Here are the movies/television programs I watched last month. Giving each a one-word review (maybe with some notes), where I watched it, and when it was made. Going to make this a thing...
Michelle Buteau: Welcome to Buteaupia - 2020 - Netflix - Okay - She was funnish, but not nearly what I was led to believe
Jungle Cruise - 2021 - Drive-In - Good - Had more fun watching this than The African Queen
The African Queen - 1951 - Criterion - Bad - Yeah, I know
The Dead - 1986 - Criterion - Bad - John Huston whiffs again, this in his last film
Going Nuts: Tales from a Squirrel - 2019 - HBO Max - Great - Love a good, lighthearted nature documentary
The Bedroom Window - 1987 - Criterion - Great - I fucking loved this movie. Neo-noir is my fucking jam. This one is exceptional, and the only one I've seen that stars Steve "The Goot" Guttenberg.
Untold: The Malice at the Palace - 2021- Netflix - Good - Still hurts. Pretty sure it cost Reggie a championship. I may be biased but I always thought David Stern and the media fucked us on this (by us I mean the Pacers). Stern and his anti-Pacer bullshit peaked then. The media was waiting to go off on the NBA. Great documentary though
Free Guy - 2021 - AMC Theater - Good - Super fun movie. Ryan Reynolds is a treasure. The film was nice with a really interesting gimmick
Warm Bodies - 2013 - Plex - Good - A zombie love story. Super creative and well-acted. One of the better zombie takes from the last decade, for sure
Homicide - 1991 - Criterion - Good - Aggressive David Mamet, zionist shit... But it is pretty good
Witness - 1985 - Plex - Good - Harrison Ford protects a little Amish boy who witnessed a murder. Goes to their community, bones the kid's mom, and kicks some fucking ass. Ridiculous but solid.
Cube - 1997 - Plex - Good - Impressive low-budget Canadian horror flick. Has a huge cult following, which I don't really get. But it was fine.
Lord of Illusions - 1995 - Prime - Great - Really feeling Clive Barker's films lately. Love a neo-noir supernatural horror flick. Wish he'd get back to directing as Hellraiser, Nightbreed, and Lord of Illusions are all classics.
2001 Maniacs - 2005 - Plex - Fucking Terrible
The Great Escape - 1963 - Plex - Fucking Incredible - One of my all-time faves, I watch this every few years. Steve McQueen is so damn cool it is insane; however, I think James Garner and James Coburn are often overlooked for their work on the film. Whenever I watch this, I try to pull off the cutoff sweatshirt look, much to my female companion's irritation.
The Asphalt Jungle - 1950 - Criterion - Great - John Huston definitely redeemed himself in my eyes with this gritty, trash crime flick. The first film with Marilyn Monroe. So worth a watch.
Oringal Deadpoolwas definitely my favorite super hero movie of all time. After one viewing, I like Deadpool 2 probably just as much. Just a heads up, I'm probably going to spoil the shit out of this bitch so read no further if you want to go in cold. Oh, by the by, Deadpool 2 is the greatest movie of all time.
Pros: Funny and fun. Great pacing. Casting is dope. Reynolds is the fucking man. That Zazie Beetz and Morena Baccarin are both pretty ladies. Get the best Deadpool rival/X-Men villain which I will spoil later.
Cons: The constant jokes get somewhat exhausting, I imagine it is more so on the second viewing. Deadpool is too fucking nice.
Spoilers... Deadpool 2 was fucking sick. Reynolds as Wade Wilson and his alter ego Deadpool goes berserk after his wife (Morena Baccarin) is killed, again, spoiler, eventually teams up with the X-Men... but straight up murders a guy while helping out a powerful and violent mutant child. Both Deadpool and the kid, Firefist played by Julian Dennison from Hunt for the Wilderpeople, get sent to mutant jail where time traveling mutant cyborg Cable (Josh Brolin who is also Thanos right now) comes to settle an old score... with the kid, going back in time to end him when it is easy, Terminator style. Turns out the kid grows up to be a shit. Firefist, however, turns out to be a lot harder to kill than expected and Deadpool goes from protecting him to trying to stop him, forming a team rival to X-Men, the X-Force. The 11th X-Men movie that may actually fit into that universe as we see a bunch of them behind a random door at the Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. The film also stars Beetz (ger) from the show Atlanta as Domino, Brianna Hildebrand as that Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Jack Kesy whom I've never seen before as Black Tom, Shioli Kutsuna is Yukio who is the NTW's girlfriend, T. J. Miller reprises his role as Weasel, and Karan Soni is back as even more irritating Dopinder. We also get cameos from Terry Crews, Brad Pitt (who is in the movie for all of three seconds max), and Bill Skarsgård who was Pennywise in the most recent It movie.
When I was checking the movie's IMDB page when I came across the plot summary provided by the studio that made the film, Twentieth Century Fox. It is a bit different and totally unrelated to the movie, which is fitting. It reads: "After surviving a near fatal bovine attack, a disfigured cafeteria chef (Wade Wilson) struggles to fulfill his dream of becoming Miami's hottest bartender, while also learning to cope with his lost sense of taste. Searching to regain his spice for life, as well as a flux capacitor, Wade must battle ninjas, the yakuza, and a pack of sexually aggressive canines, as he journeys around the world to discover the importance of family, friendship, and flavor - finding a new taste for adventure and earning the coveted coffee mug title of World's Best Lover."
Okay, time to talk about the Juggernaut. Wow. That is tits. Only the second time he has been in the X-Men movies. First time he was remotely done right. The first he showed up was in X-Men: The Last Stand which was more or less universally hated (I thought it was okay but was disappointed while the girl I saw it with wanted to leave the movie--my tolerance for garbage is insane though). In that version of Juggernaut Vinnie Jones was more or less a normal sized dude with slight powers (he couldn't be stopped when he got going) who was irritating AF. Around that time there was that "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch" video that came out. It was considered pretty funny, though I didn't really get it, and it became sort of sort of hilarious to scream, "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch" at inappropriate times. What was super insane about ,X-Men: The Last Stand was that Vinnie Jones's character fucking said "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!" which was fucking bananas. I thought for fucking sure he was going to say it in this flick as well but it didn't happen.
Anyway, now we have the truly massive Juggernaut (my favorite scene from any of the Deadpool comics was Juggernaut this size on a commercial flight) with his super strength, regeneration, unstoppable momentum, and metal helmet that keeps Charles Xavier, his brother (in the comics as least) from fucking with his mind (Magneto style). When he first showed up in this movie it was shocking. Deadpool, like the audience, breaks the fourth-wall to show what a super he is of one of his biggest enemies. Juggernaut, for his part, rips Wade in half which leads to him walking around with little baby legs, which was genuinely hilarious. But yeah, Juggernaut showing up was the best little surprise of the movie. It was sort of disappointing when they seemingly killed him off, "you can't kill him off already!", but then at the end you seem him pulling himself out of the pool he was being electrocuted in. Need that guy for the franchise, main!
Speaking of the future of the series, it's impossible to tell where the franchise is going as the timeline is completely shot to shit during the closing credits so make sure you stay put for that. What happens is the Negasonic Teenage Warhead fucks up bad. She "fixes" Cable's time machine and just gives it over to Wade who is like "I'm gonna abuse the shit out of this!" at which point she is like, "uh, I just really fucked up." Uh, yeah, dude goes back in time and basically made the whole movie sort of unnecessary with his time travelling. Immediately he stops the big twist that happens at the beginning of the movie and sets up everything that goes down. He is shown saving Peter who's the normal dude who joined them because it sounded fun, Deadpool was all "fuck yeah!" when he wanted to join X-Force though he was obviously going to die. Also, dude gets weird with it. He kills off the Deadpool from X-Men Origins: Wolverine, for example, and in a super meta-moment he kills a Ryan Reynolds just after he's finished reading the script for Green Lantern. So yeah, dope from start to the post credits.
IMO this is the best Marvel movie. I've watched it five times, the most recent in prep for the sequel, and it is still dope. Here is some masturbatory preamble... I didn't get into comic books until my mid 20s. At that point it was mostly just because and my literary tastes had already been long established (self-aware meta shit was my jams). That being the case, I went into a comic book store and asked the stereotypical fat comic book dude what I should read. He gave me Planetary and Deadpool both of which I still love. For DP it was the series "The Circle Chase" which featured The Juggernaut who was mad hot at the time because of that "I"m The Juggernaut, bitch," video that my girlfriend of the time found to be the most offensive thing of all time. Shout out to Clare (she definitely had a point). Later he became my go to hero whilst playing Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, probably my favorite game of all time. Gotta love that regeneration and teleportation, main. This, more than anything else, got me into the character. I mention all this to let the world fucking know that I was into that shit before anybody. I'll cut you if you accuse me of jumping on that bandwagon. Cut you. Anywho, love a character who can enjoy a good chimichanga is what it comes down to. So I was stoked to see the character on screen. And the shit did not disappoint. Knocked it out of the goddamned park and Deadpool was indeed the greatest movie of all time.
Pros: Solidly funny. Pokes a lot of fun at the superhero genre like Scream does with horror. Ryan Reynolds is dope. Great pacing. Gina Carano is a pretty lady. The first X-Men movie to not fuck up Colossus.
Cons: Some may call it crass and juvenile. It is but it was fun in the end.
Carano. A pretty lady
Gist of the first one is that mercenary Wade Wilson meets a chick, they get engaged, he gets cancer, undertakes experiment treatment that is basically just torture which leads to disfigurement and superpowers, becomes Deadpool, tells jokes, searches for the guy who fucked his shit up (Ajax), meets up with X-Men Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (meh), kicks ass. The movie stars Reynolds as Deadpool, Morena Baccarin (who I'm pretty sure was crazy eyes in How I Met Your Mother) as DP's love interest Vanessa, Carano who was an MMA fighter, Brianna Hildebrand as NTW, Stefan Kapičić voices Colossus, T.J. Miller who played Erlich Bachman in Silicon Valley, Ed Skrein as Ajax, Karan Soni as the annoying cab driver, and Leslie Uggams as Blind Al who I fucking swore was Nichelle Nichols (Uhura on Star Trek) but I'm an idiot apparently. It's technically the eighth X-Men movie but has to be in a different universe and is hard to tell where in the universe it fits in which it pokes fun at. It also shits on several timelines including the first movie Deadpool appears in, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
Some of the best shit from the flick is the opening scene, which is one of those stopping time dealies. It is a moment in time right before a bunch of carnage in the middle of a big highway fight scene where the bad guys are getting thrown from an SUV that is flipping sideways. They lay nonsense credits over scene--stuff like staring "a hot chick," "a CGI character," "god's perfect idiot," "written by the real heroes here," and so forth--while the song Angel of the Morning by Juice Newton (it's that song that goes "Just call me angel of the morning, angel. Just touch my cheek before you leave me, baby"). Once time starts moving again one guy is decapitated, one guy is thrown 30 feet into an exit overhead sign, and one is crushed under the SUV. Deadpool, in this moment, worries about if he left his oven on. In case you haven't seen it, here it is...
The post-credit scene is also a nice bit of nonsense. Deadpool, donning a bathrobe, says something to the effect of "why are you still here," Matthew Broderick from Ferris Bueller's Day Off style in a total nod to that scene. Makes sense that they would reference that movie as both are solid examples of metafiction where both characters tool on the audience for still being in the theater after the movie is technically over. Bueller is sort of Deadpool's brethren when you think about it. Snarky all nonsense characters that like to break the fourth wall. I love that shit. Deadpool also goes a little further, as Marvel movies are wont to do, when he talks about the sequel which he says will feature Cable and then goes into possible casting before finally making a few more little jokes how the Marviel Cinematic Universe teases the next flick in the series during the post-credit scene in every fucking movie. We then get the final "chika-chikaa" from the song "Oh, Yeah", by Yello, that's featured in FBDO. Here it is, for your viewing pleasure.
Anywho, the movie is basically one-liners and action. I like the one-liners more than the action which I think is sort of universal but don't know. The action is pretty cool, especially with Colossus who finally looks like the comic book character and is finally Russian for Christ's sake, but it's still watching someone else play a video game. Probably the most humorous stuff though is how he makes fun of superheros. Like how cool NTW and Ajax's names are and the super hero landing they are always doing. Shit we've all thought about and are hip to as lame devices. So yeah, a solid first feature film for the character with a bunch of ridiculous jokes, disembowelment, a raging superhero, and sympathetic alter-ego. Shit is dope.
