Movie Review – Page 8 – Savior Gaming

The Grinch That Stole B*tches (2024)

I like to keep my reviews positive, anyone that’s followed for any real amount of time knows that. I don’t really like shitting on peoples hard work, especially work I don’t or can’t do myself. You can tell the director and writer Malik Marcell and fellow writer Ulrick Hopkins put time and love into this movie. And stars Otis Mcintosh and Christianne Jones enjoyed working on this and worked well together. Honestly, I would love to see them in more movies. Navv Green showing up in what is clearly a movie made friends wanting to get something done was cool to see, and I respect that.

But damn this movie hurt to watch at times. The premise is essentially this: The Grinch (Otis), fresh out of jail after basically being set up by Santa (Navv) wants to continue his work to destroy Christmas. This has been an ongoing thing for all time. It’s hinted that Santa is a title passed down from father to son and that The Grinch is similarly a title passed from person to person, which I like.

The goal? Rob Santa of all his toys so he can’t deliver them, people won’t belive in santa, chirsmas will go away. During the break-in, which involves a drug addict and a dwarf, they run into a very unhappy Mrs. Clause. (Ms. Jones) who decides she’s gonna sleep with the Grinch and go back to his place to get back at Santa for ignoring her. Since she is gorgeous, the Grinch agrees.

Discovering his plan to ruin Santa, the wife decides that since the Grinch is great in the sack, they will get all the lonely moms to come back to his place. This will somehow ruin Christmas. I think the plan was to make the kids misbehave or something. This results in the best scene in the movie: all these women sign up to be “kidnapped” in a fun and playful way and get tossed into the back of a car, bags packed. Husbands are mad as hell, women are laughing, the Grinch, his pet crack head and dwarf are having a great time.

I won’t ruin the ending of this hour long movie for you in case you want to see the twist ending for yourself. The movie isn’t good, and it really doesn’t paint the black community in a good light. I think it may be the worst thing done to the black community since slavery, Jim Crow laws, and P. Diddy parties. Watch it at your own risk. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Near Dark

So Caleb is a good-looking country guy working on his dad’s farm with his little brother, living the typical boring farmhand life. When he and a buddy go into the city looking for chicks, beer, and a good time, Caleb finds it. Mae is hot, quirky, and likes Caleb a lot…so much she nearly bites his throat out getting some hanky panky. Understandably Caleb freaks out and heads back home, bleeding out and feeling his skin burn the closer morning comes. Before he can reach his home, he’s snatched by a gang layered in thick blankets who speed off with Caleb in an RV with all blacked out windows. Odd. Turns out Mae is part of a nomadic gang of anarchist vampires, feeding and raising hell by night while laying low come dawn. Caleb is drawn between his budding love for Mae and the comradery he begins slowly forging with the maniacs but is he willing to destroy his soul for love and immortality?

Ok, this movie is a gem and I’m utterly pissed its a pain in the ass to find. There’s some legal rights dispute bullshit with it so finding it physically is going to cost you a hell of a penny, and streaming is a headache. I found it on Tubi- once- after trying for over a decade to track it down.

If you loved Aliens the gang will look extremely familiar; Henrickson, Goldstein, and Paxton did Near Dark right after Aliens actually. Bill Paxton (RIP) steals the show as a menacing, hilarious, and awesome villain. The acting all around is great. I love that the movie is a terrific balance between a western and a horror movie. I weirdly found many themes from Twilight as far as Caleb’s pathos when he has to fight the cravings to keep his humanity, just obviously much better and effectively done, reminding me much of Kaneke’s arc in Tokyo Ghoul (season 1) . I do like how they came up with a clever means to a happy, albeit badass ending. In the end, I implore you to go find Near Dark and experience this super underrated, near-forgotten gem for yourselves. May the gaming gods bring you glory Mr Pig Knuckle.

Salem’s Lot (2024)

You know, this is one of those damn movies I never thought would see the light of day (hehe lame vampire pun). It was announced, delayed, then disappeared for a few years before getting dumped on HBO Max like a dead carcass at the slaughterhouse. Years ago I reviewed the novel for Salem’s Lot and since then I’ve read it at least twice and I can say it is a damn good book and a pretty solid vampire tale. While I never saw either mini-series, the trailer for 2024 was enough to make Savior and I at least excited for a flaming dumpster fire. Did we get it?

Sadly no. Salem’s Lot 2024 is not a garbage fire. That’s not to say it’s particularly great or even good. The cast gives decent performances given a pretty crammed script. Much of the soul, the suspense, and characters of the book are crushed, compacted, and repackaged into a forgettable vampire romp. It’s the kind you can forget the same day you watch it which honestly is a shame given how good the book was. The vampires are more like zombies. Barlow isn’t a nightmarish ghoul like in the 79 mini-series but a parody of that memorable design. There’s not even as much gore or hilarious jumpscares as I thought there’d be in the trailer. In the end, read the book or seek out another vamp movie because good or bad, you’ll remember it more than this thing that should’ve stayed in the development grave. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Oppenheimer

So I have to say I typically hate biopics. I’ve never been into biographies, and even less into autobiographical pieces. I went to see Oppenheimer in theaters at least expecting a good movie, considering the A-list cast and knowing it was directed by Christopher Nolan.

So the movie tells the story of acclaimed physicist and quantum theorist J. Robert Oppenheimer: the American Prometheus whose work and leadership at Los Alamos through WWII led to the first successful creation and test of the nuclear bomb, the end of WWII, and the arms race with the Soviet Union kicking off the Cold War. Throughout all of this, we get a very human look at a brilliant but very flawed man as well as the political crucifixion he endured in the midst of McCarthyism as well as the psychological fallout from what he unleashed on the world.

I’m not going to mince words, I loved Oppenheimer because I felt like it told such a truly human story. Cillian Murphy is spectacular and is surrounded by an outstanding supporting cast. Nolan brings his S game when it comes to establishing visuals that are both beautiful, awe-inspiring and damn terrifying. The music is beautiful. It is a 3+ hour movie that feels long but the pace runs smoothly. Whether the movie is historically accurate, I can’t really say. I do want to read the book much of the film was based on, which REALLY says something considering the opening statements of this review. What I admire maybe the most is the passion and love put into this movie, making it shine brighter and inspiring me quite a bit as a writer. In the end, I highly recommend it, especially in 4k our Blu-ray at the very least. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Graveyard Shark

The other day a friend of mine shot me a message and said hey, you need to watch Graveyard Shark on Tubi and he refused to explain why. He does this occasionally and I am never disappointed. The movie is always either a complete train wreck,or a masterpiece,but they are always enjoyable.

This time,the movie manages to be both. You can guess by the name what this movie is about, a sort of man shark is buried in a cemetery after it is thought to be killed by a fisherman. It turns out it isn’t dead,and now it is killing people in this graveyard.

This is a rubber suit. And I don’t know why it’s a spiked leather jacket

Now there are some twists and turns and things I absolutely refuse to spoil, but at no point I’m this movie did I know what was going to happen next. The entire plot of the movie from where the shark came from,to how they get rid of it and everything ok between was a rollercoaster ride of what the hell is going on.

I mean all of this in the best way possible, I never wanted to know for example how a mermaid has sex or that Bigfoot was a bottom. I do however know both of these things now. So go,learn these things,and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

How To Be Single (2016)

How to be Single Starring Rebel Wilson (Robin) and Dakota Johnson (Alice) is the story of a new college graduate that she decides she needs to take a break from he long term college boyfriend and learn to be single and who she is. Alive takes a job as a paralegal to do exactly that.

This is where she meets Robin, a party girl that loves to get drunk, have one night stands,meet new people and just all around have a good time. This is where Alice learns how to do it all and life to its fullest.

This is also how Alice learns single life isn’t as great as she thought and attempts to run back to her college boyfriend,which has moved on. The one part of her equation she never really counted on.

The movie isn’t great, it attempts to teach a bunch of lessons about life and fails at all of them. It also fails at being truly entertaining. This isn’t to say it was a bad movie, it wasn’t. It was just a movie really. I didn’t have any feelings for it at all,which might be the worst thing to have happen. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Things Heard & Seen (2021)

Things Heard and Seen starring Amanda Seyfried (Cathrine Claire) and James Norton (George Claire) is a Netflix Horror/Mystery that honestly did not do well with critics, or fans for that matter. I can see why, the story from the start seemed to struggle to understand what it wanted to be.

We start with a family moving from the big city to a small town when George gets a new job at a prestigious school. He isn’t a very spiritual person, unlike Cathrine and the rest of the town who seems to believe in spirits. This is good because their house is haunted, but Cathrine thinks the ghosts aren’t bad or evil.

The movie quickly goes from being a horror movie to really more of a mystery drama as the marriage quickly devolves into George keeping all sorts of secrets from Cathrine, such as the house they got such a great deal on was the site of a brutal murder-suicide. The spirit in the home is trying to protect Cathrine from what it views as a horrible husband.

Honestly from the bit I have told you, you can probably guess the rest of the movie. I won’t spoil it for you obviously but as much as I enjoy Amanda Seyfrieds work this isn’t one of her better movies. This isn’t a slight on the acting in this movie, in fact, the chemistry between them made the movie worth watching. What should have been a terrible movie turned into a decent movie just because of Amanda and James. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Graduation Day (1981)

Graduation Day is a movie about a track star from Midvale High School who dies during the school year, and when her sister comes home to receive an award she won, a deranged killer suddenly starts killing everyone that was on the team. Apparently, someone isn’t so happy that they won and plans on honoring this young lady’s death.

The movie has exactly what you would expect from a 1980s slasher movie, boobs, cheesy death scenes, a teacher that is very inappropriate with students, and a blatant killer who isn’t the killer, and a huge tirade I want to go off on but I refuse to spoil a movie even if it is closing in on 50 years old. I want to make this even more weird, check out the following picture.

That is not a joke, one of those women is, one of those women is a young Vana White before she became famous as the woman turning letters on Wheel of Fortune ( she also failed to get out of contestant row in a 1972 episode of The Price is Right as one of the first 4 people) See, I teach as well as entertain.

Back to the movie, as a horror movie in the 80’s it is the right kind of bad. We have the cheesy death scenes, the needless nudity that is done tastefully but tasteless at the same time that we all enjoy but know the horror genre is better off without, and most importantly it is entertaining. I had fun watching it and that is all I ask for. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Also because it was the 80s, do not watch the trailer below if you have a seizure disorder of any kind.

Fraternity Demon (1992)

There are bad movies that are fun to watch, and there are bad movies that are worth it just to say you have seen them. Then there is this fucking movie. Trixie Bowie plays a lust demon summoned by some college students because they didn’t know what a spell they found did. The guy that left it in a pile of papers knew, he apparently figured summoning her would grant him some sort of authority as well as get him laid.

The movie is as good as the concept, and by that I mean Ms. Bowie made this movie and this movie only then retired. Or maybe she went and did porn I don’t know honestly I wrote all this to say, never watch this movie. Seriously here is a YouTube review from someone else saying basically the same thing with some movie clips. (it does have some brief nudity) Best wishes and may the gaming gods brin you glory.

Time Cut (2024)

Time Cut is one of those movies that the very concept made me feel old as hell. It takes place in 2024, a couple decades after her sister was brutally murdered by a serial killer.

Why does this make me feel old? Well she accidentally goes back in time to 2003. So the movie takes place when I am an adult, and goes back in time to when I was an adult. That hurts.

The actual movie however is..well it’s a movie. The acting is wonderful admittedly and the story starts out pretty well with a party and a great death scene. From there we get to meet Lucy,who for all intents and purposes seems to have been born in an attempt to replace her sister. The characters have great depth to them and the writing is fantastic.

The problem is when it comes down to the story itself and the actual killer reveal etc they do a very haphazard job of explaining the how and why the killer even existed in the first place. Don’t get me wrong, science is actually quite sound. The explanation however, without ruining it, is horrible.

That hurts for me to say I actually enjoyed the movie. They just dropped the ball in that one place which hurts the overall movie. I still recommend checking it out because if you have a fundamental idea of how it all works you will enjoy it. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.