August Monie Review

Whew! Almost forgot to do this one. Alright, here we go!

 Megan both wants and doesn't want to see this one. Since we saw the first one and it wasn't that bad, I'm not opposed to going with her to see this one if she wants. Ironically enough, it comes out the same time we're on our beach vacation! : )

 Usually, this sort of film would be right up my alley but for some reason this looks like garbage and I have no interest in it. Maybe Redbox.....maybe.

 I ended up enjoying the first movie surprisingly. However, it doesn't give me the urge to see this one in theaters,

I watch all the Fast and Furious movies....that includes the spin offs I suppose. But I only watch them on video. Pass!

Thoughts? Let's hear them!

What We Do In The Shadows TV show review

If you don't know already I friggin loved the movie about 3 vampires living together and having a documentary crew follow them around to show what their every day lives look like.

Well now it's a TV show and I just had to watch it. This time it's with 3 different vampires but still takes place within the same universe as the film. In fact, "The Trial" has all 3 vamps from the movie as a cameo, along with an amazing star studded council of cameos which made it one of the best episode in the first season.

This show is hilarious. I was laughing the whole way through. Oddly enough, it may even be better than the film. Can't wait for season 2!

If you want to catch up on it, I'm sure some streaming service has it. It's an FX show.

Great stuff.

Resevior Dogs (Review)

It's been a while since I've seen my favorite Quentin Tarantino film, so I decided to re-watch it to make sure it was still my favorite. After all, he's made a lot of films now and Hateful Eight was one of his best....but not THE best.

This movie's solid. Fun characters, great storyline and even a twist at the end, which I already knew but still enjoyed seeing events unfold. Such a good film that is way worth your time!

Constantine Review

I know I watched this movie when it came out but I had no memories of it so I decided to watch it again...it has Keanu Reeves so it can't be all that bad right?

Yes and no

They story is a little flat but the characters are good and they had some good creative ideas here and there but the movie never jelled as a whole.

Not worth your time I'm afraid. I need to watch the TV show, I hear it was better.

Have a good weekend folks!

Young Tom Cruise films

If you didn't know, I'm a huge Cruise fan. So I thought I'd watch his earlier films and see what they were like. Here were the two I saw.

Losin It

A story that takes place in the 60's revolving around a group of highschool kids who make a run down to the border for some paid love.

Cruise is a supporting character and the movie isn't very good. But there was one line near the end that sent me back to my college days as I recalled a former roommate would always quote. Now seeing the movie, it made me laugh to hear the line spoken for the first time in film. I texted him right after watching the movie.

He admitted to not remembering anything about the movie except for that line which I told him was a good thing.

What was the line? Well....kinda PG-13 so I won't mention it here. Is it THAT funny? Nope. Not unless you lived with my roommate from back in the day.

Taps

The next young Cruise movie I watched had him once again in the supporting role about a group of kids in military school that gets shut down after the  school master has an unfortunate accident that got someone killed.

In honor of their disgraced school master, the kids form a coalition to prevent the school from being shut down by staging a takeover and making demands for the school to remain open.

Pretty good film and was engaging the entire time. Well worth seeing if you're a fan of Cruise like myself or just in the mood to watching a decent flick!

Encino Man (review)

Decided to give this one a re-watch due to old memories I had of seeing the movie all those years ago in theaters. I remember who I went with and even the exact outfit I was wearing that day as well.

This was Pauly Shore's debut film, which kicked off many more in his short lived career. Was it good?

Not really. The only redeeming quality of the film is nostalgia. Beyond that, there's nothing more...buuud-dy!

Leprechun Returns (Review)

Yeah I know, I know "Why, did you watch this in the first place?!" right?

Well, I've seen all of the movies and this one is a continuation of the previous ones and even brings back a cast member from the original movie so I had to check it out.

Though Leprechaun Origins was horrendous, (not to mention the previous 2 films before that) I still felt obligated to give it a shot.

It's both bad and good.

Bad in that ALL of the kids cast in the show were HORRIBLE at acting. Honestly, it looked like they picked a few local kids who were in one high school play, offered them $100 each to make this movie and they agreed. The kids acting is B.A.D.

However, the actress (yep, it was a girl) playing the Leprechaun did a pretty good job and stayed true to the character first established by Warrick Davis all those years ago.

But alas, the kids in the movie are so bad I can only recommend it to the most die hard fans of the series and that's about it.

SGU Review

And finally, the last spinoff of the Stargate franchise....sadly the worst. But it's not as bad as I remembered.

Let me break it down for you:

The Good: GREAT episodes, that had some amazing twists you never saw coming. Also they were smart in that they didn't over explain the plots.

Some of the characters were great too. The cast was really 50/50 as being awesome of lame. (which is discussed in "The Bad")

Continuity. Though they have a different look than the rest of the shows in the franchise, they stayed true to continuity and used it continuously within the show. Even bringing in characters from both prior spin offs to strengthen the overall connection of the Universe. Very well done.

The Bad: Characters. Like I discussed earlier, some were awesome. Others were so bland its a wonder they got any screen time at all. The worst part about this is two of the most utterly POINTLESS characters get a lot of screen time within episodes, that were excellent chances for me to break away and get something done around the house when I saw it was their story.

Time Travel. Done absolutely brilliant in the episode "Time" but after that, the multi-universes, second chance, split second time reversions got so confusing, it's no wonder fans quickly began to tire of the series as a whole.

The Ugly: This show is a blatant rip off of Battlestar Galactica. A show that was a hit back in the day and Stargate writers wanted to emulate the show right down to the look, feel, and camera shots. It's painfully obvious that they had no confidence in the tried and true method of previous Stargate shows and wanted to be a carbon copy that looked and felt entirely different to the fan base.

Should you watch it? Yes and no. If you were a fan of previous series and you never gave this one a shot, you should. But for fans new to Stargate. Watch one of the previous 2 first to see why it was so popular with fans in the first place.

Stargate TV Movies (Review)

After SG-1's series was done they did a few movies afterwards. They only went direct to TV but I wanted to talk about both today.

The first one "Ark of Truth" is a great follow up to the series. Tying up a loose end left over from the final season this felt like a real cinematic movie! Really good.

The last one (which came out later that year) was "Continuum". It was alright and did tie up the series final loose end, but overall the whole movie felt underwhelming and more like a regular episode rather than a full length feature film.

Overall, they're both fine and do justice to the series.

Stargate Atlantis (Review)

The first spinoff to the series, this starred a young Aquaman, which caught Megan's interest for a few episodes then she went back to the entrapment of Facebook posts.

There's a debate among fans which show was better. SG-1 or Atlantis. I have to admit, both have a solid case. Atlantis has just as many good characters, loads of action and cool main villain (the Wraiths) to boot!

If I had to pick one, it'd be SG-1, but only barely. Sadly this series only went 5 seasons with the 5th sporting some of the best (and worst) episode of the series. The only weak character was Weir, who was replaced in the 3rd season, thankfully so I didn't have to watch her the whole time.

Other than that, this show is a gem!

Stargate SG-1 (Review)

After watching the movie my next step was to make it through the entire 10 season of SG-1! The show that takes place just a year later after the movie. Though it doesn't star any of the actors from the first movie they do however feature the characters.

Actually, now that I think about it, there are some actors from the movie who reprise their roles for the series, making it all the more credible.

When I first saw this series, the last spinoff had just ended. I remember liking it a lot but on my second time through, I have to imagine what I was thinking.

This show is great. I mean, awesome. Better than Star Trek and right below Star Wars for me in my opinion. I LOVED this show! So much continuity, humor, action and wonderful story arcs. The main characters all solid and even the shows two "replacement" characters weren't all that bad either.

If you've been thinking about giving this a try, I highly recommend you do!

Stargate Movie Review

It'd been a while, so a few months ago I decided to run through the ENTIRE Stargate series once again! The first one I started with was the movie from the mid-90's

It's excellent. A great tale based off the old conspiracy theory that aliens built the pyramids. The story is so engaging it'll pull you in almost instantly!

STILL a great movie after over 2 decades!

Dick Tracy Review

On the heels of Tim Burton's first Batman movie but before the era of Super Hero movies, there was Dick Tracy. It had a lot of stars, goofie make=up, colorful sets and all of it based off a comic strip character.

I remember as a kid being enamored with the story. He was like Batman's detective side with less action. The movie holds up though only for its unique design, star power and make-up. There are worse things you could watch. This isn't one of them.

Little Debbie Did it again

When I saw this at the grocery store this week I thought "What a desperate attempt to sell Little Debbie cakes. Who in their right mind would want them?"

Only later to find Megan with a box in her hand minutes later.....well played Debbie, well played!

Rocketeer Review

Last month I got the chance to re-watch this again with Megan (who had never seen it before!)

It's a solid entertaining film. Loved it all over again. If you were thinking about watching it again, do so. He soundtrack, scenes, characters, all of it. Good stuff!

Have a great weekend folks!

Gen 13 Comic (ongoing series review)

If I'm not mistaken I believe I've already review the mini-series of this comic but not the ongoing series because I stopped getting it after issue 2.

Once again when my brother gifted me this series to read I was interested to see if I'd missed anything I would regret. I loved the characters but hated the direction of the series. It was supposed to be based of the mini-series which had them on the run from Ivana and her I.O. goons. In the ongoing series, I think only 2 issues address it. The rest of the time they're on tropical islands, college keggers and a billion other frivolous things that teenagers did back in the 90's.

Confrontations against foes waged in Malls, Concerts and spring break vacations on the beach. It's as if MTV created their own comic about the 90's generation. The exact reason I stopped getting it. It lost it's focus and became uninteresting over night.

It's sad because the characters themselves were truly interesting and I would've loved to have seen more focus on their relationships with one another instead of a road trip the ended up with every girl on the team being stripped down to their undies.

Oh well.

Grifter Comic Review

My brother also gave me a collection of Grifter comics. Made popular by the Wildcats comics this character quickly became a fan favorite and started getting his own series. I'd always wanted to read it but when I finally did, I realized it wasn't very good at all.

The only thing this comic has is action poses of Grifter firing his guns at every angle the artist can think of. Sideways, upside down, you name it. There's a splash page in each issue. But story wise this comic's a complete dud.I had zero interest in what was going on the entire time.

Again, cool character, fun art but the story just ain't there!

Wild Core Comic (Review)

Another Comic I got to read was Wild Core. Kind of a super hero team up led by Backlash. I only knew half the roster but that wasn't enough to get in to the series as I'd hoped. By the time this came ou I was already moving away from comics anyway so this wasn't able to perk any of those interest. 

Any story lines taking place after "Fire From Heaven" felt lost and unguided to me. This was one of them.

 

Deathblow (Review)

Another comic Jeremy gave to me to read was the old Deathblow series from Wildstorm. It'd been a while since I'd read through it and I was happy to read through it again. The series started off with a wild story arc of Deathblow going on a mission with a Nun (with guns) who was protecting a child who could heal people and create miracles. The villain was a "dark angel" who wished to sacrifice this child and steal his power.

A really strange mystic tale.

The second half of the series was more "Punisher" like, where Deathblow went on shoot'em up missions and kill the bad guys in various places.

Really weird turn from what it originally set out to be. They eventually killed the character off (in a Wildstorm crossover event "Fire from Heaven") and gave him one last issue of his funeral which was weird because he was hardly in it and it focused on various other comic characters who had series going on at the time.

Overall it was ok, but not Image's best. 

Uncanny X-men Review

A few months ago my brother gave me a small run of X-men comics to read while being at home with my girls. I finished reading them a while back and forgot to give me thoughts on it.

Interesting enough, this series began with this issue which was one issue off from the first appearance of Jubelee! She was the "hot new mutant" in the series at the time which was funny to read how they thought a girl who shot fireworks from her finger tips would be that popular.

But this comic also had Dazzler on the team so I guess it was low times all around.

Jim Lee did some of the art in this series and you can tell. It look beautiful.

But the whole time I was reading the series I struggled to understand why the comic was so popular in the first place? Overall, the roster looked weak and the characters uninteresting. I don't get the hype this series was getting back in the day.

Anyway folks, have a great weekend!

Happy 4th!

I plan to do the same thing I did last year to celebrate....nothing.

Survivor NZ: Thailand

I just finished watching the 2nd season of this international spinoff of my favorite show and I have to say, Season 2 is SO much better!

It did suffer from having on of the WORST winners get the title but other than that, there were more interesting characters this season, more classic challenges like a Survivor auction (which I miss!) and a few new ones I'd never seen before on the American version of the show, so good for them for being creative on their own!

The best part about the season was that 2 childhood friends were accidentally cast for the show and they didn't tell anyone they knew each other until the end of the season! It was great! I've always thought about what would happen in that case.

If you are having Survivor withdrawal and want to  watch something to bide your time until the next season comes out, I suggest you give this one a shot.

I think it's cancelled now because of low ratings for their season finale. But seeing who won it all, I can't imagine many people outside the winner's family who was cheering for them to win in the first place.

Have a good one folks!

Firefly: The Unification War (Vol 1)

Got around to reading the latest few issues from the BOOM! comic run of Firefly.

Ho-hum.

The artwork is lacking, the story is even worse. The characters aren't true to he ones we see portrayed in the TV series.

It takes place before the movie, because everyone wants to write stories about the entire crew. It's kind of getting old and sad because the last comic book run took place after the movie and was refreshing to see where'd they'd go with the story moving forward. Guess no one wants to do that anymore. 

Unlike the novels, these comics are basically just run of the mill stories meant to cash in dollars.

I'll try reading the next Volume when it comes out but if the story doesn't improve, I'll be dropping it fast.

Survivor New Zealand

Ever since Survivor ended, I've had to settle in for a long summer until the next season arrives. But in that time I made a startling dicovery that New Zealand started their own version of Survivor a few years back and have 2 FULL seasons under their belt!

Well of course when I found that out, I went at once to YouTube to watch the entire 1st season. Here's my thoughts....

The Good

 The game has a lot of throw back challenges that I missed seeing in Survivor. I won't go over all of them because there were too many to count and would be difficult to explain without pictures. It was awesome seeing the old school challenges again.

Another interesting thing was the fact that another Survivor has been going on at another part of the world for 2 years and I didn't even know about it?!? Crazy.

Sala. Out of all 16 contestants, he was the only one worth their salt to be out there. He was a great competitor to watch and played with honor like Colby did back in season one. Those guys are super rare to find in the game these days so it was refreshing to see a player of that caliber in the game again. 

And, that's about it for the "good"

The Bad

There's a lot.

The game is slow, I mean SLOOOOOOOW. So much down time is filmed where the contestants do nothing but sit around talking about nothing. The game was so slow at times there were episode where NO ONE was voted off and NOTHING happened!

The host of the show is obviously trying to copy Jeff Probst as best he can. It's funny and a little lame at the same time. I wish he would've developed his own personality for the show but I guess you go with what works so....

The contestants are VERY aware of the cameras on them and no one wants to have a bad image so they're very self conscious which made for a very flat season. There was one episode where one girl (who'd flipped on every alliance she ever made) was called out on it mid-way through the game. She spent the rest of her time in the game, crying about how she was going to look like the "villain" in the season.

Yup. Everyone cared more about their image than playing the game.

The worst part was the winner. Billed as a "good guy who played with honor" the guy played the game as a complete spoiled brat. He whined when his alliance turned against him and sat on the beach for the next 3 days pouting about it.

He railed about how he played with "honor and integrity" yet he turned on his first alliance and broke his promise 4 episodes later! Saying "there was nothing I could do"

Another childish moment was after losing several challenges in a row to another player, he took off running down the beach to pout about how he wasn't winning anything. Yeah, a really "great" guy, I can see that.

Overall, it was interesting to watch. I can't recommend it unless you have nothing to do and love Survivor as I do. But I'm glad I got a chance to check it out.