#2 - The Legend of Halloween Jack (2018)

Okay, second day into OHMRAT 2019 and I'm still scrambling to find movies to watch.  Thankfully, I signed up with Vudu.com last month in preparation for October, so I'm grabbing a movie from there tonight.  From what I can tell so far, Vudu has a lot of bad old horror movies (the kind I love without reservation), so if you like those kinds of flicks, sign up for that, it's free.  Sure, Vudu emails the shit out of you trying to get you to buy newer movies (which you can do there if you have money, but I don't), but other than some ads for Vudu during the movie (which seems ridiculous since you're already watching the movie on Vudu, so I don't get that), you can watch them without interruptions.

The Legend of Halloween Jack (2018) is one of Vudu's newer movies.  I picked it because of the scarecrow pic on the icon for the movie, which is a standard symbol of Halloween and autumn.  This movie is your standard serial-killer-gets-off-on-a-technicality, then gets-murdered-by-a-bunch-of-townsfolk, then comes-back-from-the-dead-to-exact-his-revenge routine.  I'm not giving anything away that doesn't happen in the first 5 minutes.  I almost shut the movie off after that.

As is usually a problem with movies I haven't seen yet, there was no way to tell how good this movie was before I started watching it.  Once I started watching it, it was quickly obvious how bad it was.  All the actors were old, and bad at their jobs.  The dialogue was pretty awful.  About the only things I did like about this movie was the Halloween-ish atmosphere, and the one scene where there was an actual honest-to-goodness field of growing pumpkins, which is something you always see around Halloween, but I don't think I've ever seen in a horror movie before.  It wasn't anything special, but it was still cool to see, at least for me.  The rest of the movie was pretty awful, but if you don't want to take my word for it, there's always Vudu.

I usually give a review of the fall series premieres, but this fall has been pretty crappy, as far as I can tell.  About the only series that looked promising was Evil, on thursday nights, but the first episode didn't look very good.  Maybe it'll get better, but I doubt it.  With all the online movie places nowadays, maybe all the good series are ending up there?  Meh, who knows.  That's all for tonight!  Time for more horror movies!  :-D

October Horror Movie Review-A-Thon 2019 Begins!

You know all those clever plans that you have, and you think, oh, I'll have plenty of time to get this done before that hapens, and then something else happens, and you get all caught up in that, and then, before you know it, the other thing has happened and you've run out of time?  Well, it wasn't like I didn't know OHMRAT was coming, right?  So I started watching horror flicks last night, thinking, "Okay, I should have plenty of time to find something new and review it for the blog."  So today I get up, started watching a movie I had DVR'd, and then... POOF!  Shit happens and it's like 30 minutes before midnight on October 1st and I still haven't written a blog post for the day!  I know, I had ONE JOB, and I fucked it up!  :-(  So, let's open OHMRAT 2019 with Hocus Pocus, which I just watched with my mom, because she's like 1,000 years old and she loves Bette Midler.

Hocus Pocus (1993) starts off as a classic fish-out-of-water story, and ends with a halloween twist.  This high-school kid named Max moves with his family from California to some New England town where the three Sanderson Sisters (deceased witches and local legends, played by Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy) form the core of the local halloween folklore in the area.  Max is trying to hook up with the local high-school beauty, but he's hampered in his efforts by his tag-along little sister (played by a young Thora Birch).  So Halloween night comes along and of course, Max gets stuck babysitting for the evening.  So he takes little sis out trick or treating, runs into miss-high-school beauty, and accidentally lights a black flame candle that awakens the three sanderson sisters after 300 years and unleashes them on the town for Halloween night!  Oh, man, if I had a dollar for every time that has happened to me, I'd be...  uh...  very poor.

Hocus Pocus is a Halloween classic at this point, and despite the fact that it's more aimed at kids than adults, you can't really get through the holiday season without running across it at least once or twice.  I caught it on Freeform tonight, which is doing their 31 days of horror again (along with every other decent channel out there, come on people get with the program, it's Halloween horror month, ffs), so you can probably watch it there if you want to.  There's a couple musical numbers (not my favorite thing in a movie but the tunes are catchy), and the veteran actors do a fair job of making things creepy, in addition to the overall feel of the chaos and hijinks and tomfoolery that goes on most halloween nights.  Special effects are okay for the time, but honestly, this is just one of those decent, entertaining, mildly-atmospheric Halloween movies you watch just to pass a few hours, and it certainly passes the re-watchability test.  It's been around since 1993 and it's not going away, so if you haven't seen it yet, just surrender to the Freeform-Borg Overlords and go watch it.  Resistance is futile.

That's all for tonight, and I actually want to post this before midnight, so hopefully I will get my shit together by tomorrow and do a better job then!  Ah, who am I kidding?  Anyone who's been following my blog knows I'm a completely out-of-control dumpster fire that stinks like flaming cabbage, and you guys just come here to watch and laugh.  Strangely, I'm okay with that.  See you tomorrow, assuming I don't fall down a flight of stairs and break something.

Throwback Thursday - Down/Shaft (2001)

It's almost that time of year again!  October Horror Movie Review-A-Thon is just around the corner!  I can tell you guys are salivating all over your lobster bibs for my reviews on new movies!  Well, we don't have a new movie this week.  In honor of throwback thursday, I'm reviewing something only about 18 years old, which is probably longer than most people on the internet have been alive.

Down (aka The Shaft, 2001) is about a possessed elevator.  It's one of only two horror movies I know of that elevators are killing people.  The other one is Devil (2010, bokeem woodbine, matt craven), which is also pretty decent, and I've reviewed it before.  The Shaft stars James Marshall and Eric Thal as a pair of elevator repairmen who are called to repair an elevator that got stuck and caused a bunch of pregnant women to give birth all at once.  They can't find anything wrong with it.  The next day, a blind man apparently commits suicide in it, taking his dog with him.  A guard loses his head in the doors, and that's only the beginning.  Can the heroic elevator repairmen find out what's causing all these horrific accidents, before more lives are lost?

This movie wasn't the best killer elevator movie I have ever seen, and since it's a short list, I guess this is acually the worst killer-elevator movie I have ever seen. Still a good watch, though, even the second or third time around.  Interesting actors to watch for are Ron Perlman and Michael Ironside as the evil experts behind the elevator accidents, and Dan Hedaya and Edward Herrman are supporting cast as owners of the building where the elevator is located.  Naomi Watts plays the "intrepid reporter" role, and apparently doesn't believe in wearing a bra on cold movie sets.  The ratings warned me of nudity in here somewhere, but I didn't recall seeing any at all.  The dialogue and effects are so-so, but the story is relatively coherent, and the deaths escalate pretty quickly.  I caught this movie on Showtime Beyond, but there are probably other places you can find it.

In other news, summer's over and the leaves are starting to change color, and that means it's time for OHMRAT!  I hope everyone joins me for "October Horror Movie Review-A-Thon" next month.  It starts next week tuesday!  I will try and review a horror movie every night for a single month, that's 31 horror movies and 31 reviews posted in october, 1 per day!  this year, I'm going to try and review only horror movies I haven't seen yet, but that doesn't always work out.  Frankly, I love watching horror movies, so that's the easy part, but managing to fit 31 horror movies into 31 days can sometimes be a problem.  Sometimes it'll be late in the day and despite my best efforts, all the more-recent horror movies turn out to be utter shit, and I can't even finish watching them.  In those cases, I have to resort to the usual favorites, which are often played on regular TV in honor of Halloween.  Can I do 31 days of horror movies again, same as I have been doing for the last ten years?  :-o  Only time will tell!

See you guys next week!  :-)

Stranger Things 3, Jessica Jones 3, Spider-Verse, RotLD

It's been a busy summer, and I been meaning to post a review for a long time, so you guys are getting a bunch at once.  I'm going to keep it short, since it's a sunny day, and I am going to work on my tan as soon as I finish up here.  :-)

Let's take Jessica Jones (season 3) first.  In the Final Season of jessica Jones (available on netflix, of course), Jessica takes on a normal, every-day, human serial killer.  I would have thought super villains would be more her speed, but I guess someone has to take care of the serial killers that manage to escape justice, amirite?  Right.  Along the way, Jessica reconnects with her foster mom and sister, and there's even some side-story involving that lawyer-friend of hers.

I wasn't really thrilled with the third season of Jessica Jones.  I like Jessica Jones as a character, and dealing with a serial killer is a bit different than usual.  I also suppose they had to try to finish up with a bang, since it was the last season, but it sort of ended with a whimper instead of a bang.  I won't say the whole season was bad, since some of the things the characters went through was actually kind of cool, and I liked the dynamics of the character interaction.  Minor spoilers, I also liked the symbolic way Jessica cleaned out her detective office, and handed over the keys, to give people one last look at the office she's lived in for the past 3 seasons.  It's like giving Trekkies one last look at the Enterprise before they blow it up (again, or maybe for the last time, whenever that happens).  I didn't like the way the series ended, honestly.  More minor spoilers, I was never a fan of that purple mind-controller guy's (I'm honestly too lazy to look up his name right now, it's Sunday morning ffs) voice in Jessica's head, not even as residue of the trauma she suffered after dealing with him.  I would much have preferred seeing Jessica soaking up some sun on a beach somewhere at the end of this season, in a bikini instead of her usual jeans and leather jacket combo, retiring her uniform as well as her career as a Private Detective/superhero.  I think she finally achieved superhero status in her final season, and deserved some much-needed relaxation time.  Then again, maybe that doesn't fit her character.  All in all, I thought the final season could have used a bit more Jessica, and less of everyone else.

Spider-Man, Into the Spider-Verse (2018) was basically a Spider-Beings cross-over event in cartoon form.  There's Spider-Girl, Spider-Man, Spider-Pig, some sort of Noir 40's detective dark knight Spider-Man Bat-Man mixup, and some futuristic anime Spider-bot thing all tossed into the mix.  They are all needed to help stop Kingpin and some alternate-universe-version of Dr. Octopus from their dastardly plan to remake reality.

First, let me preface this by saying, I love cartoons.  I grew up on Spider-Man movies in the 70's (yes, there WERE spider man movies way back in the 70s, several of them), and spider-man cartoons in the 80s.  I suppose I get that people are getting tired of the old Superheroes at this point, since most of them have been around since 1940 or so, and they want to re-invent the hero's alter-egos to make them seem fresh to the newer generations, but honestly, do you have to take everything away from a hero and remake him or her completely, just to suck in young folks?  Remember your audience, nerds who grew up on comic books, or at least take a cue from NCIS, which hasn't changed it's format in like 20 years ffs.  Show us some stability in these troubled times.  Show me spider man dealing with some freakin bank robbers, ffs.  I'd LIKE some simple, character-driven stories that DON'T involve saving the entire universe for a goddamned change.  It doesn't ALWAYS have to be bigger and more explosive than the last episode, for it to be enjoyable.  But, I rant.  Moving on.

I liked into the Spider-Verse.  Pretty sure it's also on Netflix.  Funny side-note, and minor spoiler, there's a part where the young Spider-man (spider-boy?) purposely gets a zero on a true-false test to try and get kicked out of the fancy new school he was in, because he liked his old school better.  I did the same thing in high school to get out of a business class my guidance counselor wouldn't let me just drop.  Awesome stuff!  Taken right out of my own life.  Now if only I could turn invisible, that would be awesome.  Swinging from tall buildings and fighting super-villians, maybe not so much.  I'm scared of heights, and a bit of a coward. :-D

Stranger Things season 3!  In this season, a rogue team of Russians manage to crack open the portal to the other place, and something sneaks through the crack to prey on the children of Hawkins.  Can Eleven and Mike patch up their lover's quarrel before all Hell breaks loose?  Or will Will the Wise have to step in and lay down the smackething?  Will the heroes get time to play D&D again before the Summer ends?  Will Dustin ever get a girlfriend?  Check Netflix and find out!

This season of Stranger Things only has eight episodes, so it went a lot faster.  There wasn't as much character development, but it was more than enough to move the story right along.  I really enjoy how Stranger things does their monsters.  As a lifelong horror-movie / monster movie fan, I gotta say, their critters are very creative.   Sure, maybe they rely on CGI a bit too much, and don't do things old-school (with real monsters!  Come on, monster actors for monster parts!  Fair's fair!), but at least they're giving it the old college try!  Cheerio!

I've also recently found out that Season 4 of Stranger Things will be the last, so, I guess we'll probably see that drop next fall, if past premiere dates are any indication.  This season was fast-paced and fun to watch, and didn't drag on like the previous seasons, but it also felt a little rushed at times.  Hopefully they've found their groove now, and will just settle in and give us a decent enough fourth season to cap off the series.  I'm sure the young stars probably want to move on to other roles.

Oh, speaking of other roles, minor side-bar, I just read an article that the next james Bond is going to be a black woman!  I'm thrilled!  I've been saying they need to make Bond a woman for years now.  I don't recall the actress's name (mostly because I'd never heard of her before), but it's definitely a good move.  Now all they need to do is make her either bisexual or a lesbian, and they won't have to change the default script at all!  It's always (1) Someone dies (2) Bond is called in (3) Bond seduces some secretary in an evil organization and gets info (4) bad guys find out and kill secretary (5) bond destroys evil organization because he wasn't done boning the "bond girl."  I've seen it happen a dozen times already, and it just keeps getting better, every time I see it!  Of course, boning is probably not the right word in a girl-on-girl situation.  Sorry, I will try to update my archaic slang for next time.

Now, what's ROTLD, you ask?  Well, it's Return of the Living Dead (1985), of course!  I try to watch this movie every July, mostly because the events portrayed in the movie (which are ABSOLUTELY TRUE according to the blurb at the beginning, and absolutely fictitious in the credits at the end) supposedly happen on July 3rd, 1984.  That's 35 years ago, this month!  I actually was home July 3rd this year (I'm usually not), so I got the chance to re-watch this movie on the 35th anniversary of the supposedly ABSOLUTELY TRUE events portrayed therin!  You know, it's funny, I don't recall louisville Kentucky being destroyed by a nuclear morter back in 1984.  Hmmm.  Probably just a load of malarkey, then.

Return of the Living Dead is the awesomest zombie movie of all time.  Of All Time, you ask?  OF ALL TIME, I say!  I'm not even going to go into how the plot just ZIPS right along, and how there's humor and awesome character actors in every damn scene.  I'm not going to tell you how hot Linnea Quigley is in this movie, dancing naked on a stone sarcophagus.  No, I'm just going to say two words.  FAST ZOMBIES.  Yep, this is the first movie (that I know of, anyways) where zombies aren't stupid, staggering lumps of flesh that you can easily outrun.  The zombies in this movie are fast, smart, and they remember everything that they knew in life.  And shooting them in the head doesn't do jack shit.  Why?  Because they're already dead!  Duh!  This movie was an instant cult classic, and good enough to spawn several sequels right away.  Believe it or not, they were still making more sequels, a few years back.

Of course, if you want to see Return of the Living Dead, it's not on netflix.  I'm not sure where I saw it, but I watched it on July 3rd, 35 years to the day after the fictitious events in the movie!  In fact, it might have even been right at the exact same time, too!  Not that any of that makes any difference.  It's just a good movie.  I think I saw it at one of those free-to-watch movie places online.  I also have it on DVD, but I'm not sure if my DVD player still works.  I got it like 15 years ago, and I never used it.  Hmmm.  Might be time to plug that sucker in and see if it works.

Okay, you folks are all caught up on what I've been watching, so enjoy the rest of the summer!  Hopefully you'll hear from me before October. :-D

Game of Thrones Wrap-Up

Okay, so I been watching Game of Thrones since the first episode 8 years ago, and quite honestly, I expected it to end a little better than this.  Game of Thrones spoilers to follow, but like, maybe half a dozen people at most read my blog, so I'm hoping they've already seen it.

I posted a few weeks ago about Arya killing the night king in epsiode 3 this season, and I honestly think that was the last decent thing that happened on game of thrones.  As I mentioned then, Bran should have smiled to warn the Night King he was about to die, and then thanked Arya afterwards, to let everyone know he was still at least partially Bran.  Right then and there, things started going badly for the entire series, and I'm going to explain why.  Let's recap the events of episode 3, just so we're all on the same page, so you can see where I am coming from.

All of the North and all of Dany's forces converge in Winterfell to defend it against the Night King.  As Jon Snow said, they'd never have survived the battle without Dany and the Unsullied.  Conversely, the Night King would have destroyed Dany and her dragons, without Jon's army, Arya's intervention and information (from Samwell Tarly!) that Dragonglass kills White Walkers.  However, the army of the Night King is all undead, and as we are reminded halfway through the episode, the Night King can replenish his troops after every battle by just raising the dead again.  There's no way to defeat the Army of the Dead without killing the night king, and Arya manages this, fulfiling her role as an assassin, AFTER pretty much everyone in winterfell is killed by the dead.  I mean seriously, there was like Jaime, Jon, Brienne, Arya, Ser Davos, and a couple other guys.  All the civilians ended up in the Crypt, but all the soldiers were up top, fighting.  The dead overran the place.  There was literally almost no one left, when Arya finally offs the Night King, and saves most the main characters in the nick of time.

Now, here's my problem.  Jon Snow and Dany now have no army left to send South to defeat Cersei.  I mean lt's face it, two dragons are great, and the last 3 episodes should have focused on those two characters using those two dragons to go ahead and confront Cersei, but they didn't.  Instead, Dany gets all "I want to kill Cersei NOW!" and sends her troops (now where did she get MORE troops?  EVERYONE just died at winterfell.  I just explained that, and the episode went to great lengths to demonstrate that only the main characters were left) south, and the small fleet of boats she sends are ambushed by Euron Greyjoy and the Iron Fleet.  So that kills off even MORE of Dany's imaginary army, any injured she might have managed to send south, and at this point, there should be like 3 guys and Tyrion left to send up against King's Landing.  They should literally have no hope whatsoever of taking King's landing without dragons, and in the same episode, Dany loses another dragon to the Ballista, so there's only one left.

Now, let's take a moment to quibble about whether one dragon could have taken out all the crossbows or mangonels or ballista or whatever the hell you call you big-ass bolt-shooters that took out Jon's dragon.  I always thought that it would be damn near impossble to fire those things straight UP, so if Dany had come at each ballista from directly overhead, it would be almost impossible to aim it directly upwards, and fire at the dragon.  Of course, if you've seen the subsequent episodes, that's not exactly what Dany did, though she did come at them out of the sun at first, making it extremely hard to see her coming.  So, between a bunch of ballista firing bolts at a dragon coming straight down at them (my idea) out of the sun (what they showed), I think MAYBE she might have got all of most of the ballista emplacements.  It could have gone either way, I think.  Now, how the hell dragonfire manages to make solid stone explode like gas-soaked matchsticks, I'm really not sure.  Real fire doesn't work that way, but I'm suspending my disbelief on that one for the sake of argument.

Now, in episode 5 or whatever, Dany takes out all the ballista, and she's pretty much free to do whatever she wants.  Now, here's where the breaker of chains and mother of dragons cuts off her nose to spite her face.  I don't know if she was freaked out about Missandei's death or upset about her crumbling relationship with Jon Snow, and I can understand her being angry about either of those.  And is it just me, or do the two most loving and pivotal relationships in the entire series revolve around incest?  Jaime/Cersei and Dany/Jon, right?  What the hell?  But anyways, the entirety of King's landing surrenders, and THAT makes Dany lose her shit.  I mean, I don't get it.  She's fine when she thinks she has to fight her way through thousands of soldiers to get to Cersei (who is directly responsible for killing Missandei, not the city), holding back her dragon on the wall to wait and see if the city is going to surrender.  And they DO.  Every last enemy soldier surrenders.  King's landing is Dany's, and all she has to do to take the Iron Throne is Kill Cersei.  There isn't even going to be a fight.  All she has to do is fly her dragon to the Red Keep and roast Cersei, or let her men take it, and Cersei is hers to do with as she pleases.  I mean, we all know Cersei's going to die at this point.  Even Killing Missandei was one last scene to show everyone her character is an evil bitch.  Everyone in Westeros hates Cersei.  We get it!  I'm surprised she's lived as long as she has.  But instead of attacking Cersei and the Red Keep, sparing the people who KNOW that Dany is their new Queen, and that Cersei is the usurper, Dany goes apeshit and starts killing everything.

Dany turns into a one-dragon wrecking crew, and uses magical dragon fire to roast every last living thing in the entire city, and destroy every last building.  No, really, they showed her doing that, in episode 5.  Systematically and methodically burning every street, destroying every building, roasting every living thing.  Even Arya knew it.  She told a bunch of people hiding inside a stone building that YES, they were ALL GOING TO DIE if they didn't RUN.  Which was proven correct as the building was destroyed immediately afterwards, and everyone got scorched to cinders except Arya, who was so covered in ash and unconscious that she was probably mistaken for dead.  So, everyone in King's Landing is dead, and all the buildings are so wrecked that repairing them with one remaining soldier crying in an alley and Arya's bloody horse, is going to be absolutely impossible even with hundreds of years.  Even Arya gets on her horse and flees.  At this point, nothing should be left in King's Landing but broken stone, Dany and her dragon.  Even the Red Keep looks like swiss cheese, the iron throne bared to the elements.  Sure, there were supposed to be Jon and some Unsullied left sacking the city after the dragon destroyed the gates, but let's face it, as I've already logically established, after the Night King's army overrran Winterfell and Euron's fleet destroyed the last of Dany's troops, there shouldn't even BE any Unsullied, Dothraki, or Northmen left, except MAYBE the main characters.

So we come to the final episode, episode 6.  Okay, I get it, the writers are pressed for time, trying to wrap everything up in 6 episodes, but come on, is that any excuse for sloppy writing?  We've got a coffee cup left in one scene, water bottles left in others, I mean, read the internets, guys!   Things are just falling apart, and it's nowhere more obvious than Dany suddenly commanding THOUSANDS of Unsullied and Dothraki.  I mean, where the Hell did they come from?  Arya and Jon are walking past Dothraki riding back and forth through the streets, hundreds of them at least, and Thousands of unsullied are gathered to hear Dany speak on the ruined steps of the Red Keep.  I mean, look, at this point, if everything I've said hasn't broken your immersion in the show by now, I don't know what will.  It sure broke my immersion.  I almost stopped watching when I saw Dany's whole army suddenly reborn, somehow.  They make this HUGE thing about how Dany has to get her troops all the way across the sea to Westeros, how she's not going to have any reinforcements once she gets there, how all her army is destroyed by the Night King and the POOF!  They're all back!  Ah, the wonders of CGI, amirite?  Ugh.  I'm so disgusted at this point, I don't even want to keep talking about this shit-show.

So, MAJOR SPOILERS, Tyrion resigns as Hand over Dany destroying everything, Dany puts him in prison, Grey Worm is murdering surrendered prisoners by the dozens, and Jon Snow visits him.  Tyrion talks him into killing Dany, and he does, in the most obvious manner possible.  It wasn't even emotional, it was an "of course, how boring" moment.  So then the dragon destroys the iron throne, which, I mean, why?  Why wouldn't the dragon burn Jon?  I've always wondered if Jon, also being a Targaryn, would be immune to fire.  Alas, I didn't get to find out.  In any case, Dany's dead, the dragon flies off with her body, and Jon is imprisoned for treason.  So they convene a council of lords to judge Jon's fate, but first, they have to deal with Tyrion's fate.  It seems nobody actually WANTS to be King, and that seems to me that almost anyone seated at that concil would have been a good choice as ruler.  Tyrion uses his sneaky word-skills to suggest Bran become King, and everyone is like HELLS YEAH MAKES PERFECT SENSE!  WHY DIDN'T WE THINK OF THIS BEFORE?  Uh.  What?  Really?  WTF ARE YOU THINKING?

Okay, let me stop everything for a moment here, and explain why Bran would be a horrible King.  Bran spends hours, days, sometimes WEEKS lost in his own little world, viewing the past, the future, seeing through the eyes of animals.  He's never going to be there when you need him.  Hell, all they had to do to get the Night King to show himself was wheel Bran over to a tree and LEAVE HIM THERE.  Bran literally did nothing from that point on, and honestly, did he ever do anything, in the entire show, that was of any use whatsoever?  Samwell Tarly could have told Jon his true parentage, if that needed to be said.  Who wants some guy who hardly ever talks, shows absolutely no emotion, cares about nothing, and has no idea what it's like to even be human anymore, to be King?  Few of those Lords gathered at that council at the end there, would have even known who Bran was, and nobody's going to elect some random dude off the street to be King.  How's he even going to father heirs?  Look, let's say you're some random surviving lord sitting at that council, and even the internet doesn't know who half those people were, because I checked, so you could have been.  Tyrion, a convicted criminal in chains waiting for your judgement of his guilt, starts waxing rhapsodic about how Bran is a three-eyed Raven, a Broken man who "flew beyond the wall on his own wings" and can see the future!  Come on, Tyrion, lay off the wine!  Would you believe that shit?  I wouldn't, and I read the damned books!  They should have laughed harder at that than they did at Tarly's idea to get the common people in there to elect a King, ffs.  Bran doesn't even have the common decency to say thank you to Arya for saving his life, how the HELL is he going to handle court politics?  Bran is an even more ridiculous choice than Tyrion or Jon say they are, if you spend 30 seconds even considering the idea.

SPOILERS, CONTINUED...  Sansa decides she's not bending the knee to Bran, which is just total pettiness at this point, and makes herself Queen of the North.  Bran immediately names Tyrion his Hand again, Bronn, Brienne, Ser Davos and someone else end up in the little council (how is that room even still whole when everything else is ruined?), and Brienne honors Jaime by writing his deeds in the Knight's Book or whatever that thing is.  Arya goes off to explore what's west of westeros, so, good for her, and Jon is forced to join the Night's Watch, which is still apparently still a thing, despite the Night King being dead now, as his punishment for killing Dany.  The last scenes of Jon are him meeting up with Ghost again, and heading North beyond the broken Wall, as Sansa is crowned Queen of the North and Arya sets off to explore.  The End!  But Dany's body was borne off by the dragon, so, is it the End?

I want to take a moment again here, and register my confusion as to how anyone is even bothering to stay in King's landing.  The Iron Throne is GONE.  They showed the entire city burnt and broken, but somehow, at the end, the city is full of life again, and boats are coming to the docks.  There was no one left to rebuild!  They had like two guys and a dragon!  It would have taken centuries to be rebuilt, even with all the people!  Anyone sane would have just abandoned the pile of rock!  Lazy writing.  Just simple, lazy, bullshit, non-logical, continuity-breaking writing.  Ruined it.  Ruined the whole damned show.  Eight years of my life, gone down the drain.

So who should have been King, if not Bran, you ask?  Tyrion or Jon would both have made equally good choices, to my way of thinking.  Both are main characters, both influenced the plot significantly, Jon is well liked and Tyrion could talk the birds down from the trees.  Neither of them wanted it, but I am sure they could have been talked into taking the crown.  I mean, let's face it, if Tyrion can get a council of Lords to proclaim some random unknown disabled person to be King, he's got the political mojo to make peace between anyone, and get anyone to do what he wants.  I think even Ser Davos or Brienne or Samwell Tarly might have been equally good choices.  Hell, The House of Baratheon had the last good claim to the throne, why not let Gendry have a shot at it?  He is the only remaining descendant of the last true king, from before the seven kingdoms were fragmented, and he's a good honest hardworking blacksmith.  I think he'd have done a fair job.  I'm sad at this point that Varys didn't make it, he would have been a decent ruler, if you forgive that lack of heirs thing.

I don't agree with Sansa becoming Queen of the North.  She had this look, sitting there at the Council, that she was just WAITING for someone to put her name forth to be Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.  I know she's been through a lot, and maybe she deserved to be Queen at some point, but she wants it so badly that she can't even bend the knee to her own family.  The minute Bran is named King, she bows out, declares herself Queen of the North, again fragmenting the seven kingdoms, and opening the doors to chaos.  Isn't this where we came in, eight years ago?  What a godawful, disappointing ending.  Tyrion says nobody is really happy with it, and somehow that's supposed to make it right.  No, I don't think that's how things are supposed to work.

So, let's muse about what else might have happened.  How things could have been wrapped up so easily, in so many other ways.  So, let's say Dany doesn't go nuts.  King's Landing surrenders, and that restores Dany's faith in Westeros.  She flies her dragon over to the Red Keep, roasts Cersei with her dragon, and VOILA!  All's well that ends well.  Tyrion is happy, Jon is happy, King's landing is not a pile of burnt ash, and Dany is happy.  We've got a happy ending!  You don't like that?  Let's try something else.  Dany DOES go apeshit, burns everything, and demands to be crowned Queen of Westeros.  During the Coronation Ceremony, Jaime manages to dig himself out of the fallen rubble that Cersei died in, and stabs Dany through the gaps in the back of the iron throne for killing his sister.  The Kingslayer earns his nickname all over again, and whether he dies or not is irrelevent, because he's rid the world of a greater evil than Cersei, namely, Dany.

Don't like that one?  How about this!  Dany flies to the Red Keep, intending to burn all of King's landing to ashes, but before she does that, she wants to destroy Cersei first.  She uses her dragon to kill Cersei, but Cersei has planned for this by loading the Red Keep with Alchemical Fire.  The Red Keep explodes, the Iron Throne is destroyed, and Dany and Cersei are both dead.  Sure, it's a huge blow to everyone, but it's still a happy ending, because both the psycho bitches from hell are dead.  Don't even get me started on how nearly every woman in this show is evil, murderous or crazy, it's just so man-centered I don't even know how to unpack the misogyny.

You don't like that ending either?  Try this one.  Everything happens just as it did, except before Jon can kill Dany, Grey Worm does it for him.  I mean, let's face it, Missandei dying is Dany's fault.  Why the hell was she even sent south with everyone else?  She doesn't fight!  Dany dragged her all over Westeros with her, and that's why Missandei ended up dying.  Grey Worm should have been furious with Dany for that, not King's Landing.  Grey Worm dying for killing the Queen is a lot easier to take, so he takes one for the team, and Jon becomes King.  They showed Grey Worm at the end, intending to sail to Missandei's island, but would you want some murdering soldier to be your protector, or someone with some heart?

Don't like that one either?  Try this one!  Cersei wins, but before she can execute anyone, one of the Faceless Men assassinate her.  I mean, let's face it, everyone in Westeros hates her, someone was bound to take out a contract on her life eventually.  Don't like that?  How about this?  Bronn decides that since Cersei paid him in gold first, he is going to kill her with the crossbow she gave him, and run off with her money.  Come on, these are all good ideas just off the top of my head, and any one of them is better than that last episode.  Ugh.

Okay, I am done with Game of Thrones.  Screw the prequels, screw HBO, and screw Hulu.  No, Hulu doesn't have anything to do with Game of thrones or HBO, I just hate the fact that they charge you money for their service, and then still collect money from advertisers to show you commercials.  The Cable companies do that, and that's why the cable companies are rich assholes who shouldn't be King of the Seven Kingdoms.  Until the next time I want to rant about a movie, or see something good, you guys have a Happy Memorial Day!  Seeyas!

The Silence (2019), Game of Thrones

It's finally Spring, and that means, Winter has finally come to WinterFell.  But before I get to the final season of Game of Thrones, I'm going to review a Netflix movie!  It's called The Silence, and since Netflix doesn't allow people to review their movies on the website anymore, I'm just going to do it here.  I've also changed my blog theme to a more summer-y view for both your and my viewing pleasure.

The Silence (2019) is a movie about a heretofore unknown species of flying predator that breaks out of a newly-discovered cave system in Pennsylvania and proceeds to eat the entire world.  They hunt by sound, so you have to be quiet.  Shh!

Sorry, that's a crappy synopsis, but it's been a while since I reviewed a good movie, and this movie sucks.  Let me begin with the critters.  Spoilers to follow, but ugh, don't even bother watching the movie on Netflix.  First, the critters are completely blind, and hunt by sound, much like bats, but without using echolocation, as far as I can tell.  Since they seem to eat everything they hear, or try to, there's no possible way the species could have survived by themselves underground.  It might be one thing if there had been a whole ecosystem down in that cave system, a huge food supply these things could have lived off of, but there wasn't.  Since the flying things seem to eat everything that makes a noise, they'd have eaten themselves to death thousands of years ago, dying of old age or starvation after eating every other source of food.  There wouldn't be any left.  Also, there are insane numbers of these things.  Where did they all come from?  It might be one thing if a few escaped, and without their usual predators to keep them in check, they multiplied out of control and became another invasive species, but we get invasive species all the time.  Sooner or later, something evolves to eat them.  Plus, the critters are always screeching and making tons of noise.  They'd have attacked each other, or thrown themsevles to death into fires or wood chippers or thunderstorms or whatever else was making noise.  Since these noise sources are used in the movie to kill some of the creatures, why does it not work on all of them?  It makes no logical sense.  There are literally millions of noise sources in the world out there, and the average human is very quiet by comparison.

The second thing I'd like to mention, the cult of humans worshipping them or the religious nutjobs who think they were sent from heaven or whatever, I mean, that's just ridiculous.  First, cutting out your tongue doesn't stop you from making noise.  It really doesn't.  It stops you from forming certain sounds with your tongue, and as I understand it, also makes you bleed like crazy.  I'm pretty sure the first idiot who cut out his tongue to try and silence himself would have been the last, because if he didn't die from it, the next person would realize what a nutjob he was in the first place.  Also, wtf is with humans who decide that every single thing that happens in horror movies is the best thing that ever happened to them?  Where are these people who are just living out their boring little lives and suddenly some geological event or virus sweeps the land and it's like a gift from god?  Shit, if you're that bored, sign up to netflix and start watching movies ffs, or find a goddamned hobby!

Aside from those two ridiculous things, the movie wasn't even that good.  There's like one scary part where they're all still in the minivan, and after that, it's all crappy bs.  They can walk around fine on gravel roads without making a sound (I've walked on gravel before, it is not soundless), they can go through underbrush without making noise (what, no rustling leaves?), and seemingly every single noise they make is juuuuust quiet enough not to attract attention until they want it to.  Come on!  Suspension of disbelief is one thing, but at least try to be consistent.  They've got some decent actors in this thing, who I'm not going to shame by naming them.  There wasn't even a lot of action.  There was one quick fight sequence at the end and it wasn't even against the monsters.  I suppose it doesn't surprise me that I had to stop this movie halfway through because I just couldn't stand the boredom anymore, and then came back to it when I had time to kill a day later.  It didn't get any better.  To quote a movie trope, go on without me, save yourself the horror.

To summarize, The Silence (on Netflix) really sucked.  Don't waste your time.  Moving on.

Game of Thrones finally climaxed on Sunday night.  After 10 years of foreplay or the longest orgasm in TV history (WINTER IS COMING!), Winter finally came to the aptly-named Winterfell.  Spoilers to follow, because I really want to talk about it, and after three days, if you haven't seen it yet, you're not going to.  First off, Theon died, which I was totally okay with.  I never liked his character to start with.  If I recall correctly, in the books (which GRRM will probably never finish),  Theon became a priest for the drowned god or something, which he never did in the HBO version.  That might have made the character more interesting.  Hodor was more interesting, and he only had one line of dialogue (albeit repeated over and over).  Theon didn't even die for a reason, but in a pointless charge at an enemy there was no way he could have defeated.

I read an online review of the battle itself, and some military guy savaged the tactics employed by Dany and Jon.  He estimated there was three weeks between the fall of the Wall and the arrival of the White Walker army, and said there should have been a lot more done to prepare the battleground for the inevitable breach of the walls.  I assume they had less than that amount of time to prepare, not only because the army of dead would have travelled night and day without stopping, but also because Winterfell was still taking in refugees up until a day or two before the white walkers arrived.  Sure, they could have churned out tons of dragonglass weapons in that time, but digging up the ground around the castle would have been impossible with all the people coming in there, and they still would have needed room inside to house the refugees.

The military guy was spot-on about Dany and Jon's inexperience as generals causing them to employ bad battle tactics, but I don't understand why Jorah Mormont, Tyrion, or any of the dozen other battle-hardened and experienced commanders didn't offer better strategies.  I mean, all of them have commanded men in battle, and even if Dany or Jon hadn't learned from all the battles they'd been in since the series began ten years ago, the group as a whole had half a dozen to a dozen experienced commanders handy to discuss battle strategy.  In any case, the battle went badly for the side of the living, as you might have guessed.

So I'm watching the fight going on, and the first thing I am thinking is, well, this fight has to go badly for Winterfell, because Cersei's army is coming up from the south.  Dragonglass isn't going to be any more effective agaisnt the gigantic army of the living coming up behind them, and there's not going to be anyone left to fight on, even if they win.  I assumed the army of White Walkers was just going to roll over Winterfell, and then destroy Cersei's army, which might at least reduce the vast numbers of dead (or add to it, depending on how things went).  At first, that seemed to be what was happening, because all the major characters seemed to be fighting for their lives and about to go down.  So, I figured I was right.  But nope, I was not right.  Surprise!

I'm only going to mention one other death, because the only death in the episode that was particualrly brave and worthwhile, was Lyanna Mormont fighting the giant.  And, I'm not even going to mention that there were dozens of giants fighting for the white walker the last time I saw a glimpse of his army, because there was apparently only one left for Lyanna to kill.  So the giant knocks little lyanna aside, and she comes running back, and the giant just grabs her and lifts her up to look her in the eye as he crushes her to death in his hands, and she stabs him right in the eye with a dragonglass dagger.  Epic!  Kills the giant, and dies in the process.  Heroic sacrifice!  The stuff of legend!  I loved it.

I'd always figured how things were actually going to end for the Night King, though, and this was demonstrated about 2/3rds through the episode when he walked towards the open gates of Winterfell.  Jon comes up from behind him, hoping to engage him in battle.  I can only guess that would have gone badly, though the battle would have been epic, but it never got that far.  The problem with going warrior-to-warrior with the night king is that there's no way you can get close enough to do that, as the night king aptly demonstrated by resurrecting an army of the dead to surround him before Jon could even get close.  Sure, Jon might have killed the Night king, but he was too worried about his own survival to try.  That's the problem with fighters, they're great at defense, but not so good at killing.  You need to be ready to die to get close enough for a kill shot, and that's where Arya comes in.  Arya's assassination was so damned awesome, even the faceless men should be honroing her instead of hunting her.

I'm not going to reduce the actual confrontation between Arya and the Night king to words, because it was just so simply awesome I don't think I can give it proper credit.  I will say that I thought Bran should have, I don't know, smiled or something, just before Arya struck, enough to give the night king a better reason to think Arya was coming.  I also think Bran should have at least thanked Arya afterwards, because, sure, maybe he did see the whole thing coming, but he's still partially Bran, and Arya is still partially his sister.  A little knowing smile from Bran would have made it so much more awesome beforehand, and a thank you would have been expected afterwards.  Damn it Bran, show a little more life, so I can actually like your character, ffs!  Maybe that'll happen next episode.  In any case, Winterfell seems so aptly-named at this point.  Now, how the heck are the few surviving people going to handle Cersei's army?  I'm worried Bran will try making a new White Walker to replace the old one, because that's how the indiginous folk fought off the First Men to begin with.  Don't do it, Bran!  You might know how, but you also know it was a mistake in the first place.

Okay, three more episodes of Game of Thrones to go, and I doubt I'll watch any of the spinoffs that I've heard are coming down the pipe from HBO.  I'm tired of waiting years to see a few episodes here and there.  None of us are getting any younger, and I might die of old age before I get to the ends of those series.  Shit, this one took almost ten years, ffs.  I was just past 40 when I started watching it, and now I'm pushing 50.  Who the hell has that kind of time to wait around for a series to finish production?  If this trend keeps up, whole generations of people could come and go before the next series reaches the epic finale.

And why does it take so long for anything worthwhile to happen in life?  I been waiting 15 years for Minecraft to add frogs and toads, and I'll probably die before that happens, too.  I should talk, right?  It's taken me three months just to post to my blog.  Ugh.  Life, amirite?  At least you won't get any Avengers: Endgame spoilers from me.  I haven't even seen it yet, and probably won't until it comes to the premium channels.  Until next time, people!  Hopefully sooner than 3 months.  :-)

PS: Oh, speaking of assassins, I wanted to mention Barry.  It's also on HBO, about an assassin who gets tired of killing, and tries to become an actor.  Sure, it's been done before (I think?  usually I only watch monster movies), but I like Barry because of the supporting cast and the wacky things that happen to him.  Henry Winkler (The Fonz!) is Barry's acting coach (as Gene Cousineau or whatveer his name is)!  Sunday's episode (right after game of thrones) had Barry trying to talk some guy he was supposed to kill, into leaving the area for about a year.  Things seemed to be going fine, but then we find out that Barry's target is actually a tae-kwon-do master.  Barry gets his ass kicked (mostly because he is doing his best not to kill this guy), and barely survives the episode.  The episode was kind of wacky, but pretty funny, and I enjoyed it.

I read in an interview with bill hader (who plays barry) that the tae-kwon-do guy was supposed to be some overweight, chubby older guy who didn't look anything like a tae kwon do master.  I actually saw a guy like that once.  I was going to watch a jiu-jitsu class (my friend was a student, and I was thinking of joining the class), and right before the class started, there was this chubby bearded guy with glasses who sat down on the mat across from where the jiu-jitsu class was going to begin.  I remember thinking "Man, this guy must be a new student, because he looks ridiculously out of shape!  If he can learn Tae Kwon Do, I shouldn't have any trouble with Jiu Jitsu!"  So, the guy stretches out a little bit, and then proceeds to leap into the air like a ninja, doing a series of high-flying kicks that would have made John Claude van Damme green with envy.  I was all like WHAT THE EFFING EFF!  :-o  I find out later that the chubby guy is actually the Tae Kwon Do instructor. Crazy shit.  Apparently, Bill Hader coudln't find somebody like that, and got Daniel Bernhardt instead.  I guess most people who take active martial arts like Tae Kwon Do are actually in great shape.  Who'd a thunk it?  :-/

Ant Man and Wasp, Incredibles 2

Yep, I'm alive!  What, it's only been 5 weeks or so.  I've taken longer breaks, like that time I posted in Feb to a new blog I created, and then forgot I had a blog until the following year.  Yeah, good times, good times.  So, enough chit-chat, we're all caught up, on to the review.

Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018, or, the title is something to that effect), is out on Netflix.  This movie is a follow-up to the first Ant-Man movie.  In this one, Ant-Man is basically under house arrest (for being Ant-Man) and the FBI keeps dropping in on him to make sure he's done with all that superhero stuff, so this is one of those wacky superhero comedies where he makes fools of the FBI while doing good deeds under the radar!

What I liked about this movie:  There's no world-saving going on here.  The plot is a simple rescue mission, a few mostly-normal bad guys to deal with, a fairly sympathetic villain (who's cute, too, and I mean the Ghost lady), and lots of wacky hijinks along the way.  I especially liked the lonely asian lead on the FBI side, and I'm wondering, would it be so hard to throw him a bone?  I mean, take him out to dinner next week, when your schedule clears up, ffs.  Poor guy never gets out of his office, and I can tell he's getting a little stir-crazy in there.  Also, Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer really class up the picture, not to mention the actress who plays the Wasp.  The Ant-Man's security support team are all excellent supporting actors, too, but I'm too lazy to look up their names right now.

What I didn't like about this picture.  The Sokovia Accords.  Look, this is a fictional universe, and I REALLY hate politics.  Do we really need the fictional world governments in this fake alternate universe butting into the lives of fake superheros just as a random plot device?  I don't think so.  I mean, everyone who's watching the movie knows the superheroes are just trying to do the right thing, save lives, and take down the bad guys.  Why paint the fictional goverments as bad guys?  Why not make the fictional governments supportive and nurturing of heroes, who are just trying to do the right thing?  Why does every man, woman and child on the face of the fake-earth have to hate superheroes as much as the supervillains do?  Is no one ever going to be in the superhero's corner?  I get this shit in every damn hero show now, Ant-Man, Supergirl, Agents of SHIELD...   Ugh.  It's like watching C-SPAN all the time.  And I don't do that.  I don't even watch the news, you know why?  That's right!  Too much politics!

What I also didn't like about this picture:  The ending.  Sure, it was all feel-good for a minute there, and then I get reminded that (SPOILERS!) Thanos killed half of everyone in the entire universe.  Look, let's just take a minute here and talk about all the plot holes in infinity wars.  Why is Dr. Strange, the earth's sorceror supreme, limited to using magic ropes to try and pull off the gauntlet?  Why not make it vanish?  why not make Thanos vanish?  Why not use the time-stone and go back to when Thanos was making it?  Why does Dr. Strange give up the stone in the first place?  See, if a guy like Thanos says "No Tricks" to me, I'm automatically going to trick him, just because he's a huge arsehole.  Why does the Hulk not come out and kick some ass?  I mean seriously, he's had his ass kicked before, it usually just pisses him off, which is the whole point of being the Hulk.  Why is this time different?  Oh, well, Thanos can't snap his fingers if he's battling the Hulk, so we need to get Hulk out of the picture!  Bah.  Lazy writing.  Lazy writing pisses me off.  HULK SMASH!

Moving on.

The Incredibles 2 (2018, I think).  Not a bad picture for a cartoon.  In this sequel, which picks up right after the events of the first movie, the Incredibles proceed to deal with the fallout of the family all being superheroes, and Jack-Jack's burgeoning powers.  Also available on netflix.

What I liked about this movie:  Meh, it was all pretty good, slightly larger part for Frozone (Samuel L Jackson) which was expected, and the rest of it was cool, lot of characters from the first movie came back, but thankfully not the bad guy.  The bad guy in the first movie was a dork.  No spoilers for this one.

What I didn't like:  Again, the world outlawed Superheroes in the Incredibles, which is ridiculous since there are still supervillains out there and they don't care if the world outlaws THEM.   Meh, all stupid political BS.  Doesn't belong in a movie about superheroes duking it out with supervillains, or at least, it detracts from MY enjoyment of such things.  Honestly, all the political nonsense in superhero stuff lately, doesn't even make me want to watch them anymore.

For instance, I hear that the Captain Marvel movie isn't going to be released on Netflix, now.  I don't go to the movies, so if I can't see it there, and they're only showing it on the Disney+ service, then Disney can just go fark themselves if they think I am paying to see yet another third-rate superhero movie.  Personally, I think Disney's going down the rabbit hole on this one, but I'm not disney, and I don't make bajillions of dollars while having croissants for breakfast, so I know my opinion isn't worth a burnt croissant, but I really think disney's going down the rabbit hole on this whole Dsiney+ thing.  I think they're going to take a huge bite on it, and either abandon it or just flop, big time.  Hey, people make mistakes.  Wouldn't be the first time a huge company has screwed up, and gone into the toilet because of it.  Mark my words.  Or, you know, just remember them.  No, don't mark the screen, no, stop, no, PUT THE MARKER DOWN.

Sorry, it's late, and all the company I have this time of night are the voices in my head.  Good talk.  Happy Valentine's Day!  Til next time.