What movies have you seen recently?

[Fresh Tendrils]

I didn't realize the girl from VEEP was the My Girl girl until like season 2 of the show.

[Hammerhunker]

Quote: Originally Posted by Fresh Tendrils

I didn't realize the girl from VEEP was the My Girl girl until like season 2 of the show.

Trying to recognize her face gnawed on me for a bit also.

[DieHardYankee26]

My superhero hunger is peaking, ended up watching the first season of The Boys again and then wanted to watch a movie and ended up on Brightburn, basically a horror movie with the Superman kid from outer space premise but **** goes wrong. I liked it a lot, not a revolutionary movie or anything, it goes exactly where you expect it to, but it was entertaining to watch. The way it ended actually made me really hope they can get a sequel off, I want to see where they planned to go based on the other discoveries.

[Fresh Tendrils]

I saw the new trailer for The Boys and immediately got ready for it. I need Karl Urban just walking around behind me saying profanities all day. Switch up to Bones maybe. Then to Dredd. Yup.

We've been watching Firefly on Hulu. The last time I watched this was before Avengers. The similarities are pretty fun to notice and fairly obvious (to me anyway).

[Blzer]

This is still sitting at 100% on RT after 38 reviews, by the way.

Quote: Originally Posted by Blzer

Host (2020) This is a 56-minute Shudder original production that just came out today (like literally at midnight). My friend Haley Bishop is in it (I once mentioned that she was in Angel Has Fallen as well), and as every character in the flick shares the name of their real life counterparts, her character is named Haley and is kind of the "main character" I guess, if you would call it that. She's on the top portion of the cover pictured below. It's an Unfriended type of film as it's a screencast of several friends all on Zoom together, relevant in today's time as they mention the quarantine. They are using Zoom to do a seance, and as you can expect some evil supernatural stuff occurs. I'm just going to play the bias card and say that I enjoyed watching it. Yeah the foreshadowing at the beginning was obvious and there, and with 56 minutes of movie there is only so much character development and so much explanation of anything that you can have, that I frankly didn't care and just watched it for what it was. These screencast movies are pretty easy to get through as well. Obviously nothing is going to touch Searching (2018), but if you enjoyed Unfriended, have an hour to spare, and want to support Blzer's friend, go ahead and give this one a looksie. If that doesn't help, so far it has 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (only ten reviews, but that could have gone any direction imaginable). https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/host_2020

Anyway, just a heads up...

On the day my payment was going to renew (after the free 7-day trial), I elected to cancel citing the reason that I only tried it to see one movie, which is essentially true. It then offered me a free month's extension, which I accepted.

If anybody is interested in trying this service with similar ideas in mind, just know that it may be possible you'll get about five weeks' worth of free content.

So I decided to check out two Halloween sequels that are on there.


Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

I liked this one quite a bit, especially the ending. I enjoyed that there was police involvement where they were consciously aware of the threat as opposed to simply being blindsided without warning or putting themselves in a spot where they confront Michael without knowing who he is.

I'll speak on this later, but man I don't really like the way they have portrayed the Samuel Loomis character. I'm not talking about for this movie specifically, I'm also referring to any other Halloween film he appears in (the original, these two sequels I'm watching, the Rob Zombie remake, any of it). He is not at all a sympathetic character. I'm sure this is an intended effect, but he is every bit the verbal crazy that Michael Myers isn't. I understand his restless demeanor, that's fine. But he's like shaking children and getting into their faces, cursing a storm at them. When his sole purpose is to convince everyone else that MM is essentially an unbeatable source of evil, he could definitely come off as less kooky himself, otherwise from the outside looking in I wouldn't believe him either.


Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

I liked how this was essentially a Part II to Halloween 4 in picking up where the other left off, much like the first two films of the franchise. Yes, they have a year jump in the beginning, but we're still for the most part in the same place with every character (and I'm really confused on what Michael was doing this whole time? if you've seen the film you might know what I mean).

However, outside of maybe two prolonged scenes with great tension build-up (the barn scene and Michael's house scene), this film kind of faltered on many levels. Some bits are nitpicks such as the dreadful and constant use of ADR and the goofy cop duo who are used very little, but then there is the idea of character choices. I realize that characters walk themselves into trouble a lot and I'm fine with that, but there were constant moments where I want to yell at the screen because the movie decided despite the situation that they were going to be idiots anyway. At some point I may sound like I should be more forgiving of horror movie idiot tropes, but I like to think these are a lot dumber than "Don't go in that room!" because we are aware of what's in there. And honestly, a lot of these actions could have still been in the movie if the setup was simply written differently. This is a big fault of the writing here, and the previous movie maybe had one of these moments (the dude with the double-barrel shotgun, if you know what I'm referring to... though the roof scene didn't make much sense either lol).

To not get too spoiler-y, one example is where someone is running in a tree-filled area when being chased by a car, and decides to only run in spaces where the car can continue following them. They must have gone to the Prometheus School of Running Away from Things. Another example is where police are expecting MM to appear somewhere so they are staking it out, and then the entire force (S.W.A.T. included) decide to leave because they essentially get the radio call equivalent of a cat being in a tree. There are like six others I can think of right now, but I'll simply refrain.

Although I for the most part liked the characters, it felt like we were on a B-storyline for a long time when really that was the A-storyline the whole time. I guess I have to be accepting of the idea, but when we're combining 4 & 5 as a two-part thread, this would make the entire fourth act seem like an hour-long "deviation" of sorts. Granted, this is also where some of the best tension was built so I was kind of okay with it, but this was also noteworthy for me.


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It's funny how even after having seen eight different Halloween films, I still sometimes question if MM is ever actually trying to kill people like Loomis or any of his relatives. That sounds stupid especially if you watch the movies, but sometimes I sit there wondering if he's trying to get close to them just to say: "Wuv me, sistohl?" This is also true with how close Loomis gets to MM often, but I guess that's because of their past. I guess if you're okay knowing that these movies are about Michael relentlessly killing just because (which really always has been the lure for many) and that he basically is incapable of dying, then knowing that there are currently eleven movies in the franchise's existence will be enough for many.

Shudder currently doesn't have 6-8 (though I saw 8 a long time ago... ugh Ja Rule), and I skipped on 3 for now after watching five minutes and realizing it didn't follow Laurie or Michael and looked like some Terminator knock-off before The Terminator existed haha, but I'll be sure to check out Curse and H20 when I'm able to, maybe rewatch the first RZ film again, and then watch the new chain's sequel one more time even though I watched it for a second time already back in April. But again, none of those are on Shudder so I'll have to improvise a little bit to catch some of these.

[KSUowls]

Introduced my wife to Happy Gilmore.

Adam Sandler's comedy has not aged well. It certainly wasn't as funny as I remember, but I still really enjoyed the movie.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Men in Black International
This is what happens when you have no set movie in mind before jumping on Prime/Netflix and the wife has something catch her eye.

Positives? Tessa Thompson is absolutely adorable. Both her and Chris are super likable in this. Everything else is super dislikable. To put it mildly.

[jeremym480]

The Judge - I thought Duval and Downy did a great job and it was nice since Downy as someone other than Tony Stark (since that's all I've seen him in since Tropic Thunder a decade ago). Overall, the movie was decent but a bit predictable and cliched. It did make me want to move to Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts though.