Movies I've Seen

Sicario Day of the Soledado - in which border crossers and coyotes help Benicio Del Toro almost smuggle a teenage girl into US witness protection. Benicio is still working for Josh Brolin, who is working for Matthew Modine this time. Matthew Modine is ruthless, and tries to start a cartel war in Mexico by kidnapping a kingpin's daughter and framing a rival gang. Okay, but Modine is just giving the orders, Josh Brolin is the one telling Benicio that once the teenage daughter sees who has her, she's gotta go as well. There are a lot of murders, and Benicio doesn't want to kill this little girl. He smuggles her across the border and she gets saved by Josh Brolin, Matthew Modine relents, and she doesn't get murdered, but they put the hit out on poor ole Benicio. He gets shot while hooded, so he survived and ended up working in a mall food court but he's still in the game. There is a subplot about a nice America (also Mexican) kid joining the cartel life for money, a...

Death Wish (1974) - in which the justice system fails a man who lost his family, and he goes off the rails in finding personal justice. I mean vengeance. Charles Bronson plays Paul Kersey, a husband and father and architect, who has a nice NYC life. One day, near the beginning of the movie, Paul's wife is murdered and his daughter is raped into a catatonic state, from which she will not likely recover. Sexist. Anyways, Paul is destroyed, so his boss sends him out to New Mexico, or another lawless state, for a 3 month long project. Paul does some recovering while he is out there, and is befriended by his big money client, with a big hat and big guns. Upon arriving back in NYC, Paul is disheartened to find his daughter in terrible condition, and his son-in-law coping poorly. There have also been no arrests in his wife's murder, as the police are very busy with a crime spree related to gang violence. Paul is a really sympathetic guy, and his pain is visible, and very real. So,...

Event Horizon - in which sci fi space body horror gets very fucking real, and totally gross. First, Lawrence Fishburne is a space captain named Miller, and his first mate is Joely Richardson, and she rocks. Her accent is real. A bunch of space sailors are escorting science genius Sam Neill to the wreckage of a space ship. It wasn't just a space ship, it was a massive black hole generating machine, and it recently re-emerged around Neptune, and now its just orbiting, being spooky af. To give all the details, Sam Neill, AKA Dr. Weir, is having creepy dreams about his dead wife in his cryo/gravi-sleep pod before they even get to the abandoned wreck. Oh, its called the Event Horizon. So, once the crew rolls up on Event Horizon they get nervous, because its creepy, and a few people go out to investigate the empty ship. Miller orders Dr. Weir to stay aboard their vessel, and he doesn't do a good job of listening. As soon as the crew splits up, one young guy gets sucked into the g...

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom - in which Owen Grady is popular with dinos, and Henry Wu gets away with it, again! So, if I don't do this now, I'm definitely gonna forget what happened in this movie. First, Claire is back on her bullshit, working for a paleontology based non-profit, advocating for the intervention of the US government into the Jurassic World broken down theme park situation, to save the remaining dinosaurs. There is a ticking clock on this work, as the island is also an active volcano that is literally now starting to erupt. Who is the bad guy? Um, first, some lawyer who works for Hammond's old partner calls Claire and offers to pay for dino relocation and suggests she enlist Owen's help. Claire convinces Owen to come by reminding him that he can once again see his dino-daughter, Blue. Once they are on the island with para-military forces to help round up the dinos, Claire and Owen are getting along great. There's two normies with them, one clas...

Incredibles 2 - in which gender stereotypes are challenged, and the villain is a girl. First, I had to rewatch the first one before I saw this, and it was cute. Now, Incredibles 2 has the Incredible Family move into a fancy new house, while Mrs. Incredible is being bankrolled to come back and be a super hero on the down low. Its supposed to generate goodwill towards supers, and might lead to the repeal of anti-super legislation. Keep that in mind, as all of the crimes Mrs. Incredible thwarts are fairly easy to solve, and they are all being perpetrated by the same criminal - The Screen Slaver, who uses strobe lights to hypnotize people into committing the crimes for her. Mrs. Incredible catches on, because she's no dummy, and after the framed Screen Slaver is caught, she won't relent and keeps investigating. There is this dope ass fight scene in a room full of strobing lights, and it looks amazing. Anyways, Mrs. Incredible finds out that the "benevolent" donors who...

Coming Soon, A Podcast of Movies I've Seen

Hereditary - in which family means everything to some people, and nothing at all to others. Annie has a nice family, with a husband and two kids, but her mom is kind of a pill. When her mom dies, Annie chooses not to go through all her belongings because she wants to respect her dead mother's privacy, I guess. It comes out that they had a bad relationship, even though Annie took her in and cared for her in the last days of her life. Um, it also becomes apparent that Annie was scared of her mother, and didn't speak to her for the first few years of her older son's life.      Ummm, this movie was so haunting and scary that I don't need a blog post to remember all the horrible stuff that happened in it. So, I will just say that his name was King Paimon, and just go watch it. I don't ever want to see it again. Maybe.

Monster! (Humanoids From the Deep) - in which the terror of Jaws is actually giant fish guys who will rape you. In a small town, in a fishing community, locals are preparing for a new cannery, but there appears to be some infighting about it. Well, the local Native American is opposed to the new plant and its science chemicals, but the town leaders call him some racial slurs at the Friday Night Fish Fry, and a fist fight break out. Our main character is a nice white guy who wants the cannery, but can't abide by doing racist shit to this nice neighbor. The violence starts early, with a graphic onscreen dog murder, followed quickly by several more canine corpses littered around the docks. Dog remains are found in a Chrissy-like pile on the dunes. Then, a cute couple has sex on the beach, only to be attacked by these fish monsters! The woman is raped, and the guy is murdered. Further down the beach, another woman is raped. The town folks figure out there are some dangerous things...

The Neon Demon - in which Elle Fanning is not as good of an actor as her sister. Sorry. Marketed as a horror movie, this starts out atmospheric and innocence focused, with a pretty girl being photographed by a guy who looks like a creep. I'm not really gonna start on how unnecessary it is to illustrate that the movie is filmed through a male gaze, because its about models, and its a major studio movie. Of course the lens is the male gaze. Whatever, skip it. So, over the course of two long ass hours, here's what happens. Elle is befriended by Jena Malone who is a makeup artist. She goes to a LA party where Jena introduces her to her mean model friends. Elle is only 16 (shock! she said her parents were DEAD), her agent tells her to lie about her age to everyone. She has a boyfriend in his 20's, she tells him her real age, and he doesn't leave her. Whatever, he also wants to protect her, he seems nice enough. Elle is staying at a seedy motel run by a grouchy Keanu Reev...

UPGRADE - in which the 'husband seeks revenge' trope gets fucked sideways, and something on the periphery reminds me of Pi. In the vaguely distant but unspecified future some hot, masculine dude still wants to drive cars the old fashioned way, and his future-savvy wife thinks its cute. His name is Grey, and he builds/restores muscle cars for money, and today he has built a car for a rich weirdo who lives in a desert in the basement. His wife comes along for the ride, and also so she can drive him home, in her self-driving car. On the way home, the car goes haywire and they crash, and some merc looking dudes come up and shoot him and his wife. Upon awakening, Grey is mostly paralyzed, and he is immediately suidical, even though his nice mom is there to help with adjustment. Grey is beyond pissed that he needs robots now. Fuck robots (not really!). So, the weirdo he sold the car to brings him out to the desert again, and offers him a chance to wear this new AI microchip out, ...

Logan Lucky - in which child beauty pageants are not played for comedy, but doing yoga is. Some schlub played by Channing Tatum is working in an underground construction site, and his name is Jimmy Logan, and he gets fired because he has a limp, and his daughter wants him to come to her Lil Miss West Virginia pageant rehearsals, but he's kinda busy getting drunk with his brother. His brother is Adam Driver, aka Clyde, who has a fake hand and is a total weirdo. So, they also have a sister who does hair and drives fast. The point is, it takes the plot a while to get going, and by then Jimmy has enlisted a group of rogue idiots to help him with his plan to steal money from the pneumatic tubes under the stadium he's been working under. For the plan, his one armed brother goes to prison, and breaks out with blonde numbskull Daniel Craig, and the rest of the prisoners do a fake riot to cover their absence. Its a small jail. So, they break into the tubes while a very famous race i...

Deadpool 2 - in which Deadpool cries like a bitch, and I do not. First of all, Deadpool is working, and then he goes home to celebrate an anniversary with his girlfriend, who tells him they can try to have a baby now. Also, he gives her a plot device for a gift, and she gives him her removed IUD. There is no sex scene, and then the two of them are just chilling, and some guy Deadpool neglected to murder comes and kills his girlfriend. Deadpool does not take it well, and even though he like, immediately got revenge on the guy who shot her. Ultimately, he feels both responsible and sad, so he tries to kill himself. It doesn't take. His friend, Colossus, shows up and takes DP to be a part of a B team of X-men, as an official trainee. They go to a showdown between a teen named Russel (Julian Dennison) and some jerks who run the orphanage he lives in. Russel wants to kill the guys who have been abusing him, and Deadpool kind of talks him down, until The kid tells him he was abused b...

Solo: A Star Wars Story - in which Han Solo has a does his first big heist, and its not a great success, but he sort of figures it out by the end. Its fine. Its... its fine. The movie starts is when Han is a teenager, and he's been an orphan for a while now, but he's not alone because he has a girlfriend and they are running scams for a local mobster. He grifts a little off the top, and uses it to bribe his way off the most depressing planet I've seen in a long time. Han tries to bring his girlfriend Qi'ra, but they get busted and she's dragged back to her grimy life of crime. Something cringey happens at the space airport, but whatever, I'm over it. Han joins the Army to escape Corellia, but it isn't working out for Han, so he defects after they throw him to a literal wolf, except its a tortured Chewbacca, and Han rescues him! So, they escape together, Woody Harrelson gives them a lift, and invites them to a heist, but it goes south, and they lose all o...

Ghost Rider - in which Nic Cage plays Johnny Blaze and some rando plays Ghost Rider and Eva Mendez fails all women. To start, some teenagers play Johnny Blaze and Roxanne as a couple in love, but Johnny Blaze can't commit to her because he feels like carny trash, and his dad has cancer. So, when Johnny finds out about his dad's cancer, he gets real upset, and is therefore vulnerable when approached by a Devil, and gladly exchanges his soul for his father's health. Joke's on him, because the Devil is a jerk and as soon as the cancer is gone, Papa Blaze breaks his neck, I guess, or he is mangled by a ring of fire. Its hard to say. Sad, though. Okay, so thirty years go by before Mr. Devil cashes in his Johnny Blaze favor, but in a chilling and tragic coincidence, he does it on the ONE NIGHT Blaze has a date to reconcile with Roxanne, whom he has run into as an adult. While Blaze turns into Ghost Rider and it looks terrible, poor Roxanne (Eva Mendes) is left stood up at...

Matilda - in which a little girl outsmarts everyone and is a telekinetic genius. So, this is based on the book by Roald Dahl, which I loved growing up. So, I knew everything that was gonna happen in the movie. It was a decent adaptation, and Mara Wilson was cute.Danny DeVito directed and starred and narrated the movie, so I guess he liked the book. So, the plot is that Matilda has a terrible family who discourages learning and reading and only watches TV and eats TV dinners. Matilda teaches herself to read at a very young age, because she is a genius. Her family is mean so she pranks them by dying her father's hair, and then one day she goes to a school with a monster Headmistress named Trenchbull, who has all sorts of tortures she does to children, and Matilda has a sweet kindergarten teacher named Miss Honey. Miss Honey is the only one who sees Matilda as the genius she is, and gives her special assignments to advance her. The twist is that Matilda has so much extra brain pow...

Throw Momma From the Train - in which Billy Crystal is made to look average-sized and sane by standing next to Danny DeVito. So, Billy Crystal is an angry ex-husband who wants his successful ex wife dead. He accidentally conveys a message to a student in his creative writing class that the student should kill his ex wife for him. Owen (Danny DeVito) is tiny and adorable and earnest and is just the best, so when he goes to kill the ex wife, he seems kind of sweet and dumb. See, Crystal was giving him advice on writing a mystery novel, so he recommended Strangers on a Train, but Owen is kind of dumb, and in a lot of pain from having to live with his awful mother and not kill her every day. So, he thinks the Strangers on a Train proposition in the movie is a coded but firm message from Crystal to do each other's murders. Crisscross. He flies to Hawaii and tries to kill the ex wife, and then he calls Crystal to say he did it, and because Crystal didn't have an alibi, he flips o...

Raw - in which France has the grossest veterinary school imaginable, and vegetarianism is the thinking woman's solution to the broken Greek system. Some skinny girl goes to the same veterinary school her older sister is currently attending, and her bitch sister doesn't even help her move in to the dorm she is sharing with a guy. Albeit a gay guy, but I'm assuming not all of the men in this coed dorm are gay. The first night the hazing begins, the freshmen are herded out of their rooms by threat of violence, and all of their mattresses are thrown onto the front lawn. It takes a surreal turn into gross-cinema discomfort at the rave they are all taken to and our tiny protagonist runs into her mean sister and is peer pressured into taking some club drugs. Things are just starting to get weird. Some kind of creepy things are happening, but it mostly just reminds me of the lonely horror of my college experience, except I wasn't peer pressured into eating a rabbit kidney, ...

Happy Death Day - in which the concept of Groundhog Day is revisited with black glitter thrown on top, to great success. Some basic sorority bitch wakes up in some dude's dorm and her ringer is crazy annoying but I still like it cause it kinda sounds like mc chris. Her name is Tree. She ignores the nice guy and runs out of his room. She makes her way back to her dorm, across campus, and it becomes clear that she is the sluttiest girl at her sorority. Her roommate is a total drag, and she keeps dodging calls from her dad. On her way to a party later, Tree gets brutally murdered, and on her birthday. So sad. But then, she wakes up again and its the same morning and she goes through a few rounds of this before she enlists the random guy's help, and he's really into the idea, but she does keep getting murdered until she learns how to build a human relationship with her 24 hour boyfriend. Oh, and also she figures out her killer and wins her life.

In the Mouth of Madness - in which Sam Neil is, yet again, the most sensible person in every room he's in. I think he plays an editor for a publisher that is waiting for their next novel from their biggest name author, but the author has holed up in a tiny town and has been refusing to communicate for some time. But, as soon as Neil gets to the tiny town, it is apparent that the place is weird and spooky and obviously the reason for the blackout. So, everyone keeps telling Neil that he should talk to the Wizard of Oz of the movie, who has a terrifying monster trapped behind a stretchy wooden door. Also, everyone keeps telling Sam Neil that he is the author he is looking for. It is confusing at first, but then it seems like they are right. When he finally gets to the castle, I don't remember how it ends.

The Boogens - in which some jerks try to reopen a haunted mine, but it wasn't haunted by the ghosts of the men who died in there. I don't know why not. So, some rando and his buddy are about to take the weekend off from reopening a mine with these old dudes, as soon as they blow these charges, they're gonna leave the old guys and go meet their hot girlfriends. The mine was caved in, and should be haunted by the spirits of old Prospectors, and I was looking forward to that, but instead it is haunted by some awful monsters that look like carved shit. Like, literal shit, and they just spy on the showering girlfriends and there are no ghost prospectors at all, as I was promised by the Netflix envelope! It was a silver mine, I think. If that helps.

The Hitcher (1986) - in which some nice guy, trying to do the right thing, pays the price for trusting literally anyone. So, C. Thomas Howell is this really normal, friendly guy, and he is driving home from college or something normal, and on a long, desert highway he picks up a middle aged white guy who is hitchhiking. This turns out to be a terrible mistake, as he begins to see what a creepy weirdo Rutger Hauer is, and he politely asks him to leave and tries to be on his way. Nope, Rutger Hauer murders literally the first family he meets who pick him up, and spends the next 24 hours framing nice C Thomas Howell for several murders and arsons, and making his life a terrifying nightmare. He's not being too careful, so he gets caught eventually, but he's done so much fucking damage, he seems pretty proud of himself and like he has fulfilled his mission. Its really rough.