No big deal, I finally picked a winner to rent. How have I not seen or heard of this before?! Soldier is like a Halo movie that pulls in references and easter eggs from, oh, I don’t know, a dozen different movies and cartoons? Let’s just go ahead and assume that this is a deep dive easter egg game like six degrees of Kevin Bacon, and Soldier is at the center.
Days since I suggested a movie to watch and it didn’t suck: 0
Called the #1 Dad Movie of all time. Am I Dad? Are we all Dad?
I’m late to the game here. I had heard that Top Gun: Maverick had broken all the earning records. I had heard that it was immediately universally loved. As a GenXer who grew up in the 80s, Top Gun is just one of those movies that holds a lot of brain space. It’s unavoidable. Inescapable. I mean, I didn’t go out and join the navy because I thought that Tom Cruise had shown me a vision of what real life on a big boat with fast planes was really like …but I did see an actual classmate at my actual elementary school lip sync “Dangerzone” at a talent show, in flight suit with helmet. That kid had full size adult balls and should have been able to immediately enlist as an officer at the age of ten.
Centering on a group of Maverick trained pilots who have to perform an impossible maneuver to destroy a uranium facility in an unnamed middle east country that is obviously …Sshhhh… Iran. They are tasked with performing a low-flying, pinpoint precision, high climb, dogfight, objective which has to be led by Maverick, when he proves to the training pilots that it can be done after, I swear, STEALING A PLANE to show that it is possible, because, “it’s the plane, not the pilot.”
There are a lot of nods to the original Top Gun. From the motorcycle, to the beach football, to baby Goose (fine, Rooster…) playing the piano just like daddy Goose, and singing “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling.” And no one DARE forget that Val Kilmer makes a brief but absolutely wrenching return as Lt. Tom ‘Iceman’ Kazansky. Is it exactly what you expected? Absolutely. But to all of those Rotten Tomatoes reviewers who are a small minority but expected this movie to be, I don’t know, Citizen Kane I guess… YOU ARE NO FUN. Calling it bland and basic is so obviously missing the point that I wonder… girl, you ok? I think you need to have your keyboard privileges revoked so that you can have some quiet time. And did you even see OG Top Gun? Is it silly? YOU BET. Maverick is just that with a better story.. and seriously, SERIOUSLY, badass flight scenes. Now I know that I was several drinks in from the opening credits when we watched this, but they were so well done that when Maverick banked left, I banked left in my seat. 10/10 high fives because I got a little motion sick it was so good.
The end is pretty speedy, Maverick chooses Rooster as his wingman, the mission is a pretty straightforward success, but Maverick is shot down, and Rooster returns to rescue him. Maverick and Penny Benjamin actually ride off into the sunset. No one even pretends that we aren’t wrapping everything in a bow.
I still don’t understand why every movie doesn’t have a happy ending this aggregious.
RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Oh how I love Major League and sports movies of the 80s variety. Summing up our plot, a rich widow inherits the shit Cleveland Indians but can’t sell the team and move it to Miami (because who wants to live in Cleveland…) unless game attendance is a record setting low.
Easy enough, just fire everyone and bring in a catcher, Jake Taylor (Tom Berenger), who has blown knees, Third Base Roger Dorn, (Corbin Bernsen) who is too precious to get in front of the ball, and pitcher Ricky Vaughn, (Charlie Sheen), just paroled. Let’s not forget Pedro Cerrano (Dennis Haysbert), can’t hit a curve ball, and Willie Mays Hays (Wesley Snipes), can’t hit anything.
As these things always go, the team starts off the year in the toilet. But gradually the players overcome their individual shortcomings and become a team that can compete and win in the end. This is not why we are here. We are here for subplot Jake and Lynn.
I remember having the most inappropriate crush on the Jake character. And why? There’s certainly nothing to see here in an old, overweight, white guy with bad knees who wears readers. I would not be dissuaded. Preteen me thought that the romance with his ex-wife was just dreamy. In reality, what we have here is a way past his prime Jake stalking his seemingly happy ex wife until she, far to willingly in my opinion, sleeps with him. Now Lynn the accomplished and smoking hot librarian has to decide whether she wants to dump her fiance for Jake. Let me tell you, THIS PLOT DID NOT AGE WELL.
Like, girl. What are you doing? This banker (?) who obviously has a nice midtown apartment, a 401k, and can take you to brunch whenever you want is the way. Not the guy who will get with other women on a dare and is going to bounce out of the pros on a medical at the end of the season, and yes I’m calling stalker. STALKER. But yes even I was smitten before I easily learned to do better than that trash. Ew. Never would I ever. 🤣
Favorite Character: Pedro Cerrano, one hundred percent.
RATING: ⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾
We aren’t actually reporting from the garage for the foreseeable future because it is mostly ice, rain, or cold outside. And we only have one slanket.
While my partner in crime was away for work I took the opportunity to watch Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin. There are some things that I don’t feel even he should have to endure for my company.
I don’t know what came over me because I never watch movies by myself, but I had decided that this was the way. I like found footage horror movies, he knows that they are trash.
Oddly, it was better than most other Paranormal Activity movies because it was more of a conventional horror movie, but like most horror movies, just filled with all the wrong decisions. And that brings the ✨magic✨.
Let’s just get to the part where we trash a few things about this dumpster fire.
The premise is that a young woman raised as an orphan, has found family through online testing and they happen to be Amish of a sort and live in a disappointingly gray world where they frown a lot and eat in silence. I get this. I am also convinced that my real family is out there somewhere, now that I have the adult benefit of seeing that I must surely be an alien foundling. She wants to make a documentary with some friends to capture this riveting story.
First and most obviously, real world me would have yeeted myself out the door at the first opportunity after meeting this house full of near certain cannibal Chainsaw Massacre cultists. After dinner, just nope the eff out with a stolen handmade quilt and the pretense of a walk. These people are going to lock you in a basement and make drums out of your skin. Just run.
Secondly, the haunted Church pit that they throw family into and contains obvious evil cave dwelling things (obviously no one had seen The Cave. They would have known..) is not given the gravitas that it deserves. And what it deserves is to not be stood over and pondered at. It is literally growling. Do they actually deserve to die? Let’s consider that.
There were so many opportunities to leave the farm, I didn’t feel sorry for anyone that had their body parts torn off. Even the mailman told them WHEN THEY COULD HAVE LEFT TOWN FOR THE THOUSANDTH TIME, that those people are just creepy cult weirdos, and definitely not Amish. You in danger, girl. By all means go back though, leading to the obvious result, which is that you are now a meal.
This all reminds me to watch Midsommar again.
RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ lol
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is similar to other Arthur stories in that some of the names and places are the same. And that’s about it. Some will equate it to no less than blasphemy while others will label it a “retelling,” but the fact is simply that it is a really fun watch. That’s right. This movie is fun.
First of all, this is just a Guy Ritchie mob movie, but Avengers in style, medieval in tone, with Charlie Hunnam’s good hair, and combining every genre that he usually does into one movie. They’re all great, he’s great, and I’M SO UPSET THAT THIS DIDN’T DO WELL. I want three more of them, which was apparently the plan, but for the fact that the average movie goer can’t suspend their disbelief, preconceptions, or big mouths for just a few minutes and judge something based upon its own merits, all the while shutting the eff up so that I can get what I want. But I digress.
We have seen the King Arthur story over and over again (just me?), but this format hasn’t been done before. It’s fast paced. It’s a totally different take on the lost king narrative. I could go down the rabbit hole of the swaddled child shipped down the river in a basket like Moses but I’m sure that wasn’t intentional..
Perhaps audiences just didn’t know what to do with a movie that doesn’t know if it’s fantasy or not, but I do know that I was all in after just a few minutes because the only notes that I took said this:
OMG what the giant Pachyderm
Cast is too good for this clip (I have no idea what I meant by that)
Tentacle birches (I meant bitches but was too into it and didn’t want to miss anything. Typically I leave my typing mistakes as is because they are hilarious.)
So yes, it begins with a giant Pachyderm battle. I had no idea what I was about to see, and there was a lot of yelling at the screen and I’m sure I was making crazy faces like I do when I’m actually really into a movie, which is rare.
Secondly, the tentacle bitches. I was physically ill every time they popped up out of the water in Vortigern’s flooded basement, but I don’t like snakes. And the slurping sounds. Save me.
The characters were solid. The actors put in the effort. I do not recall anyone mugging for the camera to take the easy way out and phoning in their performance. Now, bring up David Beckham all you want, but why is he a problem here? He does nothing but to “Oi, both hands,” and frankly, it’s hilarious.
The scenery looks stunning. It’s also nice to not hear someone just casually strumming a lyre or hitting some drums occasionally to include some kind of musical accompaniment. The soundtrack feels very British and very appropriate and I enjoyed it. Try that shit in a Western though and I will come for you.
Thoughts:
Charlie Hunnam looks like he’s wearing a cool dad Eddie Bauer wardrobe. Approve.
RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
