The 13th Friday (2017)

I have never put something like this, but today I will. If your name is Justin Price, the man who wrote and directed this, stop reading now. You will not appreciate this review. I am sure you are a nice guy who loves films, and I don’t doubt you know your craft well, and I will happily watch your next movie. You do however owe the actors and audience of this movie an apology.

To the actors within the movie, you did the best you could with what you were handed, and I am sorry you were treated this way. I hope you were well compensated tho, and not just with experience. I am not the only one that feels this way either, Film Threat was also not very kind to this movie, and nobody should be. The plot pretty much makes a mockery of every part of horror movies and is so convoluted and ridiculous as to serve no real narrative purpose. It was so busy seeing if something could be done it was never asked if it was even worth doing. It then had an ending that existed for the same of having an ending, not because it was an ending anyone wants or more importantly needed. It is almost like having a twist ending for the sake of having a twist ending, but there was no twist. The movie just ends, almost randomly and tossed together real quick before the budget runs out.

All I can say is, do not watch this movie. It isn’t even a fun train wreck, it is simply an example of how to not make a movie. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Meg (2018)

The Meg is a 2018 thriller about a deep sea research station that sends a submersible down to explore the ocean floor, possibly even deeper than the Mariana Trench, past a cloud of section thought to be solid ground but is actually just a pocket of gas that is freezing cold. Beyond there is life people never dreamed of, an entire never before seen ecosystem. It is also home to a shark long thought extinct. The Megalodon.

This is the part where Jonas Taylor, a person long thought to be crazy or to have been having hallucinated or even made up due to cowardice, a similar attack on a sub rescue where he lost about 8 people at a similar depth year beforehand. In fact, he only takes this mission because his ex-wife was the pilot, and he kinda wants to say I told you so.

The movie itself rather intriguing, I always like a good shark movie and while I know it isn’t really all that possible for this to happen I do like how they attempt to make it seem at least plausible. I rarely say this tho, I really think this could have benefited from an R rating. The concept was good and the action scenes were ok but, but it always felt like they were holding things back to keep it into that PG-13 rating. The huge shark felt less threatening most of the time because of it, even when it was devouring whales you never really got the feeling it was doing much more than swimming by. I know Jaws (1975) was rated PG and is an all-time great, but this is just a bigger shark they tried to make scarier and simply didn’t. Then they didn’t make it gorier either.

It does have some things going for it tho, for example, Megalodon is a cool concept. The comradery and friendships are also fun to watch grow. The movie may have been met with mixed reviews and it has its faults, but the movie is enjoyable. I would happily watch it again.. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Deadpool 2 (Savior)

Deadpool 2 came out to some mixed reviews is some areas but I felt was pretty funny. The story is pretty standard stuff, Deadpool is killing people and cracking jokes, after all, he is the merc with a mouth. The reason he is killing people isn’t all that clear in the beginning, and I don’t want to give away what changes. He will eventually be fighting Cable to save a kids life. This will make him form a team in efforts to save him.

The movie has quite a bit of action and it shines there pretty well, but the big thing to remember here is a lot of this movie will depend on how you feel about Ryan Reynalds. The humor is quite a bit like his other movies except he is playing Deadpool. This isn’t bad for me, in fact, I really enjoyed it. The jokes made me laugh, for example, at one point he is in the X-Men mansion complaining about the lack of people and the company cheaping out on him when he walks past a room and we get a cameo from a group of X-Men from the movies closing the door real quick on him.

If you enjoyed the first Deadpool you will mostly get more of the same, and there isn’t a ton of twist and turns but the ones that do exist are worth it. I also think the end credits scene may be the best, possibly in movie history. In fact, it alone may be worth watching it for. People that aren’t fans of Deadpool tho may want to avoid this one tho. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Sex Drive (2008)

Sex Drive is a 2008 comedy about one man’s quest to lose his virginity to a woman on the internet by stealing his brother’s car, a 69 Pontiac GTO Judge, which his brother loves more than basically anything. Only a few issues with this quest, Ian (Josh Zuckerman) has a friend named Lance. (Clark Duke) Lance is kind of a ladies man and gets them chased by a pissed off redneck that decides he needs to score with a lady he finds crying at a gas station. His best friend from childhood, Felicia (Amanda Crew) is also kind of a cockblock. Not sure she means to, but she has done this quite a few times in their life including one sure thing early in the movie.

Then there is Ezekiel (Seth Green), an Amish man that will routinely save them when their car needs to be fixed. He learned while he was off on the Amish tradition of Rumspringa. The movie explains loosely what it is tho in an extreme version of it. Basically, it is the Amish (and from what I heard Mormon) tradition where at the age of around 16 people are allowed to leave the religion temporarily to experience the rest of the world and return around age 18 to decide if they want to stay or leave forever. Not every sect practices this is a general idea of what it is.

Anyway, after that little learning bit, I am sure most of you didn’t care about, our boy Zeke who is, in my opinion, the highlight of the movie will fix their car a few times and be very sarcastic the whole time. Not because he doesn’t like our group, they actually end up being great friends, he just missed the sarcasm. It is lost on his people according to Zeke.

The movie is typical for the genre, it has its serious moments, it has some nudity and crude humor and is just in general a fun movie if you liked movies like Porky’s or Superbad. If you didn’t however there isn’t much here for you, best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Avengers Endgame Review (Savior)

As usual, @torstenvblog an I went to check out the new Marvel movie, and I will, of course, this will be spoiler free.

I won’t say much about the story because I feel saying pretty much anything about it will be a spoiler. Obviously tho it covers what happens after the Thanos snap and how they all deal with it. Some of them obviously will deal with it far better than others. The general tone of the start of the movie as you can imagine has the team feeling pretty down. Admittedly this never changed.

For a three hour movie, it never felt like three hours, and even tho the first hours pacing felt a bit off to me and some of the decisions felt a bit odd at first by the end of the movie they all made much more sense. The end of the movie left me very satisfied and the final act was nothing if not extraordinary. It had everything you would want it to have, action, intrigue, explosions, and even a few tears.

I can’t say it was the best or even my favorite in the Marvel universe. It wasn’t even necessarily the ending I wanted to the whole Infinity War or what the last over a decade was building to. It was, however, the ending I needed. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Blockers (2018)

Sorry, I couldn’t properly name the movie in the title, I didn’t have a picture of a rooster and I didn’t want to type out Cock Blockers in the title. You all know the movie tho, it features Leslie Mann and John Cena amongst many others trying to ruin their kids attempt at having an amazing night at prom.

Seriously, that is what this movie is. Julie, Kayla, and Sam are about to graduate high school and go to college but first is prom night. They decide to lose their virginity in one night. After their parents see their text messages tho, they decide to follow them around town and try to stop them.

As you could imagine the movie was quite commercially successful tho it did get some rather varied reviews from both fans and critics. Personally, while I recognize the movie wasn’t great it had its moments, and it did an admirable job of being an R rated adult comedy yet still having a nice message of family and friendship behind it. There was also a car explosion so I always enjoy that as well. This comedy won’t be for everyone and if you don’t like John Cena this won’t really change your mind tho it is a far cry from his wrestling persona. This is one of those times tho where there are no surprises, the trailers are what you are getting in the film. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Nun (2018)

The Nun is another movie from The Conjuring series that tells the story of, you guessed it, where the nun from The Conjuring 2 came from. Given how creepy she is this seems like it should be an awesome idea and concept. The problem is the movie is relegated to a needlessly convoluted story that bounces around and relies on jump scares for its horror as opposed to any real suspense or horror.

The movie starts in a cloistered castle with two nuns searching for something in a hurry and terrified. One is killed by something and the other hangs herself. Not long after a young man from the local village in Romania finds the nun and the Vatican sends a priest that is known as a miracle hunter and a soon to be nun to figure out if the place is still holy.

People in the town don’t speak of the place, and the man that found the nun, Frenchie, doesn’t want to go back but he basically wants to sleep with our soon to be nun Sister Irene sp he goes anyway because why not.

Soon after arriving weird things start happening, the nun Frenchie tossed in the ice house isn’t how he left her, Father Burke ends up buried alive somehow which somehow wasn’t the universal sign for leave now.

The story will also bounce around a ton and for no real reason. The blood of Jesus is also involved. The best part of the movie was the ending which ties in nicely with The Conjuring movies themselves and Frenchie himself being possessed and talked about in one of the classes taught by Warrens. This for me was the worst movie in a franchise I enjoy. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

 

The Silence (2019)

The Silence is a 2019 horror movie from Netflix and follows the trend of don’t make noise or you will die. It is actually quite similar to A Quiet Place except The silence is based off a 2015 book by Tim Lebbon. The book goes into more details about certain things but all in all the movie does a pretty good job explaining some things, but we will get there.

The movie starts by showing some miners busting through a wall and unleashing what appears to be some bats. These bats quickly swarm and kill them and thousands are released into Pennsylvania. We are then introduced to the Andrews family, most notably Ally (Kiernan Shipka) who lost her hearing in a car accident and Hugh (Stanley Tucci) which this may be the first time he hasn’t played at least a semi-gay man that I have seen. I mention this because he does that amazingly so I wasn’t sure how I would feel seeing him here as a straight man in a serious role, and he played his part amazingly as did the rest of the Andrews family.

The ancient bats quickly start terrorizing the eastern seaboard and even the military is powerless to do much. Entire cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are quickly overrun and pretty much everyone killed.  This isn’t explained great on how this occurs with a few thousand bats escaping a cave but they do show that they reproduce very quickly when they kill, to the point in a few days there are millions of them.

They, of course, can’t see and hunt off the sound everything makes, and there is plenty more going on. The movie isn’t getting great reviews but I can’t see why. The acting and script are solid, the movie does what it wants to do quite well and there are no glaring plot holes or defects with some pretty tense scenes as well. I can only assume people are just tired of the formula which I honestly understand. It is worth a watch, but if you are tired of movies like A Quiet Place and Bird Box, this may not be for you. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Young Adult (2012)

Young Adult is the story about a woman trying to get back a man from when she was younger. The one problem is that man is now married, with a daughter. Hey, why let that get in the way tho right?

Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) decides to go back to her home and win back Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson) She also has a huge drinking problem, she is technically at some stage of drunk for most of the movie and if she isn’t she is about to be or is just waking up from a night of drinking. Along the way, I would like to say she makes new friends and learns life lessons, but she seriously mostly just drinks a lot and sleeps with people while trying to wreck a marriage. The movie isn’t great but it isn’t bad, and most importantly it is fun.

The aspect of her writing a book is also a pretty nice touch, and I didn’t even mind that there was no real ending because there didn’t need to be. I didn’t get the ending I wanted, I got the ending I needed and that is few and far between in movies these days really. Give this one a watch, best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Alien Warfare (2019)

Alien Warfare is an interesting movie. I don’t always mean that as a compliment either. The story is so stereotypically painful I almost think they did the whole thing on purpose as a joke to see if it could be done. The movie is a navy seal team is sent to investigate a top-secret base that is hiding something. I say that because of the President and CIA not telling them what they were hiding despite the fact that they were supposed to secure, instead just telling them if it is there they will know it when they see it.

Of course, the team has a wild card member that happens to be someone’s brother, and their father was also was a Navy Seal and oh yes, both the brother and father got someone killed on a mission because they are a hothead. Despite the fact that everyone disappeared, one scientist survived and knows a lot of things about, you guessed it the alien artifact that was found, the government messed with, and got everyone killed except for this one that happened to be in the one room that would save her.

Aliens are of course super advanced and can teleport but don’t kill any of these guys, and they are far too stupid to see they aren’t trying to murder anyone they just want their giant black rock looking device back. I won’t spoil the ending for you, but I will say this. Don’t watch this movie. It isn’t very good. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.