Review - X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

I've seen a lot of DC productions lately, and a lot of Marvel stuff.  Personally, I prefer Marvel, mostly because of the variety.  I've noticed, however, that Marvel superheroes seem to just fight it out with their powers, rather than fight with any degree of physical skill.  On the flip side, DC superheroes seem to duke it out physically, completely disregarding any powers they might have.  I'm not sure which is more realistic, but in the DC universe, Batman seems to be king.  I don't know whether the guys who write DC are just trying to get the point across that a guy who is entirely human and uses gadgets to do most of his dirty work is better than a super-powerful shape-shifting incredibly brilliant alien with the ability to turn ethereal and read minds, like the Martian Manhunter, or a super-strong, incredibly durable alien with heat vision, cold breath and super-speed like Superman.  Or, you know, any one of the other superhuman individuals that make up the Justice League.  In any event, DC seems to have a love affair with Batman.  I prefer the Marvel universe because they don't seem to have a bias.  Sure, Iron-Man got three movies, and the avengers only have two so far.  But Captain America got two movies, and the Hulk has had several, and so has Thor.  Even the X-Men have a string of movies, but seriously, is Wolverine the only X-man who can get some love?

In X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), the timeline jumps forward about 50 years to show you a bleak vision of the future.  The Sentinels, or mutant-killer robots, have taken over the planet.  The only humans or mutants still alive are those who are helping the shadowy leaders behind the swarms of Sentinel robots sweeping the globe, hunting for loose mutants.  Of the X-men, there are only a few recognizable ones left.  Iceman, Shadowcat, Wolverine, Colossus, Magneto and Professor X are the only surviving members of the original X-Men, and yes, I know, that's most of them anyway.  There's no way to stop the Sentinels, and the X-men are fleeing from them at every turn.  There's only one hope.  To return to the past and stop the Sentinels from ever being built.  There's only one problem.  Only Wolverine can survive the journey.

If some of you are thinking, wait, I've heard this tale before.  Sounds like the Terminator!  DING you win a prize.  Only this time, instead of the evil robots going back in time to stop John Connor, the John Connors are going back in time to stop the evil robots.  So, they sort of flip-flopped it.  And if you're saying, Wait, that sounds like Terminator 2, where they try to stop the evil machines from being created in the first place!  Yes, you are correct again!  And, you watch too much TV.  Get out and get some sunshine once in awhile, you pasty-skinned fuck.

I'd like to say this was a good movie.  I suppose it wasn't bad.  There was a lot of mutant-on-mutant violence.  Some people died, although I am sure no animals were harmed in the making of this movie.  Except Nightcrawler.  He's Missing In Action, and I presume, got stomped on by a Sentinel.  So, there's that.  Oh, and Wolverine, because, come on.  He gets hurt every 10 minutes like clockwork.  Pretty sure that's just his job.  He's like the Tank in the party of adventurers.  He soaks up the damage, and then someone sneaks around from the back and catches the bad guy unawares.

Speaking of Wolverine, let's just recap, shall we?  In the first X-men movie, he fought Magneto to save Rogue.  In the second X-men movie, he fought Jean Grey, to save, well, everyone.  And in this movie, Wolverine fights everyone, to save the future.  Oh, and let's not forget, I think he's had like, two movie of his own, too, right?  There was X-Men Origins: Wolverine, where they explain what happened with him and his brother Sabretooth, and how he lost his memories.  And there was just plain Wolverine, where he goes to Japan and fight an adamantium Samurai.  Were there more?  I don't even recall.  How many movies does Storm have?  Zero.  Professor X?  None.  And don't count X:men, the first Class, because that was an x-men origin story.  It pretty much covers the beginning of the X-men, and was a pretty sucky origin story, as those go.  Does Cyclops have his own movie?  Iceman?  Rogue?  No.  Certainly Colossus, the big russian who can turn himself into organic steel, has his own movie, right?  Nope!  Is Hugh Jackman actually producing these movies?  All five of them?  Or is Wolverine just the only X-man who can get shit done?

Let's recap what I like about this movie, before I get to what I don't like.  Well, I didn't notice any glaring plot holes.  When there's time travel involved, usually there's a shit-ton of plot holes, but let's take a closer look at it.  Supposedly, according to this method of time-travel, the changes Wolverine is making in the past, don't actually take effect until he wakes up.  With that in mind, we don't actually see the effect of Wolverine's ham-handed efforts to change the past until the end of the movie.  Okay, I guess if you're going to make that proviso as part of Shadowcat's time-travel power, fine.  Of course, there's one small problem.  There's actually three timelines involved, not just two.  First off, you have the bleak-future-Wolverine returning to the 1970's timeline to make the appropriate changes, and somehow stop the Sentinels from ever being made.  So that's two timelines.  Presumably, once Wolverine has finished fixing the past to save the future, he returns to the future and we see the changes he has put into effect.  Instead, what happens is, the future Wolverine becomes the present Wolverine, and we're more at present-day 2015 technology than future-technology.  So that's never explained at all, he just sort of slips into the middle of the two timelines as if he's making a timeline sandwich and he's the peanut butter.  Ew.  That's an awful comparison, and I'm sorry I thought of it.  Moving on.

The acting wasn't bad.  It's a superhero movie, so you don't expect these people to be getting oscar nominations.  There was stuff blowing up, stuff flying through the air, future tech, past tech, genius dwarves and killer robots.  The CGI was pretty decent.  A lot of stuff happened in the movie.  It wasn't just, go back, do the dirty, and BAM everything is hunky-dory again.  In case you have never seen a time travel movie, it's never that easy.  Something always goes wrong, which is why I am never going to time travel.  Bad shit happens.  Hell, I can barely get through Daylight Savings time changing my clocks twice a year.  There was some weird scene at the end of the movie that made absolutely no sense to me, that I almost missed.  I know they do short scenes at the ends of the iron man and avengers and even one of the Hulk movies, but I didn't expect a scene at the end of an X-man movie, and I totally didn't get it when I saw it, either.  I won't reveal it, because I have no freakin idea what it means yet.  I am sure, at some point in the future, some X-man movie will explain it to me.  I eagerly await that day.  I hate loose ends.

Now the bad stuff!  There's not really any villain in this movie.  Sure, there's killer robots.  They are doing what they are programmed to do.  Yes, they're violent, deadly, unstoppable, and terrifying.  But there's no character there.  It's like getting your ass beaten at chess by a machine.  It means nothing to you.  Of course you're going to get beaten by a machine, because a machine only makes mistakes if it's badly programmed.  The whole point of chess is to either make your opponent make a mistake, or wait for him to make a mistake and take advantage of it.  The human element comes into play.  There's no human element when it comes to machines, so it's a foregone conclusion that they will win.  Which, also makes the movie rather boring.  You know the X-Men are going to have to cheat by changing the past to win, and the cheat's going to have to work.  Otherwise, everyone dies and that's a horrible ending to any movie.  Unless it was a romantic comedy, in which case, that ending is fucking hilarious.

Magneto tries to be the villain here, too, because that's pretty much Magneto's job, but nobody wants that after three movies where Magneto's the bad guy.  Sure, he has a fucked-up name.  Erik Lehnsherr.  Sure, I can add a bunch of H's to my name and sound like a villain, too, but I don't.  Let's toss some more in.  Ehrhikh Lhenshehrrh.  Now he sounds like a villain from Guardians of the galaxy.  I'd be pissed if someone filled my name with silent H's, too, but can't he just get over it and say "You know what, Charles?  Fuck it, let's just try it your way for a change, so I can be around when shit goes wrong, and I can say 'I told you so!"  Why does he have to be such a grumpy ass bitch all the time?  Take some damn Xanax or Prozac or something.

You can't even really hate Trask, the dwarf inventor who created the Sentinels.  He's played by peter Dinklage, the same guy who plays Tyrion Lannister in game of thrones (which started a new season on HBO again tonight, by the way).  Look, I don't care how good an actor Peter Dinklage is.  You can't put him in the role of a villain and expect people to hate him.  He's making the sentinels because he perceives Mutants to be a threat to all homo sapiens, and he's pretty much right.  Just like the neaderthals disappeared when the current version of humanity evolved, so too will the current version of humanity disappear if something like the X-Men ever comes about.  Excepting, of course, that the most current theories actually propose the idea that the neanderthals just interbred with modern-day humans, and passed on their DNA to us.  So technically, there was never a fight, and we never actually killed off the neanderthals.  They are us.  Or at least, they are football players with a unibrow.  So, close enough.  Personally, I like the idea of interbreeding with some of the X-men.  Storm's pretty hot, and I got a thing for both Rogue and Shadowcat.

Speaking of hot mutants, wtf is up with Mystique?  Is she not like one of the hottest badasses in the history of mutant-ness?  I mean, let's recap.  She can be anyone you ever wanted, she ages slowly like wolverine, she's a sneaky James-Bond type spy who can get into anywhere, get out of anything, and has absolutely no fear of being caught.  And what happens the one time she IS caught?  They use her mutant DNA to make mutant-killer robots who are unstoppable and can adapt to any mutant power out there.  Yes, that's alotta mutants.  Oh, and one more thing.  That blue spiky stuff she's wearing?  That's her skin.  Yes, it can change into just about anything she wants to, and mimic any natural fibers and assume anyone's shape.  But when she's in a fight, she reverts to her usual blue-skinned form.  You know what that means?  She's naked.  All the time.  Sure, she LOOKS like she has clothes on when she's assuming someone else's appearance, but she really doesn't.  So, she's just walking around butt-ass-nekkid all the time.  And she doesn't even try to fake clothes while she's in a fight unless she's fucking with your head.  She just resumes her normal appearance, and fights naked.  And still kicks ass.  Wolverine's, Magneto's, Xavier's, Storm's, yep, pretty much everyone's asses.  That's just goddamn hot, if you ask me.  You ever fought a naked chick before?  Just surrender, kiss the angry bitch, and make love, not war.

Something else I noticed, that is a definite improvement.  I originally wasn't fond of the idea of Jennifer Lawrence replacing Rebecca Romaine-Lettuce, when I first watched X-men,: First Class.  Frankly, I think Rebecca is hotter, and she seemed to look more, I don't know, athletic, back in the first couple X-man movies.  Like a killer mutant chick should, you know?  However, Jennifer Lawrence seems to have grown into the role.  It doesn't show so much when she's in a fight (too much CGI perhaps, or maybe they use a different skin-tight blue suit, or a stunt double), but if you watch when Mystique is just walking around, Jennifer's body fills out that blue skin-suit quite nicely.  Her curves just seem to bounce attractively in all the right places, you know what I mean?  I think you do.  Sure, maybe she's got a bigger butt than Rebecca, but what the hell.  Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, or whatever the hell old-ass expression fits in here.

So, to sum up, watch X-Men, days of future past, mostly for Mystique.  There's some killer robots that look pretty awesome, and watch it if you like peter Dinklage, or if you want to see Wolverine survive yet another thing that would kill anyone else.  Yes, we get it.  He heals.  It's awesome.  It's his mutant power.  It's his job.  It's what he does.  It's all he does.  Now focus on another goddamned mutant, okay?  And realize, Mystique gets into and out of more bad situations than Wolverine, and she doesn't even have mutant healing powers.  She just doesn't friggin stand there and take the hit!  She moves out the way, like any smart person would.  Honestly, I think she should take on the Hulk next.  Really piss him off, fight him as Betty Ross or something.  The Hulk would have absolutely no clue what to do.  He'd start throwing buildings into space just out of anger, and then beat the crap out of Thor.  Just because.

So, there's one funny part that I'm going to mention, and it came during the rolling credits.  It's not really anything you can see, but think on this while you watch the movie.  So it's 2:20 in the morning, and I've just finished watching Days of Future Past.  I think, 'man, that movie seemed to take forever, I wonder how long it was?'  and like any person with ADD, instead of checking the time, I get distracted by the fact that it says there was nudity in the movie.  And I'm like 'Nudity?  Wtf?  I don't recall any nudity...'  So I think back, mentally reviewing the movie in my head.  Nope, didn't recall actually seeing Jennifer Lawrence's breasts.  Or anyone else's for that matter.  So I'm searching my brain for anything that might have been some fleeting vision of nudity, and my mind returns to the first moment that Wolverine returns to the past.  He wakes up with a girl in a bed, and I'm trying to remember if there was any actual nudity on the girl's part or not.  Not entirely because I am a perv (which I am), but mainly because if they said there was nudity in it, and I somehow missed it, then how am I supposed to mention it to my readers?  That's right.  I only stare at women's naked bodies for your benefit.  I'm doing it for you!  And that's when I recall Logan getting out of bed, and I saw Hugh Jackman's ass.  Which is when I cracked up laughing at 2;20 am, because that's not quite the nudity I was looking for!  And now I've made a pun.  CRACKed up, laughing, about seeing a butt.  Sigh.  I know.  Humor is one of my many gifts, and I share them with the world.  I make joke, you laugh, as some crazy russian guy said.

That's all for this week.  Tomorrow's supposed to be nice and warm, and I already have yard-work planned.  Wheee.  Should be fun with my gimp-hand, which still isn't quite healed.  Damn masturbation accidents can really sideline your single lovelife, you know?  Oh well.  Catch you guys next time.

Easter Review - Nightbreed (1990) The Director's Cut

I was hoping to find a better movie to review today, I admit it.  Perhaps something with giant killer zombie easter bunnies.  I'm sure such a movie exists.  I probably watched it back in the 80's.  However, I decided to watch Nightbreed instead.  Mostly because searching Netflix for "giant killer zombie easter bunnies" didn't bring up any matches.  Sadly.

I saw Nightbreed (1990) years ago.  Essentially, it's the story of a young man with mental issues who believes he's been going around slaughtering whole families.  The man has a girlfriend, who doesn't believe he could possibly be a killer, though his psychiatrist is convinced of it.  However, the man himself has little proof of this.  He can't remember having killed anyone, despite his psychiatrist telling him that he has.  All this young man, named Aaron Boone, can remember is his dreams.  They're strange dreams, dreams of an old cemetery called Midian, a place forgotten by men...  the place where the monsters live.

Netflix has the director's cut version of this movie, which, according to all the sources I can find, is closer to Clive Barker's vision, and the source material.  Clive barker, of course, is the one who wrote the source material, the book upon which the movie is based.  So, here's the thing.  I don't like the director's cut version, as much as I liked the theatrical release.

Without comparing the two versions yet, let me give you a brief rundown of what I liked about Nightbreed.  Firstly, there's a lot of monsters in it.  Like one of them tells Boone, "God is an astronaut, oz is over the rainbow, and Midian is where the monsters dwell."  There's a shit-ton of monsters in Midian, so many they defy description, history, and classification.  As a former biologist and anthropologist, I'd wander Midian just trying to classify which 'Tribes of the Moon' each monster belonged to, their history, and how they ended up there.  Of course, half of them would probably eat me, but that's not the point.  I love fictional monsters, and trying to figure out their taxonomy and ecological niche is half the fun of seeing them.  Secondly, there's midian itself.  An old graveyard, full of crypts, mausoleums and graves, all fancifully decorated with carved statuary, and not a town anywhere nearby.  That interests the Archaeologist in me (and yes, I have some training in archaeology, as well).  So much history in one place!  Exciting stuff, if you're me, or a professor of archaeology, or a biologist, or just the generally curious sort.

The acting talent is pretty decent.  You've got Craig Sheffer playing Boone, who is essentially the main character.  The last time I saw Craig was in Dracula 2, where he played a wheelchair-bound man in search of a vampiric cure for his affliction.  David Cronenberg, who is more famous for his directing talents, seems suitably chilling in his role as Dr. Decker, Boone's psychiatrist.  Hugh Quarshie plays an FBI agent, and Doug Bradley, of Hellraiser fame, plays Lylseburg, the leader of the monsters of Midian.  I'd have to say the acting in this movie was pretty effective.  The relationship between Boone and his psychiatrist changes as the movie goes along, and Decker's chilling transformation (I'm being purposely vague here) is pivotal to the whole movie.  I know nobody's ever going to win an oscar for this movie, but maybe they should have.

The story flows along pretty well.  You've got a brief background on Boone, a short interlude while he figures out where midian is, and then the chase begins.  Boone tries to find midian, and decker follows Boone, and the authorities are close behind.  There's a fair amount of blood and monsters from the beginning right up til the end, with the end being so monster heavy that if it was a woman with breast enhancements, she'd have toppled over.  The special effects are good.  There's none of that CGI crap here, this is all old-school monster making, with make-up and prosthetics and body paint on some of the more humanoid monsters.  Sure, a little body paint isn't exactly scary, but it's the background that matters.  Most of the monsters are there for background, not necessarily a main part of the story.  But there is even a bit of nudity, which always makes a monster movie better, in my opinion.

Now let's get down to the nuts and bolts of it.  Despite the added scenes, the extra footage, and the more accurate retelling of Clive Barker's artistic vision, the two movies are not overtly different from each other except at the end.  And frankly, I like the ending of the theatrical release better.  I'm not sure where you might catch the original theatrical release, since Netflix only has the director's cut, but honestly, the way the director's cut went was just... bleh.  The theatrical release has more pop, if you know what I mean, and I like the opening for a sequel much better than the director's cut version.

So, to sum up, I don't recommend the director's cut version of Nightbreed, but the original one instead.  If you really MUST see Clive Barker's vision rendered in extra footage, with a different ending, then watch it.  If  not, skip it and find the original 1990 release.  Watch that instead.

In other news, I'm 45 years old!  Yea, ancient, innit?  Maybe a hundred years from now, some cyber-archaeologist will be digging through the remains of the internet, come across my blog, and write a paper about what a rambling nutcase I was!  Wouldn't that be something?  :-D

I hope everyone enjoyed Zombie Jesus' birthday.  That's all for this week!  Hope to find something much more enjoyable for next weekend.

Review - The November Man (2014)

I've been watching Pierce Brosnan for years.  Ever since Remington Steele back in the 80's, Pierce has pretty much been doing action roles.  Of course, back in the 80's, I was watching Remington Steele to see Stephanie Zimbalist, not Pierce Brosnan, but what can you do.  Nowadays, you say Stephanie Zimbalist, and people ask "Who?"  But you say Pierce Brosnan, and people go "Oh, the last good Bond guy!"  Yea.  The last good bond guy.  But don't get me started on Daniel Craig again.  (shakes head sadly)

Pierce isn't getting these action roles because he's a guy who looks like a hired thug, or a big bruiser.  No, Pierce gets the action roles because he can act like he's a hired thug, or a big bruiser, or probably anything else, and make it believable.  Even at the age of 62, he's still kicking ass, blowing shit up, and playing alongside leading ladies like Olga Kurylenko.  Impressive, innit?

The November Man (2014) is about a retired CIA hit man who's offered a job to extract a deep-cover russian agent.  Devereaux (Pierce Brosnan) takes the job because the russian agent he's extracting is the mother of his child.  Why does the russian agent need extracting, you ask?  Because she knows things, of course.  Things the next Russian president, one Arkady Federov, doesn't want anyone to know.  The man who offered devereaux the job told him that the russian agent had asked for him, but when the agent is finally extracted, after her cover is blown, she seems totally surprised to see Devereaux.  Which is when...  Wait for it...   All Hell Breaks Loose.  Yea, you knew that was coming.

So without spoiling anything for you, this movie was pretty decent.  Lots of action, of course, gun fights, explosions, fisticuffs, I mean, it's not a 007 flick by any means, because it feels kind of short.  At an hour and 48 minutes, it really isn't, but given that most bond films go over 2 hours, the action in this movie seems kind of rushed.  Devereux is supposedly called the 'November Man' because after he sweeps through, everyone is dead, but aside from the fact that the movie is named after him, I'm not really seeing any supreme evidence of his efficiency.  It almost looks like several fights and encounters in the movie could have gone either way, and maybe that's kind of the point, maybe it's supposed to look like that, and Devereaux was never actually in any danger of losing.  But it didn't look that way.  From the title, I was expecting more of a 'Now You See Me' feel to the movie, like the November Man was a magician instead of an assassin, but that was never the case, at least as far as i could tell.

I guess the acting was okay.  I mean, there really wasn't a lot of character development, and I don't see anyone getting any oscars for their roles, here.  Olga Kurylenko plays pretty much the same role she played in Hitman opposite Timothy Olyphant, but shows much less skin in this movie, which is sad, because she's really very attractive, even if the teen version of her character in this movie doesn't really look anything like her.  There was indeed a little brief nudity, but it was from a couple random strippers in a russian club scene.  If I wanted to see random russian strippers, I know where to go on the internet.  Luke Bracey plays Devereuax's former protege, who Devereaux is trying to teach one final thing to, but I've never before heard of the guy, so I have no idea if he acted well or not.  Brosnan does okay in the role of devereux, but I don't get the whole one scene in the movie, to be honest.  I'll tell you about it, but it's sort of a minor spoiler, so don't read the next paragraph if you want to see the movie for yourself, or  go ahead and read it if you don't really care about a minor spoiler.

Devereaux seems to be trying to teach his former protege something, and there's only one real scene where he spells it out.  He basically holds the protege's new girlfriend hostage, at gunpoint, while Devereuax tells the kid that he can either be a killer of humans, or a human being, and not both.  Personally, since most killers of humans are human beings themselves, I really don't see where that's actually true, but this is the point he's trying to get across, I guess.  And then, to make his point, he severs the girl's femoral artery.  I don't think she actually dies, but I don't get why Devereaux went in, assaulted the poor girl, nearly killed her, and then used her bleeding out to make an escape, when the protege had no idea where Devereaux was to begin with.  Wouldn't that just piss the guy off?  Given the way the movie ended, it just didn't make any sense to me.  End spoiler.

Apparently, the movie was based on a book written in 1987, so the plot is probably a little old, and it seemed totally predictable, at least to me.  I figured out the supposed twists long before Devereaux did, but at least most of the major plot points were cleaned up by the end of the movie.  Nothing was really left unfinished, which is always good with an action movie, I think.  Sure, there were holes in the plot, maybe ones big enough to drive a truck through, but who cares?  I watched this movie to see a spy thriller, and damn it, that's what I got.  Maybe it wasn't a Bourne Identity, and maybe it wasn't a James Bond movie, but it wasn't bad.  This movie is available on Netflix if you want to see it.

Some of the reviews on netflix mentioned this movie as being gritty, but I didn't see that.  This movie didn't seem any grittier than any other spy thriller.  Frankly, when you put a bunch of hired goons, guns, explosives and politics into a blender, and turn it up to liquify, you're going to have a big mess on your hands.  Pretty much every spy thriller ends up the same, anyways.  Lots of bad people die, and the hero sneaks off with the girl.  (shrug)  Watch it once to see an aging Pierce Brosnan shoot his way through a decent supporting cast, and then forget about it, because it's not overly memorable as far as cool movies go.

In other news, It's the last week of lent!  I'm not religious, but Easter candy is always something to look forward to.  If I can find an appropriately easter-themed horror flick to review this weekend, I shall do so, and give you another review then.  Night of the Lepus, maybe?  Something with murderous baby chickens?  Hmmm, so many options!  I'll have to see what Netflix has got for me...  (maniacal evil laugh)

Sorry about the maniacal evil laugh.  I haven't been sleeping well.  It seemed appropriate at the time?  :-/

Blast from the Past - The Blob (1988)

I've been a bit out of it the last week or so.  Had a nasty cold.  Better now, thanks.  :-)

For those regular readers to my blog, you know I love the 80's.  There seemed to be more monster and horror movies made that decade than, well, ever.  Sure, Asylum studios churns out a crappy movie every month nowadays, but that hardly counts.  Tonight's movie came from 1988, when I was 18 years old, and even more of a geek than I am today!  I know, that's hard to believe, isn't it?

The Blob (1988) is about, well, a blob.  A crashed chunk of rock from space lands in the backwoods around some dinky little town somewhere, oozing some pink slime out of it.  Sure, I know what you're thinking.  Pink slime?  I've seen that movie.  That's right, it's a remake of the Steve McQueen movie "The Blob" made back in 1958.  In both the 1958 movie and the 1988 one, some poor schleb of a hobo gets slimed, and is eaten alive, and the only witnesses are a couple of teenagers.  Of course, nobody believes the teenagers when they run around town telling everyone that a slime ate a guy.  Until, of course, the slime grows big enough to devour a whole crapload of people in a movie theater.  Back in 1988, everyone was a conspiracy theorist, and the government was to blame for every damn thing that happened, everywhere, at any time, so the 1988 version involves a government super-bug that mutated and grew out of control, and a containment team sent to isolate the town and retrieve the bug.  It's a bit of an understatement to say they aren't entirely successful...

The Blob (1988) stars Shawnee Smith, who was pretty hot back in the day, and plays a high-school cheerleader whose boyfriend gets eaten.  Kevin Dillon plays a rebel without a clue who runs into the old hobo first infected with the slime, or blob, as they call it.  You guys may have no clue who these people are.  Kevin Dillon is apparently known for the Entourage lately (which I didn't watch because there's no monsters in it) and Shawnee Smith has been in the Saw series (which I didn't watch because I prefer monster movies to torture porn).  The Blob also has Art LeFleur (from the Trancers series) as the cheerleader's dad and Jeffrey DeMunn (who was born in my hometown, and you may remember from The Mist a few years back) as the Sheriff.  Joe Seneca plays a government scientist who will stop at nothing to retrieve his science experiment, and sadly passed away almost twenty years ago.  The Blob was probably his last good monster movie.  These acting veterans, who were even veterans back in the 80's, do an excellent job bringing life to their roles.  Erika Eleniak even makes a short appearance in one of her first real movie roles.

The special effects are decent enough,  I'm not sure if it's a mix of CGI or some other kind of special effects, to be honest.  For all I know, they got a sentient glob of goo from outer space to flow around on command.  I really can't tell.  There's only one scene where things really look kind of fake, where the rebel and the cheerleader are running down a short hallway in the diner and the blob is flowing after them along the ceiling.  It just looked, I don't know, kind of wrong, somehow.  Maybe the lighting wasn't right, because it didn't quite look like the blob was very close to them.  Anyway, it was a short scene.

I like the Blob for several reasons.  The first is that the action is almost non-stop.  There's a nice long scene at the beginning of the movie where it looks like the Blob has already eaten the entire town.  There's shots of empty streets, running fountains, a lone cat wandering around, all on a seemingly nice sunny day.  Then the camera cuts to the high school, and you see the entire town in the bleachers around the football field, supporting the home team.  About 5 minutes after the movie opens, the action starts, and the Blob doesn't stop devouring people until the end.  Another funny little thing I like in this movie is all the side-plots that get wrapped up quite well.  Some survive, some get eaten, but there's no loose ends.  Aside from the few good people who gets eaten, there's a whole host of bad people that you want to get eaten, and as it turns out, they all do.  Yep, all of them.  It's a fun watch.  The Blob is playing on Encore Suspense, if you want to catch it.

Watching this movie tonight, I thought to myself, you know what?  The Blob is ripe for another remake, or a sequel.  There's a nice little opening at the end where they leave a sequel as a possibility, and I had a script all written out in my head!  And then, I checked, and you know what?  There's a movie called The Blob coming out in 2016.  Damn.  Well, I guess great minds think alike.

That's all for tonight's blast from the past.  Next time I see something good, you guys will be the first to know!  Until then.

Review - Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)

Yes, this is pretty much the only new movie I saw this weekend.  So let's recap what's going on in the world of transformers.  Transformers are shape-changing robots of various sizes who look like cars or helicopters or tanks or the like.  The Autobots are the good guys, led by Optimus Prime, who looks like a semi-truck.  The bad guys are the Decepticons, led by Megatron, who looks like a plane.  In the last two movies, Optimus and the Autobots kicked the Decepticons' asses so badly that they don't even really show up in this movie.  Megatron is dead.

Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) is about the hunt for Optimus Prime.  Apparently, Optimus Prime's creators have put a price on his head.  Who are his creators?  That's never explained, but a lot of Autobots died while some robot named Lockdown chews his way up the ladder to find Optimus Prime.  Fortunately for Optimus prime, he's currently offline while an unexploded missile is lodged in his 'spark,' or power source.  But while Lockdown is basically a bounty hunter out for Prime's head, he's not working alone.  He's got a deal with a CIA guy (played by Kelsey Grammar) to provide the metal the transformers are made of, to the head of a technology company (played by Stanley Tucci), who is using the heads of dead Decepticons to remake his own line of Transformers.  Unfortunately for everyone concerned, Megatron's head still has some life in it, and he uses the technology factory to make himself a new body...

Okay, I don't think I can recap the number of times Megatron and Optimus have both died by this point.  Sure, it's great that they're robots, and they come back every movie to duke it out, but wasn't it the point of the first two or three Transformers movies to have Optimus and Megatron duke it out for the final time?  How many 'final' final times are there?  Looks like at least one more.

Mark Wahlberg heads the cast of humans this time, supported by Nicola Peltz, who is quite hot, and tends to run around in extremely short Daisy-dukes.  For those of you who don't know what daisy dukes are, they are very short denim shorts.  But, I digress.  I think the real problem here is they spend too much time trying to make the humans the heroes of the Transformers movies.  Look, it's a movie about giant robots.  The cartoon series back in the 80's had 1 human involved, a teenaged boy, who spent most of his time getting into trouble that the Autobots had to get him out of.  I think there was one episode where the boy actually helped the autobots, and the rest of the time he was pretty much a nuisance who just gave the Autobots the use of his dad's garage so they could repair themselves.  Every transformers movie made so far seems to be focusing on making the humans as heroic as possible, and when they're up against giant alien robots, I mean really, how heroic can they be?

There's one scene where this giant space ship shoots down some anchor lines to a bunch of buildings in a city, and the humans are trying to escape down the anchor lines.  Now, since the anchor lines are made of parallel steel poles, and the anchor lines are running almost horizontally, they try to walk along them like walking along a wooden plank.  Needless to say, there's all kinds of shit flying around, the anchor lines are bouncing around in the breeze and as the ship moves, and there's nothing holding them up at all except their own two feet.  And yet, they manage to almost make it back down to the building.  While firing away at robots running down the lines after them.  Look, have you ever seen a human being walk?  Our balance isn't so good.  We fall down and bump into shit all the time.  I'm pretty goddamn sure even a master tightrope walker like Nik Wallenda would have been tossed off before making it about 50 feet, and here's a farmboy-turned-engineer who's probably never even climbed a mountain (or even walked up a steep hill) shooting robots down off the anchor lines while shouting encouragement to his daughter.  And here's the 20-year-old daughter wearing cowboy boots and daisy dukes who manages to hang on while robot wolves are chasing her down the wire?  Riiiiiiiight.

Another little error, and I know that supposedly time passes between scenes at some point, but Nicola bounces between having jeans on, and having her shorts on, almost at will.  First she's got them on, then she doesn't, then she does, I don't know.  Hey, maybe it's not an error, maybe she just changes clothes a lot, but I find it hard to follow how you have time to change clothes 15 times while being chased by everyone from the CIA to killer alien robots. Maybe she's trying to confuse her pursuers.  Sure, I bet that's it.  I'm sure confused.  It worked on me.

All that having been said, the robot fighting isn't as good as the first two movies, even.  John Goodman adds a little comedy relief as a chubby robot gunner, and Bumblebee is back, but all that doesn't help much.  The bounty hunter doesn't have as much villain-y badness to him as Megatron did, and the Dinobots, which seem awesome, barely even make an appearance til the end of the movie.  Sure, the movie is hours long and supposedly a blockbuster, and sure there's giant robots beating each other into scrap throughout the movie, but I just don't think it's even as good as some of the other Transformers movies.  Plus you got Mark Wahlberg taking out dozens of robots with a tiny gun that seems to have infinite ammo, while John Goodman's robot arsenal seems to run out faster than a minigun with a busted ammo chain.  I know suspension of disbelief is supposed to fit in here somewhere, but really?  And even the dialogue doesn't make much sense.  Mark and his daughter Nicola are arguing over her having a boyfriend, and Nicola throws some argument at him about how if he'd just turned the truck over to the government, none of this would have happened, except...  isn't that exactly what the other guy did, that got everyone into the trouble to start with?  Where does logic fit in?

You know, I can't even really tell you to watch this movie, or not.  I'm biased because I watched the cartoons as a kid, and I love to see giant robots fighting each other, so I'd have watched this movie no matter how bad it is.  I can't really call myself a Transformers fanboy or anything, because I've obviously just ripped this movie a new asshole, but I'm tempted to tell you to watch it once just for the giant alien robots.  And sure, maybe to see Nicola's legs.  But my point is, I don't want to do that, because you probably won't like the movie, unless you just LOVE watching giant CGI-generated robots tear each other apart.  Which, I do.  So don't.  Just don't watch this one.  Skip it.  Or don't.  It's currently playing on Epix if you want to check out Nicola's legs.

That's all for this weekend.  Hopefully something better will come up by next weekend.  Happy St. Patrick's day to all those Irish out there.  Try not to drink too much green beer.  And Spring officially starts friday!  At least I got that to look forward to.

Friday the 13th - The Movie Series

Friday the 13th is here!  :-D

I've always liked the number 13.  It's always seemed lucky to me, somehow.  In honor of this non-holiday, Epix and Netflix both have pretty much all the good friday the 13th series of movies, for your viewing entertainment!  Yay!  What's that?  You've never seen the Friday the 13th movies before?  You want to know what ones are good, and what ones suck huge sweaty donkey balls?  Well, shit!  Let me help you with that, because I've seen them all.  Plot spoilers to follow, but since most of these movies were made in the 80's and 90's, I'm guessing most of you have seen them all.  I generalize and sum up, anyway, so the movies should still be enjoyable even if I might spoil the end in some cases.  Obviously, these movies are your typical slasher flicks, so most of them contain graphic violence, lots of blood, some nudity, and severed body parts.  Just the way I like them!

Friday the 13, part 1 (1980) -  This movie begins the Friday the 13th series.  Essentially, this covers Jason's back story, like any good superhero movie.  Jason Voorhees was a deformed, mentally deficient boy who drowned in Crystal Lake, partly because the camp counselors were too busy smoking pot and screwing around to keep an eye on him.  Years later, Jason's mom gets even by killing a bunch of camp counselors who are trying to reopen the camp.  Some people think this is a classic, and it gets played on TV a lot.  I personally don't like this one because Jason doesn't actually do any of the killings; his mother does.  Jason himself may or may not put in an appearance at the end of the film, depending on how hysterical you think the only survivor is.  If you absolutely MUST see the back story of one of the most prolific fictional killers in movie history, then by all means, check this one out, but I'm pretty sure I covered all the basics.

Friday the 13th, part 2 (1981) - Some camp counselors are renewing their training on the other side of Crystal Lake before the start of the summer season.  The beginning of this movie may be the quintessential beginning of any horror movie ever made, with the introduction of one of the horror movie staples, The Old Man Who Knows.  Or, The Old Man Who Warns.  Either way, this is some creepy old geezer who knows what happened to the last bunch of people who died at the end of some old road, in some old house, at some old barn, or wherever, and tries to tell the latest bunch of kids to turn back.  Like the old man says, "I tried to warn them.  They didn't listen.  But I tried."  If only those crazy kids had listened to this old man, none of them would have died horribly at the end of a machete.  Or an ax.  Or a harpoon gun.  But, they never listen!  You know why?  Because there wouldn't be a movie if they did.  Somehow grown into an adult even though he supposedly drowned as a boy before the beginning of the movie series (apparently, Jason survived the drowning, but hid in the woods away from his mother, and then saw her get killed at the end of the first movie), Jason leaves Crystal Lake to take out the only survivor of the first movie (shown in the first few minutes of this film), then returns home in time to slaughter half the counselors-in-training.  This movie features nudity, Jason's first actual kill, and some pretty funny humor tossed in by the practical-joking counselors.  This movie sets the standard for the rest of the series, and is definitely worth watching and repeat viewings.  Also features the first skinny dipping scene in the series, and she's also definitely worth the watch.  Important thing to remember about the end of the movie, half the counselors survive by heading into town for a night of drinking and partying.  Apparently, Jason doesn't give a shit if you're a drunken slut of a party animal AWAY from the Lake.  Also, it probably helps if one of the surviving counselors cuts Jason down at the Camp before he can head into town.  Jason is still human in this movie, so don't be surprised by him sustaining injuries.  There may be some confusion about the ending, so I'll give you my theory: After Jason takes a severe wound to the body, his adrenaline allows him to chase down the survivors, but adrenaline doesn't last forever.  After killing Paul and probably thinking he's killed everyone else, Jason crawls off to heal up in the woods for the next film.

Friday the 13th, part 3 (1982) - Originally filmed in 3-D, this movie supposedly takes place the day after the second movie.  However, the supposedly wounded Jason seems pretty spry, and there's absolutely no mention of the camp counselors who spent all night drinking at the bar in town.  You'd think they'd all show up hung over and scared shitless, but they don't.  Instead, a group of drug-addicted party animals head up to the lake to, well, get high and have sex.  No surprise there.  Jason kills a few people living around town, then heads back to the lake to finish off the party-goers, who are being stalked by a gang of pissed-off bikers. There's a lot of 3-D action in this movie, sadly not featuring nipples, but everything from spears, to eyes, to snakes.  The usual version shown on TV is not in 3-D, but is still entertaining.  This film marks the first time Jason dons his signature Hockey Mask, having worn a burlap sack over his head in the second film (like the killer in The Town That Dreaded Sundown).  Fun fact, I actually carved a Jason-style hockey mask into a pumpkin one year for Halloween, and it was AWESOME.  Even my mom still remembers it.  Yea, I'm a Jason fanboy, I admit it.  Part 3 is worth watching only as a stepping stone to part 4, or if you must know where he picked up the hockey mask from.  Jason is axed in the head at the end of this movie, apparently dead, but somehow manages to return for part 4.  A critical exception to this is if you actually get to see a 3-D screening of the movie.  Apparently, the 3-d effect is worth it to see jason reach out of the screen and try to kill you.  Personally, those 3-D things and blue and red glasses only managed to give me a headache, so I prefer the TV version.

Friday the 13th (part 4), The Final Chapter (1984) - This movie apparently happens right after the events in Part 3 (which happens right after part 2), but how Jason manages to survive the ax-wound to the head in addition to the grievous bodily machete-cut on the day before is beyond me.  After his body is taken to the nearby hospital, Jason wakes up and kills a bunch of doctors and nurses, then heads back to the lake.  On yet another part of the woods around camp Crystal lake, the Jarvis family is living next to a bunch of kids who rented the cabin next door.  One by one, the teenaged party animals die, and then Jason goes after the Jarvis family.  Tommy Jarvis, a young boy addicted to video games and who makes his own horror masks, is scared so badly by Jason that he goes apeshit, shaves his head bald, and hacks Jason to death with his own machete.  Tommy Jarvis was played by a young Corey Feldman, who is now deceased.  Watch this one to see how Jason finally shuffles off his mortal coil, and the origin of Jason's arch-nemesis, Tommy Jarvis.

Friday the 13th (part 5), A New Beginning (1985) - Tommy Jarvis, now a mentally disturbed teenager, is attending a rehabilitation camp with a bunch of other teen-aged nuts when a death among their number gets Tommy Jarvis worried about Jason returning from the grave.  Things get even worse when Jason starts killing off more kids, and Tommy can't tell whether he's hallucinating and doing the killings himself, or whether it's actually Jason, back from the grave.  I don't like this movie much, not only because the teen-aged Tommy Jarvis is kind of a messed up dork who doesn't resemble his earlier self at all, but because Jason isn't actually doing any of the killings.  Turns out an ambulance driver got pissed and put on a hockey mask to cut up the crazy kids before getting killed at the end.  Generally following a similar pattern to the other movies, this movie felt like a bunch of filler that just gets you to part 6, OR it was supposed to start a whole string of movies where the killers were just Jason copycats.  Instead, part 6 happened, and really WAS a new beginning...

Friday the 13th (part 6), Jason Lives! (1986) - Tommy Jarvis, now an adult, is finally released from his long incarceration at a mental facility.  Still plagued by nightmares, Tommy tracks down Jason's grave, intending to dig up Jason's remains and burn them to ashes.  Instead, a sudden lightning storm manages to bring Jason back to life.  Oh, shit!  :-o  Zombie-Jason kills Tommy's friend, and heads back to the lake, stronger and tougher than ever.  After killing a bunch of deputies and the local sheriff, Zombie Jason is finally imprisoned at the bottom of Crystal Lake by Tommy Jarvis and the sheriff's daughter.  This movie marks the last appearance of Tommy Jarvis, who apparently runs off with the incredibly hot sheriff's daughter and is never seen again.  Worth watching to see the first appearance of Zombie-Jason, who returns for the rest of the movies from here on out.

Friday the 13th, part 7, New Blood (1988) - A young girl gifted with telekinesis, the ability to move things with her mind, accidentally killed her father at Crystal Lake with her emerging powers.  Years later, her psychologist tries to bring her back to the lake in an attempt to make her powers come out, hoping to record them and make a bundle off proof of the paranormal.  Instead, the girl accidentally releases Zombie-Jason from his prison at the bottom of Crystal Lake, and Jason proceeds to kill everyone off.  In a showdown with the telekinetic girl now in better control of her awesome powers, Jason gets the crap beat out of him and is once again imprisoned at the bottom of the lake.  Worth watching for the final fight scene alone, the Zombie makeup in this movie is also very good.  Zombie-Jason not only looks dead and rotting, but supremely pissed off by his inability to take down one teen aged girl.

Friday the 13th, part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) - A bunch of rich school-kids head out on a yacht from Crystal Lake to Manhattan.  Somewhere along the way, Jason hitches a ride, and proceeds to kill everyone on the boat before it makes it into port.  As the boat goes up in flames, the survivors paddle to shore, only to have Jason follow them ashore and track them down.  Not one of the better films, Jason ends up getting washed away by (possibly toxic?) sewer water.  Maybe worth a watch if you like to see Jason get the shit kicked out of a him by a boxer, only to win the fight in the final round by knocking the other fighter's head off.  Literally.

Jason Goes to Hell (Friday the 13th, part 9), The Final Friday (1993) - Jason is brought out into the open by a police sting operation, and is blown apart after being shot to death.  While the coroner is examining what's left of Jason's body, some surviving part of Zombie-Jason enters the coroner, who proceeds to go on a killing spree.  Jumping from body to body, the supposedly demonic part of Jason is eventually banished to hell.  Only worth watching to see Erin Gray, otherwise known as Wilma Deering from the Buck Rogers TV series, because you were wondering what happened to her after all these years, weren't you?  I know I was.

Jason X (2001) - After being captured, Jason manages to escape while experiments are being performed on him, but the doctor in charge manages to cryogenically freeze him along with herself.  Centuries later, a wandering spaceship salvages Jason's cryo-tube and unfreezes both Jason and the Doctor.  Catapulted forward hundreds of years in time, Jason is stopped by an android, only to have his body re-formed by nanobots, who make him an even more unstoppable cyborg.  While tracking down and destroying nearly every person on the space ship, Jason destroys the ship itself, and either burns up in re-entry on an alien planet that resembles earth, OR lands in a pond on a world colonized by humans.  Has the new zombie-cyborg Jason found another Crystal Lake?  Not really worth watching unless you need a decisive end to the series, or you really like Lexa Doig, who played the 20th-century doctor in charge of Jason.

I'm not even going to mention Freddy vs jason, because that one is just kind of weird.  It doesn't fit the pattern, and has more a Freddy-movie feel to it.  The crossover was likely set up to infuse some life into an otherwise dead Freddy, who hasn't been able to attract moviegoers to the theater in years.  So, to sum up, parts 2 (maybe 3), 4, 6 and 7 are definitely worth watching.  The rest of them, Eh.  Only watch them if you are having a Friday the 13th marathon and you need to show something in between the good movies.  The recent Friday the 13th remake?  Well, that's even worse than the in-between movies that I didn't like.  Only watch that if you're so high you can't find my blog page to tell you which movies to watch.  Maybe you'll enjoy it better.

That's all for tonight!  Might be back sometime this weekend with another review, if I see something good.  If not, enjoy the... damn, Friday the 13th is now Saturday the 14th (which is also a good movie, but more for kids than adults).  Don't fret.  There's yet a THIRD friday the 13th this year, in November, I believe.  Any month that starts on a sunday has a friday the 13th in it, so check your calenders.  As long as there are fridays marked 13 on your calender, there's going to be Jason movies.  :-D

Review - Deliver Us From Evil (2014)

There's a lot of pretty crappy horror movies out there.  And by pretty crappy, I mean, poor production values, shitty camera work, bad dialogue, and horrible acting.  But even those movies can be entertaining sometimes.

Deliver Us From Evil (2014) is a movie with good production values.  What the shit does good production values even mean?  Hell if I know.  Let's put it this way.  They got veteran actors (if not necessarily good ones), they had good camera work, and there was a halfway decent plot.  And they spent a few bucks on special effects.  This movie is the story about a couple cops who get a domestic disturbance call and end up stumbling into a weird series of supernatural events.

I think it's a bad sign when I can sum up a movie in one sentence.  This was a well-made movie.  A lot of attention was paid to scary effects, some demonic-looking makeup, and some fairly decent fight scenes.  Eric Bana (I know him from his stint as Dr. Banner in the 2003 Hulk movie with Jennifer Connelly) plays the lead, and there's a supporting cast of at least a few people, including Olivia Munn (recently of Newsroom 2.0 fame) playing his wife.  I think this movie was one of those movies that might have been really good, if only they'd done just one thing perfectly.  Instead, what you've got here is a collection of things that are fairly well-done, but don't add up to more than the sum of their parts.

Let me give you some examples.  There's a scene where this demonic presence is stalking this little girl.  And her toys are doing that whole demonic possession thing that toys do.  There's this particularly creepy scene where the jack-in-the-box is playing Pop goes the weasel, while a stuffed animal of some kind slowly rolls towards the little girl while she watches.  I was a little creeped out, but then, they basically resort to kidnapping the little girl and it turns into a hunt for the kidnapper.  Way to ruin the whole supernatural factor.

I guess what this is, is a particularly well-done collection of demonic possession clichees that you have seen before, rolled into a semi-coherent plot.  The plot by itself is fairly decent, and a lot of attention is paid to the various scenes involved.  There's even some pretty good suspense early on.  After that, the movie kind of falls apart.  There's nothing new here.  Is it rewatchable?  Yea, sure.  It's entertaining if you like demonic possession movies, or cop movies, or a mix of the two.  However, it is pretty forgettable, too.  Nothing really stands out as exceptional.

Bonus Review:  Hellbenders (2012).  This movie is about a bunch of priests who band together and use a loophole in the rules of demonic possession to send demons to hell.  Basically, they sin.  I know, that's thinking out of the box, right?  They sin, they drink, they swear, they behave badly.  Because they are going to hell.  In fact, in a sort of suicide-bomber attitude, they think if they sin enough, that they will be more attractive to demons who are possessing otherwise innocent victims.  So here's how this shit works.  The priests sin.  They get called to perform an exorcism.  They invite the demon inside themselves, and then... They commit suicide, thus dragging the demon's spirit to hell along with their own soul.  Technically, if you follow the convoluted logic of religion and sin, it's a fairly flawless method of exorcism.  No demon can resist possessing a priest, and the priest's soul is automatically damned to hell for taking his own life.  Once the possessed body dies, the demon's spirit is banished back to hell.  VOILA!

Clancy Brown, one of my all-time favorite under-appreciated actors, actually STARS in Hellbenders.  Which, is awesome (not the movie, that Clancy Brown actually stars in something).  He plays a drunken priest who is literally going to hell, whenever he dies, because he sins so much on a daily basis that there is no way that heaven would accept him.  And he's fine with that, as long as he takes a demon down to hell with him.  The other priests in his Hellbenders unit (squad?  group?  cadre?  I don't know!) are lazy, misanthropic dorks who try to be as good at sinning as Clancy Brown, but alas, they fall short.  Then, sadly, Surtur, the Norse Fire-God that invokes Ragnarok, the end of the world, begins to rise again.  Bibles don't really work on Norse demons, and the whole team has to step up their game to stop the end of the world.  Even while the catholic church is trying to shut down the whole group.

Hellbenders is NOT one of those high-production-value movies.  I am pretty sure the cast was actually drinking while they made this movie.  They certainly acted pretty drunk, which actually worked.  I'm not sure whether this movie was supposed to be a comedy, or a serious attempt at an anti-religious look at the bad logic of the rules of possession, but I found it entertaining.  Probably not enough to watch twice, but it wasn't too bad the first time around.  Robyn Rikoon (never heard of her before in my life) plays a female priest, one of the first I have ever seen.  And, she's pretty hot.  Either because she's playing a female priest, or just because she's hot, I am not quite sure.

So, to sum up, watch both movies at least once, because they aren't bad.  Deliver Us from Evil is currently playing on Starz! and Hellbenders is playing on Showtime Beyond.  You'll probably enjoy deliver us from Evil more if you like to be scared, and Hellbenders more if you like a good laugh.

In other news, Daylight Savings time kicked into effect on sunday.  Just as John Oliver asked in his weekly news show on HBO sunday night, "How is This Still a Thing?"  I honestly don't know.  I was watching the news last week friday when my local newscaster announced that the clocks would be turning ahead in two days, and she said "The day is an hour longer," which it's not.  Every day is 24 hours long.  They don't get longer, no matter what time of year it is.  And then she corrected herself, and said "We get an hour more of daylight,."  Which, is also completely untrue.  We don't get an hour more of daylight, either, just because we set our clocks ahead an hour.  The sun still rises and sets at the usual intervals.

Now if she had said, "we lose an hour of sleep on sunday morning," then that might have been true, but even that's debatable.  Here's what also happens when we lose an hour of sleep.  Not only are we all tired, but we're all basically suffering from an hour of jet lag.  Ever had jet lag?  It sucks.  Let me tell you what jet lag does.  They took a bunch of stewardesses (flight attendants, whatever), and had them do some mental evaluation tests.  The ones who typically flew in the same time zone, generally had about average intelligence.  The ones who routinely flew across the country, changing time zones on a daily basis?  They registered at around retard level.  True story, actual scientific results that tell you jet lag, or the resetting of your body's internal clock, basically messes up your brain so bad that it kills your ability to reason.  And that's totally in addition to the normal effects the week after DST kicks in.  Proven facts, people have more car accidents.  They also die more often of heart attacks this week.  I think I also heard that people die in hospitals more, the week after the clocks change.  So enjoy your spike in accidental deaths every time you change your clocks.

Personally, I don't really get it.  Supposedly, it was invented around the time of WW2 to save oil or some shit, but I don't get that.  Regardless of whether it was effective then or not, it's certainly not having much effect on our economy now, except to make us all more prone to accidental death in a number of ways for about a week.  As well as making us all stupider by giving us all jet lag twice a year.  According to John Oliver's newscast about this, it was actually invented by the Nazis, so why we're all still clinging to it as if it makes sense, I really don't know.

I can only personally say two things about daylight savings time.  One, whenever I have to change my clocks, it makes me goddamn sleepy for about a week.  Second, in the summer, if we didn't have DST, the sun would probably be rising about 5 am.  Which, does sound way too damn early, but by no means makes up for the whole "making me more likely to die of a heart attack twice a year" deal.  I'm pretty sure all of us in the States complain about having to change our clocks twice a year, and there's a fair number of other countries that do it too.  So why do we still do it?  I got nothin.  Moving on.

Yet another Friday the 13th coming up!  And I'm back to reviewing horror in my blog, instead of action movies.  Spring on the way.  I think things are looking up around here. :-)  Catch you guys in a few days with a Friday the 13th horror review.  If I have time.