This Movie Sucks

This will be a blog with me carrying on about movies and what I don't like about them, or in the rare event I watch one that I actually like, I will tell you why. I know the formatting is terrible right now. I'll fix it later. At least it's not plain text. Actually maybe it should be. If you want to hear something, link: go here.

INTRODUCTION

The watch dates will be listed first if I can remember them, if not, well, whatever. I saw it after it came out. In most cases I watched these at home on discs borrowed from the library or streaming, so it’s gonna be at least a year after the release date. I have seen so many movies that something really has to be good for me to actually want to go to the theater or pay money to view it. No, I have no interest in sneaking into a theater to watch a film. I purposely avoid trailers because they show too much. Yes, there will be films I liked in this blog. Not all of them sucked. But a lot of them did.

**** Oh, and SPOILER ALERT – sorry I’m not going to hold back. I am giving MY OPINION and nothing else. I’m sure the people who made these films worked hard on them and I am not giving them shite, it’s just that sometimes a movie just doesn’t work. Actually, I’m giving them props about completing the damn thing no matter what! If you are reading this, do not assume I will not give away major plot points of some of these. I AM GOING TO! If you want to watch one of the films I’ve written about here, do that first. Then, when you yell THIS MOVIE SUCKS, think of me. ****

Just because I didn’t like it doesn’t mean you won’t. We all have different tastes and biases, so different things are going to appeal to different people.

To begin, I’m going to go through my library history, which I know isn’t complete, but goes back a couple years. I am not listing every film because apparently I’ve borrowed over 1300 films since July of 2023. I'm just going to mention one more thing which I think is stupid in more recent films: Text messages. I can't see that. Producers, why don't you wise up and at least put a big subtitle on the screen, or blow it up so it's readable.

• American Hustle - an enjoyable crime film starring Christian Bale and a bunch of others. Definitely worth watching!


• Dreamland - Starring Margot Robbie before she became more famous (nudity!) Bank robberies gone awry and several chase scenes, but it's out in the dustbowl in the 1920s so they're not very fast. You can pass on this one. It was ok.


• Rams - an Australian remake of an Icelandic film - This one was more pleasant.


• The Suicide Squad - I watched this before and didn't remember until I started watching it again if that tells you anything. The giant eyeball starfish creature is a fun villian. I won't watch this one again, but it's way better than Suicide Squad, the first film.


• The Man In The Iron Mask - starring Leonardo DiCaprio, John Malkovich, Jeremy Irons, Gabriel Byrne, and Gerard Depardieu in this sort of telling of some Alexandre Dumas stories. This is closer to being a remake of the 1949 film, from what I read. It's still worth watching if you haven't seen it. The boys are great as aging Muskateers, and DiCaprio does a good job playing himself and twin brother.


• Brightburn - imagine that Superman's character came to earth, and just turned out to be a terrible kid. That's the premise of this James Gunn DC film. I don't think the kid was the right fit, casting wise. This one missed.


• Last Action Hero - Oddly enough, there are two Schwartznegger's in this one too. Another one that was just ok. Seemed like more of a kids film.


• 6th Day - Schwartznegger is cloned in this sci-fi film. It was ok. I guess.


• Avatar 3 - Another in James Cameron's series. It's long at 3:20 minutes, but I enjoyed this more than the second film. The graphics in these are always fantastic, and truly unparalleled. There are two more Avatar films in pre-production. Recommended.


• Dredd - Karl Urban is Judge Dredd going after criminals until everybody is dead. Nuff Said!


• Hooper - 1970s film starring Burt Reynolds as a stuntman. I enjoyed this despite being dated. Terry Bradshaw made an appearance as well as a few other faces I recognized from films. Sally Field as Burt's love works as much in this as it did in Smokey And The Bandit.


• The Count Of Monte Cristo - PBS Masterpiece Theater miniseries. This was done very well and I quite enjoyed it. Recommended! It's a great story and if you don't know it, watch one of the many movies, or read the book.


• 3000 Miles To Graceland - crime film with a bunch of Elvis impersonators ssteal from a casino in Las Vegas. Christian Slater, Kurt Russell, and Kevin Costner star in this painful slog. What more do you want? Elvis? Some of the music really dates it to 2001. I would've preffered an all Elvis soundtrack, but perhaps it was too expensive to clear those songs.


• Code 46 - A futuristic film where it's illegal to procreate with anyone who has as little as a 25% genetic similarity. Tim Robbins stars in this film I had to stop watching because it just sucked. And his female co-star was so unattractive I couldn't stand any more of it. This movie sucks.


• Black Widow - A Marvel Comics film. Honestly, while I know they wanted to tell this story and give Natasha her own film, introduce her sister, it's really quite a snoozer in terms of the Marvel Films. Red Comrade or whatever he is called isn't really that funny in this one. This one came out sometime after Endgame, but takes place before the events of Doctor Strange, Thor Ragnarok, Infinity Wars, and Endgame. One thing I hated was that Taskmaster (SPOILER AHEAD) looked to me like the build of a man, but well, (SPOILER IF YOU AIN'T SEEN IT LOOK AWAY!!) turned out at the end to be the Bond girl from Quantuum Of Solace. Oh and the after credits scene with Elaine from Sienfeld - I can't stand her! It's nowhere near as bad as the Black Panther films, but you could sit this one out for sure.


• An Hour Behind - a romcom about a couple who meet because of the time change. She was supposed to meet some guy who was also wearing a green shirt. He has no idea what's going on when she sits at his table and he just goes with it. They spend most of the movie arguing over whether he should've told her he was the wrong guy as she kept calling him Adam.


• Madame Web - A stretch to make this horribly lame film connect to Marvel characters before Sony opted to get out of the superhero film biz with Kraven Then Hunter as both films bombed at the box office. A Ben Parker cameo played by that guy who was in the show with Starlord when he fell in the pit. Unborn Peter Parker is mentioned. What are the odds a woman with spider-sense is the EMS partner of Ben? It's like they learned nothing about how to make a cool superhero film from any they previously released. Stars Don Johnson's daughter. Do they just make films to have millionaire's children actors have jobs? I think I would've been pissed if I'd paid money to see this. You're waiting the entire film for something cool to happen but it just doesn't. The spider people's costumes are way too much like spiderman's in style for there to be any explanation other than terrible imagination. How do you explain that? Just bad acting and bad music. Pass on this one folks. Even the 1970s Spider Man movie would bring you more joy. This movie sucks!


• Green Card - Annie McDowell and Gerard Depardieu star in this love story where they wed so he can stay in America, and then fall in love. Hans Zimmer did the music!


• In The Line Of Fire - Clint Eastwood and John Malkovich in this epic crime film. Likely Malkovich's creepiest character, an ex-cia psychopath who is set on going after the president played by.


• Heaven's Burning - An early Russell Crowe film. He plays a driver for a bank heist gone bad, then heads into the outback with a Japanese woman, chased by her insane husband. Crowe has some hilarious sideburns in this. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, but I enjoyed it.


• The Nice Guys - Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe star in this fun 1970s crime noir film. You can never go wrong with Crowe! Watch it.


• Trap - A M. Night Shamalym film starring Josh Burnett. I knew nothing about this film and aside from the horrible pop music during the concert, I quite enjoyed this movie.


• Red Dog - a film about a dog, and some of the people it knew. Based on a book and a true story about a dog which travelled all over western Australia. Really enjoyed it. The dog has a statue in They made a prequel film, and then a documentary about the actor dog Koko who was in this film.


• Crazy About You - a guy gets dumped by his girlfriend after proposing, then fired from his job. Then he decides to do a walk up the west coast of Australia for charity, almost naked! Laughter ensues, then he meets a new woman. I enjoyed this one.


• The Quest - This was pretty bad. Another film based in Australia, but starring the Elliot kid from E.T. There were some details that completely lost me at the end. Spoiler: Supposedly the kid was stuck underwater for hours or a day, and then he was found totally unscathed. They never explained how he was able to breathe down there. Ya lost me! This movie sucks!


• Breath - a surf film set in Australia about a couple of kids, their surf mentor and his wife. Lots of nice surfing shots. It was kind of mundane but I enjoyed it.


• Fight Or Flight - Josh Harnett stars as a former security specialist who has to find someone on a plane. The only thing is, he's not the only one on the plane looking for this person and nobody knows who it is. A key detail is revealed at the end of the film which is one of those a-ha moments. They do have a scene suggesting a sequel, but apparently the film didn't do well at the box office. Watch it!


• Life - A film starring Ryan Reynolds and Jake Ghyllenhal who reconstitute a space amoeba from some Mars rock samples which dumb kids on Earth name Calvin. One by one, they get killed until there's just Calvin and one other person. One of the astronauts could've launched herself into space with Calvin on her body, and that would've at least saved the crew temporarily. Can't recommend this one. They should destroy the ship to save humanity. Why don't they have an escape pod?! Doesn't anyone learn from other sci-fi films?!


• Dangerous - Mel Gibson plays a supporting character. This film is about a very dangerous guy who is trying to be a better person. He goes "home" to his brother's funeral and then all hell breaks loose because there's something hidden on the island. Wasn't the greatest film, but I say watch it!


• Betty Blue - a love story starring the blind chick from Jim Jarmusch's Night On Earth, and the boyfriend of La Femme Nikita, with full frontal nudity and an opening sex scene. He's a writer, and she's batshit crazy. It's three hours long! Nice to have on in the background if you like the sound of french.


• A Quiet Place - Day one, or something like that. Couldn't wait for it to end. I was so happy the main character's cat survived. This movie sucked!


• The Time Traveller - starring that guy from 2001 who plays Dave, and Adriene Barbeau. He arrives from the future where everyone looks the same (clones?) and lands in Greece in the 1980s


• Ruthless - Dermot Mulrooney is a wrestling coach who doesn't take any shit. Some guy kills his daughter and he goes about enacting vengeance including one of his wrestling students mom's abusive boyfriend. Then it turns out she's kidnapped and is going to be auctioned off in Las Vegas. Well, that's not going to happen. The coach is going about to be ruthless. Lapidas gets it in the end! Good action film!


• Coda - a remake of a french film about a girl with deaf parents and brother. She just wants to sing! Excellent film.


• Before I Fall - another time loop film. This involves a teenager who keeps living the same day over and over until she solves the problem. I liked this a lot, but wasn't interested enough to watch it twice.


• The Naked Gun - Parts were dated despite being a few years back. Liam Neeson in the old role of Leslie Nielson. Still a fun watch!


• The Man Called Uncle, or from U.N.C.L.E - Superman and The Lone Ranger team up to fight Edward Teller. Well, not really. It's good, and uh, they should make more of these films. Film studios are dumb these days.


• The Incredible Shrinking Wknd - a woman is reliving her weekend over and over, stuck in a time loop. Only thing is, it's each loop is shorter and shorter. This one is en espanol.


• Things Will Be Different - a slow burner about a brother and sister using time travel to lay low from a bank robbery. It all goes to shit. Confusing. While I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, it was ok. Definitely a different take on a time travel film.


• Time Traveller's Wife based on the book. They also made a film with Eric Bana, and Rachel McAdams, but this is the six episode series - I vaguely recall watching this show before. While I was watching it, I'd be thinking about details in the film, so I was a bit confused. It starrs John Snow's wife and some other guy. Same actress, Rose Leslie. No John Snow is not the time traveller. Wouldn't that have been interesting? Like he keeps disappearing from battles. That's how he survives! Everyone asks him "Where did you go JOHN?! You start every battle great and then you're gone, and we barely survive!" Nope. Even the white walkers are confused. But in this show her husband doesn't have much control over time travelling, and he always has to steal clothes because he's always naked.


• Source Code - a film I've watched before. At first you think, he's stuck in a time loop, but he really a pilot plugged into someone's memories to try to stop a terrorist attack.


• Timeline - Gerard Butler and that dude from Fast and The Furious travel back in time to 1357 to try to save Billy Connolly. Somehow the film works despite a ridiculous premise of government scientists sending a rag tag crew, including a dude who can't see because he couldn't take his eyeglasses, back into the past. Their two marines die in the first minute after going back in time. If you're gonna travel back in time, take weapons, or steel them asap.


• Bang - a film about an assassin who gets shot up, ends up in a hospital, and then gets a new heart which changes him. Eventually he meets the woman, who's husband died and they gave the assassin the heart. Then he betrays his handler played by Peter Weller. It was ok, but that assassin was unemotional the entire film. You can pass on this one.


• Omni Loop - Milfweed has a black hole in her chest and then befriends a student to help her figure out the time loop she's stuck in, living the same week over and over. Why didn't she send the horned rhino back in time? You could pass on this unless you're really interested.


• Locke - Starring Tom Hardy and only him. He plays a concrete site manager who just found out a woman he had a one night stand with is about to give birth. The whole film is him driving to her, making phone calls in the car, and his life is changed that night. I really love this performance by him on the road to London.


• Press Play - a film where a girl's boyfriend is killed (played by Marvel Thunderbolts Bob/Sentry), and somehow when she plays the mix tape he gave her, she can travel back in time to when he was alive. I liked this one but I expected there to be more cool music. The mixtape just became a mechanism for her trying to fix something. With the right tunes, this could've been special.


• The Boys - a show about super heroes, some of which are total jerks or borderline, evil. I've watched the first three seasons at this point and it's incredibly gorey at times. If you don't get queasy at excessive violence and blood, I'd recommend it. No telling if the series will pan out as an overall win. The final, Season five is due out soon but I don't expect I'll see it until next year.


• Still The Water - a Japanese film about a young couple falling in love while her mother succumbs to cancer and dies. Some nice shots of rural Japan and the ocean. It was ok.


• First To The Moon - Apollo 8 mission - It was ok, but For All Mankind was a better overall film bridging all of the missions.


• For All Mankind - a film about going to the moon. Includes footage from most of the Apollo mission, as well as Gemini. There are some interesting extras including the documentary with the director An Accidental Gift, discussing how the photography ended up being the treasure of the missions. Definiely worth watching. Soundtrack by Eno and Daniel Lanois.


• Sisu - Nazis try to steal an old man's gold and he turns out to be a nightmare for them. Epic film! Watch it!


• Sisu Road To Revenge - the sequel


• Street Kings - Keanu plays a dirty cop who is trying to enact justice in his own way. Watch this!


• Siberia - Keanu Reeves plays a diamond dealer and goes to Siberia to meet with a guy who took off with his diamonds. A slow burner but worth a watch!


• Risky Business - Another Tangerine Dream soundtrack - Tom Cruise plays a high school pimp. Don't worry, he's not pimping his classmates, just marketing to them!


• Sonic 3 - I didn't like this one as much as the first one.


• The Integrity of Joseph Chambers - a weird movie about a guy who goes hunting and makes a big mistake. It was ok, but you can pass on it.


• Into The Night - a great 80s film starring Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Pfieffer. It has tons of cameos including a knife fight scene between David Bowie and Carl Perkins! Watch for Jim Henson or you will miss him! Soundtrack by BB King.


• Replicas - Oh this is a weird one. Keanu Reeves works for some biotech company who is trying to figure out how to get the brains of dead people into robots. This his family dies in an accident (the wife, ok, but I still don't get how the kids died - did they drown?) Then he gets help from the guy from Pied Piper to help him clone his family, except there aren't enough pods so he can only bring back his wife and two kids, sorry little Zoe, I guess you weren't the favorite child. Eventually, the dude at the biotech company comes and tells Keanu that he knows what happened and that all of his clones are property of said company, which was really trying to do some illegal or immoral stuff for the military (can you say blackops?) and then shit goes down. Keanu wins by inserting his consciousness into a robot who takes over, then he and his family go on permanent vacation. Worth a watch if it interests you.


• Lake House - Starring Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves. An alternate time shifting kind of film which I'd seen before but didn't quite get the first time. I very much enjoyed this second viewing and fully understood the time shift going on between the two characters. Great love story!


• Date Night - Steve Carrel and a night out with his wife that goes haywire. Lots of stars.


• Thief - The best of the Tangerine Dream soundtracks. James Caan plays a jewel thief in this Michael Mann production. Definitely recommended.


• Ryuichi Sakamoto - Opus - His last performance, which were actually lots of shorter performances stitched together by his son. Beautiful piano pieces. He passed from cancer sometime after.


• I Think We're Alone Now - a strange post apocalyptic film where a dwarf goes around cleaning up the dead bodies. It got strange once they hit the Los Angeles area where they found other living people including. I felt like the best part of this film was the use of Rush songs in the soundtrack. Pass on this one.


• Heartbreakers - Another Tangerine Dream soundtrack. Film about an artist in Los Angeles.


• Three O'Clock High - Another Tangerine Dream soundtrack. This is a great 80s film about a kid who gets in a fight. Recommended if you have never seen.


• Firestarter - Another Tangerine Dream soundtrack. I had somehow never seen this 80s film starring young Drew Barrymore as a pyro. Cheesey at times but I enjoyed it. If you are a fan of Stranger Things you should watch this.


• Legend - Tom Hardy's portrayl of both of the Krays. I think this is likely the best of The Krays films, but I was only half way paying attention to it as I watched it because I'd seen it before.


• Sneakers - a great crime film starring Robert Redford, partially taking place in San Francisco. I quite enjoyed it despite being somewhat dated.


• Red One - An alternative Christmas Story starring The Rock. I enjoyed it.


• The Krays Code Of Silence - a film about 1960s gansters The Krays, and the investigation that finally caught them.


• Hellboy 2019 - no where as good as the Guillermo del Toro films. But then, how could they be?! Multi pass girl is tiring as the villian. David Harbor isn't bad as Hellboy, but not as good as Ron Perlman. Is Doug Jones in this as Abe Sapien? He is by far my favorite actor who plays aliens or creatures! If you have never seen Shape of Water, the creature is really amazing. If he was only able to do The Hobbit films! But I digress. You could skip the newer hellboy film and go watch the del Toro ones again Golden Army being the better of the two.


• Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension. Still good after all these years. Cheesey effects for the most part, but definitely a fun movie.


• During this time, I watched a bunch of movies I've seen before and was surprised to enjoy Sleepless In Seattle as much as I did. Then there was a Benedict Cumberbatch trio of The Thing With Feathers, the Patrick Melrose series, and Sherlock Holmes series. If you stop watching the first episode of Patrick Melrose part way through, and watch The Thing With Feathers as some kind of drug induced attack, it makes more sense than watching them separately. The actor is brilliant in all three, but the Sherlock series is the only one I can recommend.


• Grand Piano - starring Ellijah Wood. I liked this, and despite his name and picture of him on the cover of the blu-ray, I was pleasantly surprised when John Cusack was revealed as the bad guy.


• The Great Gatsby - Robert Reford version. Yes, I liked this more than the newer version. Best part about this one, no hip hop garbage.


• Time After Time - H.G. Wells chases Jack The Ripper through time to 1970s San Francisco! Talk about convenient for the film makers! They had them show up in the current time the film was being made! A plus was the time machine, maybe not as cool looking as the one from the 1960 Time Machine film, but it was interesting. I enjoyed a bit of it, but you can skip this one.


• Wildlife - starring Jake Ghyllanhal and another actress I kept thinking was Katie Holmes. I was expecting wildlife but there wasn't any. This film sucks.


• Cold Water - an interesting French film with an ending I had to look up because I was lost by that point, but they get extra points from me because of an appearance of both and LP and song from Creedence. The party scene was crazy and I kept expecting them to set the building on fire. They just burned everything from inside the building. Watch it.


• Tron Ares - It was good but left me questions about what happened to the ISO, and Tron from the Legacy film. Jeff Bridges has a small part as a sage old Flynn. I thought it would've been funny had he been smoking a dube the whole time, ala Liebowski, with Creedence softly playing in the background. The Ares character was interesting, and I'm glad they incorporated a bit of the original into it. Worth a watch, but I sincerely hated the evil chick bot.


• The Last Castle - Robert Redford. This was really good. Military Prison. Tony from the Sopranos, Mark Ruffalo, and the guy from Boondock Saints part II. Redford is masterful as usual. If all actors aspired to do what he's done, movies would be way better.


• Genius Within, The Inner Life Of Glenn Gould - he was an absolute genius, perhaps tragic at his end. If you've never listened to his piano playing, you should go do that right now. The Goldsberg Variations. This documentary was very good. There's another film about him worth watching: 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould. Watch them both.


• The Great Gatsby - Leonardo Decaprio and Tobey McGuire. The music is modern hiphop based garbage, unfortunately. Ok, now I'm 42 minutes into the movie and the hiphop is ruining it. Oh, I just looked it up and some famous rap artist did the soundtrack. Ugh. Not sure I'll make it though this. Not tonight anyway. Maybe I need to go get the Robert Redford version. The second half was ok. Less garbage music, and more story. Tobey McGuire saved it.


• Apollo 11 - It's basically a bunch of film from the launch to the voyage to the landing on the moon. And in it, when Neil Armstrong says his fateful words, it's shown from a camera positioned above him. Pretty interesting. That LEM still looks way to flimsy to be flying through space.


• Apollo 13 - Tom Hanks best film next to Forest Gump, which he hates. They fly into space, something breaks, go around the moon, and come back. Supposedly based on a true story.


• The Outsiders - the classic 50s style film with a star studded cast including a young Diane Lane. The Greasers versus the Soshas in a rumble, then they all slip in some grease and fall into the river. No, not really. Basically it's a fight between guys who listen to the Stray Cats versus guys who wear sweaters over their shoulders. What else needs to be said? If you haven't seen it, watch it. Tom Waits has a cameo. "Stay gold, Ponyboy."


• '71 - a tale of a soldier trapped behind enemy lines in Northern Ireland. Good, but it's always a sad topic being descended from Irish and English.


• Short Cuts - an unbelievably long movie with lots of stars, lives entertwined somehow in Los Angeles. I suppose the appearance of Tom Waits was the only reason I borrowed this one. Mundane. Also has a very tweaky Robert Downey Jr. I guess this was during his drug days.


• The Brutalist - I heard this won an award. Probably for being brutally long. I watched it over several days. I can understand this more from an artist's point of view where I hated the other characters. JUST LET HIM BUILD! Unless you really feel the need to see it, you can pass on this one.


Annual Holiday Films I like to watch:
• Gremlins
• Bad Santa - it's vulgar at times, starring Billy Bob Thornton, John Ritter, and Bernie Mac.
• Die Hard - Christmas isn't over until Hans Gruber hits Nakatomi Plaza!
• Troll Hunter
• Violent Night - a new favorite. Former Viking destroyer turned Santa played by David Harbour. John Leguazmo plays a really annoying but effective bad guy.
Movies I watched in 2025:
• .


• .


• Johnny Handsome - a crime noir film where Mickey Rourke who plays a thief who looks more like he does now, almost gets killed and has facial reconstructive surgery agreeing with the cops to become a CI. Then, he ends up looking like he used to (before the boxing in real life), hooks up with Elizabeth McGovern, works at some plant, then stuff goes bad at the end after they rob the plant. Why the plant happens to have nice crisp dollar bills to steal is the part I didn't understand. Maybe they only had time to print the top bills on top of 3X5 cards. It was alright but nothing really to write home about.


• Against All Odds - the 80s romantic/crime film starring Jeff Bridges and James Woods which has the title song by Phil Collins. The film is good, but that song will outlive this. Watch it!


• The Transporter - Refueled - much like the original, it's got a guy driving women around, evading and foiling bad guys. But this one doesn't have Jason Statham so it's not as good. It was ok.


• Hirokin The Last Samurai - Oh, this one is terrible. If it had a bigger budget, it might've been better. A scifi film which takes place on another world, so it's basically all desert scenes and Utah. It's supposed to take place on a world where humans were mining an ore which makes stuff float. The space ships look literally like those yellow CAT digger/excavators. It does employ a couple of guys who heckle and provide color commentary throughout the film, one of the few bright spots. Could've used more of that. The villians costumes are pretty lame and laughable. Starring Julian Sands as the bad guy, and the guy who played Robert The Bruce in Braveheart as the old sage. The main actor, who is basically Samurai Jesus, looks like he could be Jake Ghylanhall's brother or cousin. This movie sucks!


• Hard Rain - a suspenseful crime film during a Hard Rain. Actually this one has more flood action than the last couple of flood films I've watched. Christian Slater plays an armored truck driver who has to escape from Morgan Freeman who wants all the money. The water keeps rising to unbelievable levels until Minnie Driver helps him escape from jail. Why was he in jail? Clearly, there are some dumb ass cops on the job in this town.


• The Punisher - Frank Castle gets revenge upon John Travolta as he tries to dance away. It's good and I enjoyed it even more than the recent Punisher Marvel series.


• The Session Man: Nicky Hopkins - a music documentary about a pianist who played on a ton of famous songs. I'd never heard of him before, but he was really good! Yes, you've heard him play on something. I can almost guarantee it. Watch it!


• Tom Waits Down And Dirty - a mix of interviews from tv shows and others. It was interesting to see the clips, but I'd only recommend for die hard Waits fans. Some clips show him fidgeting quite a bit which bothered me watching it.


• McCartney Now And Then - A kind of ho-hum documentary about Paul, with lots of telling about early Beatles. I'm not sure there was really any music in it other than some background music. You can pass on this.


• Daredevil - the Ben Afflack version. It lacks the subtlety of more recent Marvel films. This has moments that are just bad. I think the special effects are part of the problem and are campy at times. The dude who plays the Kingpin, well, the kingpin was always a big white dude so having a black actor in the roll doesn't make sense. The kingpin wasn't just strong, he was extremely smart and business savvy. Jennifer Garner as Electra - while she is a total babe in this, she doesn't come off as being Greek. Bad casting? Colin Ferrel as Bulleye was also a bit off. I'm not saying he did a bad job, I think the problem with this film was editing, effects, and probably bad script/storyline.


• Flood - campy 70s destruction film. It was pretty bad, but it was another time when bad movies were still done better than ninety percent of new films.


• Stronger - Jake Ghyllanhal becomes strong after taking an experimental syrum that makes him lose his legs, but is still able to run into the arms of the woman he loves. Well, not really.


• Streets Of Fire - 80s musical film which I had never seen. It was ok, and I did recognize at least one song. Diane Lane was so young! It's worth a watch.


• A Christmas Story - a great classic from the 80s. I'm sure you have seen it. I don't know if it's still true but the house it was filmed in was turned into a museum and had that leg lamp in the window.


• Tolkien - This film was excellent, but also brought up feelings for me when they showed the WWI scenes which are sprinkled throughout. My great grandfather died there during that war so I think about him whenever I see anything regarding the war. What was he like. How much am I like him, if at all? Was he there with Tolkien? I suppose the odds of him knowing him are slim, but not impossible. The film really shows how he began to think up the stories of the Hobbit, and Lord Of The Rings. If you are a fan of the book or the films, you should watch this!


• Radioland Murders - A star studded cast of people I can't really name, other than Stephen Tobolowsky who plays the character Insurance Salesman Ned in Groundhogs Day. He also used to receive voices or radio signals in his head and then David Byrne wrote the song Radiohead about him. Then a band used the name and got really famous. It's campy but I enjoyed this if only for Christopher Lloyd's character doing live foley sounds for the radio shows.


• Memory: The Origins of Alien - a great documentary on how Alien came about. If you've never seen Darkstar, it's terribly bad, but stars Dan O'Bannon who co-created Alien. If Ridley Scott hadn't done the film, I don't think it would've become the iconic series.


• The Incredible Shrinking Woman - My dad took my brother and I to see this when it came out in the theaters. It's not really a good film, but it's an interesting sort of remake of the Incredible Shrinking Man which of course dad also took us to. This stars Lily Tomlin, and has a soundtrack by Susan Ciani who is best known these days for playing Buchla synthesizers, but back then she was doing all sorts of sound effects for commercials. It's likely you've heard her work and don't even realize it, like the sound for a certain famous fizzy cola drink. This movie sucks but in a hilariously bad 80s way where special effects were laughable, and the premise of this one even more ridiculous with evil people trying to use her to shrink the population of the world so conserve resources. While they would be able to motion capture her into all thesee scenes nowadays, they built large sets to make her look small. At the end of the 60s Shrinking man film, he shrinks so much he can fit through the grate in the basement and escape into the garden, but in this one, it ends with her returning to full size, only to show her shoe expanding. Had they planned a sequel where she kept growing into a giant and got revenge on the corporations and people who made the chemical products that poison us? Not to mention her house keeper killing her in the garbage disposal! Despite only being 87 minutes, this movie feels too long!


• No Time To Die - The last of the Daniel Craig James Bond films where they kill off James Bond (again?). Not sure since you don't see him die at the end, but it's made to look like that was it for him. He could've been thrown free of the blast somehow. If they bring Bond back as a black guy as I've heard rumblings about, you know he's really dead, as will be the franchise.


• Punisher War Zone - I vaguely recall the comic book being done by John Romita Jr. who has a really cool messy style of drawing. The movie wasn't great or completely unwatchable but I don't recommend it. I'm not going to say it sucks, but the dude from The Wire's make up sucked.


• F1 - a car movie starring Brad Pitt where he drives around. It was pretty good and intense but lacked actual tradgedy. I would recommend it but it's a film that I think you should sit and calm down for awhile after watching. Maybe don't watch it too late at night.


• Wings Of Desire - I listened to the director commentary as I watched this, and did not read much of the dialog. It's about angels who hover around people in Berlin, including one angel who falls in love with a human woman. Mostly black and white, but also has some scenes of the wall with graffiti art in full color - my favorite scenes in the film. There's also a cameo by a young Nick Cave during one of the two club scenes in the film.


• Serenity - I have seen this several times, the film from The Firefly series. I mainly borrowed this blu ray to check out the commentaries and extras but it's a good sci-fi film worth watching if you haven't seen it. Two words: Space Zombies.


• The Life Of Chuck - A strange film about dancing, and the end of the universe starring Tom Hiddleston and Mark Hammill. It was ok but never explained the things that happened in act one.


• Every Little Thing - A documentary about a woman who saves hummingbirds. As I see them in my yard quite frequently I enjoyed this film. I once had to rescue one of them off the window in my garage, and held it in my hand for a moment. After I took it outside, it looked up at me briefly before it flew off. Such an incredible moment.


• Pianoforte - a piano competition where everyone plays Chopin with their insane abilities. I enjoyed this as I love Chopin's music. A 17 year old woman won. This was also made around the shutdown as everyone in the audience were wearing masks.


• Taken - In this one Liam Neeson's daughter gets taken by some bad eastern european dudes who plan to sell her as a sex slave. Liam tracks them down and kills most of them.


• Taken 2 - in this one, the father of one of the dudes he killed in the first one comes for Liam Neeson, and his ex-wife. Guess what? Liam Neeson kills all of them.


• Taken 3 - damn how many times is Liam Neeson's daughter going to get taken?! Teach her to shoot already! No, in this one Liam gets framed for his ex-wife's murder and then has to take down her ex-husband eventually. Also stars Forest Whittaker who plays a cop trying to catch Liam and figures out what really happened.


• Apocalypse Now Redux - Somehow they made an even longer version of this film in the early 2000s. The movie is a long slog through Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness and is a must watch (at least once in your life) despite being slow at times.


• Christmas In Conneticut - borrowing this from the library was a total mistake as I thought it was a more modern film than the black and white 1945 film starring Barbara Stanwyck that starts out with two navy men surviving their ship being torpedoed by the Nazi's. The premise of this is absolutely ridiculous including agreeing to marry some guy and borrow a baby to pretend it's hers just so someone doesn't lose their job. Then the navy guy shows up and she's smitten at first sight. And the baby gets swapped out for another one! I'll be talking like Edward G. Robinson all day after this one! Yeah, see!


• Fatman - Mel Gibson plays an angry Santa who has to deal with a little shit of a kid who puts a hit out on him.


• Vanishing - this one is a dutch film about a woman who vanishes at a truck stop while with her boyfriend. Fuckery ensues with a bearded man who is the type of guy who will inject you with something to knock you out, then take you to his basement lair, all the while maintaining a family, and normal every day life. Subtitles.


• Blue Velvet - oh another weird David Lynch film starring Kyle MacLachlan.


• Slumber Party Massacre - a cheesey B film with lots of tits and ass as coeds get drilled and cut up by a psycho. This could have only been shot in LA, just for the fact that they would never have funded such a terrible movie. It's like a bad porno without the porn. This movie sucks, but worth watching if only for the T&A.


• Hearts Of Darkness - a documentary about the film Apocalypse Now, adapted from Joseph Conrad's novel Heart Of Darkness. This had quite a few details I never knew about the film like how Harvey Keitel was originally cast in the role that Martin Sheen ultimately played. That Sheen had a heart attack during production. That a typhoon wrecked a bunch of the sets they had built for the film, and apparently over two hundred people died in the phillipeans during that storm. Then there was the helicopter crash during filming which killed two crew members. They were using the Phillipeans army helicopters for shooting, on loan from Ferdinand Marcos.


• The Hidden - this was very much as if John Carpenter's The Thing occurred in L.A. only the alien just wanted to steal and kill and listen to rock music. I can't recommend it.


• Vanishing - Gerard Butler and a couple of other guys star in this film inspired by a true story of lighthouse kepepers who vanished in 1900 on an island near Scotland. It was likely the best film I've watched this week. The mystery of what happened to the actual lighthouse keepers is still unsolved.


• Dead Poets Society - a good film about a boys school starring Robin Williams, who was not in enough of it, but made it funny for a moment or two.


• Critters - I saw this sci-fi film in the theaters when it came out. It's still pretty bad. Comically bad.


• Miracle Mile - a strange 80s film about a night out in Los Angeles where all hell breaks loose, starring the actor who played the bad guy in Highlander, as the helicopter pilot (he's barely in this). I enjoyed it, but I can't really recommend it other than the soundtrack being done by Tangerine Dream.


• Black 47 - Hugo Weaving - this was pretty good.


• The Sound Of Music - never seen it before. Liam Neeson is not in this. Maybe in the remake. I tried to watch this but gave up after about forty minutes. Maybe some other time. Or maybe I should run the audio through some guitar pedals. Seriously, if Liam Neeson was in it shooting or saving people, I would've watched it.


• Charlie Brown Christmas - not as good as the Thanksgiving or The Great Pumpkin, but I'd rank it third after those two. But apparently this one won some awards and got a 35% Neilsen tv rating when it first aired.


• A Year Without A Santa Claus - It's not yet Thanksgiving, but I'm in the Christmas mood early and who doesn't like that silly Heat Miser/Snow Miser song. I'm not a fan of heat and this year I'm going to see how long I can go without turning on the heater. If you never watched this stop-motion Rankin and Bass feature from decades ago your childhood must have sucked. Watch it! This is a 5-movie Christmas set with a couple other stop motion features but this is the best one.


• Better Off Dead - John Cusack in this 80s film where he is constantly asked by the paperboy for his two dollars. Noticed someone from the film crew in the reflection in the glass during the opening scene with the paperboy. Whoops! Still entertaining after all these years.


• Something Wild - starring with Jeff Daniels and Melanie Griffith. Melanie is perpetual liar and pulls Daniels into her world. It's still playing, but I fully expect her to ruin his life in some way by the end of this film. This Movie Sucks!


• Fast Times At Ridgemont High - Spicoli is the eternal stoner causing minimal damages while 15 year old Jennifer Jason Leigh has sex with older guys. Judge Reinhold as a high school student doesn't really work. He was just too old (in his mid twenties). Still entertaining after all these years.


• Say Anything - Cameron Crowe film starring John Cusack where he has to say anything to impress a girl. I'm surprised I have never seen this before.


• Commando - Arnold kills lots and lots of bad guys while trying to save his little girl, Alyssa Milano. This movie sucks, but in a cheesey movie kinda way.


• Good Will Hunting - I've seen it before years ago. It's pretty good.


• Elephant - It's about a single day at a high school. You know, sometimes I have dreams that I'm back in school and either can't find the class I'm supposed to go to before it's over, or I can't find my locker. At least I'm not naked. This one basically turned into Columbine. I was fine with it being about a day in high school, but it became a video game at the end, with real dead bodies. Fuck you Gus Van Sant. This movie sucks.


• Someone To Watch Over - Starring Tom Berenger. Ridley Scott film, crime noir. It was ok. Has something in common with The Fugitive.


• Blue Christmas - Like Christmas but crime noir. It's just a low-budget reworking of A Christmas Carol. No offense to the actors and people who made it but this is nothing to write home about.


• Wings Of Life - a Disney Nature film about flying things.


• Aquarella - Fantastic nature film about water. The most interesting part was the opening sequence with cars being fished out from the ice, then someone actually crashing into the ice when they were filming. I think one guy was trapped under the ice and died. His friend who managed to escape was losing it. Aside from that section, there is no dialog.


• Blacklight - Another Liam Neeson fucks-people-up film. Looks like I'm on a roll with these. The only one that threw me was Third Person - the one where he was a writer and the only person he killed (SPOILER) was his baby when he wasn't looking and it fell in the pool (Hey! I did that when I was a baby!). Or maybe that's what he was writing about? I forget. Anyway, Liam Neeson fucks up more people in Blacklight, but they're bad FBI guys so they had it coming.


• Non-Stop - Another Liam Neeson fucks-people-up film. This one he's an air marshall on a plane looking for a bad guy. It took awhile, and was nerve-wracking but it was pretty good. Maybe it was because I've been on enough planes to know I would've been annoyed as fuck on this flight.


• Girl On A Train - possibly my final train film of the year, and I watched a lot in the first quarter. Or was that 2024? Emily Blunt is the girl on the train so at least there's that. This was a really good suspenseful film which never quite telegraphed what was going on. Watch it.


• James Cameron's Story Of Science Fiction - I am still quoting Aliens and Terminator after all these years. A short series I'd highly recommend if you are a sci-fi fan, or even if you aren't. I still would like to see James Cameron's version of Jurassic Park.


• Planet Hulk - I can see how they took a lot from Thor Ragnarok for this. Or is it just that the two stories are intertwined? I never read this comic so I don't know but it was a good animated feature at only 81 minutes. The only problem I had with it was that Hulk seemed a bit too talkative instead of his usual brutish self. It takes place on Saakar, but sadly there is no Grandmaster played by Jeff Goldblum. If this is essentially what happened to Hulk before Thor showed up there, it wouldn't surprise me, and it would almost fit. If you're a Marvel fan, this is worth watching if only for Meek and Korg.


• Jurassic Park Rebirth - A bit of a snooze, and a lot of the scenes were so obvious. White girl in charge trope. Black guy is the hero trope. The white dude is the villian trope. That's not even original in the series. Newman from Sienfeld was doing the exact same thing as this guy, only instead of trying to sell dinosaur embryos, in this one, they're vying for dna to make some incredible "salve". Sure, put some dinocream on your skin. That'll end well. It's like the people who wrote it don't really know how to make anything new or interesting. They're just spewing out more woke garbage with moderately boring actors whose characters' profiles were probably spit out of an AI generator. I wonder how much it lost at the box office? Oh, it actually made money? That's just sad. People, don't spend your money on this stuff. Seriously. Aside from the Rancor mutant dinosaur, which was barely exciting, I thought this movie sucked. Just the premise of the beginning - if you know there are wild dinosaurs in the ocean, why would you go sailing? Dumb. This movie sucks.


• Silence - a film about Christians trying to convert people in Japan who basically get emprisoned. I missed what happened to Adam Driver's character, but Andrew Garfield and Liam Neeson are still alive and worshiping Jesus in secret. This film is way too long, and has no scenes with Liam Neeson using a samurai sword. You might be better off sitting in silence for two hours and forty minutes than watching this one.


• Runaway Train - Jon Voight and Eric Roberts escape from an Alaskan prison and steal a train that won't stop. It's pretty epic. Lots of nice shots of the train rolling through the snow.


• Black Mass - I borrowed this film after it came up when searching for Irish films. This is not what I was looking for, but it was good. It's a film about mobster (and FBI informer) Whitey Bulger as played by Johnny Depp. Very violent at times. Kevin Bacon, Benedict Humperbach also star in this fantastic


• Donnie Darko - starring Jake and Maggie Ghyllanhal. I had seen this years ago, but watching this again was quite amazing. It's a strange film, but completely perfect as cinematic experience! It's one of those movies where you are still questioning what happened after you watched it. Watch it if you haven't. And then watch it again. Good songs in the soundtrack!


• Ambulance - starring Jake Ghyllanhal. He another and his brotha are bank robbers then they steal and ambulance containing a paramedic and a cop that they shot, and lead the cops on a police chase through los angeles. The paramedic is the hottest latina paramedic you've ever seen. But with any theft film, it's always completely unrealiistic in the way they show the amount of money. This one they are carrying around 8 million in two bags, so that would weigh somewhere around 88lbs per bag (if it were 80,000 $100 bills) but I think the volume might be ridiculously larger than what could fit in duffle bags. If it were gold, it would fit, but it would almost weigh the same.


• Bullet Train - Yes, I liked this enough I watched it again. Still catching little details I didn't notice in previous viewings. The only point in the movie that is unbeliveable is where Aaron Taylor Johnson's character Tangerine jumps on the back of a Bullet Train. No dude, the physics don't quite work. I'm pretty sure he would've ate it as it moved away, him falling down onto the train tracks. I know it's just a movie, so whatever dude. If you haven't watched this or any of 87North's productions, watch it.


• Honest Thief - This is the one where Liam Neeson steels from you then he tells you he took your stuff because he's honest. Well, not really. This was actually pretty good, and definitely one of the better Liam Neeson films I've watched lately.


• Here Is Your Life - a Swedish film which has a short scene with Max Von Sydow is mainly about a young man in the north of Sweeden. This film is unbelievably long at 2:48 and I did not watch all of it. The disc stopped working towards the end, but a lot of the second half I wasn't paying attention. It could deserve a second viewing but honestly, I'd rather do something else with that amount of time of my life. Maybe you should too.


• The Big Bang - an Antonio Banderas film that I saw the trailer for and thought I'd give it a chance. A weird crime noir film with lots of random bits about the God Particle, but one of the Hallmark movie actresses gets buck naked and rides Banderas.


• Making Waves - a film about sound design. Ben Burtt is featured in it, one of my heroes. I'm going to watch it again, and you should too if you like hearing how they make all the little sounds for film. It's not super in depth, but a good primer on the subject.
• P.S. I Love You a nice romcom with Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler which ends up in Ireland. Hey, kiss me I'm irish.
• Planes Trains And Automobiles - the first time I watched this was last year. Somehow I never saw this classic Thanksgiving road film starring John Candy and Steve Martin when I was growing up. Or at least I didn't remember seeing it. Parts of annoy me to no end, like how they just leave their wallets out in the motel room. Put that under your pillow. Most hotel rooms come with little safes these days but at the very least hide it
• Crimes Of The Future - Clearly post apololyptic style, with opening scenes of a passenger ship on it's side out in the water shot from the beach, then a kid eating a plastic trashcan right before a woman smothers him with a pillow. Well, it's another Cronenberg film with Viggo, so I'm sure it's going to be horrible. Viggo's opening scene has him hooked up to the matrix in a large baby cradle with tubes plugged into him. Gross! I may not get through this one. Yup, I had to abort it when I got to the man dancing with surgically added ears all over his body. This is the plus about getting films from the library, if I don't want to finish watching something, there's no reason not to shut it off! This movie sucks!
• Asphalt Jungle - A John Huston film. He was Drew Barrymore's grandpa. Wait. No, that's totally wrong. That was John Barrymore. Oh well, it's a black and white crime noir film with Marilyn Monroe in it from 1950 so it's ok. Ya see!
• Barcelona - A film by Whit Stillman which I have no idea about, but it was a Criterion Collection so I thought it might be ok. Cute women, but it wasn't very interesting. In fact, I felt like I'd seen it before, but wasn't entirely certain. This movie sucks!
• Ice Road: Vengeance - Liam Neeson drives a bus in the Himalaya's and kills some bad guys. Scenic.
• The Marksman - Liam Neeson has to deal with cartel dudes as he transports a little mexican kid to Chicago. Not Neeson's best film.
• Cop Car - This was fun as two little kids steal Kevin Bacon's cop car.
• Fantastic Four - First Steps - it was good, but I had been under the impression that Doctor Doom was the villian so I was happily surprised in the direction of the film. These films are better when you don't know what is going to happen. I.E. I hate trailers.
• Eastern Promises - you can't go wrong with Viggo Mortenson and Vincent Cassel. I didn't like that they switched back and forth with Russian and subtitles because the type was too small. But this is an excellent crime/mob film. Watch it if you haven't.
• Flight Of The Phoenix - Jimmy Stewart crash lands in the desert. I missed some of it. One of the character's played a nice mandolin. They spend the whole film in the desert trying to fix the plane. Some of the characters die but they finally piece together a makeshift plane to escape with a monkey.
• Inside Job - if you enjoyed The Big Short you'll want to watch this to see what really happened. F*ckers.
• Hail, Caesar - don't bother with this Coen Brothers film about Hollywood and Communists. I got it strictly because it was a Josh Brolin film, and he was the only redeeming character. Not even him machine-gunning all the commies down at the end would've saved this snoozer. This movie sucks!
• Gangs Of New York - Daniel Day Lewis is once again steller in this film about old timey New York.
• Ordinary Angels - not what I was expecting at all but was good. Based around a real life incident during a snow storm and extrapolated into this story. They even show the real people at the end of the film. The main actress does a good job.
• Kraven The Hunter - I've watched it before and it's a fairly decent superhero film introducing the character whom Aaron Johnson does justice. A few other bonus Spidey villians, and a very subtle hint of a possible match up between Spider Man and Kraven in the future.
• Third Person - another film which went in a direction I wasn't expecting. I got it because I thought it was another Liam Neeson kicks ass action film, but he plays an author in this one. Lots of misdirects during the whole film. I can't say you should watch it but it was not bad.
• Fearless - Jeff Bridges is a man who survives a plane crash. The whole time I kept expecting him to have really been dead the whole time and was in limbo with some of the other passengers, but that was not how this turned out. It wouldn't have surprised me if that was one idea left on the cutting room floor. I can't say I'd recommend this.
• Violent Night - 87North produced an action flick that I may add to my annual Christmas films. The guy playing Santa, David Harbour is pretty funny in this. I often enjoy a film more when I don't know what to expect and this was no exception. Can't say it's the perfect film, but it's worth a viewing!
• A Certain Killer/A Killer's Key - to be honest I got this Japanese double feature because I thought one of the films had the actor who played Zatoichi in it. (Maybe it was the newer Zatoichi film) Neither of these were very interestng, but I wasn't really paying much attention. A Killer's Key was the better of the two. Go watch some old Zatoichi instead of watching these.
• Crash - David Cronenberg's adaptation of J. G. Ballard's novel of people getting off to car crashes. It was weird as all Cronenberg films are. I do not recommend watching more than one of his films within a weekend.
• Videodrome - I remember seeing the trailers for this when I was a kid and was always intrigued by the strange imagery, but never saw it until now. What can I say? It's really weird, but James Woods delivers. I'm only realizing now that his female counterpart in the film was Debbie Harry. Damn, no wonder she looked familiar! The film feels very dated, but if you want to watch something weird, watch it at least once so you can regret it!
• Nobody - Bob Odenkirk stars in this great action film about a guy just trying to live a normal life. The scene with the painting had me laughing pretty hard and I had to rewind it. 87North prevails again! Watch it!
• Love Hurts - I watched this all the way through before I realized (only after a friend told me) the main actor was Short Round in Indiana Jones and The Temple Of Doom. (Alot of people don't realize that takes place before Raiders!) This took a bit to get going, but I understood that it had to be done that way. Some parallels with the film Nobody, and it seems that some of the actors are in several 87North films, including the couple buying the home who I've also seen in a Hallmark Christmas film. Watch it!
• The Boondock Saints - Somehow this is the perfect mobster film. Rocco steels the show. Willem Dafoe is great as always but his character goes way off rails at the end. The scene in the confessional is brilliant. If you've never seen it, go watch it.
• Wet Hot American Summer Camp or whatever its called starring Antman. This movie sucks. It's basically a bunch of camp councilers and staff trying to get laid. This movie sucks. Don't bother. In fact, I think I want to write a letter to the producers to tell them how bad of a film it was and that they should go back to driving garbage trucks because it's only what they're good at.
• The Sicilian Clan - Starring Alain Delon, who was in Le Samourai. French mob film. Thankfully, it had an English dub so I didn't have to read the entire film. I love foreign films, but I don't always want to read the entire time. This one includes use of a laughable "boing" sound effect interspersed throughout the movie.
• My Left Foot - Another incredible performance from Daniel Day Lewis, this one based on a true story about a guy with cerebral palsy who wrote a book with his left foot. It's not pretty, but it won Lewis an Oscar.
• Love Hurts - another one from the 87North folks who brought you Bullet Train, and The Fall Guy. So far, I've liked all of their films. A production team made up of stunt guys can't go wrong with action films!
• Star Trek - The Next Generation Season 5 - episodes like I Borg, Darmok, and the pair of episodes entitled Unification starring Leonard Nimoy as Spock are notable. In I Borg, people convince Picard NOT to infect the Borg they found and send him back to the Borg Collective to destroy them, but the people who convince him are soft. And they inadvertantly infect the Borg with individuality instead which allows them to continue to understand humans and the federation. Ultimately, it does also lead to Seven of nine being freed from the Borg during the Voyagers series, so we'll leave that as it is. But the episode I borrowed this set for was The Inner Light, one of the best episodes of Star Trek ever. The crew encounter a space probe and the Picard gets zapped into another reality, experiencing an entire life filled with a wife, and children only to finally find himself back on the Enterprise with only 25 minutes having elapsed.
• Explorers - starring River Phoenix and Ethan Hawke when they were young kids. They make a spaceship and rendevous with another ship in outer space only to find out the aliens have been trained on television and movies who constantly communicate by quoting commercials and shows. Then they get captured by space pirates who just turn out to be the aliens parents. I'm so old, I saw this in the theater when it came out.
• Ballerina - A spin off film of the John Wick series with a cameo by Keanu. It stretches at times with the action scenes. There were too many times where it was pretty clear the bad guys were holding back. I counted several times where they could've easily killed her. Continuing the trope where they have a small woman, no matter how skilled she may be, taking out strong men who no doubt could choke the life out of her very quickly with just their hands. But nobody does. Oooh spoiler. I expect they will make a sequel despite how tiresome it all is. I don't know what happened to her but Angelica Huston's facelift plastic surgery looks horrible. Sorry! THIS MOVIE SUCKS. Just go watch the first John Wick.
• Stand Up Guys - kind of lame at times, but I enjoyed it. In one scene Bill Burr gets shot and punched by Christopher Walken and Al Pacino. What's not to like!
• Kill The Irishman - based on a true story about the mafia in Cleveland. I liked this one.
• Finding You - Shot in Ireland, two storylines intersect with a fantasy actor and a budding fiddle player in this romcom. I liked it, mainly at first for all the scenes in Ireland, but also for the musical element. The dude actor in this is a little forced. He was definitely the weak link in this one.
• Live Die Repeat/The Edge Of Tomorrow - By far the best remake of Groundhog's Day. The lead female roles even have the same name! This is one you have to watch more than once.
• The Dead Zone - A film by John Carpenter with Christopher Walken in the lead role of a man who awakens from a coma with the power to see the future. He saves some kids, then kills Charlie Sheen's dad who plays a politician that in the future Walken's character see launch nukes. So he kills him.
• Aquaman - eh, it was ok. I didn't care much for the villian Mantis. Or is it Black Mantis? You can pass on this one.
• Perfect Days - A Criterion Collection edition of the Japanese film where you follow a man who cleans toilets. Actually I liked this quite a bit. There's almost no dialog for the first half as one might expect in a film about a guy cleaning bathrooms in Edo. Might be top ten for 2025. Good soundtrack!
• Aquaman 2 - Dawn of the Shramps. Actually it's not called that. Another DC snoozer with lots of special effects. Oh no, Black Mantis is back! Maybe I'm just not a DC fan. Too bad Marvel has gone down hill.
• There Will Be Blood - Daniel Day Lewis is good. Watch it if you haven't already. First he finds gold and silver, then he becomes an oil tycoon. Just go watch it. Then watch Bill Hader's SNL skit on this, which I somehow remembered more than first seeing this film.
• Night Moves - starring Gene Hackman. I only remember the end of the film, which was weird.
• The Voices - Weirdest film I've seen with Ryan Reynolds. It's just messed up. Don't watch it.
• The Martian - The Extended Version - Kevin Damon is The Martian and sells wine to the Martians with incredibly detailed pricing. No, wrong Damon. Matt Damon plays an a space pirate who steals a Martian Rover and communication device to phone home. He also grows potatoes on Mars. Then they blow up and he has to listen to disco all day, even though in the book he also had the entire collection of The Beatles. Have you ever grown potatoes in your back yard? It's not hard but the water may cost you more money than just buying a bag of potatoes. Dude, Matt Damon had to make water. Watch this film. Read the book too!
• Serie Noire, part of Hardboiled, 3 films by Alain Corneau - Lots of people yelling French. I love french films generally for the cute, sometimes, nude women. There's usually at least one totally nude, or topless. I like hearing French in the background and I enjoyed this despite not paying attention to any of the english subtitles, and occasionally yelling "D'Accord!" back at the screen which it's entirely possible my neighbors heard.
• Meet Me In The Bathroom - An epic music bio documenting the music scene in the early 2000s including bands like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD Soundsystem, and The Strokes. Despite the title, I saw nobody doing cocaine. I quite enjoyed it and if you like any of these bands you should watch it. The extras were also pretty good including a Q&A panel with Jim Jarmusch and the filmmakers.
• Outlander - this was an action film I think I watched before but had little memory of. Warrior from space crashlands in Norway in 709 A.D. bringing with him a monster which he battles with the vikings of the day. I thought it was alright but nothing to write home about. I did consider the ramifications of the ending and wondered if the little kid would turn out to be Erik The Red's 6th grandfather, or if the space warrior injected his genes into the Vikings, making his progeny actual Space Vikings. I guess that would've only been true if they travelled into space.
• Melancholia - I watched the first 45 minutes of this with the sound off and then when I turned it up everyone was talking quietly. Turned out a rogue planet had come into the solar system, which in reality would not be an easy task for a planet to do so and not wreck everything - uh, can you tell me why Uranus is on it's side, hello? Any way, the part I watched had people freaking out and being happy when the planet started going away. At the end of the film, I did say "This Movie Sucks!" but you can watch it and tell me what you think.
• Laurel Canyon - what a snooze. I couldn't complain enough about the unrealistic studio recording having the vocalist in the same room as the band without any kind of baffles. Stupid. I mean getting math wrong in a sci fi film is one thing but you're in L.A. - certainly there was at least one person who would say - this doesn't make any sense. The film was mainly about Christian Bale's gf and whether or not she was going to get it on with his mom and her boyfriend (the singer of the band). Ugh. This movie sucks, but I just had it on while I was working on something else so I don't feel like I wasted any time.
• Burn After Reading - Coen Brothers black comedy starring one of their wives, Frances McDormand about when dating in Washington D.C. goes wrong. Actually it's not really about that. I think Brad Pitt's character is lame, but in a funny way. John Malkovich is perfectly annoying, and J.k. Simmons brief appearance likely sums up a fair amount of governtment official's mentality.
• Black Sea - (SPOILER) a film which I thought was based on a true story the entire time I was watching it only to be dumbfounded by the end when the gold comes up to the surface in a suit. They said it could only hold so much, and if the gold bars were 12 kilograms each, based on a human's weight the suit could only hold say eleven bars, but it clearly looks like a lot more than that. I know it's a movie, but now you've left so much gold down in the ship with all the people who died in the film, that the two guys who survive are going to want to go back. Were they hoping for a Black Sea sequel? I did enjoy it, but I can't say it's a great film.
• Superman - another Superman? I enjoyed it, but parts of it were dumb. I guess when you have to appeal to the masses, you have to dumb it way down. I did not like the bitch with the technobody, but the actor as Lex was pretty good. And I think this Lois Lane is likely one of the most attractive in all the films, (can't speak to the tv shows as I've only seen some of the original and Smallville). The whole battle of people without weapons versus a military with weapons is stupid but they had to have a reason for the Justice League to step up. But Nathan Fillon's haircut is probably the dumbest thing about the entire film, and Superdog was the best.
• Thunderbolts The New Avengers - How they think they could call these the new Avengers is just fitting along with all the dogs Marvel has continued to put out since Avengers Endgame. I count three decent films since, and I haven't seen all the series shows, but it just seems like Marvel has become a producer of only Milkduds. I hate Elaine as the villin and really hoped someone was going to toss her off the ledge of Stark Tower but then they have a reason to give her armor or superpowers and then I'd really be annoyed. I just don't like her. This one needs an alternate ending where they kick her ass, or a post post-credits scene where she's in a jail cell with Thunderbolt Ross. The russian dude is the bright spot if there could be one. I just thought if I was going to drink, I want to get drunk with that dude! Actually, the best part of this film was when it ended and I fast-forwarded to the post-credits scene. You can watch it, but if you miss it before the next big Avengers film I doubt it'll matter.
• Wrath Of Man - another Guy Ritchie/Jason Stathman film. Some of this misses, but I think the parts where it doesn't make up for it. Most of the villians I don't care enough about to want to see them get it in the end, and even the last guy, he deserved so much more. Maybe an extended escape scene where you thought he got away from Statham, before the final scene? Watch it!
• On The Road - why they turned a famous book into this dog of a film, I don't know. I'd rather listen to Jack Kerouac waxing poetic down the street than watch this one again. I actually saw this in a theater with a friend some years ago but didn't remember. Road films are better when they are actually on the road the majority of the time. There was way too many scenes of the douchebag character being a douchebag to whatever woman he was with at the time. We get it, he's a jerk.
• Adrift - based on a true story, but wait, there's more! This is one of those films which bounces back and forth time-wise to develop and carry the film along. It did confuse me a couple times, and the end threw me for a loop, partially knowing what really happened in real life. It's the kind of film that will make you never want to sail across the Pacific Ocean. Take more supplies people!! In fact, I'm going go order more survival food right now.
• Sicario, and Sicario 2 - these films are in the must-watch category although they are not blockbuster, exciting movies.
• The Ministry of Undistiguished Gentlemen blah blah blah warfare - Another Guy Ritchie film worth watching if you like action. Some of it is a bit lame but I enjoyed it.


Movies I watched in 2024: Yeah, I gotta dig out the list.

Partial list of movies I watched in 2023:

• Irreversible – December 2023 – this has some brutal violence in it. Just BRUTAL! Can’t really recommend it unless you are specifically looking for Vincent Cassel films. The film also does the time flip, where they show later scenes first, then go back to before that time. It's done in a way which I thought was confusing. It's also in French so be advised.
• The Last Duel – December 2023 – I first came to know of this film from a trailer for the film which I'm sure is on a dvd I own. I would laugh so hard when I'd see Adam Driver trying to be serious in the clip. That, and Matt Damon’s ridiculous beard. Honestly I don’t remember watching it but I do remember that it sucked. Most likely this was a film I had on while I was doing something else.
• The French Dispatch – Wes Anderson film which I thought was alright, even though it was a bit weird. Wait, aren't all Wes Anderson films werid? Yes. Yes, they are. Definitely worth viewing if only for the female nude scenes.
• The King’s Man – December 2023 – A decent spy movie I can’t really remember much of.
• Bottle Rocket – December 2023 - Another Wes Anderson film I thought was ok, but can’t say I enjoyed it a whole lot.
• Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets – December 2023 – I have watched this before, and really wanted to like it, but it just misses. I don’t know if it’s the lead actor, but I suspect if someone else was in the role it might have done better. Another dog by Luc Besson. Worth watching once, but THIS MOVIE SUCKS.
• The Swordsman – December 2023 – I’m not sure I remember, but I think it was good. Swordsman who is blinded, so they are kind of doing the Zatoichi thing without calling him Zatoichi.
• Anna – December 2023 – another assassin film, this one done by Luc Besson (Fifth Element, La Femme Nikita, Leon The Professional) which you should take a pass on.
• The Muppet Christmas Carol – December 2023 – A fairly good version of the Dickens classic which includes muppets, and probably one of the best versions of “death” in any A Christmas Carol films, as made by the Jim Henson Creature Shop. See the show Farscape for more fantastic muppets.
• Ava – November 2023 – a film about an assassin played by a woman. It probably had some unrealistic stuff in it. THIS MOVIE SUCKS!
• Assassins – Nov 23 – Stalone and Benderass. Worth a watch, but still THIS MOVIE SUCKS! Good, campy action.
• Last and First Men – November 23 – A film which uses these stone slab structures in Yugoslavia to show how life sucks in the future. Watch it for the scenery. Also, look up pictures of abandoned structures in Russia. THIS MOVIES SUCKS but watch it anyway.
• Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings – November 2023 – I still think this has one of the coolest ending battle sequences that Marvel has done after Avengers Endgame. I enjoyed it.
• Pineapple Express – November 2023 – You can still enjoy this film about smoking weed even if you don’t smoke weed.
• 65 – November 2023 – Starring Adam Driver – it was ok. Dinosaurs and a space ship. He crashes on a planet and then has to deal with giant reptiles, and a brat of a kid who speaks a different language than him. Worth a viewing! I’ve watched it a few times and I think it’s a lot better than most of the more recent Jurassic films.
• Transformers – Rise Of The Beasts – November 2023 – you know what, I watched this for ten minutes and turned it off. I just don’t see how a franchise goes from the last film with Wahlburg to this woke garbage. THIS MOVIE SUCKS! The cartoon Transformers One (I think that’s the name) was ok compared to this, and I don’t even like watching most animated films.
• Star Trek IX – Insurrection, Generations, and Nemesis – is that Tom Hardy as the bad guy? WTF? How is Captain Kirk hanging out with Picard? If you like sci-fi films and haven’t seen them, I can’t recommend them, or not recommend them. They're the Star Trek "Next Generation" movies.
• Ghost in the shell – November 2023 – I have no idea if I watched this or not, but I’m guessing THIS MOVIE SUCKS!!
• Blue Beetle – November 2023 – I enjoyed this superhero film mainly because I didn’t know anything about it.
• The Darjeeling Limited – October 2023 – another dog of a film by Wes Andersen. I do like some of his films, but this one didn’t work for me. The best part about it was when the little indian kid drowns and they have to go find his family to tell them. Actually no, that’s not true. The best part is them on the train, which is something that I could probably say about several Wes Anderson films. THIS MOVIES SUCKS. Go get yourself some Darjeeling Tea instead.
• Wargames – October 2023 – Would you like to play a game? The classic, but incredibly stale WarGames will make you wish you were watching Close Encounters Of The Third Kind instead. Very dated, but if you’ve never seen it you should watch it.
• Bullet Train – October 2023 – A fun action film which I recommend, despite a moment with someone jumping on the back of a speeding bullet train that I always cringe at. It’s a bullet train! This was done by the same people who made The Fall Guy – another one I recommend.
• The Flash – October 2023 – I try to like DC comics but something about their films that just seem to always miss a bit. This was no different. There were parts I liked, especially bringing in Michael Keaton. I’m not sure I really like the actor who plays the Flash much, and why someone with that kind of power would need a day job is a bit baffling. I mean, he could just run a bit slower and be a famous sports person. My favorite line of his was cut out of the Zack Snyder Justice League film edit (it was in the terrible original version of the film) while he's zooming around and says “It’s like a cave. A bat cave.”
• The Last Temptation Of Christ – October 2023 – Willem Dafoe as Jesus Christ what more do you want? This was far too slow for me to want to watch. I may have fast forwarded through parts. The only thing I really remember was making a clip of Jesus’ disciples in the desert headbanging to some Iron Maiden I was playing at the time. Hey, it was funny. It’s still on my phone!
• Men in Black International – October 2023 – Starring Thor and Valkyrie. I don’t remember. Actually having Thor and Valkyrie be Men In Black would've been entertaining. A crossover Marvel Series would be hugely popular. Do they fight the guy from The Flight Of The Conchords and he’s an alien with big teeth? Or was that in another one?
• The Quarry – Sept 2023 – Starring Michael Shannon. I don’t remember this at all, which might say a lot, I really don’t know. I’d bet Shannon gives a good performance either way.
• John Wick 4 – Sept 2023 – the final John Wick film (so far). All of these are good films, but I still say the first one is the best one. I’m still mad at Theon Greyjoy for killing Neo’s dog. F ucking A sshole!
• Operation Fortune – or Ruse De Guerre – Sept 2023 – a cast of characters and another Guy Ritchie film worth watching at least once. It’s alright, but not my favorite of his films.
• Cocaine Bear – Sept 2023 – a batshit crazy story about a bear who gets into some drug dealers stash and starts messing everything up. Far more entertaining that most films that Hollywood produces. Definitely watch it, and it also THIS MOVIE SUCKS!! But still watch it anyway!
• Blue Iguana – Sept 2023 – I don’t really remember watching this – dude, all of these movies you watched two years ago from now, how do you remember any of them?! It’s a film about some guys stealing a blue jewel. Sam Rockwell is usually pretty good. I went to the same high school as him so I knew people who knew him. Oh, and the film Moon he did was pretty good despite being incredibly slow.
• The Postman – Sept 2023 – starring Kevin Costner – post apocalyptic mail man somehow still getting Publishers Clearing House snail mail spam to people all over the country. Well, somebody has to do it. I’m not going to recommend you should watch this, but I won’t say it sucked.
• A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood – Sept 2023 – Starring Tom Hanks as Mister Rogers. What a crap load of a film. I have no idea why I bothered with this. You’d be better off watching Castaway on repeat. THIS MOVIE SUCKS!
• Jurassic World trilogy – Sept 2023 – I watched all of these over a few days. They’re ok, and the special effects are great, but I kind of don’t give a shite about the characters. Is it just that they don’t do character development anymore? Terrible actors? Bad scripts? I somehow recall caring more about the characters in the original Jurassic Park way more. Even that little shit of a kid in the original somehow comes off better than 99% of the people in these JW films. BUT they are worth watching for the dinosaurs.
• Another Version Of You – August 2023. This may have been the first time I watched this movie, but it wasn’t the last. I checked it out a couple times and kept watching it over and over until I bought a copy, which turned out to be a DVR from a library so I made them refund me and bought another copy. They didn’t want the DVR back so I actually own two copies of this film. I enjoy it but you’ll have to watch it yourself. Mokte Dapp was the director on it, and sadly one of the young actresses committed suicide not long after it was finished. Yes, I’ll watch this again in the future. It’s not the perfect movie, but it’s one of my favorites. Boy never tells girl he loves her. Girl marries another guy. He weeps, then a former NFL player gives him a drink and a magical key in a bar that opens doorways to parallel universes. I will say no more other than the soundtrack really grew on me.
• Amsterdam August 2023 – yeah, I’m pretty sure this sucked. As always if Christian Bale is in a film, he’ll be the best part of it. But I’m not sure his acting could save this one.
• Three Identical Strangers – August 2023 – ok, this was a very interesting yet completely f*cked up thing that happened to some triplets. It’s a documentary, and while I won’t suggest you watch it, it wasn’t as terrible as what happened to those kids.
• Krakatoa East Of Java – August 2023 – oh this is pretty bad with comical special effects. Do yourself a favor and read up on Krakatoa rather than watch this one. THIS MOVIE SUCKS!
• La Strada – August 2023 Fedrico Felini’s film about a clown played by a woman who gets tangled up with a very young Anthony Quinn. It’s a sad movie and one I can definitely say you SHOULD WATCH THIS! No, it didn’t suck, but it’s an older film so the pacing is very slow compared with modern movies.
• Conny Plank – The Potential Of Noise – August 2023 – a documentary about producer/engineer Conny Plank who worked with the likes of Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, Ultravox, and Devo. Definitely worth watching!
• Paint – August 2023 – starring Owen Wilson as a Bob Ross type character who is not likely at all like the man Bob Ross was. This movie sucked, but I’d still recommend watching it for a laugh.
• Seconds – August 2023 – I can’t say I even watched it it was so slow. That kind of Criterion Collection sit in the art house, smoking weed in the back film that you don’t really get no matter how high you are type film. THIS MOVIE SUCKS!
• Tenet – August 2023 – I’ve rewatched this since and along with Inception, the film still is baffling. While I felt Tenet was interesting, I can’t say I enjoyed it much. Inception had it’s moments, but Tenet was a struggle to like.
• Moonraker – August 2023 Roger Moore as James Bond. I remember my father taking me to see this in the theater when it came out back in the 1980s and while it’s very dated, I still enjoyed watching it. I can’t say it’s one of the better James Bond films, but it has a nostalgic quality for me.
• The Machine – August 2023 – Bert Kreicher’s tale of a train robbery in Russia turned into a film. Honestly, don’t bother with this film - just go find clips of him telling the story on the Joe Rogan podcast on the internet. There’s one where someone even animated it with South Park-like characters. That’s hilarious, this film missed the mark.
• The Keeping Room – August 2023 – a western sort of. Just go watch something with Clint Eastwood instead of watching this. THIS MOVIE SUCKS!
• Eyes Wide Shut – July 2023 – I finally watched this. Stanley Kubrick’s last film exposing the fucking elite illuminati cumbucket weirdo porno saturnalia cult. Yeah, you fucks are a bunch of weirdos. And to the reader here, that is basically a documentary. I didn’t like it but probably more from knowing about those sick fucks exist already. Then they ended Kubrick.
• Until The End Of The World – July 2023 – I’m sure this sucked because I turned it off at some point, or can’t remember anything about it. Sam Neil is in it, and they made it a Criterion Collection film so you know it sucks, but in an artful way. I will withhold judgment on this one, but I can’t recommend you watch it unless you need something to fall asleep to.
• Dog – July 2023 – Starring Tanning Chatum. I think I enjoyed this because who doesn’t love a good dog story with some kind of happy ending. I can’t say it’s a great film, but it had some moments, and I remembered it more over two years later than I did Until The End Of The World. Which reminds me I need to check out a Boy And His Dog, a post-nuclear-war -apocalyptic film starring Don Johnson and a dog. Sorry, it’s Channing Tatum. I always get those guys mixed up.
• Reminiscence – July 2023 – starring Wolverine. I don’t recall much of this, but I’m pretty sure it sucked.
• The Green Knight - July 2023 starring Dev Patel. Yeah, that guy who was in Lion – (which is a bit heartwarming albeit unrealistic), and some other films I’m sure. Other than an Indian being a knight during King Arthur times – oh, he's British? – sorry I don’t care. When you put a brown person in a role where historically in all likelihood, it would've been a white european, it's difficult for it to play well. They do this with films where small women beat up large men and it just makes it so unreasonable to consider it a possibility. Even still, the problem with this one is the script and story. It just sucked. I watched the whole movie and at the end was wondering if I should’ve just sat in the garden for two hours. Actually I wasn’t wondering, I wish I’d sat in my garden than watch this piece of crap. THIS MOVIE SUCKS!
• Tracks - July 2023 – a film about the true story of a woman who treks across Australia by herself. It was an interesting despite being a foolish thing to do alone, and her dog dying is really sad. Somehow she makes it across Australia and this made me thankful I am never going to do that.
• There are more films but I guess my library history only goes back two years, or maybe I didn't sign up on their website until then.

To learn more HTML/CSS to make better blogs than this one, check out these tutorials!