’s performance and the cinematography. The movie just looks cool.
The 80s was known as the golden age of what we now call Copaganda. Movies about cops and other law enforcement officers being rebels, breaking all the law enforcement rules, and pretty much acting like America was still in the Wild West stage of history, were all the rage back then. Just about every other Action movie starred a rebel cop or an FBI agent blowing stuff up, and frankly, I’m glad we’ve moved on from that to having other types of professionals blowing things up, like assassins, car valets, and insurance agents.
This movie has all the usual tropes. There’s the rebel cop with the cool name, Marion Cobretti, Cobra for short, a hot blonde played by Brigette Neilsen, who I kinda liked back in the day (I don’t know why). Brigette plays a business/model named Ingrid because what else are you going to name a six-foot-tall blonde white lady. Brian Thompson was your typical bad guy with a dubious philosophy and even more dubious plan for taking over the world by killing disabled people, I guess, because it was all very radically Dawrwinist, and he has a gang of followers and nameless henchmen.
When Neilsen’s character witnesses some malfeasance by the gang they need to hunt her down and kill her and she comes under the protection of Cobra who naturally falls in love with her. But that’s really not what makes the movie fun. What makes the movie fun is the action and the dialogue. Yes, the dialogue is stupid but it was really fun to watch these characters trying to emote while being too tough to show their emotions, and I actually liked Stallone’s character. Neither he nor the villain will be winning any Mensa awards so they’re about evenly matched. He and Cobretti get into a knockdown, drag-out fight at the end of the movie, which I enjoyed watching (I don’t know why.)
10/10 will most likely watch this again on some idle Saturday afternoon.
Nemesis(1992)
Nemesis is a cyberpunk action thriller from 1992 that contains all the well-worn tropes of a Copaganda/Robocop Ripoff. There is a burnt-out cyborg cop, a wayward former partner, a manhunt, a missing computer McGuffin, or bomb, or something, and several beautiful but deceitful cyborg/AI women. It also stars three of my favorite actors, Olivier Gruner, Tim Thomerson, and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa ( I don’t know why.) And I don’t think it was a coincidence that Brion James was involved in this movie. I was not a fan of Brion James, but I guess I am now, because he was everywhere after his stint as a robot in Bladerunner, so I built up a tolerance. This movie is bad in all areas of badness. The acting is atrocious, the action scenes are well done but make no sense, and quite frankly I didn’t care enough about any of the characters to root for or against anyone, but I remember watching this blatant Robocop rip-off multiple times, and will probably do it again at some point in the future since it’s free on Youtube.
For some reason, I was really crushing on Olivier Gruner at the time and remember watching several movies just because he was the star. He could be described as a low-rent version of Jean-Claude Van Damme, and he does have actual martial skills. Here, he plays an ex-cop, who is also a cyborg, named Alex. He gets recruited by an old boss or something to hunt down his former partner who runs some kind of underground rebel group. The plot involves a lot of shooting and blowing up of things. Do not even try to make any sense of the plot because you’ll only hurt yourself. I, on the other hand, am a professional bad movie watcher. This is what I do and I couldn’t even make sense of it.
I think I just liked the idea that half the characters in this movie were cyborgs, and the dialogue was pretty funny, even if the delivery was horrible. Nowadays, I’d watch it because there is a considerable nostalgia factor involved. But I don’t think you should watch this movie just because I have no shame.
The Rock(1996)
I wanna start off by saying that okay, Michael Bay is a horrible director, but I had to watch most of his 90s movies to figure that out, apparently. I did eventually learn my lesson and stop looking at them but not soon enough to miss seeing this. It also has the added benefit of starring both Nicholas Cage and James Bon- uh, I mean Sean Connery. Ed Harris is in this too and he’s worth about two and a half Connerys. Both William Forsythe and Michael Biehn (from The Terminator) also star in this movie, so Bay somehow managed to gather some of the hottest action stars of the 90s to take part in this novel, but still somehow mediocre plot.
This movie has everything. SEALS, the SAS, the Pentagon, ex-government prisoners, a rogue general, some rogue Marines, Alcatraz island, nerve gas, rockets, hostages, threatening an American city for ransom, and did I already say it? Nicholas Cage and Sean Connery hating to work together to accomplish their goals.
This is a movie where the plot actually makes sense in that it’s relatively easy to follow and keep track of people’s motivations, more or less. It did pretty well at the box office, a lot of people seemed to really like it, and it even won an Academy Award for Best Sound! But I’m going to argue that it’s the earnest and occasionally charming performances of the actors that make it so watchable.
The Rundown(2003)
Have no doubt, this is a dumb movie, that makes no pretense of trying to seem like it’s smart, but I love the hell out of this deeply stupid film. The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) stars in this movie and while he is not known for making smart films, he is such a fun and charming character in all of his movies (even though he pretty much just plays different versions of himself) that I always enjoy watching anything in which he shows up.
The movie also stars two more of my favorite actors, Christopher Walken and Rosario Dawson (and Stifler from American Pie, but I am not a fan of him though). The Rock plays a bounty hunter who gets sent to Brazil to hunt down his employer’s son, who is in Brazil hunting an object called The Gato (a gold-plated cat. Why? Who cares!), which is also an object of seeming importance to both Rosario and Walken. The three of them juggle this McGuffin between them for most of the film while Dwyane tries to keep Stifler alive to get him back home.
There are jungle scenes, a political resistance camp of some kind, angry monkeys, toxic fruit, explosions galore, a herd of stampeding cattle, and a batty Scotsman who spouts biblical scripture, and is also a helicopter pilot! Frankly, this guy is my favorite character in the entire movie. You have to watch it just to see the last thirty minutes, which is how I stumbled across it on cable, one idle weekend.
Universal Soldier(1992)
This was my and my Mom’s favorite Jean Claude Van Damme movie. She was a huge fan of his (so was I) and she really loved this deeply goofy film which we watched and laughed through multiple times. Now the movie isn’t exactly dumb but it is a bit cheeky. It takes itself just seriously enough that the introduction of those cheeky little moments of humor don’t feel out of place. The plot is non-sensical (in the sense that the science behind it goes completely unexplained), but also surprisingly easy to follow. Oh, did I mention that Dolph Lundgren is in this movie? No. Well, I should have, because that man can chew scenery like nobody’s business, even though he’s only playing a low-rent Arnold Schwarzenneger.
Jean Claude and Dolph play a couple of soldiers who died during some kind of personal skirmish in Vietnam, but through the magic of science fiction movies, they get resurrected as Special Operations soldiers who decide to pick up where they left off. But the best character is Veronica, played by Ally Walker, as a television journalist trying to get the latest scoop about some dead soldiers, who is also a great audience stand-in, as she speaks our minds most of the time. She spends most of the movie not believing what’s happening to her, but never comes across as stupid, which was very refreshing. She also gets all the best lines and I love her!
Why this particular military team is committing war crimes in Vietnam, long after the war is over, is never explained. Why do these two US soldiers have clearly non-US accents is never explained (although the writers do try to sell us the idea that Van Damme’s character was from Louisiana, so there’s that)? Why these two characters have beef is also not explained (outside of one of them being crazy). They just do. But the writers do make sure to explain why Jean Claude needs to take his clothes off in one key scene, though. There’s a little bit of Robocop, a little bit of Apocalypse Now, and the action scenes are, of course, EXTRA. With butt cheeks!
My mom and I used to crack the hell up so hard at this movie, which we watched every single time it aired on TV, no matter how late it was.
The Fifth Element
I just want to make it very clear that Milla Jovovich is a horrible actress, yet for some reason, she keeps getting cast in Action movies even though she has all of the fighting grace, and emoting talent of a 2 x 4, and I blame this movie for starting her Action movie career. I just wanna let it be known that while I don’t like her very much I am willing to tolerate her when she’s surrounded by better actors like Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, and of all people, Ian Holm!. Hell, even Chris Tucker, as an androgynous television presenter named Ruby Rod, while deeply annoying, is at least trying to be funny, and more or less succeeding.
But the standout character and the one which most moviegoers remember is Diva Plavalaguna, a blue-skinned, tentacle-headed, 7 ft. tall opera singer, who gets about five minutes of screen time, but still manages somehow to steal the whole damn movie (by twerking), despite the distracting hairstyles, fashion sensibilities, and atrocious accents of all the other characters. Ian Holm plays a space priest, and I don’t know what Bruce Willis is doing in this movie, other than being himself, but they are the two most normal characters in the entire movie, which is kinda saying something, but I’m not sure what.
Bruce Willis’ character has to escort Milla’s genetically perfect mutation to a special location so she can save the universe from the Darkness or some such nonsense. This involves lots of aliens, elemental stones, kung fu, Gary Oldman choking on a cherry pit, and shootouts with said aliens. Don’t bother to follow the plot. It’s essentially meaningless. On the other hand, the director somehow managed to get the French fashion designer, Gautier, to do the costumes, hair, and makeup for the film, so pay attention to that.
The movie is a visual treat and occasionally funny, with acceptable action scenes, but do not mistake any of that for greatness. This is very much a niche movie for Sci-Fi Action fans only.
Venom
I resisted putting this movie here but finally relented because although I enjoyed it immensely, it’s not a smart film. I liked the characters, but they are not especially bright and there are a number of things that remain unexplained. The pacing is off, the plot is easily followed but makes little sense, and the dialogue needs some serious help. That said, the movie just leans into its inherent goofiness, with no shame, and I kinda liked that. It’s a lot of fun, mostly funny, and bears almost no relation to the things going on in the comic books, outside of the characters’ names.
This film was popular mostly on the strength of Tom Hardy’s performance as a journalist that’s kinda like himself, and the alien symbiote who falls in love with him, named, of course, Venom. Michelle Williams and Riz Ahmed are also starring in this but no one remembers that. This is strictly a Tom Hardy joint, where he plays a man possessed by an alien that takes over his body, falls in love with him, and decides it doesn’t want to join its murderous brethren in taking over the world and eating humanity, although it still wants to eat people.
The movie’s got some problems, which is everything in the movie that’s not Tom Hardy. But I am a huge Tom Hardy fan so I was able to tolerate all the other problems in this movie like the dialogue, the plot, the villain, and the special effects. Still, I was able to pull a handful of things that I really enjoyed besides Tom, like the relationship between Venom and his character is funny, and the relationships between him and most of the other characters are quite wholesome. Even the villains are suitably despicable.
I think most of this movie’s fans would never argue that this is a good movie. However, if you are a fan of Tom Hardy…it’s a great movie!
Face/Off
I tried to add other movies to this list but I kept coming back to this movie, which I have watched multiple times. Like the above-named films, the science and plot are just sort of hand-waved away, which gives me the nagging sensation that the movie is unfinished, but doesn’t otherwise hinder my enjoyment of this spectacularly goofy film. I think you can guess that I’m a big John Woo fan. He has made a number of these types of movies with some silly plots, starting with the very first one I ever watched, Hard Boiled. That movie was so wild that I had to backtrack and catch some of his previous movies. I didn’t love them all. John Woo is the kind of director that can just make you watch a plot that, if proposed by any other director, would get them laughed out of the studio, and I am here for it. It is the existence of John Woo that makes the John Wick franchise possible since he is the one who pioneered what we now call Gun-Fu!
Get this. Nicholas Cage and John Travolta play a cop and a criminal (it doesn’t matter which is which) who get their faces surgically altered in Travolta’s face-swapping plot to, pick one: blow up some shit, get revenge, or steal something. How about all three? Good! There’s all kinds of battiness going on in this movie, multiple Mexican standoffs, little children oblivious to shootouts happening just out of their fields of vision, nuclear bombs, boat chases, husband swapping, endangered daughters and wives…you name it, it’s probably in here, and all done with a style and swag that makes John Woo the Godfather of modern action cinema. The only thing this movie is missing is Chow Yun Fat, the star of Woo’s previous Hong Kong films.
As you can imagine both Cage and Travolta are chewing the scenery like it’s a BLT, but there are, as in all of Woo’s films moments of startling beauty and pathos that make it worth taking a look at. But if you’re going to start watching John Woo’s films, don’t start with this one. It’s best to ease into it with something like Hard Target or Mission Impossible 2, to prepare yourself for all his slow-motion, Mexican standoff finery.
Double Impact
I know a lot of people would pick Hard Target, which is pretty dumb but this is quite frankly one of the dumbest Jean Claude Van Damme movies ever made, and that is saying something when you consider some of the other films he’s famous for. This movie, like Universal Soldier kind of knows how silly it is, and JC more or less plays these twin characters completely straight, except every now and then he does or says something with that little mischievous twinkle in his eye that lets you know he knows this movie is deeply silly, and he looks like he’s having the time of his life.
Jean Claude plays some kind of yoga instructor who likes to show off his leg flexibility to the ladies in his class (seemingly the only reason they are there is to look at JC’s butt in tights, and I’m not gonna lie, that’s why I would attend such a class). Of course, back in the day, JC would take every opportunity to show off his naked leg muscles at even the slightest provocation. He is separated from his twin brother when they’re children after their parents get killed by some Hong Kong Triad gangsters or something. Anyway, they meet again as adults and have to team up to take down the people who killed their parents even though the two of them intensely dislike each other, which makes for some brotherly shenanigans as they show their love by punching and kicking each other. Eventually, they do get along long enough to blow things up.
To give you some idea of how silly this movie is, there is a completely unnecessary dance scene, with JC working it out with a couple of beautiful women in what appears to be a shed, and I enjoyed this scene immensely. It never fails to crack me up, mostly because it matches absolutely nothing else in the entire film, and yet is entirely in keeping with his character’s character! The brother, also played by Jean Claude, does not dance, hates black silk underwear, and is a grumpy, unlikable, stick-in-the-mud, who still somehow manages to make that look cool, and yet also appears to be living his best life.
You have to watch this movie just for the dance scene, because JC, unlike a lot of white guys I know, can actually stay on beat and appears to really be enjoying himself, as he should.
Bonus Movie:
Prometheus
I don’t even know where to start with this movie. I have friends who like this film and I guess if you turn your brain off and only see this as a Horror/sci-fi/Action film, it’s okay, but my problem is I know far too much about how the scientific method works to ever enjoy this movie. I kept getting pulled out of the movie by the character’s actions.
These are quite possibly some of the stupidest scientists to ever grace a Science Fiction movie. And the non-scientists aren’t too bright either. These people are so stupid they had me screaming at my television screen and that’s not a good look for any movie.
There are a good half dozen dumb character moments in the movie, and if you’ve seen this movie, then you know which is the worst one, but if you haven’t let me illustrate this for you. Towards the end of the movie, two characters are running away from a massive rolling ship (do not ask why it is rolling, you will only hurt yourself). One of the characters manages to avoid being crushed by the ship by accident. She falls down (as is traditional in Horror movies even though she isn’t wearing heels), and the other woman (who is wearing heels) also manages to fall down but does not avoid being crushed. Both characters could have avoided the entire thing by just not being stupid, and running into the wide open spaces to either side of the rolling ship!
This is my whole feeling during the entire movie!
You have scientists getting lost who aren’t supposed to be getting lost, people afraid of things they’re not supposed to fear, and/or touching things they’re not supposed to touch.
Here is my watchlist for the Summer, yall! Every year, I plan my movie-watching well in advance. Unlike some people, I don’t just pay money to see everything that gets released. I don’t have that kind of throw-away money. I carefully pick and choose the movies I’m going to see and especially the ones my nieces and nephew like. I think this discernment accounts for my complete lack of burnout when it comes to watching Action movies. I make sure to choose the ones which are going to maximize my fun.
At home, I prefer to experiment more. I’ll try thoughtful, slow, and considerate movies like Women Talking or the new sound movie Last and First Men, martial arts movies, documentaries, and Horror and Classic films. In other words, I like some variety and I do discriminate. But when I go to the theater I go for fun, thrills, laughter, and adventure. I’m not spending money to cry and be upset because I can do that at home for free (and I no longer subject myself to Black trauma films).
So here is my Summer Blockbuster movie list. These are movies I’m sure I’ll be watching this Summer and feel very enthusiastic about seeing (more or less).
In The Theater
The Little Mermaid
I’m not especially enthusiastic about seeing this movie, but my niece wants to go see this and I don’t deny her stuff because I think she knows martial arts (I’m not sure about that last part but I don’t want to test it.) This looks like a pretty faithful adaptation of the original cartoon. It’s a beautiful colorful movie, especially the underwater scenes, though I am not a fan of Disney’s live-action remixes. But like I said, I guess I’ll be going to see this one.
Barbie
After seeing the latest trailer, I’m actually excited to see this. I grew up with all the Barbie dolls, and her accessories, like the apartments, vehicles, and pets, so I love her. I even have a few of the Christmas, Designer, and Specialty Barbies, along with several Black ones, and that one Latina Barbie. My niece has expressed a great interest in seeing this, although my nephew has nixed the idea of going himself. This trailer is absolutely hilarious. I already love Simu Liu’s Ken, and Ryan Gosling is absolutely perfect!
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
This is one my nephew and I will be very excited to see. I remember the Beast Wars from books but I don’t remember watching the anime. I while I like the Transformers, I haven’t always liked the movies. This looks like a lot of fun. I’m noticing a trend here this Summer: Lots of Latino and Hispanic actors and lots of Black men and women are joining the Summer Blockbuster schedule. Well, I’m here for it. It’s very refreshing.
Blue Beetle
I did read the Blue Beetle comic books when I was a teen. These were the Ted Kord books when he was in the Justice Society and hanging out with Booster Gold. When the character was rebooted with this new kid I read a couple of those books too, so I’m more or less familiar with Jaime’s origin story. This movie looks cool as f***, and I also like the idea that his family already knows he’s a superhero and they encourage it.
Across the Spiderverse
I’m really excited about this, and so are a lot of other people it seems. I enjoyed the first movie immensely. My nephew and I are the biggest Spiderman fans ever. We are gonna have a ball, eat popcorn until we get sick, and then talk about this all the way home!
Guardians of the Galaxy
I’m a huge fan of the movies. I have never read a single comic about these characters. I’m not entirely sure that I wanna go see this because I know it’s gonna make me cry just like the last two. Apparently, this is a Rocket-centric story, as well.
The Flash
I’m not sure I’m going to see this but I am excited about it. I put it on my schedule.
At Home Movies
The Blackening
This looks hilarious and hilariously accurate! OMG! The tagline! They can’t all die first! This movie is already hitting me in the feels. This is based on a short movie I remember watching on Youtube.
In the Fall I want to talk about the amount of diversity I watched in the movie selections this Summer.
They Cloned Tyrone
This is airing on Netflix. It looks like fun and stars John Boyega and another all-Black cast.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
I’m not a huge TMNT fan but I’m familiar enough with the movies, books, and TV shows to find my way around a movie. This looks like fun and I’m told the turtles are being voiced by actual teenagers this time.
Fist of the Condor/Sakra/Once Upon Time in Ukraine
Here’s a trio of martial Arts movies I plan to watch this Spring and Summer. They all look novel and/or fun.
I’m gonna be honest, while I’m “mildly” excited to watch this, I don’t know that I’d shell out the money to go see this movie in a theater. Due to family issues beyond my control, I would have to watch this alone. Some movies are good for watching alone, but this one isn’t. It looks like a lot of weird fun that you share with your buddies.
I’m mostly interested in seeing Jonathan Majors’ giant screen breakthrough because I really really like him, I’ve heard that the character he’s portraying, Kang the Conqueror, is a huge Billy Bad Ass in the Marvel Universe, and because this movie kicks off one of the multiple plot threads of this new phase of the MCU, The MultiversalWar. Each movie after this one will be a piece of that story introducing us to alternate universes and other realms of consciousness and existence, like the Quantum universe in this movie.
Guardians of the Galaxy 2.5: Christmas Special
This movie looks like so much fun. Unlike the many fanboys who insist on complaining about the direction of the MCU, it seems that I actually do have a sense of humor. I love the MCU comedies, and I do not understand why all the MCU movies must be dark and deadly serious all the time in order to be taken seriously. I love the direction in which Thor was taken. I thought it was great fun and definitely better than the emotional slog that was Thor 2. Sometimes you don’t need or want great cinema, you just want the creators to lean into the craziness of whatever you’re watching.
Guardians of the Galaxy has been something of a comedy from the beginning, mostly because of the nature of the characters, and that last movie and this new one just sort of lean into it a little bit more. I’m looking forward to this one more than the Antman sequel because I really like spending time with all these deeply funny goofy people, and I’m glad that the creators and writers are just fearlessly leaning into the sheer batshittery of this part of the universe, because C’mon! Really!
Chevalier
I’m just coming off the finale of the Interview With the Vampire series which I’m going to have to talk about at some point because Wow! so, I’m really in a good place mentally to feel excited about seeing more Black men in wigs and stockings! It’s one thing to see Black and Indian women doing the whole ballgown movie thing, but we don’t often get to see Black men in these roles unless it involves Shakespeare or playing a servant.
I love the look of this film, and there’s the added attraction of it being based on a true story, that of a French Caribbean composer named Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Joseph Bologne. I’m a sucker for beautiful costumes, beautiful music, and sword fighting, and you throw in some Black people and I’m in, I guess!
John Wick 4
I just had the most interesting discussion about this movie with my co-worker, who said she had a real problem suspending her disbelief while watching these movies and kept getting pulled out of the film. I told her I didn’t have that problem because it never even occurred to me what I saw as taking place in a world like this one with the same political and systemic setup. I had always viewed this franchise as taking place in some kind of fantasy alternate universe, where you can just be riding through the streets of downtown New York with swords and guns and not one person would blink an eye at it.
This is what I mean when I say that whatever your mindset is when you start to watch a movie will probably determine how you’ll feel after having seen it. Anyway, this looks great and I’m eager to sit down in a theater with some popcorn and enjoy two hours of sheer Keanu Reeves, Donnie Yen, and Hiroyuki Sanada mayhem!
Violent Night
This looks like such wild and crazy fun that I just have to see this. This is definitely one of those movies that you can go see by yourself at the theater. I don’t know that I’ll do that but it’s an option. It looks like a Christmas version of a John Wick movie except it’s Santa Claus using magic and probably some guns which I know all of you must be excited about as well.
Glass Onion
Still don’t know what to make of this but I will not have to go to the movie theater to see it. I can just watch this, whatever this is, at home on Netflix. I like most of the actors here and quite frankly I was going to watch any movie that starred Dave Bautista, Janelle Monae, and Daniel Craig because these are not actors’ names that one tends to think of as being together. This also looks to be more comedic than the first film, which I didn’t think was especially funny, but apparently, that’s just a me thing.
For some reason, I’ve been watching a lot of comedy mysteries this year. I just came off the Hercule Poirot movies, The Orient Express, and Death on the Nile, and I will probably be watching See How They Run this weekend. I don’t normally gravitate to period mysteries. I’m not opposed to them or dislike them or anything. They’re just not the sort of movies I tend to gravitate to, so when I get the urge to do so, I flow with it.
Maybe I’ll Watch These
Bones and All
I’m not sure I’m in the mood to watch anything dealing with cannibals but I’m willing to watch this if it’s streaming. If it’s in the theater then it’s out of luck. I’m not spending a bunch of money to see this, although it seems intriguing.
Shadow Master
Yeah, this is a movie that’s just going to be watched via streaming only. This is not the kind of movie I would ever watch in a theater. I mean, Kung Fu movies are meant to be watched in the house, with popcorn and a remote.
Warriors of the Future
Fortunately, this is a Netflix jam so I don’t have to spend money on my curiosity about it. Okay, it really doesn’t seem like it’s a lot of fun, in the sense that it’s intentionally funny, but it does look thrilling and action-packed, so I guess that’s a kind of fun.
And Movies I’m Not Watching
Avatar 2
I didn’t care too much for the White Saviorism of the first movie. In fact, I found that movie infuriating in a way that I didn’t for movies like The Last Samurai, or Dances with Wolves. I’m not arguing about how beautiful it is but I think I’m gonna wait to watch this next year on some streaming service. Since my niece and nephew aren’t going to be with me, and this is really the kind of movie one watches with a group of people, I’m unlikely to see it in a theater anyway.
The Whale
I do not have any particular need or desire to spend money to see this. Plus this looks like one of those movies where there’s going to be a lot of crying. I’m really glad Brendan Frasier has made this return to making movies. I missed him, and this actually looks alright, but I’ll catch this on streaming.
I Wanna Dance With Somebody
I’m not going to sully my memories of Whitney Houston with a biopic. I just can’t do it.
M3gan
This movie is probably going to blow up once it comes out becomes it looks unintentionally hilarious and there are already a bunch of memes about it! I’m not paying money to watch what is essentially a killer-doll movie, but I’ll go see it my sister pays for my ticket because this seems like the kind of thing she’d attach herself to.
I still do not understand after all these killer doll movies why anyone would ever build life-size killer robots that look virtually indistinguishable from an actual person. I don’t understand the plots of movies like Bladerunner and stuff where that kind of thing happens. Why would human beings still be doing that? Have we learned nothing?!!! On the other hand, this could just be an American thing because the Japanese build life-size robots all the time and they don’t ever seem to have this problem with the robots trying to merc people.
The reason I rushed to get that last post published so quickly was that I had just watched the film, and wanted to get it all down while the images were still fresh. I’m probably going to mention things in this post that I forgot to mention in the last one or not mention some stuff I simply forgot. I’m still in something of a rush to write this all down before I forget my impressions of these characters, (I have seen the movie a second time since the first post). I didn’t walk into the movie thinking about things to look for. I walked into it remembering an interview I saw with Peele where he mentioned that his inspiration for this movie was Jaws.
There Are Going to Be Spoilers!!! There Are Going to Be Spoilers!!
To make a movie this ambitious (it is more than 2 hours long) and in an effort to save time, Peele has engaged in a certain amount of film shorthand, namely archetypal characters. Archetypes are typical examples of a certain type of person often seen in movies. Archetypes are characters that the audience is meant to immediately recognize (mostly on a subconscious level), understand who they are, what their purpose is, and sometimes a broad concept of what actions they’re going to commit. There’s nothing wrong with archetypes (unless they’re badly used or written), most films use them, and they’re meant to save storytelling time. Peele has used at least three different archetypes here, and they mostly seem to map very well to the archetypes from the movie Jaws, which is on Peele’s recommended watchlist as inspiration for this film.
The Archetypes
The Cowboy – Oj
Drawing on his depth of knowledge of genre films Peele has engaged the archetype of The Cowboy in the form of OJ. While the definition of the cowboy is a guy who rides a horse to herd cattle, the image of the cowboy in the US is anyone who exhibits the behavior and trappings of a cowboy, which Oj does. He’s heroic, strong, silent, and highly principled, and has mastered the understanding, training, and use of horses. But what he most reminds me of with his jeans and hoodie are the urban Black horseriders called the Compton Cowboys which tickles me to no end!
When it comes to comparisons to Jaws, Oj is the one most like Sheriff Brody. He is the person trying the hardest to hold things down, hold onto his father’s legacy, and he is dedicated to his job and devoted to his family. Like Brody, he has trouble making his voice heard even when he is right, and is the kind of man willing to make the sacrifice play to defend what he loves.
The Prodigal – Emerald Haywood
Em is the classic Prodigal Son archetype. The Prodigal in movies (this definition is outside the literary version) is often a younger brother who has left home because they couldn’t reconcile themselves with the wishes of their father and seek a better life for themselves. Em comes back home from Hollywood after her estrangement from her father, and reconciling her issues with her dad (and brother) achieves her final goal. There is no Prodigal character in the original Jaws so the addition of Emerald is wholly unique. Another wholly unique feature is that this Prodigal is a Black woman who, while working in tandem with her brother, turns out to be the hero of the movie and a Classic Final Girl.
The Wild Card– Jupe
Another archetypal character is the wild card. Jupe isn’t a wild card because he’s unpredictable to us. Like Quint in Jaws, he is a wild card to the other characters who don’t know enough about him to figure out what his goal is. The wild card character has their own agenda and their own motivations. As long as they can accomplish their goal they will work with anyone, on any side, they will switch sides, betray others, or form alliances based entirely on what they can get out of the arrangement. They are often arrogant and opportunistic. This perfectly describes both Ricky (Jupe) Park and Quint. I consider Jupe a wild card because his goals are not consistent with the goals of the other characters, although, on the surface, they may seem to be and he is willing to seem as if he is their ally. But his primary goal is to exploit the UFO and the circumstances for his own monetary gain and his motivation is based on the mistaken belief that he can.
The Common Man/Man in the Chair – Angel
The closest Jaws character to Angel is probably Hooper, who is there to study the shark, handles all the tech and equipment, and has no stake in the affair other than being friends with the protagonist. I talked before about how every genre story needs to have one character who can speak for or represent the members of the audience. This character’s job is to voice the audience’s concerns or do the things that audience members wish they could do like having a grand adventure, being friends with the primary characters, or just surviving the event. These characters are unlikely to be killed, because they have no real stake in the proceedings, so they are more like witnesses. Angel, like Hooper, isn’t someone who really furthers the plot in a big way, but he is the character that is most like us, finding himself in an incredible situation that he must now deal with in a way we hope we would.
The Characters
Ricky (Jupe) Park
Jupe is one of the deepest characters in the story and the one about whom we get the most in-depth backstory. Like the Mayor from Jaws, he is also the closest thing we get to a villain, or antagonist, as it is the choices he makes that set the plot in motion. One thing viewers may not have gotten is that the alien/ufo has taken up residence in the valley where the Haywood Ranch exists because Jupe has been feeding it the horses he’s been buying from Oj. Oj has been selling him horses as a way to pay for the Ranch’s upkeep, with the full expectation that he can buy them back. When Oj tries to discuss buying back his horses, Jupe distracts him with his famous backstory. Even though we can see the pain in his eyes and that he has not, in fact, moved on from the trauma, he tells Em the story anyway.
That scene is also an echo of Quint from Jaws in the scene where he is telling Em his story of what happened on the set of Gordy’s rampage and is a callback to Quint’s recitation of his own trauma aboard the USS Indianapolis, and something which informs his motivations for hunting the shark. You have these two characters who have not moved beyond their trauma, which has led to the delusional belief that they can control/capture these wild animals, which subsequently, gets them killed. Jupe’s scene doesn’t have the same level of gravity as Quint’s scene because it happens fairly early in the film before we’ve really spent much time with the character, but it serves the same purpose as a “pivotal moment” that each character has in their backstory. It is the moment that made them who they are in this one.
Jupe has the idea that because he survived Gordy’s rampage on the set as a child, and because Gordy, who was trained to give him a fist bump, was in the process of doing so before he was killed, that he has some special connection with animals. He has entered into a kind of devil’s bargain with the alien, where he feeds the creature horses every weekend, and as a result, the alien has taken up residence near his theme park, and specifically, near the Haywood ranch, where it steals the occasional horse and dumps its “spoor” on their land. Jupe’s mistaken belief that he has mastered this alien creature is one of the larger themes of the movie.
Jupe has not dealt properly with the trauma of what happened to him as a child. He continues to dwell in the headspace of that event, and coupled with his need to hold onto the fame of his youth, this makes for the disastrous outcome we see in the movie, where he presses his luck, and for his trouble, he and his audience get eaten.
If you look closely, you’ll see that each character holds onto some object from their past that is representative of their personal trauma. For Jupe its the little gray shoe which he keeps on display in his memorial room.
Emerald Haywood (Em)
The scene that most completely encapsulates the type of person Emerald Haywood is is the scene in the tech store where she’s laying out her plan to capture photos of the ufo to her brother, and she briefly interrupts her spiel to compliment some lady about her clothes. It’s a blink and you’ll miss it moment, but when I saw it I burst out laughing because that’s just so HER. She does things like that where she just randomly compliments people. Em is a person who is constantly giving and looking for approval, not just because it helps her accomplish her goal of being a Hollywood star, but because she seemed to always be trying to win her father’s approval.
Em’s “pivotal” backstory is when she was about nine years old her father promised to teach her to train her first horse, which she named Jean Jacket, but she never got the chance because her father chose Oj in her stead. She says after that their father never seemed to see her. He only had eyes for the heir to his legacy, Oj. Subsequently, she has spent the rest of her life trying to be seen, trying to gain somebody’s, anybody’s, attention. That’s what all the hustling and charming, self-referential patter is all about. She left home to go to Hollywood for fame and fortune and spends her time trying to convince other people she is special, not understanding that she was always looking in the wrong place because her brother already knew she was special (for being able to do the thing he could not do which was break free of his father’s shadow) and he has always been able to see her.
The one thing that Em holds close to her that exemplifies her trauma is her father’s speech which he used to introduce himself to his clients. In her attempt to be seen by her father she has memorized every word and inflection (even his stammer) of that speech.
There are a number of callbacks in the film, like the scene where she watches her brother being trained on her horse, Jean Jacket, and he looks up at her and points to his eyes, and then to her. This is recalled at the end of the movie when he does it again and she returns the gesture. One of the primary themes of this movie is seeing and being seen. Capturing the alien’s photogragh is her Jean Jacket moment. He is giving her this chance to put her shit down and show the world what he always knew she was capable of.
And for that, we anime fans are gifted the extreme pleasure of seeing her do The Akira Slide!!!
Otis Haywood Jr. (Oj)
Each of the primary characters has a pivotal story in their background that informs their character, motivation, and actions at the end of the movie. Oj’s pivotal story is that his father chose him to be his successor rather than Emerald who seemed to want it more. When they were kids, she was set to train a horse she named Jean Jacket and his father changed his mind and chose him for the training instead, which led to Oj being his legal heir. Subsequently, he got all the training (and hence his father’s attention) with Em’s horse. The first job he went to with his father was on the set of The Mummy spinoff movie, The Scorpion King 2, (which is where the orange hoodie comes from) but he was deprived of his chance to show his skills when the creators decided they didn’t need horses and would use camels instead, and has spent the years since then as his father’s assistant, never getting the chance to build the confidence that comes from working on his own.
The representative object that Oj holds close to him is the orange hoodie with the Scorpion King logo. It’s emblematic of the pivotal childhood event where he never got a chance to use his newly trained skills on his first job, and was relegated to being nothing more than his father’s assistant.
One of the reasons Oj is so reticent/standoffish on the set at the beginning of the film is that is actually his first job alone, after his father’s death. Before that, his father did all the talking and handling on the set including that little speech memorized by Em. Oj didn’t have to try to hold everything down or talk to anyone on set because Dad had everything under control. (Up until one’s parents are gone you always think you’re ready for whatever, and then when they’re gone, you have to actually find out if you are.) The orange hoodie represents him finally picking up the reins from his father, and the corralling of the alien (and the protection of his family and legacy by doing so) is really his first job.
Oj, because of his understanding and connection with animals, is the first to recognize not just that the ufo is actually a territorial predator that must be respected as the animal it is, but the significance of the actions he and Em are about to perform. It’s Em’s first training job too, only she will be corralling an alien predator. It is Oj who names the alien Jean Jacket as a tribute to that moment.
While we’re here, let’s talk about how Oj survives multiple attempts by the alien to consume him, something that Jupe doesn’t. Oj is a very different character from Jupe and his sister. He doesn’t seek fame or attention, and the special connection with animals that Jupe only thought he had, and Em wishes she had, is something that Oj actually possesses. Due to his training with animals, he is the first to discern what they are dealing with, and unlike Jupe, he never forgets that an animal is an animal, and no matter how much training that animal has, it has a mind of its own, and it can still be triggered into violence. Em may be jealous of his skills but she is willing to recognize his expertise, listen to him when he tells her about the alien, and follow his directions in dealing with it.
As for Oj’s demeanor, some of the primary markers of autism are avoiding eye contact with others, anxiety in social situations, finding it hard to make friends or being a loner, noticing small details that others don’t, and difficulty discussing feelings. Oj displays many of these traits which is why some audiences like to read him as being autistic, an idea I support because I happen to be autistic. The first time we see Oj at work he is almost painfully withdrawn. He refuses to make eye contact, looks nervous/disinterested about being in the presence of so many strangers, and shows a reluctance to speak or draw any attention to himself. When he feels pinched he calls for Em to do what she does, and we feel almost as uncomfortable as he seems to be. (I winced through that entire scene, and it’s my least favorite one, not because it’s badly written, but because it’s such a great depiction of social anxiety/being the center of attention.)
Em and Oj‘ Relationship
I really enjoyed this movie because yeah, I’m attracted to spectacle, and it has plenty of it, but it also has great characters and great relationships. Otis Jr and Emerald really resonated with me because their relationship isn’t all that different from me and my oldest little brother, and the personality dynamics aren’t too far off either, except I’m the one who left home and came back, and he’s the more garrulous one. I’m one of those people who say about twenty words a year, and only under duress!) I’m an artist and dreamer, he’s a talker and fixer-of-things who thinks his big sister is an absent-minded nerd who needs to be carefully looked after. This is not unlike how Oj thinks of his little sister as a dreamer who is smart, but flighty. He’s willing to listen to her ideas because he respects her intelligence, and because of the force of her personality, which is how I often have to convince my know-it-all little brother to do what I want.
If you watch the movie carefully you realize that the only person Oj physically engages with is his sister. It’s not that he doesn’t interact with other people but recall the scene where he and Em are celebrating a victory, and slapping hands. Oj acts that way with no one else in the movie. He is almost always monosyllabic and averts his eyes from everyone else, even Angel, who he only warms up to slowly. Palmer and Kaluuya have such great chemistry that you actually believe they’re brother and sister. They both have issues surrounding their father but don’t let that get in the way of their own relationship or ability to work together. Em listens to her brother and trusts his expertise, especially when it comes to what he’s been trained to do. Oj listens to what his sister has to say, and goes along with her plan, recognizing her drive and intelligence.
AngelTorres
I like to refer to Angel as the Common Man, or Everyman because, like Hooper from Jaws, he is an outsider, and of all the characters he seems most relatable to the average person. Like us, he doesn’t live, work, or have loved ones in danger at the Ranch, nor does he have any real stake in the proceedings other than being friends with Em and Oj. His life will not be greatly upheaved, outside of his interior sense of self, after this is all over. He is not there to save the Haywwod’s ranch or make any money off the alien.
Angel gets a tiny bit of backstory and I like him for that. Angel operates like the sibling’s “man in the chair”. He helps set up their equipment and then spies on their attempt to capture images of the ufo. He tells the siblings that he just broke up with his girlfriend and is searching for something greater than himself, and even though he doesn’t say it, he’s also looking for friends, and somewhere to be other than by himself. He meets Em and Oj at the tech store where he works and is immediately intrigued by them. Seeing their presence in his store as a call to adventure, he invites himself into their lives, and them into his, offering to let them stay at his home after an incident that causes them to flee their own (and offering them his clothes). Angel is that childlike part of us that seeks thrills and adventure (and new friends) with no consideration of the actual danger.
I’m a sucker for the Found Family trope, so Angel immediately endeared himself to me by inserting himself, totally uninvited, into an event that has nothing to do with him, and then holding his own, as if he totally belonged there. He is a quick and clever thinker and one of the few people actively pursued by the alien that saves himself by simply making himself taste bad – rolling himself in barbed wire! (He makes himself unattractive to the camera!) Although Angel spends most of the movie frightened out of his skin, he does make reasonably intelligent decisions, the kind we’d like to think we would make in such a situation. He’s out of his depth and he knows it, but he never backs down, or runs out on them, and manages to keep his sense of humor. His loyalty to Em and Oj is baffling to some people, but having been an introvert on the receiving end of being unexpectedly adopted by an extrovert, I get it.
One thing tied to my last post is about the scene where the mantis obscures the view of one of Angel’s cameras, and how in Christian mythology a praying mantis in the home is a sign that angels are watching over you. Some audience members pointed out that there actually is an “Angel” watching over the house during that scene.
*Okay, now this one is also getting a bit too long, and I can see that this is going to require a part 3 because I haven’t really talked about the monster, its significance, its depiction, what it represents, and one other character people always forget about when talking about a film, the landscape!
**Yeah, I did go back and see the movie a second time. I had not planned to do so, but when the opportunity presented itself for my sister to pay for it I jumped at the chance. There is a certain amount of glee involved in watching a Horror movie, with your easily frightened and already nervous sibling, that you have already seen and lording it over them just a little bit. That’s just one of several perks of being a sibling!
Hey, we got a bunch of exciting new trailers that recently dropped so let’s check them out! Which ones are you looking forward to, and why. Let me know in the comments!
Jurassic World: Dominion
This is such a great trailer for the movie. I would watch an entire season of short snippets of people coping with dinosaurs, so I’m really excited to watch this. I hope it’s a really good movie because this was the kind of stuff I used to imagine when I was a kid and I don’t want to walk out of the theater disappointed.
Wow! I mean just think about it! What if dinosaurs existed at the same time as modern humans? We’d have to take the good (incredible images and photos) with the bad (possibly being eaten). What if you lived in a place with a dinosaur infestation? What would your insurance be like? How would you explain being late for work because there were some triceratopsians blocking the freeway? What if the local pack of herbivores showed up in your backyard and ate your flower garden? And let’s be honest here, there is a part of me that thinks watching human beings be menaced by giant predators is just deeply entertaining.
Incidentally, if you like this video there’s a trilogy of books by James David called Footprints of Thunder that has this same plot, with dinosaurs having made it into the modern world through a time rift! Not sure if it’s still in print but if you can find some copies, check them out.
As I mentioned before, my youngest niece and nephew have already decided we’re going to see this film, and I believe in shamelessly indulging their interests. My Millennial sister likes dinosaurs too, so I hope to turn this into a full family affair, (although my oldest niece may miss out because of work).
The Winchesters
Okay, I have no intention of watching this. I watched all 15 years of Supernatural and I have no more taste for their story. I stuck it out to the end, and have moved on. More than likely this is an appeal to a younger generation of supernatural fans who while they may have watched the old episodes, are probably more likely to watch this than those of us who sat through 15 seasons of the original series. The actors are all very pretty but I don’t know any of them and I don’t want to supplant any of my memories of the original with any images from this one, so I’m going to pass on it.
But I know there are some people who are greatly interested in this, so I’m giving y’all a heads up in case you hadn’t heard the news.
The Umbrella Academy
I am very excited about this series and I’m really looking forward to the season three premiere. If you haven’t seen the first two seasons, I implore you to check it out. There will be at least one character you will fall in love with. I thought the character I would love the most was Klaus, who acts like a free spirit but is mostly traumatized by his ability to speak to the dead, and so self medicates. To my surprise, my favorite character turned out to be Number Five, an old man in a child’s body (due to time mishap) and who is the smartest sibling along with being a complete badass.
But this series is notable for having Eliot Page. Eliot came out as non-binary transgender last year and everyone was wondering how the character he played on screen in seasons one and two would be treated in the story. It appears that the character has also come out as transgender since the writers changed the name of the character from Vanya to Victor. Hopefully, Victor won’t try to destroy the world again as they did in the first two seasons. See how new this is. This is something that so different from what we’re used to that I don’t even know how to talk about a fictional character. How do I talk about Vanya? Is it deadnaming to talk about her since the new character is named Victor? And is it okay because she’s fictional? Somebody help!
She Hulk
I was a huge fan of the Jim Byrne run of the She-Hulk comic series, and I love what they’re doing here with the character. They seem to have perfectly captured the sensibility and mood of the books and now I’m looking forward to this. It looks fun and funny. I love how they made her a sexual being with appetites who makes it clear that she wants what she wants. The comic book version was often sexy and sassy, with a lot of snark and attitude, and yeah, Bruce Banner is indeed her cousin.
All that aside, I do hate the CGI. It looks awful and cheap and simply not up to Disney standards. The face is just wrong, especially in her Hulked-out state, and her body looks too thin, and not very muscular, which is a real problem I have with female characters who are supposed to have super strength but whose arms look like twigs. I hope they correct all this by the time the series airs. (Note: Jane Thor and King Valkyrie have just the right amount of muscle for such characters).
Note: I read that the CGI has been upgraded to look a bit better, so I checked it out, and the trailer was improved a bit. She looks more muscular than before, but her face still looks a little bit off to me. It’s not as bad as in the original trailer though.
Sandman
I have not read the Neil Gaiman comic books on which this series is based, something I plan to correct before the series airs in August. Since I am only passingly familiar with The Endless, I don’t know enough to be really excited about this, but so far, I like what I see, and I’m looking forward to reading the books, and watching the show.
But, whether or not I watch this also depends greatly on what else will be out at the time. Sometimes I have every intention of watching some show or movie, and then I don’t, or only watch some of it, not because it’s bad or anything, not because I’m bored, but because it’s sometimes hard for me to keep up the momentum, which has been stolen by another series. But even if I don’t watch the series, I intend to refresh myself with the books, which I haven’t even glanced at since I was a young’un.
New Thor 2 Trailer
Well, I already had plans to see this. Yeah, I’m an MCU fan and no shame in that, because I go to the movies to have fun and adventures, and MCU films deliver every single time. If I’m gonna spend that much money to be entertained I want it to be worth it. (Yeah, I’m not going to pay the cost of birthing a child in the US to watch a movie about pain and tragedy, unless it’s by Martin Scorcese.)
One of the primary reasons I love Taika Waititi (the director) is his ability, almost his compulsion, to take famous characters, sometimes famously evil ones, and deconstruct them, making them human and relatable, while never denying they’re not actually good people. He did this with vampires, Hitler, pirates, and superheroes, and he’s done the same thing for Thor, and I find it a really interesting habit. I’m gonna have to talk about that some more in another post.
So, yeah I’m looking forward to his interpretation of Jane Thor, King Valkyrie, and this new villain, Ghorr the Godslayer, who is played by Christian Bale.
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning
Okay, these actors are starting to get up there in years, (except for Rebecca Ferguson, who I believe might be a vampire), but I don’t care. The Mission Impossible franchise consistently hits it out of the park in the Action genre, and you have the usual required scenes of Tom Cruise jumping onto something while clenching a woman, and running really fast somewhere. I’m probably not going to see this in the theater because it’s simply not on my list of movies to watch this Summer. My mom used to throw my whole watchlist into disarray every year, but fortunately, I can dictate to my sister’s kids, and they kinda have to go along with my tastes if they wanna eat free popcorn.
I don’t actually have much to say about this trailer except the Action doesn’t look as wild and crazy as it has in previous films, but maybe they’re just holding back on those images, and when you’re sitting in the theater you’ll get that familiar sensation of your stomach dropping down to your knees, and you’ll clench the arms of your seat in terror, and paying five thousand dollars to see it will have been worth it.
Willow
I don’t normally engage in a whole lot of nostalgia, but for this movie, I will make an exception! The original movie was released in the 80s, and when it was available for TV, I remember watching it multiple times. It’s been thirty+ years and we have a sequel television series. As soon as I heard there was a trailer for this, my mind started playing the John Williams theme from the original. Yep, I still fondly remember that.
The reason the movie was so special to me was because of Warwick Davis. He was my first exposure to a dwarf actor, and I thought he was very handsome and very charming. In the movie, he is tasked with the care of a tiny baby girl that is the “chosen one”, But the movie isn’t about her, because she’s, like, one year old and has no speaking parts, so much as the hero’s journey of Davis’ character, Willow. It’s a little bit of a remix of Snow White, and surprisingly progressive for its time, with a woman warrior character and an evil Queen.
This sequel happens many years later and the “baby” is an adult, and Willow and some companions have been called to save their world again. The original was also my first real exposure to High Fantasy that I actually liked, as I was mostly indifferent to these types of books and movies, and most of them made no impression on me. But Willow snuck in and got to me, and I’m obviously going to have to do a deep dive before this series release!
I’m looking forward to it because it looks like a lot of fun and the nostalgia factor really kicked my ass while watching this!
Resident Evil
Despite that I’ve watched almost none of the movies, I do love a good horror series with lots of monsters, so I’m looking forward to this series. I’m not enthusiastic exactly, but anytime I’m watching a trailer, and I am sitting on the edge of my seat or just nope the fuck out (the giant spider scene), it’s definitely worth checking it out. so zombies, spiders, chainsaws, Black women being included in the story? I’m in!
I am glad to see more Black girls and women being involved in fantasy and horror movies and series. For the longest time, at least since the seventies, the existence of Black women as an audience that could be pandered to was not a thing. There’s nothing wrong with being pandered to in a narrative, despite the fact that straight white male audiences want to turn it into a dirty word, which is really ironic since for the past seventy years they have been the ones being pandered to by every form of entertainment media that existed.
Creators, almost all of whom were white men, literally didn’t think about other groups of people, in fact making it expressly clear that white men, between the ages of 15 and 35, was the ideal audience they were chasing after, and there is a contingent of online assholery that actually wants to go back to a time when we were considered nothing but maids, slaves, and servants to be abused in whatever stories we were in (hence the current online trolling of Black actresses who happen to find work in these genres). I’m glad to see these creators and writers remembering that WoC watch shit too, recognize that we also have money and choices, are willing to chase after PoC for their money, and that we want to see ourselves in these narratives as heroes and villains. Putting that message out into the world is one of the primary reasons I started this blog.
So yeah, I’m excited to see a Black girl in this series who is apparently being a total bad ass.
Strange World
I am a really huge fan of Lost World type movies, and my personal favorite is Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2. I just love watching movies about goopy aliens, monsters, and weird environments and this looks like hella fun, plus it’s got this retro-vibe that I find aesthetically appealing. I don’t normally watch a lot of the kid’s stuff on Disney, and I don’t go to those type of movies anymore (cuz I don’t have that kind of money), but I would pay money to go see this. I think it’s just going to be on the Disney+ app though which has more than shown it’s worth in the series Wandavision, Hawkeye, Moon Knight, and a bunch of movies and documentaries.
I’m not sure how I feel about the characters, because as I said many times, it’s not just a plot or some imagery that pulls me into something. It’s got to have at least one or two characters I’m drawn to, although the characters do look really cute! I didn’t see much of their personalities in this trailer so I don’t know what to think of them yet, (and although the pilot looks appealing, it doesn’t mean I will like her) but the trailer looks like weird goopy fun, which is enough of an attraction for me, I guess. It’ll get a look-see.
The Menu
And finally there’s this gem, starring Ralph, Fiennes, and one of my favorite new actresses, who I hope will be around for a good long while, Anya Taylor-Joy! I have the feeling this movie is about one of my favorite topics, cannibalism, and I’m always up for a good humans eating humans movie, especially if it’s an “eat the rich” story. I only just heard of this movie, so I don’t have a lot of knowledge beyond the visuals, but I will probably watch this when it streams.
There are few movies that feature the suburbs before the 1950s. Most movies, up to that point, were about city-living, because for most people, that was where the excitement was. All the action happened there, and the suburbs and small towns were places to escape from. You couldn’t have a life in those places. At least, not an interesting one. After the second world war, the suburban population exploded thanks to programs like the GI Bill, which allowed white people to buy homes away from the city, and the massive funding of the highway system, which allowed white people to flee the cities, and still be able to reach the places of work they left behind
While the GI Bill’s language did not specifically exclude African-American veterans from its benefits, it was structured in a way that ultimately shut doors for the 1.2 million black veterans who had bravely served their country during World War II, in segregated ranks.
If you want to discuss themes of conformity, existential angst, boredom, dullness, ennui, and escape from any of those issues, then you need to set your story in the suburbs, with its endless miles of strip malls, identical pastel housing, well kept patches of lawn, and daily rituals of pleasantness. The suburbs, in the movies, are used to represent stability, order, the status quo, and the mainstream. In other words, normalcy. In the ‘burbs, one day is much like the next, the unexpected doesn’t occur, and change is not encouraged.
The suburbs are often shown as unexciting places that are meant to be escaped from, or unexciting places into which some excitement falls, and the members of the community must deal with the repercussions, or the members of the community must fight off the encroachment of some thing, or someone, in order to keep the status quo, in order to return to “normal”. Many Horror movies set in suburbia followed the standard formula of something from the “outside” disrupting stability, and needed to be defeated.
The reason why Horror works so well in suburban settings, is because of the underlying sense of the suburbs as a safe space,. The suburbs were established as a place away from the “darkness” (i.e. PoC), and sins of the city, but in horror movies, the suburbs are invaded by something dangerous, that is either masquerading as a member of the community, like Fright Night. Sometimes the horror comes from within, when a disruption is caused by someone rebelling against a community which insists on controlling its members through authoritarianism, (The Stepford Wives), murder (Suburbia), or in one particular short story by Robert R. McCammon, He’ll Come Knocking At Your Door, being sacrificed to nameless gods, in exchange for good fortune. The theme is that the good fortune of living there comes at a price. It can cost the inhabitants their autonomy, their sense of individualism, or their lives.
The suburbs were created as a way to escape “the other”, (known as “White Flight”.) The suburbs themselves were supposed to be free from the encroachment of the violence, and incivility, and crime that white people were told, by the mainstream media, had overtaken the cities. What the residents did not take into account was that because of the inter-connectedness of American society, the decline of cities would eventually lead to the decline of the suburbs, as well. And, as PoC gained access to the suburbs, during the 80s, which was the height of the Slasher film era, those white people who could afford to leave, ran away to the ex-urbs, (a district outside a city, especially a prosperous area beyond the suburbs),leaving their poor white cousins behind. Since a system had already been set up, so that housing values declined with the “encroachment” of PoC, these white people were now trapped in these supposedly safe, but declining areas, being invaded by the poc they had been told they needed told to escape from, and unable to afford to leave.
In the early years of suburban movies and shows, the suburbs were a utopia, and saw the residents engaged in melodramas, or kids adventures, such as Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, and Peyton Place, but as television moved into the 60s, the movies, and shows, started hinting at the darker underbelly, as in the movies of Douglas Sirk, and shows about non-conformity, like The Addams Family. In these, the suburbs are shown to be a deceptive environment, where dark things could flourish behind its walls, like pedophilia, and domestic violence. It is not the actual environment of the suburbs that produce feelings of horror, and disquiet, but the people who live there. What kind of human beings could live in this boring, carefully arranged world, with its identical homes, and territorial picket fences? Apparently the kind who are hiding secrets.
This may seem obvious), but suburban horror is known for being made in spaces where people are, but a film’s tension comes from where people are not. Slasher movies, in suburban environments, focus attention on hidden, dark, out of the way spaces, like abandoned houses, empty schools, and even deserted streets at night. The 1978 Halloween, for example, took place largely at night, and the streets and neighborhoods are curiously empty. There is the sense that other people are around, but they are locked away in the well-lit houses, where they don’t answer their doors to people in distress. Several times, in the movie, Laurie Strode, the movie’s Final Girl, yells for help in the middle of the street, or hammers on doors, to no response. For most of the runtime of the movie, she appears to be entirely alone in this environment, as she frantically dashes from house to house.
And there are secrets here, too. Secrets that eventually come back to disrupt the lives of the inhabitants. This is the premise of The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, in which the sins of the parents are visited upon their children, in the form of a dead pedophile, on which they’d enacted vigilante justice, by burning him alive in a school basement. Their sons and daughters are systematically murdered by this angry ghost. Angry ghosts are also the motivation behind hauntings, in movies like the 1982 Poltergeist, in which the Freeling family are haunted by ghosts in their brand-spanking new, suburban development, which was built on a cemetery from which none of the bodies had been removed. The ghosts in the Amityville Horror from 1979, go back even further, as the movie posits that the house was built on Native American burial grounds. The metaphor here is that the suburbs are not as historically, or emotionally, sterile or pristine as its inhabitants are led to believe. This land has a backstory, and its foundation is built over a dark, and malignant, underbelly.
Sometimes, these stories are cautionary tales, about distrusting people, and usually follow a standard formula of something from “outside” infiltrating this peaceful space, and masquerading as one of its inhabitants, as in 1985’s Fright Night, in which a teenager becomes convinced that his new neighbor is a vampire, or that there is some form of corruption growing within it, like Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, in which an ordinary looking menace is hiding in plain sight, or just living in the suburbs itself is the danger, in movies like The Stepford Wives from 1975, and 2007’s Disturbia.
A classic “the horror comes from outside” story is Steven Spielberg’s 1976 Jaws. Amity is a small New England suburban town, that is visited by an avatar of death, in the form of a mindless killing machine, a Great White shark. The town’s new Sheriff, Martin Brody, himself an outsider, along with a local boat captain, and a wealthy marine biologist, have to destroy the shark to restore order, because, according to the Mayor, no tourist will visit a Summer town where they can’t swim at the beach, and without tourists the town can’t survive. The presence of the shark threatens to throw the entire economic system into disorder, and destroy the town. Along with an intrusion from an indifferent outside force, such movies also included trash talkin’, about cities, as hellish landscapes, filled with crime and poverty. In one scene, Martin Brody explains to Richard Dreyfuss’ Matt Hooper, the reasons why he left the city:
Brody : [Drunk] I’m tellin’ ya, the crime rate in New York’ll kill you. There’s so many problems, you never feel like you’re accomplishing anything. Violence, rip-offs, muggings… kids can’t leave the house — you gotta walk them to school. But in Amity one man can make a difference. In twenty-five years, there’s never been a shooting or a murder in this town.
The idea of the suburbs, as a safe haven from the death and disorder found in cities, didn’t get it’s start in horror films, but it was one of the reasons used to get White citizens to buy into the value of living so far from the it. That nothing ever happened there was part of the appeal. Brody’s postioning of Amity as an innocent, place that is free of danger, is thoroughly ironic, considering one of his kids is almost eaten by the shark.
Because Horror films, (and real life), have shown us that terror and death will come for us all, and cannot simply be escaped by driving further away, across some water, or in the movie, It Follows, in the water.
In It Follows from 2016, several teens living in the declining suburbs of Chicago, are hunted by an avatar of death that is transmitted via sexual activity. The beautiful, but listless, Jay has already experienced tragedy with her father’s death, but after a sexual encounter with a young man who is not who he claims to be, she finds she is being stalked by an invisible, powerful entity, whose only purpose is to kill her. She can stave off death by having sex with someone else, thereby passing it on, but she will never escape it entirely, because just as in the real world, one cannot pass off death to another to save oneself, nor know the hour of one’s death. The film’s theme is based on the existential angst, that comes to the young, only after they begin to realize their own mortality.
…and you have no suspicion that death, which has been making its way towards you along another plane, shrouded in an impenetrable darkness, has chosen precisely this day of all days to make its appearance, in a few minutes’ time, more or less…
— — — Marcel Proust — The Guermantes Way
In Suburban Horror, the suburbs can be infiltrated by something dangerous, that may be masquerading as a member of the community, as in the movie Fright Night, from 1985. Jerry Dandridge is a vampire, able to successfully blend into the suburban environment, by simply conforming to the manner of dress, rituals, and behavior of its inhabitants. He is handsome, polite, charming, and friendly, introducing himself to his neighbors and accepting, and extending, invitations. His house is well taken care of and he causes no disruptions. He fits right in, thereby not arousing suspicion, except from a single teenage boy, that no one believes. Not because no one believes in vampires, but because Jerry laughs at people’s jokes, and wears turtleneck sweaters. Witness the scene when Charlie calls the police to investigate Jerry. The detective visits Jerry’s home and finds no signs of disorder. The lawn and hedges are nicely kept, the garbage is taken out, and the “gardener” says Jerry is away on a business trip. The horror comes from the idea that this “safe” place is harboring a creature that is only pretending to be human. It is especially telling that this movie was released in the 80’s, at the height of the AIDs crisis, as Jerry Dandridge is also a metaphor for another hidden monstrosity, the “predatory gay man” with his pretty face, loyal male hangers-on, and effete European mannerisms, who moves to the suburbs, so he can “infect” the children.
The suburbs are a stand in for conformity and authoritarianism. Sometimes suburbia doesn’t just produce, or expose, darkness, but actually IS the horror. Homeowners Associations, with their stifling and authoritarian rules about the length of the grass on one’s lawn, the color of one’s home, how many Christmas lights can be used, and/or the number of cars that can be parked in one’s driveway, eliminate any forms of individual expression, in favor of suffocating monotony. Obedient wives, toxic masculinity, and forced camaraderie are the norms illustrated in the film, The Stepford Wives. Based on the satire by Ira Levin, the movie takes place during 70’s First Wave feminism, as Joanna, a successful photographer, moves to the well to do town of Stepford Connecticut, with her husband and children. She grows increasingly frightened of her neighbors, and her gaslighting husband, who tells her there is nothing for her to fear. The horror in Stepford Wives is not the death of Joanna’s body, (although that’s part of it), but that she can see the death of her sense of self, through the deliberate destruction of her individuality. By the mid-70’s, the suburbs had received a reputation as the place where a woman’s dreams go to die.
As more PoC could afford to move into suburban areas in the 80’s, a siege mentality set in, as the residents believed their territory was being encroached upon, which partially accounts for the glut of slasher films released between 1980, and 1989, and all of the other suburban invasion films released along the same timeline, which pictured the suburbs being invaded by violent beings of all kinds, from aliens (Critters), to serial killers (Freddie Krueger), to creatures of folklore (Gremlins), that came there to kill, rape, or create disorder.
What the residents failed to take into account, and still do, was in fleeing the cities, they simply carried all of their pathologies with them, engaging in the same activities, from which, they were attempting to flee. After all, you cannot run away from yourself.
It’s a cheesy old adage, but it’s true. Wherever you go, there you are. What does it mean? It means that if you don’t like yourself, or you haven’t made peace with yourself for things you’ve done in the past, you will be dealing with that baggage forever.
You may even be cursed to make endless movies about it.
Geeking Out about It 