14 New August Movies Ranked! - Best & Worst

So, August was a crap month for movies, which is disappointing because July was pretty damn solid. But right out of the gates, Soulmate kind of set the stage for what would be to come. Now, there are a couple decent ones that came out this month. A lot of disappointing ones, and we have some good old-fashioned, outright miserable experiences. Well, if you missed any of those reviews I put out, which I put out a lot of reviews, I don't blame you. Today's perhaps your lucky day because every single month I try to go back and do a ranking video, grabbing all those reviews, putting them together in a nice collection for you, and doing it in the order from worst to best. So, without any further ado, here are the worst and best films I saw in August of 2026. [music] Let's begin. Number 14. Summer's still in full swing, and one of the nicest ways to beat the hot heat is to have a nice ice cream treat. Didn't mean for that to rhyme, but And director Eli Roth is scooping some of that up with extra sprinkles on top in the 2026 film, The Ice Cream Man. You may have heard of that film before cuz it came out in 1995. Now, now, now, now, now. This is very much its own unique take on the character from the visionary director that gave us Borderlands. Let's talk about The Ice Cream Man. This film was very interesting for me on its face. It appears to be very retro, taking place in the late 70s or the 80s, but people have smartphones. It also reminded me of the 80s because the protagonists here are kids. So, I was thinking the Sandlot. I was thinking the Goonies. And oftent times it can be a tough cell when you have kid actors because sometimes they can suck at acting. Don't worry, that's not the case for The Ice Cream Man 1995. Unfortunately, I watched The Ice Cream Man 2026, and in this film, the actors have a tough time with the material, and that's not really their fault because the material is very tough. Here's what I think happened. Eli Roth watched Weapons. Love that movie. Thought it was awesome. And he really tractor beamed in on that ending where the kids go nuts and they start smashing through windows and running through houses and then just, you know, ripping apart an old lady. and he thought to himself, "What if I did that for a full 90 minutes?" And I think I can get the rights to the ice cream man. So, we'll just use that as a lazy way to make him into a witch type character who's able to control these kids through ice cream. They take a lick, they take a bite, and next thing you know, they're killing zombie machines, bending to the will of their voiceless ice cream master because the guy who plays the antagonist here never says a peep. The ice cream man's just hanging out in his trucking ding ding ding ding ding ding. Tips the hat to the nearby locals. And then the kids start doing his bidding. And that is the entire plot of this 90minute film. It's it's it's seriously just that the ice cream man gives them treats. They're activated and they start murdering people. Why are they doing this? Well, we'll find out very late in the game in the most insanely convenient exposition dump scene I've ever seen in my life. There is a twist and the twist does kind of make up for something earlier in the film and make it make sense. But at that point, I was so just exhausted and bored and just did not want to keep watching this film because unfortunately the ice cream man is a huge miss for me. Now it may hit for you. Uh and keep in mind I'm a person that really enjoyed Thanksgiving. I love the idea of theming the murderer. He's dressed up as a pilgrim. He's got a hatchet. He even bakes a victim at one point. Gets a whole Thanksgiving spread out. Puts her in the oven. It's brutal. It's violent. It's fun. It's silly. That's some good [ __ ] I was hoping the ice cream man would be that. But they do nothing at all with the ice cream motif. The ice cream background is just that. It's in the background. This guy could have been a garbage truck driver. Nothing changes at all. It really just is the witch from weapons. She snaps the twig. They go nuts. He gives them ice cream. They go nuts. It would have been one thing if the different flavors of the ice cream or if it's like a dilly bar or some [ __ ] has a different effect on the child. Maybe they get boils or something. Maybe they turn into disgusting monsters. I mean, do something with it. But no, in this he's just in the background doing his own thing and it's all about the kids show. Now, it did not work for me. That does not mean there's not something here for some people. And I do think it will have a cult following, mainly because there are a lot of kills in this thing. Some of them are pretty fun. A lot of them are ridiculous. The kids apparently have superhuman strength at times, and all the adults are dumb as [ __ ] just letting their kids do these unspeakable things. There is one kill very early on that I am going to spoil because I I was so perplexed by the whole layout. I [laughter] just have to bring it up as a question that you can answer for me. So, there's a scene where one of the dads is in the kitchen and the daughter says that uh she drops something into the garbage disposal. So, he reaches his hand in. You know what's going to happen? She's going to flip the switch. What threw me off here was that the switch was on the other side of the kitchen. He's up front next to a window. You then have to snake around the side. Behind the fridge, around the corner is the switch to the garbage disposal. It's like 12 ft away. You would think it's a light switch to the front entrance, but no. Apparently, it runs the garbage disposal on the other side OF THE ROOM. WHAT? I'VE LIVED IN several houses with garbage disposals. I've also frequented other folks's homes. Uh, not with their permission. I broke in, of course, cuz who would want to hang out with me? And the switch for the disposal is always in one of two locations that I've seen. Uh number one, it's right above the sink on the wall. Maybe it's tiled next to it if it's fancy. Otherwise, yeah, it's it's typically within a reach away. Uh or two, it's underneath the sink in like the cupboard below. You flip it on. In either case, it's right there because how insane would it be that it's across the room? Someone could accidentally flip it on thinking it's a light switch while you're doing the dishes. [screaming] Let's move past this though. From a visual standpoint, it's not an ugly movie, but kind it kind of is. It almost feels like they shot it raw and they did no color correction afterwards or all of the film stock fell into a grease pit. They pulled it out and we're like, "Yeah, it's a little greasy, but that's fine." Everything just has this kind of ugly huish color over the top of it. I mentioned the kid acting is not great. I I mentioned that, right? We're mainly going to follow a young man named Jared. I think his name is Jared. It doesn't really matter. It's not going to change the story here. And he unfortunately is lactose intolerant. So when the ice cream man goes by, gives everybody some nice tasty treats, he's unable to partake. So, he's one of the few people that's still awake while the rest of the kids in his class are going around on a murder spree. So, it's going to be up to him and a few collective others to band together and try to figure out what's going on and how to get the hell out of dodge. I'm a fan of dark humor when it works. Unfortunately, it just it didn't work a lot here. I got what Eli Roth was going for. He was trying to make something very playful, very silly. You got the kids in charge, so it's from their perspective, which does elevate things a little, but also not really at the same time because everything is so stupid. It's just nonsensical across the board. I'm never really scared for these kids. I'm more or less just kind of annoyed by how long we're dragging out this premise. It felt like something that would have been great for, let's say, uh, a few minutes of screen time. Oh, wait. They did that in Weapons. That was perfect. It was the perfect amount because there's just only so much you can do with the thing. The kids team up on the adults. They they cut off some arms. They drop some bricks on their faces. They're sawing off limbs. I mean, it's just kind of torture porn, which I know Eli's no stranger to. He did the hostile films. But this one doesn't even have the luxury of being called mean-spirited. That that would be giving it too much credit. Even that would be giving it some sort of a vision. I just don't even know what he was going for here. It's really campy. It's really corny. Again, there is a lot of murders. So, I think from that standpoint alone, some horror fans that like all the gore and stuff, they might enjoy this a lot more. And it's definitely going to be one that people can react to online. They get a bunch of hits that way. Like, whoa, can you believe what happened here? The dude was set on fire. That's crazy. [gasps] I just need something built around the crazy to make it more interesting. If you're using a character like the ice cream man, it's a perfect opportunity to have him lure kids into the van, take them away, do some weird crazy experiments on them or lace the ice cream with different elements or substances that would make them do different things. Like come up with something fun with the character. Don't just make him a generic demony figure because then what's the point of even having that as the profession? He could be a milkman. The big takeaway I got from this film is I'd rather be watching Thanksgiving or watching weapons again. Well, there you have it. My thoughts on the ice cream man. Not the treat I was hoping for, unfortunately. Number 13. Camp Measma. We hold you in our hearts and when we think about you, it makes me want to fart. Subscribe for dated references to Nickelodeon shows from the '9s. Have you ever seen the display at the art museum? probably in video form of a Coke bottle and a Pepsi bottle linked together on a machine and then they just slowly rotate so that the liquid goes between the two bottles. And some people call it art while others like myself call it trash. As the expression goes, one man's trash is another man's thing that they think is worth value but is not. That's how that's how that expression goes. Anyway, I'm just randomly bringing this up because I saw a movie last night called Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. And let me tell you, it puts the ass in Miasma. Not only because the lead female protagonist has a lot of junk in the trunk, but also because this movie sucks ass. But again, one man's trash and all that. I'm going to get into this film in a spoiler-free review kind of a little bit, but not really. I'll start that way and I'll probably veer into the [ __ ] So join me if you want. The early reactions for this film were positively glowing. And speaking of glowing, this is from the very same director that did I saw the TV glow. Jane Shuen Brun has a style and I don't know if it's one I necessarily gel with. I did not see TV glow, so I can't speak to the quality of that, but I've heard really bad things. But if you're one of the folks that really liked that film, then you're probably going to be right at home here assuming that that too was full of a bunch of artsy fartsy stuff that I don't really care for. And no, it's not because it challenges you to think about it, to dig a little deeper, but more so because I just hate the storytelling approach and I found none of it fascinating on its face. So therefore, I'm not encouraged to go deeper because I hate what's on the surface. But what's on the surface Prey tell? Well, it's simple. This film takes place in modern times, but it's very much got its sight set on the 80s as our lead protagonist, Chris, played by Hannah Einbender, is a hot new gay director on the scene. Emphasis on the gay. And it's not me putting the emphasis on the gay. It's the film. Because that's actually the point of the movie. Self-discovery, unlocking your sexual potential. and it's masquerading as a good old-fashioned 80s slasher flick. Chris is the director responsible for rebooting Camp Miasma, a very popular 80s horror flick that spanned a whole bunch of shitty sequels. And so, it's her job to take things back to basics, Halloween, this thing. She heads to the original reclusive campsite where this whole thing took place in the dead of winter so that she can interview the original star of the franchise played by Jillian Anderson. My skully, my beautiful, lovely scullies in this from the X Files. And I have to say, much like a fine wine, this woman is just getting better with age. Even as she engorges herself on a bucket of KFC with her ridiculous southern draw, I can't help but be all sorts of turned on. And that goes doubly for Chris, who's not only interviewing a potential actor for this rebooted franchise, she's interviewing a potential partner. She just don't know it yet. [laughter] And the audience might not know it yet either, because that's what this movie's all about, baby. If you were hoping this was going to be a good old-fashioned throwback slasher with some fun social commentary, [laughter] no, it's the opposite. It's a film about being comfortable in your body, finding someone that understands you, and then finally hitting that perfect climax. I suppose it is a bit my fault. Had I watched the trailers, maybe I would have known what I was getting in for, but I went into this one fresh. I saw the very positive reviews out ahead of time. the marketing worked on me. And so I guess I was expecting not necessarily something by the books, but something that at least could pull me in, get me interested in the characters and the scenarios as they played out, have some good gore here and there, have some fun, creative kills. Instead, no, it's this self-discovery journey where we have our lead protagonist and a [ __ ] Scully sitting around a campfire smoking a joint, talking about the best way to get off. The film is rated R, not for teenage sex, as the title would have you believe. There's a tiny little bit of that, but it's mostly just fingerplay, and you don't get to see it. It's just a lot of thrusting and really bad close-ups on uh Scully there. Like, you can see every pore and crack of the the makeup going on. It's like, pull this [ __ ] back. Holy crap. Hannah Eron Bender also has several minutes of topless nudity, and I thought, you know what? Those have got to be prosthetic ones. They're they're just too perfect. But I looked it up. I did research for that and only that and Google seems to tell me they're real. So, good for her. That being said, the twins are not worth sitting through an hour and 50 minutes of painful torture as you get through this slog of a flick that gets weirder and weirder as it goes on. And not in a fun way. Now, now, now, now, now, now, now, now in a metaphorical up its own ass stupid kind of way. When Sarah Sherman showed up in the film as Chris's agent, I knew it was over. I knew we were completely off the rails and this movie was going to suck. I have yet to see Sarah Sherman in anything that's not horrible. Okay, let's set aside the she's all That section of this movie, which is the majority of it. We have our nerdy director Chris who wears thick glasses and is not very confident and by the end she's got those things off. She's got the t-shirt off and she's running around in a sprinkler. It's just so God, I hate this movie. Let's get to the horror side of things. We have a villain named Little Death who has a vent for a face. Just a giant HVAC system. HVAC's really being represented this year. First, we had the new Spider-Man film prominently featuring HVAC, and now here we have it again. Has big HVAC taken over Hollywood? I'll let you be the judge. Actually, I won't. Don't watch this movie unless you have the weirdest taste. Here, here's the deal. I took my children to the Walker Museum in Minnesota where we're going to go look at art. We're not really the art type of family. I have a visual communications degree. I'm kind of versed in in the art forms out there, but I don't really care for the modern stuff very much. And one of the first exhibits that was displayed prominently over several hallways and and just, you know, big features was a woman whose name eludes me, but she was into charcoal drawing and it well charcoal scribbling. It was basically just charcoal circles and then words written around the circles like angry lesbian, worthless, daddy's little angel, things like that all over the wall. And I kept thinking, this is [ __ ] awful. But somehow the gallery decided in their infinite WISDOM THAT THIS was the new face of art that should be displayed because it challenges you. It thinks outside the bun. Not really. What? No. If that's the level we're at with art in 2026, I'm concerned we are one mural away from seeing Jared Leto's Joker up on display with the freaking damaged across the forehead, the teardrop. Jay, please kill me. I'm not going to kill you. I'm going to hurt you really, really bad. [screaming] [laughter] Wipe out. No, this movie is terrible. So, Death Man, aka Little Death. Terrible title, but you know, it's got a it's got layer to it there. There's something there for you to think about. I guess he's going to have a few scenes here and there where just lobs off the heads of unsuspecting teenagers with his, you know, his spear thing. And in their place is a geyser of blood that erupts several yards into the air. It's ridiculously over the top. It doesn't really reflect the 80s violence. Like everything's ratcheted up by like a million because there's so much layer to the commentary. There is exactly one cool moment in this entire film. And that's where the two love birds are going to watch an old slideshow version of the original film. And then we're going to go into the original film as little death as he goes on a couple minute killing spree. There are three reasons why this scene is awesome. Number one, it's time not spent with Chris talking about how she can't orgasm properly. Number two, it's really the only action killing murder spree in the entire film. Um, spoiler here. Spoiler. That's not the ending. That doesn't matter anyways because this is all makebelieve nonsense. The main character, Chris, can only have her greatest pleasures when she is out of her body watching her body as she's going. And the best way to do it is through the eyes of the fake killer from the movies. Yeah. Unfortunately, watching herself get fingered by Scully through the eyes of Little Death is now the only way she can achieve climax. The third reason, if I if I counted right, why this scene is awesome is because of the song being played. And that's Long December by Counting Crows. That's right. C2 is in this. We got Counting Crows, baby. Ventman is walking around killing teens left and right. IT'S BEEN A LONG December and there's reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last. And it's one more day up in the canyons. And it's one more night in Hollywood. If you think that I could be forgiven, I wish you would. N again though, if I wasn't a movie critic hellbent on sitting through some of the worst crap I've ever seen, I never would have spent a dime on this thing. 3 minutes of a fun killing spree plus a couple minutes of topless nudity are just sadly not enough to justify the ticket price. The movie up its own ass with meta commentary also attempts to be quirky. They attempt to make fun of the woke stuff while also simultaneously being incredibly woke. Kind of like a have your [ __ ] and eat it too as the expression goes. Just because the movie self-aware and bragadociously tells us that does not make it any better. There's obviously an audience for this type of film. It's just not me. Productionwise, it is a very interesting looking film. I like the 70 mm style to it. The ridiculous amounts of blood when someone dies. It's It's kind of fun here and there. The attempted humor, while not lost on me, just doesn't hit me correctly. But music-wise, production valuewise, I mean, it's it's at least cool from that aspect. I did like all the matte paintings, the fake trees, and kind of just the surreal stuff they put into the film, which not only alludes to those old '8s flicks, but also, you know, works within the story that they're telling, which of course is makebelieve Mickey Mouse [ __ ] because the villain from Camp Miasma, who's summoned at the bottom of the lake, that's not actually real. He's just an imaginary character so that the director can become the imaginary character after he slaughters her friends and acquaintances so that she can find herself in a bedroom getting finger [ __ ] by Jillian Anderson and reach climax. Jesus Christ, I hate this. Oh, on top of these shenanigans, there's the other level of commentary where little devil or little Nikki or little Dicky or whatever, he lives underneath of the movies in the lake. At one point during a conference call with the studio, the director goes off about how they're all fake. Everyone inside of the film is a character inside of a real VHS movie that's being created underneath of the lake in a laboratory cavern where faces kind of come out of the walls and there's a naked vent guy that that makes the movies to entertain himself. And then he rises back up. He gets his outfit back on and his vent face. He kills again. And then another tape is created for the sequel. Wash, rinse, repeat. This movie also has the [ __ ] or I should say the ovaries to set it up for a sequel in the final shot of the film. [ __ ] you. I can't EXPRESS THE UNBRIDLED [screaming] RAGE I HAD sitting in the theaters through this crap. Three people got up and left. One dude who was Han Solo, he popped out about an hour and 15 in, made it farther than the couple in front of us. They got up and left about 40 minutes deep. I wanted to leave 20 in, but I stayed the course. And I asked myself every 15 minutes, why though? If the movie sucks this far in, who cares if the last 30 minutes is the greatest thing ever? You still have to sit through all the awful [ __ ] terrible stuff to get to it. And it wasn't good. The last 40 minutes wasn't good. But it was just as bad, if not worse, than the first half. When the movie ended with Scully vomiting blood on Chris as she fingerbanged her and a geyser of blood also erupting from Chris's private parts, I thought, "Yep, that's exactly how this should have ended. Why would I expect anything else?" She did it. She became the killer. She killed herself as she was getting off. It's perfect. It's just a perfect It's a perfect time for someone. One man's trash, right? is another woman's pleasure in this instance. All right, there you have it. My review, I guess, of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Me Asthma. I think this is one of the worst movies I've seen this year. I would rather honestly sit through Spa Weekend three times in a row than go through this movie once more. Number 12. I want to read you a quote from Chris Carter on this new version of the X-Files film. I wanted to make the scary movie that I always intended to make. When we first made the movie, we had a vision and we tried to bring it to life. And when we took it to the executives at Fox, they said, "This isn't PG-13 movie. This is torture porn." And so we cut it back to what we thought was a PG-13 movie to plate the executives. And then we gave it to the motion picture sensors and they said, "This isn't a PG13 movie." Well, with that out of the way, here we are in the grand 2026, 18 years AC Slater, and we have a brand new version of the movie, a brand new cut, I should say, of the film. This one's rated R. It's on Hulu and Disney Plus, and it features our Dana Scully and Fox Moulder in the way you've never seen them before. And by that, I mean they're less romantically entangled. But director Christopher Carter knows what the fans of the Files really want, and that's to see dark, gritty, scary beyond all belief, torture porn, gross out moments. Oh, wait. That's more of a Millennium thing. But anyway, here's my review for the new cut, the Frankenstein thingy mabobber. If you saw the second featurelength film in theaters back in the day and thought to yourself, "Well, this is terrible." I sure hope someday they can recut this into something somewhat manageable. I want to believe there's a good version of this film out there. [laughter] You were alone. I never thought that once. I watched the movie, thought it blew ass, and didn't think there was any possible way to salvage it. Well, Chris Carter had different plans. And so, here we are. All these years removed, there is an announcement of a new version of XFiles coming out. Chris Carter is producing but has nothing to do with it. According to him, it's a Ryan Cougler vehicle. It's a complete reimagining of the franchise. That's not called Fringe. And I'm thinking I don't give a [ __ ] because without my David Dov, without my Jillian Anderson, what the hell are we even doing anymore? You going to have Dogit in the mix? We going to get Dogit back? Cry gonna make a cameo? I don't think so. So, if I were to put up my I want to believe poster and come up with a conspiracy theory as to why there is now a new cut of this shitty movie in 2026, I think it's pretty simple. They gave Chris Carter a participation producer award on this new XFiles version. He has nothing to do with it according to him. And they wanted to make sure he didn't interfere and start running his mouth. So, they let him go to the old tapes, get back in the editing room, and they said, "Hey, you know what? to kind of appease you for all the great years of, you know, and all the multiple seasons of XFiles and that badass first movie. Let's get let's let you take another run at that crap movie you came out with, the monster of the week movie. So, he went back to the drawing board. He got out all the notes. He got out all the old schematics and the and the different drawings and whatnot. And what he has produced is a movie that's shorter, a movie that's somehow more lifeless, and a film that still feels like it's PG-13. Where is the dark, gritty, torture porn, gross out, intense moments? Did I watch the right cut? Granted, it's been a long time since I saw that original in theaters, but this felt like the same [ __ ] movie all over again. So Chris Carter going out there running his mouth saying he came. He he gave us the vision that he initially fever dreamed up. If you believe him, congratulations. You played yourself. Because the XFiles I Want to Believe Franken Weeny edition is arguably worse than the previous. Now I don't know what new scenes were added in. It seems like it's just the dog with two heads that you see for all of 3 seconds max. But I know what they took out any sort of chemistry, any sort of relationship between Fox and Scully. They they got rid of the kiss. They got rid of more of the sentimental emotional moments. And so what we have is a very sterile, very by the numbers, media, not even mediocre, it's just bad. It's It's a bad XFiles episode extended to a hour and 40 minutes long. So, if you never saw the movie, but you've been curious as to what it's about, maybe you watched the initial run of the show, but you just you avoided the film, which is smart of you. Well, it takes place several years removed from the TV series. I think 10 years has gone by. Moulder is a recluse. He's off in a cabin in the woods doing his best. Walter White, he lasted a lot longer than Walter did out there. He seems pretty contently miserable. He's got the pencils in the ceiling, a nice little call back to the early days of XFiles. And Scully is working at a hospital as by God, a doctor, what she always wanted to do. But it's still not an easy walk in the park for her because she has a kid with a terminal disability. And there doesn't seem to be a solution in place. That is until she starts looking into stem cell research. And now she's going to have to once again marry her faith with her science and hope for the best. While this completely forgettable, boring secondary plot is going on, we have the completely forgettable, boring main plot happening, which revolves around a psychic priest pedophile who can find the whereabouts of body parts of women that were killed. I think they killed men, too, but I'm not sure there's any in the film. Not that anybody's really killed at all. Nothing happens in this movie. It's going to be a series of scenes where the psychic priest is wandering off onto the ice. searching out the the the souls of these people while 40 or 50 FBI agents saunter behind him. This character is played by Billy Connelly. But we have a starstudded cast here. We got Exhibit in the mix. This is the first day of the rest of my life. X X marks the spots. Nah, X spots the marks. I'm sure Chris Carter thought to himself, "This is the X Files. Who can we get in the actor's space that has X in their name? Oh shoot, we got Exhibit. Apparently DMX was busy that weekend. The film also features Amanda Pete. Remember her? Do you remember her? Cuz I completely forgot until I saw her. When she showed up, I was like, "Oh, it's Amanda Pete. That's nice." The last time I saw her was what? When I saw this godforsaken pile of [ __ ] [ __ ] in theaters back in 2008. It would not truly be an X-Files movie though without Walter Skinner. And he does show up for kind of more of an a cameo than anything else. It's a shame how how he's in the movie for just like a little bit of time. But regardless, it's always nice to see the skin head when he shows up. That is not the right way to use that term. Now, I can set aside the fact that this isn't an alien invasion storyline. That's that's perfectly fine. Some of my favorite episodes revolve around the monster of the week stuff. Tombs is is easily in my top 10 for XFiles. the incest family with the mom under the bed. That's that's scary [ __ ] What we have here though is something closer to a CSI than an X Files. After one body part is found, I think they go to Moulder, who's again, he's he's off in a cabin in the woods. They need Scully to go find him. Skull Monster, I need you to go get your boyfriend out of his cabin and come back to the job. All is forgiven. you know, all the run-ins with the FBI in the past and and the shadow government and and blowing up labs and and then trying to free aliens and and all this stuff. You know, it's all it's all water under the bridge. We desperately need him right now because one of our FBI agents is missing. They got one of our own and we're so desperate and out of ideas, we need Fox Moulder. Why? Unclear. There's really never any real reason they have to get this guy out of hiding, but Dana Scully goes to find him. She said, "They need you back." Fox doesn't want to go. He's perfectly content being miserable on his own, looking at the photo of his long lost sister on the doorstep. But after a grand total of 10 seconds of soularching, he says, "Fine, I'm back, baby. Let's do it." D What's the difference between me and you? You tuck a good one, but you don't do what you're supposed to do. Subscribe for exhibit songs. Immediately after he gets back in the fray, starts talking to the pedto priest. Dana Skully is all up in his snatch, saying, "What's wrong, Moulder? You're you're backsliding. I'm afraid you're getting too far into the darkness. You got to walk away from this one, dude." He's not even doing anything. He's seriously just following the leads, listening to the priest who is taking them to useful locations where they are finding things. But the whole movie, these two are bickering like a married couple. And in the show, it worked a lot better because Moulder typically would go like way to the extreme, put himself into harm's danger, go against the government, go against protocol, and Dana would have to like reel him back in or try to or question his decisions. Are you suggesting, Moulder, that there's some sort of a putty man who can slither in and out of vents and he's eating the livers of his victims? That seems a tad out there. But in this instance, it doesn't make sense. She's on him, hounding him, even though she's the one that got him to come back in the first place. Make it make sense. Now, this can all be forgiven, of course, if there are some scares, some chills with that cool background sound they always do. No, THERE'S NONE OF THAT. I DON'T EVEN THINK THAT SONG'S in there. But there is music. Oh my god, is there music? It is blaring the entire film while people are just having like a regular conversation. That music is at a thousand%. Because Chris Carter knows this movie is so freaking boring that he has to constantly bombard the viewer with a bunch of epic sounds so that they're kind of distracted from the fact that they're just watching mainly people fight in different rooms OF HOUSES. HOW EXCITING. ALSO, the use of the XFiles main theme song, which is barely present, does get queued up in the cringiest points possible. One of them's pretty early after Scully, I think, makes some revelation and you just hear the Amanda Pete and Exhibit's characters bring absolutely nothing to the table as agents. They're just there to kind of again push against Moulder a little bit, but not even near as much as Scully's doing. There are a grand total of zero scary scenes or thrills to be found. The the major focus is going to be on a new agent who goes missing. She's she's kidnapped by one of two guys. So, the whole Frankenstein thing plays out like this. There are gay lovers. One of them is dead or dying. I think it's never fleshed out well at all. So, the boyfriend goes out, grabs a couple agents who are on the donor list, takes them back to his place, cuts off body parts, and then stitches them to his uh his boyfriend. But we don't see any of that. It's so rare. There there's like no violent moments at all. There's barely any surgery stuff going on. This is so watered down. And again, it's XFiles. Where are the scares? Where is the chilling to the bone moments? It honestly annoys the [ __ ] out of me that I'm talking about this movie again. I I left that thing buried in 2008 where it belongs. And the fact that Chris Carter has brought it back into the conversation again. Why? Your movie was terrible, dude. Take the W's where you have them. The first XFiles movie was badass. The show was great. Yeah, there's there's duds, of course, but after nine seasons, who's not going to have some? But overall, it was a very fun ride that ultimately went nowhere because he refuses to give fans what they want, which is closure, which is finally a great relationship between these two, which is the alien invasion stuff coming to fruition. None of it's ever going to happen probably at this point. Instead, he's going to milk the stuff he already has. He's going to cling on to it for dear life because everything's about to change because Ryan Cougler is involved and who knows what the [ __ ] he's doing. As of right now, I have zero interest in a new XFiles. But I do like Ryan Cougler's work. He's made some great films in the past. So, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt when I see the trailers. As of right now, though, I have no reason to believe it'll be good, and this movie certainly was not. What a complete waste of time to sit through this crap again. Number 11. From the dynamic duo that brought us those Bad Moms movies. Of course, it's from them. Comes their next foray into cinematic perfection. I'm of course talking about spa weekend, baby. Oh yes, it's late as night and I'm feeling right. Listen, nothing gets me wetter than mimosas in September. But we don't even have to wait that long because right [ __ ] now you can have a spa weekend with the gals in your local theater that it went to for some reason and didn't [ __ ] out on Netflix like it should have. Anna Ferris, Isa Fischer, Leslie Man, Michelle Bhau, the whole gang's here and they're dressed for success, friends. And by dressed, I mean nothing but a robe and slippies because it's their time to shine under the sun, at the pool, at the spa [music] for the weekend. It's a spa weekend. I'm coming out. Just want the world to know. When it was announced there was a film coming out that looked to be the spiritual successor to Bridehard from last year, I was giddy as a [ __ ] clam because Bridehard sucked. And I knew 1,000% this was going to be another train wreck that would be fun to talk about. And you know what? I was wrong. It turns out spa weekend was a great time. Joking. No, it's terrible. Here's the deal. Yo-yo. We have four super best friends that have known each other since they were young. You have Jane, played by Leslie Man, the 54year-old mother who has two young kids somehow and works a full-time job without a man or wife by her side. How did she do it? Unclear. How did she have such young kids at that age? Also unclear. Were they adopted? Was there a surrogate mother? Was there a man in the picture at one point? A sperm donor? Does she really think she's pulling this age off? All these questions and more will not be answered in the film. We then have Anna Ferris. She's a timid little mouse. I don't want to yell at people. She gets walked all over by her douchebag boss who doesn't even know how to open his own garage door without help. Men suck. We of course can't have a fun ladies foresome without the token black woman. So we have Coco baby. She's played by Michelle Bhau and her deal is she's got anger issues and she's divorced. But the husband very much still wants her back, but she needs to overcome her jealousy, her anger, and just kind of change her entire personality to get back with this guy. Good luck. Last and definitely least is Isa Fischer's character, Mel. I love Isa Fisher. I love me some fish. But this character sucks to high hell. She's the wild card of the pack. And oh my golly G Willicker's Batman does she put the wild and wild card. Ladies, Mel's in the house and my snatch is purring. [laughter] [groaning] It's hungry for some man meat. She doesn't say that, but she says a lot of stuff about penises. There's a point in the film where she says, and I quote, "She wants to get fingered by his penis." Subscribe. No one laughed at that line of dialogue in my theater. Shocking, I know, but to be fair, there were only like five people in there. Two groups of ladies and myself. So, five ladies. About 20 minutes into the film, I looked over and got distracted by the lights running up the side of the staircase in the theater and I started counting them. And then I was like wandering endlessly all over my brain thinking like, "What the [ __ ] am I doing at Spa Weekend? Does anybody care if I review this? Do I need to see this movie to even put out a review?" It has terrible bottom of the barrel jokes, awful lines of dialogue. The humor virtually never lands. is all old crappy tropes and stupid scenarios we've seen time and time again. Hijacking a golf cart and crashing it. HOW REFRESHING. At one point, Mel drops her bag. It spills open and a whole bunch of dildos litter the floor. LAUGH. WHY DO YOU HAVE SO many of these? Mel starts to gather them up. Oh, this is just my travel collection. Would you like to borrow one? LAUGH. [screaming] THE OWNER OF the spa is a lovely older blonde woman who I honestly could not recognize for anything, but she must be someone of significance, at least in the spa weekend community, because the movie really glazes her up for a bit. the the music's like when the camera pushes in on her and the hair is flowing and blowing in slow motion and the ladies are all captivated by her and I don't know who the hell this actress is and I looked on IMDb and I didn't see her name listed in the top like 20 actors on it so [ __ ] it, who cares? But she is the owner of the spa and it honestly boggles my mind how she allows these ladies to get up to their high jinks without kicking them out toot sweet. The moment Mel opens her mouth, blah blah blah, penises, blah blah blah, vaginas. I would have said, "Get the [ __ ] out of here. This is a spa. This is a silent retreat area that you're in right now, and you're being rude." Then she knocks over and breaks all the little crystal rocks that are on the shelves. And wait, she gets a slap on the wrist. Nah, not even a slap. They just she just has to leave the little session. Leslie Man's character, Jane, is the central protag here, uh, short for protagonist. She really needs to get away. She puts herself first. I think a lot of us ladies can relate. I know I certainly can with two kids, a wife, two full-time jobs, basically just trying to have it all, you know, [gasps] but where's the time for me? Where's the time for me? And so Koko says, "Fuck it. We're dying anyways. Ladies, leave your man at home. We're going to the spa. weekend na na and all the fellas if you go with your friends cuz it's 11th honey and the club is jumping jumping. They head to this beautiful spa resort. They have this massive insane looking room that one of them flippantly says, "Wow, there's no way we can afford this." At which Koko replies, "Yeah, thankfully I got a heavy discount from the job that I have that no one knows what that is." And then they just sweep all the expenses under the rug. This is something we can all relate to. Ladies getting a spa weekend at this lavish resort. They do everything on the package. It's all inclusive, basically. But let's get down to business. Where are the jokes? Well, there's a scene where they uh they do yoga with goats. And Isla Fischer's character, Mel, the the wild card, she starts to pretend like she's banging it. She gets behind one of the GOATS LIKE, "LOOK WHAT I'M DOING." And the yoga instructor's like, "Yeah, this is fine. I don't need to kick her out." And then the goats go nuts. They start running a muck. They're knocking over champagne glasses. They're ripping up the furniture. IT'S ABSOLUTE BAD LUCK. MEL'S the friend that everyone has but secretly hates. I know in my friend group I have that too. Or I did when I was in college and then we got rid of that dude because he sucked. I don't know who relates to this at 40 or 50 years of age, but apparently this is something that needs to be heard. Everyone's got one of these turd friends and you keep them around because they spice things up and they keep things interesting. And that's exactly what Mel does. She gets one of her friends fired from her job. She tells Koko's divorce that Koko is going to kill herself if he doesn't get down here. And she has the ovaries to tell the young buck yoga instructor that Leslie man has a thing for him and she's willing to do butt stuff. At which point, Anna Ferris's character Sophie asks, "What's butt stuff?" to which Koko retorts, "It's exactly what it sounds like. LAUGH." NOW, I don't know about you, but if I was fired from my job, thanks to my piece of [ __ ] friend, and if she did all these other things to other people in the friend group, probably would kick her to the curb and not think twice about it. But this is a spa weekend. What happens at the spa stays at the spa sort of a thing. So, naturally, they'll forgive her very quickly. And you know, we're off to the races again. Shenanigans, hi jinks, things happen. None of it really has any rhyme or reason to it. But you know what? IT DOESN'T REALLY matter because this whole entire thing is really just an excuse for the crew, the actors, everyone involved to go to some nice island resort and just have a great old time. We're making a movie. [laughter] Swipe out. Now, I'm not about to shame Leslie, man. She's a very lovely looking woman. Uh, not a wrinkle on her face. They they tighten that [ __ ] up. I wish I could do something similar, but you know, I'm aging ungracefully. That said, the yoga instructor guy looks to be in his 30s and he makes googly eyes at her seeing them drive by in a golf cart. And so that's going to be the love interest of the film. This is a fun little reverse trope that Hollywood's been doing over the years as sort of an apology, too, or like, "Hey, sorry that we constantly paired 20somes with 40somes action stars. Now, we're going to do the opposite. Now, we're going to give the Cougars their desserts. So, we're going to pair the 50-year-olds with the 30-year-olds as some sort of Uno reverse card. How about we just don't do either because it looks weird either way. And it's also not the most believable when you see the good-looking yoga dude giving a lesson to all the hot yoga chicks around him, but he's making googly eyes with the, you know, middle-aged woman going by in a golf cart with her psycho friends. All of this said, if you're looking for a film that doesn't challenge you in the slightest, it's just one of those kind of easy breezy beautiful covergirl films that you know exactly what you're going to get out of it. Little heartfelt friendship of sorts, a colorful feelgoody affair that really does nothing to break any sort of mold at all, which isn't entirely I mean that's fine. You don't have to be a unique concept or or even have anything interesting to say as far as messaging goes. You're going to be right at home with spa weekend. That said, I didn't find this funny in the slightest. There was some mild enjoyment here and there from some of the shenanigans, but overall, I found uh Isa Fischer's character to be incredibly obnoxious. I found Anna Ferris's character to be pathetic and stupid. And honestly, I don't know what work she's had done to herself, but she's constantly squinting and unable to really make readable expressions. Leslie man has nothing on her face. So, anytime she's expressing sad or joy or whatever, it's always just kind of this the whole time. And I don't really I don't know if she's crying or if she's she's sad or if she's happy or mad. It's all the same emotion. It's honestly distracting and it's taking away from some of the humor that maybe could have been unearthed when you give a genuine reaction with some real facial muscles moving. Otherwise, when we make the transition to replacing all these people with AI, it's going to be an easier proposition because the real actresses are already starting to look AI themselves. Rant aside, that's Spa Weekend. Take your mom out and watch as she goes, "Oh." Every time they say the word penis, she's in for a wild night. The movie's rated R for adult language and some salty situations. No nudity, no penetration, nothing really scandalous. Uh penetration, short for penetration. Yeah. No, it's um it's about as basic by the numbers and and and stupid as it could possibly be. You know what? I work hard. I should be able to play hard, too. I think it's time for me to suit up into something more comfortable. Get the boys together and we'll go on our own little spaation. I'm coming out. Just want the world to know. For some, going to the movie theaters nowadays is a torturous exercise they wouldn't wish on their worst enemies. People sit on their phones. They talk loudly. The chairs don't recline. So oftent times they're watching movies from the comfort of their own home, aka in bed. I myself have been doing that far more often lately, which is why it's such a good combination for me to team up with a partner today, Helix. On occasion, people wonder how I'm able to see so many movies, get reviews out in a timely manner while dealing with the family stuff and a full-time job on top of this beautiful hobby. And the answer is simple. Getting a good night's sleep. Not a lot of it, but good sleep. And that's all thanks to a new mattress I got last year by Helix. Helix Sleep makes premium mattresses and bedding that are customized to fit your personal needs and conveniently shipped to your door. They offer soft, medium, and firm mattress types. And the best part is you don't have to figure it out yourself. You can go through a quiz that they provide and they will pinpoint exactly what type of mattress you should find yourself in. And I found myself in a Helix Midnight Lux King-Size mattress fit for this king. The amount of time I dedicate to sleep these days is criminally low. So, I want to make sure as soon as I hit the pillow, hit the bed, I'm out like that. And I've had zero issues with my Helix. In fact, it's been easily the best mattress I have ever owned. And that goes double for my wife who also took the quiz and was able to customize her side of the bed. And the great news is after you take the quiz, Helix delivers the mattress right to your front door with free shipping in the US. On top of the free shipping, they also offer a 120day free trial so you can test that bad boy out with a lifetime warranty. That's probably why they were recently awarded in the Grand 2026 as one of USA Today's most trusted brands. And that's out of a total of check notes 23,000 brands. And the specific mattress I'm rocking, the Helix Midnight Lux, that has been ranked as the best overall mattress by both Wired and Forbes. Thank you Helixleep for sponsoring. Visit helixleep.com/adamdosmov to take advantage of the Labor Day sale and to save 30% off select mattresses. Number 10. Look out, Megan. Heads up, subservience. Get out of the way, companion, because there's a brand new AI Murderbot film by Blumhouse called Soulmate. I mean, I believe that's how they intended to be pronounced because it's spelled Soul with an M8 and then a TE at the end. So, Soulmate. I feel like if they were going for Soulmate, they would take the TE off. But what do I know? [laughter and gasps] Well, I know a good movie when I see it. And this one feels like the type of movie you try to find a distributor for for 7 months, completely fail, and then [ __ ] it out on video on demand. It's perfect for that. Let's talk about Soulmate. In our ongoing quest to understand AI, figure out what makes it tick, and how to put it into practice in the most efficient, pleasurable way possible, filmmakers continue to shovel out the same movie over and over again, and Soulmate feels the most exhaustive of the bunch. Yeah, I would say this film is about as redundant as a middle-aged white dude standing in front of a bunch of movie collectibles talking about films. There's like a million of them at this point. But what makes it different? What separates it from the pack? Glad you asked. The answer is nothing. In fact, this film is so riddled with cliches. So by the book, you will predict every single thing that happens and then be disappointed when the film inevitably lets you down with the way they get to the thing you predicted. The movie's rated R. It does have some nudity. Thank [ __ ] god. Because if it didn't, I would just have no idea what to latch on to. There are some violent moments, but unfortunately, they don't show up for a good hour into the film. And by that point, most of you will probably have shut this thing off. I know. I wanted to cuz nothing happens unless you're really into karaoke then enjoy the show because there's two karaoke scenes and they both suck along with everything else in this film. The plot is shocker simple and basic as hell. We are going to be following a programmer by the name of what is his name? Daniel Donnie Dani Dav David. It's David. HOW DID I FORGET? THEY SAY HIS NAME 500 [ __ ] TIMES IN THIS MOVIE. WHAT SEEMS TO BE THE PROBLEM? DAVID. DAVID, are you done programming this feature yet? David, you seem upset. Is everything okay? David. David, what's wrong? David. David. David. DAVID. HE KNOWS HIS NAME. He's a programmer for a major company that has cracked the code on pleasure bots. And they don't call them pleasure bots. They're just, you know, hotlooking women that ship to your house naked. And they come with three different outfits to choose from. One of which is schoolgirl. I feel like early on in the script they were trying to make this tongue and ass or tongue and cheek. Either either expression is fine as to how they were going to approach this movie if they were going to be silly with it or straightforward or really dark and gritty. And they just decided to do none of them cuz it's never funny. It's never scary. It's never thrilling. It's just there. It is the now that's what I call Blumbhouse horror. I talked about how basic and cliche this film is, and you better believe it when I say it. The the head of this company is, of course, evil big business douchebag guy. He's always in corporate mode. Everything he says is corporate speak. He never feels like a real person. And then you have sad sack of [ __ ] David, who's always playing back messages from his dead wife. He's even calling her dead number and leaving messages on her dead answering machine. This guy sucks. And I've seen this freaking thing play out in like 50 movies now. I just need to hear her voice one more time. Beep. Hey sweetie. How's it going? Um, I'm going to be dying soon, but I just want to let you know you're a [ __ ] and you shouldn't be in a movie. Bye. [snorts] She really loved me. She really understood me. [laughter] after utilizing the company's AI helpline and and building up a rapport and a relationship with an AI named Sarah. I think her name's Sarah. I know his name's David. They say it five cabillion times. David, how you doing, bud? David. Everything okay? David. David. HOW ARE YOU? DAVID. DAVID. But I went on IMDb and the actress that plays Sarah and the actor who plays David nowhere to be found. It's like they scrub themselves from the database. They don't want to be associated with the film they're starring in. The actress that plays Sarah, I really hope that's her name. She does give off a very big vibe of Sophie Thatcher, who was the android and companion. Similar voices, similar cadence, but only one of them was willing to get naked for my entertainment. So, I guess I have to give a point to the new lady. But in all seriousness, companion 10 times the movie this pile of crap is. All right. So, the main character, if you forgot his name, it's checknotes. David, he is given the opportunity to test out one of these love bots by the company. They have decided in their infinite WISDOM TO HAVE THEIR DEVELOPERS test out the equipment at home. Oh, and if you're wondering if they're able to monitor what's going on, I guess not. I guess this billiondoll technology is kind of just up to the whim of the developer who has them. Now, there are safeguards in place which David will early on override so that he can have a more intimate conversation one-on-one with Sarah and then maybe they can do a little bit more interfacing if you catch my drift. Putting fingers into holes and then trying to pull them out of the hole. It's it's a whole thing. As Sarah becomes more intelligent, maybe it's Sara. It's S A R A. Who cares? This movie sucks. She's going to learn to do things on her own. Go shopping. Walk down sketchy back alleyways by herself for no reason at all instead of taking the main road home where she will inevitably have to break a guy's dick off as one does. There are only a couple kills in the movie. They range from eh that was okay to oh, that was a little gnarly, but let's not push it too far cuz this could possibly get a PG-13 rating if not for some of the tasteful nudity. Mind you, some of the tasteful booby shots I appreciate as a grown ass man. Subscribe. There's so LITTLE TO SAY ABOUT THIS film cuz it has so little to say. The cute chick from The Boys is in here. Not the one that messed her face up. The other one that's uh I think she's married or engaged to the dude from Companion, Claudia Dumit, I think her name is. She's uh married or engaged to Jack Quaid. Look it. They're both in AI films. I suppose that's going to be pretty standard in another five years. It's all going to be AI films, whether it's focused on that as a topic or if it's just created that way. The future sounds wonderful. This movie is stupid for a lot of reasons. Uh I already talked about how predictable it is. I talked about how lame everything is across the board. Another thing that just frustrates me is just the concept by itself. All right, they deliver a sex spot over to the house. They're not calling it that, but I mean, come on. That's that's what this is. The guy figures out a way to override the commands, but never once thinks, um, maybe I should like have a do not kill protocol in place. He at one point puts this thing to sleep in power saving mode. He goes to the computer, types in a bunch of new commands, wakes her ass up, and then things are much better for him, much improved. But later on when she's going crazy and he still has the ability to shut her off, he never once thinks maybe a do not kill command, maybe a factory reset would be okay. Nah, just power her down for the afternoon and we'll call it a day. On top of that, it's one of those films like Megan where she's out in the ether. She can access anything attached to that company. So, phones, computer systems, and cars, you name it, she can hack it. She's in the cloud, baby. Which means, how do you stop her? It's just far too broad of a villain to try to defeat. Actually, the greatest villain to overcome in all of this is sleep, cuz you're going to find yourself wanting to take a power nap during this movie. Holy crap, does it take a long time to get off the ground. Let's talk about some of the pros. Scanning. Beep beep. scanning for pros. Ski ski. [laughter] Okay. It looks good. Like production is nice. It's a It's a visually pleasing film in The Grand 2026. How can you not be music? I I couldn't tell you. There's stock music here and there. It's just completely forgettable. Unless you want to go back to those karaoke jams, then you're in for some fun. Not really. There's just truly nothing here for audiences to watch that isn't done better in like five or six other movies already. So, I guess the big takeaway for me is watch Companion or rewatch it instead of giving this a shot cuz this thing just sucked. And really, the only good thing this movie has to offer outside of the the topless dry humping moments is the fact that whenever they said David over and over again, it reminded me of Shitz Creek. David. David. Because that show's great. It's really funny. Shitz Creek is good. Soulmate Tay is just [ __ ] Number nine. Crapflix has a new streamer. It's called The Last House. That's probably the name Chad GPT suggested. The film is about a family of four dumb asses who get locked in their own house. And it turns out the entire neighborhood, possibly the world, is in the exact same boat. What's keeping them from walking out the front door? What's keeping them from breaking a window and shimmying out the side of the house? Well, you're going to have to watch to find out. No, just kidding. I'm going to tell you what happens because this movie sucks ass. I guess I gave away the game early. You know, some critics have to pretend to be drunk all the time to talk about this stuff. I do it sober. I do have a big ass Nas energy drink, though, so maybe I'll get a heart attack and die before I finish talking about this pile of [ __ ] Oh god, that sucks. There's probably going to be spoilers for this one, but I'll wait until a little later before I get into them. And so, without any further poo poo, let's talk about the next film your grandma put on while she did the dishes. It's a Netflix joint. Got the family at the house. You order up some Zah, short for pizza. You get on the couch, you put on [ __ ] flicks, and you decide to check out what's popular, what's trending, what's new, what's streaming. And greeting you on that front page is The Last House. It's an hour and 52 minute long PG13 mystery thriller. I say it's PG-13, but might as well be G. Truly nothing of consequence or interest happens at this entire almost 2-hour affair. I remember Bird Box being pretty good. When did that come out? That was a good Netflix original. When did when did that come out? Like 1987. I watched this film before even calling it a film. This digital experience with my wife and daughter and we were laughing at the film about 5 minutes in. And from that point on, we pretty much were laughing constantly at the absurdity, at the stupidity, and at the sheer nonsensical nature of the whole thing. All right, so we got this family. It's a mama. That's a papa and its two little children. They're at the house. They're about to head out for the day to pick out a Christmas tree in the pouring rain as one does. I unfortunately uh-oh dumbass. The front door is locked. Or maybe it's not. For some reason, he can't open it. So, they try the back. Then they try the windows. And then things get a little bit more desperate. And the father Jason tries to start breaking [ __ ] Today's one of them days I'm like a chainsaw. What [screaming] a skinny ass rock. I could probably choke myself out with this. We'll wait. We'll wait. Set this over here for the time being. The movie keeps going and it never ends. Nothing is ending in this world. It's just a constant. It's just a presence. I have amounted to nothing. And here I am again talking about another crapflick streamer. They're making tons of money. They're getting all the incentives. Meanwhile, I'm here with my dick in my hand talking about a movie that maybe five people will watch, but everybody will put on at some point. And then they will defend the film. I didn't actually watch the whole thing. I fell asleep at some point, BUT FROM WHAT I SAW, IT WAS pretty good. That is truly the state of things. Like I will actually fully sit through this garbage factory and give you a thoughtout review, try to entertain in the process, and yet in the comments I will get the most magical amount of sheer ignorance imaginable. Now, don't get it twisted. If you like the film, that's great. I'm just here to tell you my personal opinion, and it's not the right one. It's just mine. There is truly nothing worth praising in this outside of some decent visuals. The cinematography is fine. I mean, it obviously has that super high polish digital stank to it, but the effects work, the practical stuff is all very well done. We're naturally going to have some CG abominations later. There a range from that looks like Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean to oh my god, it's just blobs of CG flying around and the camera doesn't know what to do. I'm not even sure there's a real camera even in these scenes. It's just kind of moving around frantically. If your eyes get hurt by constant flashes of light, you might want to tread lightly for a little bit because there are a couple scenes where there's a lightning storm and the white IS JUST GOING BLAH in your face constantly. My daughter had to look away several times like the Ark of the Covenant itself was opening up. LOOK AWAY, CHILD. LOOK AWAY. SO, what are we going to be doing here for the majority of the film? Well, for the bulk of it, we're just settled in with the family as they go through old records as they dance around the house once in a while and just enjoy each other's company. But outside, something sinister is taking place. What is that? unclear because we never really figure that out. The story seems to not know which direction it wants to go. What What are you thinking about doing? Where are you going with this one? From the opening narration, which is I I believe the daughter doing so, and she'll continue to talk ad nauseium throughout. It would appear there's other survivors because she keeps saying, "We all remember where we were on that fateful day, but we all is what, the four of you? because we we never see anyone else in this movie outside of the first act. And once again, at the end, she's still talking as this allencompassing thing. Like, everyone across the world knows what happened on a Tuesday of whatever month and year. Uh, [ __ ] what are you talking about? There's four of you. You know what's worse than watching a movie that has way too much to say? Watching a movie that has absolutely nothing to say. I thought because the neighbors were all trapped inside and the daughter's opening narration talks about how people don't really know each other. They don't get out and meet and greet and have potlucks and neighborhood dance parties anymore and key parties where the parents are all banging each other and it's just not as fun anymore. I Hey, I agree. I'm trying to get my wife on board. It's It's not happening. Something needs to shake up and spice up this relationship because we're home on a Friday night watching some garbage crap factory spit out on Netflix. What a sad state of affairs. But I digress. Uh yeah, she's like, "We don't talk to each other." So, we're going to have an opening act where people are communicating like they do in Dawn of the Dead or like they do in The Gorge and a bunch of other films, which is through writing and interpretive dance. Maybe just the first part, not the second. But they have the whiteboard with the marker and they just and they start communicating with each other. Hello neighbor. How are you? Do you have any food? How hot is your wife on a scale from 1 to 10? And so I was thinking to myself, all right, is this some sort of an allegory for COVID when we were all locked inside and didn't have that human connection? Nah. Is this going to go somewhere the communicating with the others around? Nah. Is the film going to properly explain how this is happening and what's causing? NO. [screaming] NO. You'll get a little sprinkling of it here and there, but for the most part, this is just fully up for interpretation and it's not enjoyable to interpret. If you're looking for scares, look somewhere else. There's none. If you're looking for tense, creepy moments, not a chance. Like I said, this might as well be a G-rated film. It is so lame across the board. And I don't know if you heard this before or read articles or whatnot, but Netflix has decided in their infinite WISDOM TO START INCORPORATING their dialogue in a way such that if people aren't watching the TV, they still know what's going on and don't miss a beat. And so take the whiteboard for example. when he's writing on it, he's saying to the audience exactly what he wrote and he reads back out loud what's being reciprocated. Are you insane? No one does that. Maybe you do it once or twice, but you don't do it like hello. How are you? I'm okay. Great. My wife's a six out of 10. Bummer. But looking at you, that's actually a good pull. No one acts or talks like this in the real world, but Netflix knows that no one's actually sitting and watching these movies to completion. And by completion, I mean to climax, of course. Uh, they're sitting on their phones on the couch. Once in a while, they look up. [crying] Oh, okay. Swipe, swipe, swipe. Oh, okay. Nothing. Still nothing's happening. Oh, good. I don't actually have to watch. They're telling me what they're doing. I'm just going to go up these stairs and around the corner and find a harpoon gun that I leave under the bed as all rational people do. I don't know if I've gotten into spoilers yet, but we're going to we're going to go ahead and jump in. This movie blows ass. We'll just we'll just lead with that. I kind of already led with that five minutes, Richard Brier, but okay. So, we're going to spend an eternity in this house with nothing happening outside of lumbering creatures once in a while being in the in their vicinity. There are several hilariously dumb foreshadows. They have a dog who's sick and it needs dog medicine, but they only have a few pills left. My wife instantly said, "They're eating that [ __ ] dog." She didn't swear. I'm adding it in for a little bit of a flourish. They also have two fat fish. Plump for the biting. I said right away, "Those fish are getting filleted." In perhaps one of the stupidest scenes ever put to screen, the dad is bored one day because months are going by. Eventually, five full years will go by, but let's stick with like the first couple months. The dad, Jason, I believe, has his daughter Ruth, who's around eight, grab a couple of her least favorite dolls. He's going to put on a little workshop for the kids. Graham is the son. He's 12. The father, by the way, has a very thick, rich accent. I can't understand half of what he says, and I don't like him. He's annoying to me. He's very overthe-top at times. The mother, Ann, played by Greta Lee, very nice on the eyes. Um, can't act where [ __ ] in this movie. I heard she's very good in a different thing, but not the thing I watched. I guess she saw it in past lives. I'm only familiar with her work in Tron Aries. Can't say I was impressed there. And here she is hamming it up. I don't believe anything she's doing. It's It's just really bad. Not knocking her as an actress. I'm knocking the performance though. And that could totally be at the fault of the director. But what whatever. It doesn't matter. Either way. Awful. Let me weave back. Okay. The dad's with the kids. He now has three dolls in his possession, one for each of them. Pops the head off and he takes some knives out for the children's. The little girl's all into it. She's like, "All right, papaya. What are we going to do?" and he shows them on stuffed animals how to fillet a fish one time. Now, I don't know if you filleted a fish before. It is absolutely nothing like filleting a stuffed animal. There are a lot of bones. There are a lot of like little things you have to cut around to get that nice little thin fillet slice out depending on the size of the fish. I suck at it and I've I've done it a bunch of times. But it turns out all I needed was one lesson from this guy to know how to do it properly because later in the film, Graham's going to walk into the room with a plate and four freshly laid, perfectly cut fish fillets for the family. And we don't even get the service of seeing him beat those fish to death before he cut them up. And yes, they do have dog chops later, too. The dog sadly dies and and the dad cuts up the body parts and puts them in the fridge. We don't see any of that. All we see is THE DOG LIKE, "GOODBYE, JASON. Don't eat me. Don't eat your friend." Shut up, dog. We're going to EAT YOU LATER. JASON, DON'T EAT ME, JASON. His voice keeps changing. You're going to die, dog. And if you don't die soon, I kill you faster. You can't kill me. SEE, I'M YOUR BEST. SEE, [snorts] [clears throat] and that kids is how you kill a dog and chop up the body parts. Okay, we go. Capich? Bada bing, bada bang, bada boom, bada penis. That that that one's for me. I'll take this later. Speaking of uh body parts and feeding animals, that's going to be another major deal in this film. They are eventually going to run out of food and they are eventually going to run out of pets to eat. So, they have to rely on the wildlife outside. How are they going to get out there and fish though without opening that front door? Well, they're going to have an easy access point through the chimney. Yeah. Turns out the chimney's damaged and the foundation of this house sucks and they haven't been paying their bills for a while because they're a bunch of deadbeat loser parents, but that's a side plot we don't really need to go into much. We just see them burn up some letters that say like, "Can you pay your house bill?" What we are going to see though is one kill in the entire film off camera pretty much where a jogger who was stuck outside earlier in the movie is going to run up to the house at night, help me, let me in. And the family's on the other side eating popcorn and you know we can't open the door. You know that. And she's going to get grabbed by a tentacle monster to which I thought, okay, now we're now we're getting somewhere. I've seen stuff like this before online. And she gets pulled away and presumably killed. You hear the blood curdling screams in the distance. The family REACTS AS ANYONE WOULD. OH MY GOD. OH, SHUT THE CURTAINS. Get away from the windows. And then the next day comes and they go, "YOU KNOW WHAT? WHY DON'T WE have little Ruthie who's 8 years old scale the [ __ ] chimney and try to get out of the top? WHAT? I COULD JUST LIKE if I could just attach this up here that I think that would work. We'll save that for later. Yeah. Not even a day after they watched a girl get murdered outside by some giant water monster, they think to themselves, you know what? The daughter could climb up the chimney and see what's up. See what's happening. And so [clears throat] the dad, who I guess was an engineer at some point, starts maggyvering a bunch of stuff around the house. He sets up this pulley system to bring his daughter up to the chimney, and she almost falls down and dies. But, you know, who cares? And then he's going to rig up some fishing equipment so that he can cast a line over the side of the chimney down the house and trap little critters, squirrel, skunks for some reason. That's good eating, folks. And He's going to reel that SOME [ __ ] IN. HEY, WE'RE eating good tonight, folks. Little bunny eating a carrot. Don't eat me. Don't eat me. I want to live. Don't eat me. He just beats it to death with his fist stone cold. >> [laughter] >> THERE'S PLENTY MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM. ALL RIGHT. WHERE'S PLENTY MORE? YEAH, these guys are going to be eating a lot of nature. Again, it's all G-rated, though. We don't get to see it. We just get them reeling it in. And then the implication, you know, there's there's one point where they look like they're having some KFC around the table. That's good. Yeah, that's good. Could you uh pass the porcupine, please? Thank you. What else? What else? What else? I mentioned the neighbors and how that was kind of a thing for about 20 minutes and then the the story just gives up on that. Everybody's just dead. There are a couple comical scenes where people are constantly just doing stuff in front of their windows, beating their wives, dying in front of the family room window. That's my favorite. The the the man or the the old lady, I can't remember who. It doesn't matter. She collapses and the little girl Ruth sees this and goes, "Papa, is she going to be okay?" And the dad just sits there. No, she's not. WHO WANTS DOG CHOPS? Little Ruth, eight years old, mind you, she starts balling, of course. What a douche. It's just It's just good stuff. Unintentionally funny. All right, so from what I can gather after these five years go by where the family has grown, the kids are uh different actors when the film ages up, their house has completely changed. They have a nice farm, fresh field growing straight from the floor. It really does shine a new light on farm-totable eating. The dad now has his fisherman's chair pulley system automated somehow. I guess he managed to harness the power of AI, only using spare parts from his car in the garage. And of course, fueled by the blood of their dead dog. No, that that's maybe not how that happened. But eventually, all stations have to come to an end. And ding dong ding dong. One of the bad fish is at the front door. He lets himself in. [clears throat] Squid's home. Timu Davy Jones enters the home, starts slithering around. He gets his saltwater skin all over everything. It ruins the crops. It ruins the furniture. Oh my god, what a mess. And so the kids are just kind of at their wits end. The whole family is That's it. I'M SICK of this. Poor Graham is 17 years old. He wants to leave more than anyone else. I'm sick of it here. I hate this place. I've been jerking IT TO MY MOM AND SISTER FOR four freaking years. This is ridiculous. And so, after some heavy argumentation, it's decided they're going to home alone their house, booby trap it up, and then ring that dinner bell for the wet bandits to come inside again. And it's very stupid. They show the kind of like the armor up deal where they're like attaching [ __ ] to baseball bats and they're loading up their squirt guns and they're booby trapping different parts of the house only for none of it to have any payoff at all outside of some insane freaking nonsense where they strapped a long cord to the car in the garage and snaked it up all the stairs to the attic where they're at. As the water is [ __ ] flooding this place and there's Squidwards swimming all over, they hold their breath for what felt like 18 minutes straight. And then they pulled on this ball that pulled on the rope that shot the guy over into the mouse trap and it did something and all the CGI blew up all over the screen. And then they get out of the house. The house collapses in on itself like a dying star. And they think, "Hey, now that we're out of the house, why don't the four of us get on a [ __ ] boat and sail out across the ocean? WHAT?" And they set this whole Mickey Mouse [ __ ] up for a sequel. Are you out of your [ __ ] mind with this? Just forgot about the best part. So, we don't actually know why they were locked in their house. It had something to do with magic rain that was healing any sort of destruction they would do to the doors or window. It's just magic. And where did it come from? Well, it's kind of inferred, I guess, that the creatures from the water were doing it. They can control the sky because there's like mermaids and mermen and these Davy Jones uh Squidward people and probably other stuff that we never see. But that's as far as the plot goes. It's nothing really about, you know, man versus nature, about climate change, about anything. It's just nothing. It's nothing. It has nothing to say. And having nothing to to say is fine. I don't need a message in a movie. But if you don't have that, at least if you don't have any layer to your story, at least have it be interesting on its face. At least have some exciting stuff take place. At least have some lore or or like a solid concrete foundation. Ironically, this doesn't just like their house. But we uh have to get to the crux of the story, the the real meat and potatoes of it all. what really turns the tide so so to speak and that's going to be at the end when they are drowning underwater for for 20 hours straight and they they actually trap Squidward to the car this pulley system reels him in slams him against the side of the door and the cables are pulling into his skin. The dad is about to axe him to death, but then the little girl goes, "Papa, let me axe him something first." And she starts to try to communicate with the the creature. And she explains to the dad that they need to show some sympathy. They need to show some restraint just like those creatures didn't do to anyone else. And so he he walks away, drops the axe, ting, and then the magical creature thing opens the front door. The family goes outside. Other CG monsters surround them. Crab people. Crab people. This time I'm going TO LET IT ALL COME OUT. FRED DURST IS THERE for some reason. But before they can pounce, the one that they saved COMES OUT. WAIT, NO. BUT IT SPEAKS IN ITS NATIVE TONGUE. [laughter] All righty then. The translation for me said, "Hey guys, you know all the awful humans on this planet that we killed by trapping them into their houses using a a magical Harry Potter spell, but these four people let me live." And so, I think there's still some magic in that old silk hat we call human nature. We should let them live. Let's head back into the ocean. We have a lot of it now. We expanded our territories and we'll just kind of let the chips fall as they may in the future. Speaking of chips, who's hungry? All right, let's go get some fish and chips down under the sea. And that's it. They leave the family. Mhm. Yep. That's That's exactly what I thought would happen. Ruthie takes off in a mad sprint. I'm running. I'm happy. I'm on land. I'm out of my house. Let's get in a boat. I want to be constrained as much as humanly possible now that I have freedom. I want to be isolated to a small boat with you dumb asses. Instead of searching out other people, let's head off into the wide open ocean. That's exactly what they do. What an achievement in cinema. The Last House should be the last straw for me when it comes to Netflix originals. But obviously, as it's been established, I hate myself. And I'm even at the point where I'm looking at a little computer cable thinking this will do the trick. But in all reality, you cannot kill that which is already dead. Number eight. A week or so back, Netflix confirmed once and for all that they are the king of all kings when it comes to producing straight to streaming garbage with The Last House. But regardless of a lot of negative feedback, products must keep producting. So we have another thriller, baby. This one's called The Whisper Man. The The Whisper Man. I didn't really make that very clear. It stars Michelle Monahan, Robert Dairo, and Adam Scott, who seems to be in his horror era. First, he had that little slice of a cameo in The Monkey, then he was in Hokum, and here he is now with the Whisper Man. Feel like I'm forgetting someone pretty prominent. Oh yeah, Michael Kaden's also in this movie. So, with a star-studded cast, a check notes rating, what thought for sure this was PG-13, but whatever. And a two-hour run time, you better believe The Whisper Man keeps Netflix's legacy alive. As mediocre to downright awful garbage products, put on the streaming service to keep us watching week to week. Let's talk about it. Obviously, The Whisper Man sucks. Most these Netflix movies suck, but it's it's like on a scale. It's a degree to how much suckness there is. That's really what we have to determine today. But as an aside, I just want to give a shout out to an actual good film in the thriller space about a father who loses a son to a kidnapper. It's called Ransom. It stars Mel Gibson, completely unhinged. So, just Mel Gibson. It's a fun roller coaster ride. There's twists, there's turns, there's there's some stakes, there's some good emotional beats. It's about a father who puts up a million dollar bounty on the bastards who took his child in the hopes that people will go on an allout manhunt in a vigilante justice sort of way to bring his son back to him safely. GIVE ME BACK MY SON. THE WHISPER MAN also has shades of Silence of the Lambs, but I mean that's almost a disservice to even put them in the same sentence together. Silence of the Lambs is a phenomenal film. Watch that over this if you haven't seen it. And I'll get to why I'm even making the comparison. It has to do with Michael Keaton's character. I mean, I mean, it's entirely because of that. They go to ask him for, you know, advice because he's in jail. Anyway, let's get to the story. All right. What we have here is a father and a son who looks nothing like the dad or the mom when they show photos of her. Really love. Shout out to the casting department in a lot of modern movies where they just can't find kids that even look remotely like the parent. The same thing happened in Buddy recently. That horror film. Buddy, by the way, far better than The Whisper Man. Far more creative. It's It's a fun time. But anyway, back to this. Adam Scott plays a single father of one named Tom Kennedy, who's a author, which is a refreshing change of pace from his last role in Hokum, where he was a author. They moved across the city to a shitty fixer upper with the floor leaking water up in the attic. It seemed like a bad investment. I don't know if he inherited the house or what happened and why he settled on this dwelling, but to be fair, I was in and out of consciousness during this flick because it's pretty uninteresting and oftentimes boring. Anyway, he has a kid who's very much grieving the loss of his mother still. Uh yeah, the the mom's out of the picture. She died off camera, but the kid keeps little keepsakes of her and, you know, he just has like little reminders of of the great woman she was. Anything else particularly special about this boy, Jake? Uh, oh yeah, he talks to an imaginary friend. They barely have a chance to settle into this creepy place before something eerie happens. A stranger is whispering outside Jake's window, and he even sticks his hand through the little mail slot at the front door. Unlike the frustrating trope we often get, where the kid sees something bad happen, and the parent doesn't, so he doesn't believe them. Not in this instance. Adam Scott's character, Tom, actually sees the hand go through the mail slot. He freaks out. He busts through the front door looking for this piece of [ __ ] Doesn't find him. And so naturally, he's on high alert and tells his son to go back in HIS ROOM TO BED. WHAT? IT WAS AT THIS POINT, 15, 20 minutes into the movie where I thought, "Oh, [ __ ] This is going to get bad, isn't it?" What sane individual, let alone a father, would have their kid go back to their bedroom where they had said they were getting whispers outside the window and then they saw an actual physical human glove from a person in the mailbox of the front slot of the door in THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. While this is going on, there is a manhunt out there for a serial killer who's been going around whispering sweet nothings into boys ears before inevitably killing them. He's known as the whisper man, but that's a little odd because the whisper man's already behind bars. Robert Dairo's character made sure of it years ago. Robert Dairo's character Peter has been retired and off cases for many, many years now, if that makes sense. Dairo is 83 years young. That's sad to say out loud because the guy's given us so many amazing movies over the years. Casino, The Godfather, Part Two, The Criminally Underrated, The Score with Edward Norton. Now we're seeing him much older, more frail. He doesn't have a lot of speaking lines in the movie. It It's just sad. Anyway, back I'm getting sidetracked because that's more interesting to me than anything that's happening in this film. We're moving into spoiler territory. Uh even though the trailer probably shows all this, I didn't see a trailer going in. I went in fresh as a Daisy. But what's going to end up happening here is Thomas's son, Jake, who, you know, heard the noises whispering outside his window and then the the person came to the front door. He's gonna get kidnapped by that person. Shocking. Now, what makes The Whisper Man super interesting compared to a lot of like decent drama thrillers is it's entirely reliant on a massive huge enormous gigantuous gaping plot hole slash I guess chalk up to incompetence in this film because after 30 minutes or so, Tom is going to be hanging out in the basement of this [ __ ] hole house he's in, and a squatter is going to come out of nowhere, shove him, and then run out of the house at which point Tom who's very taken OFF GUARD. THE [ __ ] HE STARTS CHASING HIM, trips over his own patheticness. Ah, and allows the criminal to get away. Here's where the truly spectacular incompetence comes into play and what really renders the rest of this movie [ __ ] pointless and stupid. The cops show up. They take a look around the basement. They say there's no reason to press charges or anything they can do because, you know, he was squatting there. He he he didn't really assault you. He just pushed you out of the way. He's probably gone for good. There's really no reason to look into this any further. They they go to the back area where this squatter was at behind a shelf that they had to move. There's a whole bench of bricks laid out in a very peculiar fashion, but they're going to take absolutely zero time to even look around in the room, they're just going to close it back off. Keep in mind, one day later from now, Tom's son is going to get kidnapped. And so, any detective worth their salt, no, let me scratch that. Any detective at all? No, scratch that. Any person that's not a complete [ __ ] [ __ ] would know to look around in that basement cellar. Check out every inch of this place where the squatter was at because when someone goes missing, you look to the parents, you look to the relatives, you look to acquaintances, you look to enemies, you look to people that were in your house the night BEFORE SLEEPING IN YOUR BASEMENT. THE next hour is going to be a bunch of [ __ ] footing around, a bunch of Mickey Mouse [ __ ] as our characters question people, look around at different potential suspects before ultimately swinging back around to the basement of the house the [ __ ] is living in. And oh, WHAT DO YOU KNOW? The brick bench that was in that back cellar easily comes up and there's a trap door with some bones inside of one of the kids that was taken years earlier. Was the squatter all along. But in order to get to this point, we have to have a mending of relationships. We have to have Tom go to his papa Peter, tears in his eyes as people often approach me and say, "Sir, please get back on the case and find my son. GIVE ME BACK MY SON. ROBERT DAIRO'S PETER, a man of very few words, drinks his coffee. Yeah, I don't really do that anymore, bruh. Uh, maybe figure it out yourself, brah. Michelle Monahan's character, Amanda, is also on the beat. I mean, she's the actual lead in this investigation, but she's going to have to work handinand with Dairo, who inevitably will get back onto this. He's going to use his inside intel, which means they have to go talk to the mastermind behind all of this. Michael Keaton's character, Frank Carter. And I have to tell you, Katon is eating up every single inch of scenery in this film. He's having a great time, as he always does, giving us a very cheesy, schllocky performance. But it's fine. It's the only interesting thing worth uh listening to in this crappy film. Production-wise, this movie is a little all over the place. Sometimes it's very high polished. looks like an actual movie. And at other points, it looks like they use footage from the C team or they had to do a bunch of re-shoots because the last 20 minutes is horribly shot, very poorly lit. It It's comically bad. And in fact, even the intro scene to this movie, very polished, very, you know, very nice production values. But then we jump cut to the first time we meet Adam Scott and his son. They're in a car driving down the highway and it's this really poor resolution drone shot they clearly use. They must have needed an establishing shot, but the cameras weren't working. So, they went across the street to little Jimmy's house and they paid him a whole $10 so they can use his crappy ass drone with the 720p GoPro strapped to the front to fly over the highway. This movie sucks. There's not a memorable moment to be found. The the characters aren't exciting enough to really pay attention to for the most part. My wife fell asleep 45 minutes into the movie, which is always a nice bedrock to a good flick. I don't know if I'm using that word right, bedrock, but it doesn't matter. The thriller genre is one of my favorites. So to see a movie like this that's just kind of like doing the bare minimum. It it's emulating a lot of other films without any of the interesting payoff. It's just a waste of a little less than two hours of your time. The four main actors I talked about are fantastic in their own right, but in this movie, they just don't have anything to do or they're Michael Keaton. They're just having a great time for a couple afternoons of filming. Again, I mentioned it's rated R. I'm not entirely sure why. I guess for swearing and and maybe just some of the adult content, like, you know, just the fact that there's kids being uh killed off camera and you see some of the the bodies there. There's really nothing here though that that's shock and awe. And the stupidity on display from every character in this is hands down even more impressive than maybe the last house. The fact that Michelle's character, Amanda, tracks down the killer, has him cornered, doesn't call for backup until way too late. He grabs the kid and flees the scene. And then he decides in his infinite WISDOM TO GO back to the house where Adam Scott lives into the basement and put the kid down there again. What? He could have gone He could have gone to Mexico. He could have gone anywhere. He could have gone just a couple towns over. No one knows how to find the guy now that he left the house. And a movie where a kid is kidnapped and the parent has to go on a manhunt to find them usually ends with a powerful moment where they have reunited and it feels so good. But this does not feel good. There's no real powerful moment like that because it takes place during this crappily lit scene where the dad's there too and he gets stabbed and so he's bleeding out but Adam Scott's character doesn't even really give a [ __ ] to say anything to him. The the dad's dying. He's like, "I love you, son." Tom looks over at his father. He's like, "Mhm. Come on, son. You couldn't have given the man an I love you, too. [ __ ] you, Tom. And [ __ ] this movie." And that's The Whisper Man. It's another Netflix product. Number seven. A beekeeper, a folksy musician, and an adoptive parent walk into a bar and order a beer. bartender says, "Hey, Matthew McConna, because he's all of those things in a new film called The Rivals of Amziah King." And I suppose it's fitting that he's a jack of all trades, because this movie is kind of a jack of all trades. Not necessarily in a good way. For the next several minutes, I plan on telling you about this movie in a pretty spoiler-freeish fashion, as much as I can. So, if you wouldn't mind sticking with me, I would appreciate it. All right, let's begin. I guess he's a beekeeper. We have fun here. If you came for Matthew McConna, that's inappropriate. Not the place to do it. But if you watch the movie also for him, you're going to be both happy and disappointed because he's in this movie a lot for a little while, but then he's not in the movie at all anymore for reasons I won't go into. If you came for Kurt Russell, also gross, this is not the place. But if you watch the movie to see him, you're going to be extra disappointed cuz he only has maybe 10 minutes of screen time if I'm being generous. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This movie is not about them. It's about a young woman named Katiri, played by Angelina Looking Glass. I have not seen a single trailer for this movie. I still haven't watched one as of this review, although I'll eventually do that when I edit this thing together and put a couple clips in early on. So, I don't know if this movie is marketed as the fact that she's the lead character, but if it's not marketed that way, shame on this film. That would almost be as egregious and disgusting as when I was told via an executive decision trailer that Steven Seagal was going to be a main character only to find out he dies 2 minutes into the [ __ ] movie. Now, while this isn't Samuel L. Jackson deep blue sea levels of hoodwinkedked. It is really a damn dirty low down stinking shame that Amaziah played by Matthew McConna is gone for the second entire half of the film because McConna is so freaking good in this. He's a character you love to be around. He has a great energy to him. He's singing music. He's dancing around. He's making honey. He's solving some mysteries. He's saving a school from bees like he's a bee buster. The Rivals of Misiah King has a great first 50 minutes of film. Unfortunately, this is a 2hour and 10minute ordeal. And as lovely as our young looking glass actress is, her character is very meh across the board. There's messages to be had in this film. It's got some stories to tell. I think it takes a very cynical look at life, not necessarily one I disagree with. And I appreciate that there are things to unearth in the story department. I don't think it's a bad story, per se, but I can't help but feel at the same time that this director was really, really into this actress. And I don't and I mean it kind of in a almost creepy way because the camera is obsessed with her. You will spend probably a full freaking 30 minutes just looking at her face. This thing is locked and loaded on her for several shots at a time. The camera's just going to be moving around her as she smiles, sometimes directly at the audience, breaking the fourth wall. It was odd. It was uncomfortable. And ultimately, it was pointless. had they pulled back on that along with the excessive amounts of slow-mo and really odd editing where they just still shot things for no reason. I I guess they're like snapshots in time, right? Really really taking the moment or something. Who knows? We could have had a much more comfortable hour and 45 minute run time and I think this would have worked a lot better for me even with MCA going MIA later on in the game. This is just a strange film to talk about. A pros for me. Visually, it's beautiful. This is a gorgeous looking film. It looks like it was shot on tried andrue old school cameras, some real film stock, which is nice to see. Always appreciated. It gives the whole thing a very cinematic look to it. The music is just as good. I'm not really big into folksy music, but these songs are bangers. All of them are really excellent. I was a little worried with the opening number. Not because the music sucked. Quite the contrary. I loved it. But the editing can be bizarre with those freeze frames. And he kept doing it in the first couple minutes. I turned to my buddy actually and said after 5 minutes, if this keeps happening, I'm going to kill myself. A little dramatic. Probably a little dramatic. But it took me out every time it happened to the point where I was scared waiting for the next one to take place. It's like I'm enjoying this. I'M ENJOYING THIS. AH, THERE'S A FREEZE FRAME AGAIN. Everything's in motion. THINGS ARE HAVE WHY? WHY DID YOU STOP FOR A SECOND ON THAT? And the freeze frames are blurry and not good to look at. It's not like they're these high crisp beautiful resolution shots. No, they're like a a hamburger getting flipped in motion. So, it's like Visuals are great, music's great. I also think it's great that this is a wholly unique film and it's got a wholly unique director who said, "I don't care what regular movie goers want to see. I want to make the weird stuff I want to see." And sometimes that means you're just watching a chick get bees crawling up all over her for a long period of time and you're not sure why you're watching it. And at other points, you're thinking, "Is this a horror film now? Where where did I go?" I mean, pretty early on there is a very gross moment in the flick. And I I thought to myself, [ __ ] this is intense. Where did this come from? And I was really on board with that idea of having this kind of wholesome almost Disneylike vibe where people are just living life and living in the moment and it's it's fun and magical and spiritual in a sense and there's community and togetherness, but then suddenly a dude gets sculpted and then you're just horrified because it came out of nowhere and you don't know what's going to happen next. Now, unfortunately, nothing like that ever happens again. So, they set up this kind of anything goes deal, but then nothing goes again. On the other hand, it does lead to at least some fascinating sections, some slices of life that don't necessarily have anything to do with the grander story, but they just let you get to know the character a bit more and how he really was just kind of a a staple of the community. specifically in my favorite scene in the movie where they head over to a school that's being attacked by bees. The crazy here keeps ratcheting up to a very absurd degree. It's a very fun section of film. Probably runs a good 15 or 20 minutes. I loved that stuff. And there are moments like that throughout. Just these nice sections that really get you invested again. Unfortunately, it's all frontloaded and the later stuff feels like it's a slog to get through and I don't care about this main character at all. She's just so bland. And by the hour and 45 minute mark, I am so fed up with the camera just locked on her as she smiles prettily at the camera for the 8,000th time and then in slow motion does something pointless. just get on with it already. Love me some Kurt Russell. He's just, you know, a super rich tycoon guy. Uh doesn't really have a lot to bring to the table here, unfortunately. He he's fine. There's just not much there for him. So, he he kind of looks cool when he's in it and then he's he's gone just like that. This movie really is just a showcase of how great Matthew McConna can be. And that excellent is on full display for sure. I do think there's some very fun dialogue. There's some witty exchanges, some good snappy back and forths, and that would have been even more complimentary with a quicker runtime. Had he sped this thing up, cut out all the BS, we would have got to our destination faster. It would have operated on a more enjoyable level, and I think my review would be a lot more positive. As it stands, this film feels like an experiment of a bunch of different things thrown at the screen, not necessarily all of which stack up at the end. A big one that stands out for me is the character Matthew McConna plays. Misiah is very much a giver to the community. He's working at a net loss at his company where he's basically giving out this honey for free at this point. He goes to all the community events. He plays in this band with all these people. And yet, when the chips are down, no one seems to really bat an eye to help. I thought for sure there would be more of a rallying together in this town to take on the big business or to go after the guys that did the unspeakable deed, but no, it's just kind of like the he's got some of his crew that help out later, but it's at the behest of this aranged girl that comes back into his life. Ultimately, I'm not mad I watched the movie, but I am disappointed. I'm I'm a disappointed dad on this one. I was hoping it really would have wowed me. There are scenes again, like I said, that did, but the overall package is a little bit of a bummer. It's a let down, and I certainly couldn't recommend it to like my mom or even my wife for that matter. And it's mainly because there is that really graphical scene early on that goes for a decent chunk of time. Plus, just the tonal disconnect all around, it doesn't make for the most enjoyable of watches, especially while that message is being portrayed. We're watching this chick up close getting like a yearbook photo shoot done. Number six, Jason Staithm stars as Jason Staithm in Jason Staithm the movie. Buckle the [ __ ] up because it's been one month already, which means there's another Jason Staithm movie. Pretty soon there's not going to be a profession left for him to play. They're going to have to start making up ones for new roles. In his newest flick, Mutiny, he plays a bodyguard who's on the run for being framed for the murder of his boss. This takes him to a cargo ship full of bad guys who are human trafficking folks across the ocean. And from there, the rest is history with a capital his. The question I'm here to solve today is Mutiny another film for you to peel your father off the couch to go see in theaters, or would you be better served waiting a few weeks for this to inevitably [ __ ] out the backside of Amazon Prime? The film is only 90 minutes long, so you're in and out before you know it. It's rated R for some good old-fashioned violence, some blood, and a little bit of swearing mixed in. Sorry ladies, no Jason Staithm nudity this time. And unfortunately, sorry, Adam, because the female doesn't get naked either, and she's a smoke show. She looks like what I imagine an Instagram influencer mil makeup model would look like. Try saying that five times fast. Try saying that one time fast. I could barely get through it. And unfortunately, I could barely get through Mutiny. And no, it's not because of the quality of the film. It's because the quality of the audience, as one would expect, opening night at a Jason Stathithm film. No, no, no, no, no, no. The film itself is perfectly meh across the board. You get a couple scenes of Staithm popping out of a vent, taking out a gun, grabbing whatever instrument he can find lying around, [screaming] saying some campy oneliner like we're still living the glory days of the '9s. And of course, not getting the girl because we don't do the the nudity and penetration anymore in new action movies. No, it's all business all the time. We can't have pleasure. Uh penetrate, short for penetration. Cinema wise, you are missing nothing if you wait until this one comes to home theater. There there's nothing that screams watch this on the big IMAX screen. It's it's bare bones by the number. There's a lot of dark shots in the film where he's skulking around behind shipping containers, going in and out of different rooms, walking into the hulls, climbing up air ventilation systems. This felt like budget Die Hard on a ship. One man taking down the skeleton crew and hopefully taking out the captain in the process. I say hopefully like it's any secret whether or not Jason Staithm is going to win the day. These are the types of films you don't put any thought into. These are the types of movies where everything just kind of lines up perfectly, but if you think about it, nothing makes a lick of sense. Unfortunately, outside a couple of cool fighting sequences and some gun play here and there where the main bad guy has like an AR-15 and he only pepper shoots once in a while, [snorts] Stathithm runs around a corner instead of just going. It's always just [snorts] the film feels very lowbudget. There's no big action set pieces. There's nothing grand in scale. It's just another by the book Staithm adventure where he just goes around tripping, guys. Kraken [snorts] wise once in a while. And unfortunately, it takes a while to get to that stuff. The first 35,400 minutes is a lot of meandering around the ship, just walking and peeking around corners. A couple times I thought they were setting up a cool action scene only for it to go nowhere. Two or three I can think of. one, he's he's down in the bowels of the ship and a couple guys come into the room. They have the head things on because it's really loud and I'm like, "Okay, here we go. This is a cool setting for and they just left." And then another time he's in one of the rooms and he shoots out the power and it goes red and dark and you can barely see [ __ ] in the film and those guys leave too. They just lock him in. So they kind of dangle the Staithm in front of you and then pull it away. They stith them tease you. Now, I understand there are different folks that enjoy different things, and I'm not going to say my taste is above anyone else. Certainly not above the the gems that wandered into the movie theater tonight with me. I will say this, if you've been impressed with his catalog up until this point, if you thought Beekeeper was like top tier action, uh that one's quite a bit better than this. And I thought that movie was dumb, then you might think Mutiny is worth a trip out with the papa. Again, I'm just telling you there there's really nothing you haven't seen here before, but the audience I was with seemed to be kind of into it. They would oo and ah once in a while. I mean, there was no emotion to feel outside of, "Yeah, Jason." The movie's called Mutiny, but Jason Staithm does not like work for the captain on the ship. He just jumped on board. It's not really mutiny at all. No one's being mutinous. So, the name kind of pissed me off. I walked out of the theater. There was a representative outside with his clipboard ready to hear my thoughts. Thoughts on the film? Uh, yeah. Have you seen a Jason Staithm movie before? Uh-huh. Well, then what the [ __ ] do you need to hear from me for? They're all the same. Number five. As I was watching this brand new Ridley Scott film, one question popped into my mind over and over again. Y'all need a pilot? We got my boy Ridley Scott back with another film proving that age is just a construct made by human man. And it doesn't really matter how old you are. At the tender age of 88 years old, he's still knocking out bangers, someone said. Not me, because I watched The Dog Stars, and unfortunately, it's kind of dog [ __ ] And I'm going to tell you about it in a spoiler-free review. Dog Stars sounds like something you would see on the Disney Afternoon in the '9s, featuring a family of dogs flying around in planes, but unfortunately, no. It's just one dog here flying around in a Cessna. and his name is Hig and he's played by Jacob Allorty. Jacob Allorty. He's so hot right now. Jacob Allorty. I guess there's two dogs in the plane because you got Jacob Allort's character, Higs, and then you have his best friend, the German Shepherd, Jasper. We love Jasper here. We don't really know Jasper that well. Here's the deal. The movie is called The Dog Stars. feels a little bit disingenuous because I was thinking this was going to be another man with his friend flying around on misadventures sort of a thing. Not really that. All right. Most of this movie can be boiled down to this. It is essentially Twilight if it was a post-apocalyptic theme. Meaning we're following around a very boring character who's going to fall in love with another boring character and the rest of the story is really going to revolve around them. Even though this is on the shorter tale of a Ridley Scott film clocking in under two hours, it feels very, very long because so little happens for so much time. And when things do happen, he's hellbent on getting rid of that stuff so he can go back to the boring again. Let's uh yeah, let's talk product placement. The the the real unsung hero of this film has got to be Koke because they just effortlessly put this [ __ ] all over the first half of the film. I know they came to Ridley Scott with a chest full of cash and said, "Listen, [ __ ] you better put the CocaCola classic. You better put the Sprite symbols all over this thing or you can kiss your funding bye-bye. You want the funding or it's going to go bye-bye. You put COKE IN THERE OR BYE-BYE." There are several scenes dedicated to the greatness of Coke. One of which features our lead character going over to get hospital supplies, but more importantly, grab a 12-pack of Sprite. If it ain't Sprite, that ain't right. He then flies that [ __ ] back to the sickly kids, at which point he gets out. He hands them the medicines, but more importantly, hands them the Sprite. The Thank you. Thank you, mister, for the medicine, but more importantly for the Sprite. [sighs] If it ain't Sprite, it ain't right. [cough] Oh, that's my own blood. On top of that, we have Josh Brolan's character who fancies himself a nice ice cold Coca-Cola classic straight from the bottle. You know, this post-apocalyptic nightmare hellscape we live in sure is garbage bad. >> [sighs and gasps] >> But drinking a nice ice cold Coca-Cola classic almost makes the whole damn thing worth it. The Dog Stars feels like three or four different things you've seen a bunch of times smashed together without any of the interesting aspects. So, we have a world that looks very much like The Last of Us, complete with the twanging of a guitar. We have the man and his best friend dog companion scrapping around trying to find food and shelter and medicine and clothing. We have the old dog Bangley played by Josh Brolan. He's kind of a mentor figure for Hig, but they don't really get along that well. They get along well enough to live together, but uh you can see some odds at play there. And then thankfully Margaret Quali comes in to at least give me something to look at for a little bit. And she's rocking a mean tank top for a little bit of the film. Not enough to justify watching this thing. I'll tell you that much. Her character's name is Sema. Bad name. I assume it's short for emphyma or maybe Semen. I'm not sure. She goes by Sema, though. That sure is a fine Philly over there. That Margaret Quali. The only thing that could quench my thirst more than her female body is that of a nice Sprite or a Coca-Cola classic. She lives with her papa out on a ranch and she's going to come into contact with Hig when he crash lands onto their field and into their hearts. Why is he crash landed there? Well, it's simple. He's trying to find other groups of people out there. The the the world is gone to [ __ ] There's a virus that took most people out. There's a large group of bad guys out there known as the Reapers running around pillaging and plundering. How many times in these types of stories has there been a group of people called the reapers? I feel like it's every other freaking teen book. Oh, the reapers are here. They're they're going to reap us. The hell did you just say? You heard me. And then completely out of left field, it turns into Fallout for like 8 minutes. I can't speak to the novel, but it seems like Ridley Scott really didn't care for this part of the book, so he's like, "Let's just speed through it." And that sucked because when we get to that point way late in the film, I turned to my buddy. I said, "What? Where was this film? This is good stuff. There's this weird group of people living in this bunker place trying to pretend like it's still the ' 70s or some [ __ ] It was fascinating. Plus, you have Allison Janney who finally shows up and she's easily the best part of this movie. But if you got up to go take a long piss and get a refill on your soda, you miss this entire section. And I feel not reading the book that I missed entire swaths of this story because there are things built up in the background such as who the reapers are, why the dad of Cinnamon sticks has a weird tattoo on his forearm. None of it gets explained. None of it goes anywhere. Actually, maybe they explained the tattoo and I just blacked out for a few minutes because I was so [ __ ] bored. I don't know. May maybe that's not right. Regardless, I know there was a lot of stuff built up that didn't go anywhere, and there was absolutely stuff left on the cutting room floor because this just feels like it's rushed to get through to the ending, even though it also simultaneously feels like the slowest snails race you've ever sat through. Another incredibly puzzling thing here is this movie is rated R for violence and swearing. But why? Outside of Josh Brolan cursing like a sailor in the first 15 minutes of the movie, that all kind of goes to the wayside later. I I feel like people didn't swear as much in the second half and the violence is barely existent. There's a couple throat slashes with some CG blood. Could have easily been removed. Nothing changes in this movie. I just don't understand what the demographic is for this film. It's such a lame movie across the board. A been there, done that from every genre smashed together. And what doesn't help matters is Jacob Allerty in this film is just awful. And I've seen him put in good work. I thought he was fantastic in the Frankenstein film by Gilmo Del Toro, but here he is such a sad sack of [ __ ] from front to back. And I get it. The character is grieving the loss of his wife off camera. We go back to this several times where he just sits on the bed and pouts. But it's not a fun interesting character to follow. And if you don't really ever see that turn and that growth over time, h like I I I'd rather watch paint dry. All right, let's get some pros out of the way. It visually looks good. I mean, it's really Scott, the guy knows how to frame up a beautiful shot. There's great scale to this. It looks visually very stunning at times when we get those flyovers of some of the sides of mountains. Uh less so when there's a stampede of CG buffalo going after our character, which felt like it was straight lifted out of the book and and didn't really add to anything in the movie. But then we can juxtapose that with a later chase scene where they're trying to hop on the plane and escape a bunch of angry guys who are throwing sticks and spears and shooting at them and hopping on their plane and trying to take an axe to the top. That was very well put together. There was some stakes there. There was high energy going on. We got to get OUT OF HERE. THERE'S PEOPLE ALL OVER OUR PLANES. They're trying to kill US AND MORE IMPORTANTLY TRYING TO TAKE OUR COCACOLA CLASSICS. before we inevitably get to the next set piece that brings a little bit of intrigue. And again, Scott has no desire to stick around. So, he's like, "Nope, no, we're leaving. We're leaving this." Now, because there's a dog involved, some people are obviously going to be very concerned about the well-being of the creature. I'm not going to spoil anything about it. I'll just say, eh, you don't have to worry either way. You don't really get much of a connection with these two. So whether or not the dog lives, dies, runs away, turns into a mech, I wish that would have happened. That would have been sweet. It's kind of inconsequential. It's not near the focus that the trailers and the advertising will have you believe. And while the movie may pretend like that's the heart and soul of the film, it never really plays out for me emotionally at all. I I just I don't care about these two. Honestly, the dog was annoying. He would bark and make noises anytime some bad guys would come around. And I'm just thinking like, [ __ ] have you not been here for a while? Do you not know to stay silent? I was ready to take the gun and just hit him with the butt of it. At least knock his ass out. Subscribe for animal abuse. So, what we're left here at the end of the day is a mishmash of different movies you've seen done better. We have a performance by Jacob Allerty that's rivaling that of Edward from Twilight. We have a large focus on the wrong things in this film, which is again going to be kind of that that puppy love thing for a while. Over there is the Big Dipper. Down there is the Little Dipper. [laughter] [gasps] That's my penis. Uh that one right there, that constellation, that's the beautiful outline of a Coca-Cola classic bottle. Man, I love me a good Coke. We have a slow burn pace that does not lead to anything interesting. And when we do get to interesting things, we completely get rid of that [ __ ] as fast as humanly possible. Toot Sweet. We're out of there. One other thing worth noting that's kind of funny is this felt like a '9s action movie in terms of explosions. Ridley Scott is under the impression that everything blows upon contact. You're going to see rooftops blowing up for no reason. You're going to see a grenade drop and make like a napalms level of explosion. It's just very silly at times when the movie is clearly trying to ground itself in some sort of a gritty realism to have stuff blow up at such a comical degree. I went with my buddy and he had pretty much all the same thoughts. He did he did point out that it's too bad this didn't work because there's clearly the right ingredients here for something fascinating and it's probably present in the book. If you're a fan of the novel, I can't imagine you're going to be happy with how this turned out. It's either that or it's really close to the book, in which case, yeah, I don't have any interest in reading it. Number four. We're balls deep in Anne Hathaway's summer and I've already seen eight movies with her this year alone. The Odyssey, Mother Mary, The Devil Wears Prada 2 six times and this newest entry into her filmography, The End of Oak Street. I'm joking. I didn't see The Devil Wears Prada 2 six times. I saw it five. But the question I'm here to answer today is if the end of Oak Street is worth five or six watches, let alone one. Sure, it's got smoking hot Anath. Sure, it's got equally smoking hot Ewan McGreg. And double sure it's got the smoking hot T-Rex. And while I love me a good dinosaur, I need me something more. Does it have the goodies I crave? This is like me fondling the balls of a giant. I'm going to let you know in a spoiler-free review for The Last House on the End of Shelby Oak Street. [music] I've seen a lot of movies. They're starting to blend together. Director David Robert Mitchell has a brand new bag. And this one features some scary ass dinosaurs. Previously, he did a little film called It Follows, a film I happen to quite enjoy in the horror space. But how does he fare now? Kind of switching up the genre to a survival thriller from a straightup horror show. He's also playing with a much larger stack of cash. He's got JJ Abrams back in him. And a lot of early reviews were liking this film to a Steven Spielberg of the 80s and '9s, which is appropriate since this flick takes place in 1982. But simply having a white ass family in the 80s is not enough to make me think it's Spielberg. There was a rawness and a wholesome element to those8s flicks. You felt like you were part of the family. They didn't wait for their turn to speak all the time. They tripped over each other. It felt natural. It felt organic. So for the critics saying that this film feels like Steven Spielberg back in the day, they're full of [ __ ] To me, End of Oak Street felt like a movie that was emulating and trying to be one of those old films, but not really getting the ingredients blended up quite right. The plot of this is pretty straightforward. We're following the Platt family. Anne Hathaway plays Denise. Ewan McGregor plays Greg. Anne Hathaway plays the strong willed wife Denise who knows how to carry a gun and rock a mean dress. Ewan McGregor plays Greg. He plays a very positive husband and father with a couple skeletons in his closet that will get revealed later in the flick. They have two lovely kids, Audrey and Brian. Audrey really wants to attend college at Cornell, but unless a money tree sprouts up overnight in the backyard, that's not going to happen. Although the family will find out a different type of tree is going to sprout up overnight in the backyard. In fact, a whole bunch of them are. But we'll get there in a second. We got to talk about Brian. Brian um he really loves his dog. That's pretty much his entire character is he loves his dog. The dog's name is Starbucks based off the popular character from the TV show Battlestar Galactica. And if you thought, "Oh, that's a fun little name for a dog to have. I like that show." You might be like me and go, "Yeah, it was fun one or two times, but they say Starbucks 4,000 times in this [ __ ] movie and it gets really old really fast. Popsy, where's Starbucks? Mama, papaya, where's Starbucks at?" Sister, have you seen Starbucks? Starbucks? STARBUCKS? STAR, SHUT THE [ __ ] UP. ACTUALLY, I TAKE BACK WHAT I said. Brian has a lot going on in this movie. Not only does he have a dog he loves, he's also an archer who has his trusty bow and quill of arrows at his side. just ready for a total limp biscuit shot. He's going to attempt using that thing several times in the movie. And uh he's no Robin Hood. Let's just say that. Yeah. Okay. Nice try there, Katniss. How about you put the bow and arrow down and just try to run for a change. What you're doing is not working. All right. So, he's got the dog thing. He's got the poor archery skills. He also noticed a new girl moving across the street. She's a cutie. He wants to put the moves on her. Hope there's time before the world comes to an end. Also, at some point off camera, before the movie even started up, he broke a kid's arm and his older brother's pissed about it. And so, broken arm kid's brother is going to be on the prowl throughout the movie. You're not sure where he's going to show up. And quite frankly, it's weird that you even care because there's dinosaurs running around. That takes me to the crux of the problem here. We've established the characters. We got some loving parents who uh they're maybe not so loving these days. There's there's some chips are down stuff going on with the relationship. The teenage kids are at awkward points in their life. They're dealing with love. They're dealing with the potential of college on the horizon. And all of them are equally having a hard time dealing with the new neighbors because they're prehistoric in nature. And no, I don't mean they're old. Well, they are. In fact, they're really old because as it turns out, some sort of phenomenon has taken place which has transported these people into the land before time. Don't lose your way for each passing day. You've come so far. Don't [ __ ] throw it away. >> [singing] >> I don't know if those are the lyrics, but Land Before Time was a kick-ass movie. So, yeah, they're going to be dealing with the new neighbors that are dinosaurs, feathered friends. We got feathery raptors, we got the T-Rex, and we have a whole bunch of other creatures that I don't want to give away, but one of them does look like a really, really large dildo. This big fat slithery white thing is puls This big chunky fat slithery thing is going in and out of rooms globbing over the sides of pools and around trees and now quite frankly it's the only way I can achieve climax. Subscribe. All right, let's get professional for a little bit now. Let's put our big boy pants on. So this film is very fun. It is very engaging. It also has a lot of your classic dumb people doing dumb things, which drives me up a wall. Now, before I get into the complaint department, I just want to point out that I was very much enjoying the film from a superficial standpoint. Visually, it looks really good. There's some money on the screen. You can see it being utilized very well. That said, I don't ever really get the feeling they're dealing with real dinosaurs. As impressive as the CG is, and sometimes it's very, very lifelike, I don't get that weight to the creatures as they're like ramming their heads into doors and never being able to get through them. I mean, there's a point where several large raptor bird things are crashing into the front door of a house and it's just you and McGregor holding them back. I listen, I know homes were built better in the 70s and 80s, but come on. We got to we got to have a little bit of realism here. You're telling me one of these dinosaurs could just crash through that house. The music is popping off pretty well, too. There was a good score here. It wasn't anything truly memorable, but it made itself known and it did keep everything kind of elevated. So, I was all in on the music. As far as the variety of dinosaurs are concerned, there is a decent amount and there are some pretty cool, you know, sections of the film. A couple of them felt like they were a little too lifted from the original Jurassic Park. one specifically where the couple's hiding in the car and the dinosaurs are running over it. You just replace that car with a log and I'm transported back there in 1993. Again, as far as the acting's concerned, we uh, you know, we're dealing mainly with the main four cast, but there are some supporting characters. There's the douchy neighbor. There's the gentle, nice, sage old woman. They all have parts to play and they play them very well. I was never bothered by anybody in there. the bully character. It's a very stupid, pointless subplot that thankfully only pops up a couple of times, but it was such an unnecessary inclusion. I have no idea why it exists. The girlfriend love interest also kind of completely unnecessary. She has a bigger role, but for what reason, unclear. She doesn't add to the narrative at all. And this is one of the very few times I'm watching a movie and I'm actively rooting for a dog to die. It's not Starbucks fault. This freaking kid is so annoying how much he asks about Starbucks who who runs away pretty early on. Why is Starbucks going to be okay? Papa, we got to GO SAVE STAR. SHUT UP, KID. THERE'S FREAKING DINOSAURS RUNNING AROUND. OH, there is one side character. It's, you know, the poor kid. He's going through puberty really hard. But I don't know if that was the intent when casting for this, but the kid whose arm is broken in the cast, he is always at fullblown highpitch puberty voice. It is out of control. There's the kid. He broke my arm. I'm always up here. Like, if you think what I just did is annoying, you're going to have to deal with that for a good minute straight. And then watch as the blood pools on your shoulders from your ears. I do think this movie is easily better than the last couple Jurassic Turd flicks. the the bar is so low. That thing's straight in hell. Now, it does fall pretty far shy from great. I would say this falls in the category of a perfectly fine time as long as you can forgive some really bad decision making, especially around the middle act. When one kid makes such a dumb choice that it just screws up the entire family's night, you can't help but be frustrated by all the events as they play out, thinking, "Yeah, we shouldn't even be in this situation if not for Timmy Tough Knuckles over here." The story is squarely saved by the action set pieces. All these little moments of dinosaurs running a muck through this little town picking off neighbors. There's lots of little stuff going on in the backgrounds of scenes to keep your eyes moving around and you're you a little giddy and excited. If I was a teenager, I think I would really eat this up. If I was even younger, I think I would be fully invested and think this is badass because there's lots of cool dinosaur stuff in this. The movie's a little over an hour and a half, so it's got a good run time. It is PG-13, which is unfortunate, but you know, they want the families to come out. I will say it was a little harder PG-13 than I thought it would be. There is some blood. There is one or two kind of like, oh [ __ ] they got away with that. That's cool. It's still a far cry from some of the carnage I would have loved to see in this flick. And that does give me a little pause when it comes to the tone of the film since most of it is kind of light and the dinosaurs don't feel that threatening. I mean, the these people are kind of walking around them at times throwing [ __ ] at them to get their attention. They don't seem to be that scared even though they're yelling and running and Anne Hathaway's always putting in the work in her performance, but they're still like right up in their grills most of the time. I mean, why are they even going outside at all at this point? There are a couple of those tiny little violent parts that made me go, "Oh, well, [ __ ] This feels so different now. This this kind of feels out of place." When I just saw them a scene earlier throwing lamps at dinosaurs and kicking them and stuff, it just it's a little odd. If you're one of those people that get annoyed that things aren't explained, well, prepare to be annoyed because this is very, very loosey goosey as far as any of the sci-fi elements are concerned. [ __ ] happens basically is what the movie says. [ __ ] happens and we got to figure out how to adjust. I'm okay with that if the movie is engaging enough, if there's enough action, if there's enough fun parts, if there's some decent dialogue and acting. Uh, you know, I recently just watched The Last House on Netflix, which was trash from top to bottom. I said the same thing. I wouldn't I don't care so much that The Last House gave absolutely zero effort in explaining what was happening with the magical rain and the sea creatures. But on top of it not explaining anything, there's also just not a lot of great parts. It's not a very entertaining movie. The acting wasn't good. The characters were pretty unlikable. At least with this film, we do have excellent performances. We do have at least a set of four people that are pleasant. They seem to enjoy each other's company and even though mom and dad are on hard times, you can tell there's a connection there. You can tell there is love still and so it does help drive the movie forward. There is plenty to criticize about this movie and I desperately wanted it to be phenomenal. I wanted it to be this generation's Jurassic Park. It kind of probably is all negatives aside because there's just not that many good dinosaur movies [laughter] out there. So, by default, being at least competent enough makes it a big winner. Makes it the king of the crop. I will probably do a spoiler video on this in a few days. So, if you haven't already, please think of subbing to the show. Adam does movies on YouTube. I'm on Spotify, Apple Podcast, wherever you watch or listen. My overall thoughts, good enough. Not great enough like I was hoping it would be. Number three, it's been a couple months, so there's a new Insidious in theaters. We are up to number six in this franchise. A franchise that kind of eludes me as far as what the appeal is at this point. The PG13 scary world where we go into the further and come back out on the other side pretty much unscathed has somehow managed to stay relevant in the eyes of the horror community. And so here we are again, baby, with Insidious out of the further. For me, the first film was solid and then it just kind of went on a pretty safe downhill slope from there until inevitably falling straight into hell at the bottom of the barrel with the last one, the red door or the the lost key or dude, where are my keys or please open the door and let me in. I don't remember the titles. I do know this though. Out of the further, not too shabby. I'm going to tell you about it in a spoiler-free review. Finally, the Lambert family gets a break until we inevitably pull their asses back into the fray once we get to Insidious 10. But until that time, we have a brand new set of folks we're going to pay attention to. The main protagonist this time is the young mother named Gemma, who looks to be a cross between Charlen and three or four other actresses put inside of a generator. Beep beep beep beep. And we get this nice looking lady who has a I don't know if it's a pimple or a beauty mark or something above one of her eyes and I just kept wanting to pop that thing. While she has no ring on that finger, she does have some baggage. As she lives with her daughter Maya in the house she grew up in where her mother killed herself, as one does. There's nothing particularly special about Gemma. She's a good mother. She goes to work as a dental assistant. She pays her bills on time. She has a garage full of all of her old stuff from when her mom was alive that she for some reason is hanging on to because she can't let the past go and wants to torture herself constantly. You know, just kind of the stuff we all deal with. And what else? I feel like there's one other thing that kind of gives her a leg up on the competition, short for competition. Oh yeah, she can communicate with the further. And not only that, she can bring stuff into the further and potentially bring stuff out. >> [laughter] [gasps] >> And that's going to be the plot of the film. You see, there's unsavory folks inside the further that would love nothing more than to get out. And so, by harnessing the power of Gemma, they're hoping they can grab on to her inside the further and catch a ride to the other side. That rhymed. Why, though? Now, you might be asking yourself, how does Elise Raineier, the one who's been constant in all these films, fit into this picture? The psychic who's been dead for several years now. Well, they find a way to bring her out. They always find a way to dust off those bones and get her into a flick. And I have to say, I enjoy seeing her every time. She is a staple of this franchise, and I hope they can continue to utilize her in some sort of a capacity. Outside of the motheraughter combo, you have a trio of old people that just kind of, you know, wander hither and thither, looking off, smiling creepily, doing that whole thing, doing that whole shtick. And you better believe there's a good amount of tipping of the hat to the films that came before. But I'm more interested in what this new movie has to bring to the table. And what it felt like was a combination of a lot of recent horror films I've seen recently, like Back Rooms. There's a little section like that, or like some of the gross, intense [ __ ] you see in films like Weapons. Insidious is going to sprinkle a little bit of everything around this film. And there are several sections of this film that work incredibly well. I was all in on the scares. Two of my favorites are when Gemma goes inside a pillow fort from hell and another is when she's cleaning the teeth of a really gross old guy. Like just cleaning the teeth of an old dude alone is chilling to the bone. But in the scenario presented in Cidius, it gets quite a bit worse. Now, one negative I've had with all these movies is that brutal PG13 rating. I think it dampens these films a lot. It keeps them from really pushing to where they should go. But that said, I honestly thought this one was rated R. There is some blood. There are some pretty intense moments where I thought, yeah, they finally went R with this franchise, but I was wrong. Seems like they're just able to get away with a lot more these days. Probably because we're all desensitized thanks to the world being a flaming pile of [ __ ] You love to see it. There are two other prominent new characters. A cop boyfriend who, you know, he's fine. He's serviceable. doesn't really bring much to the table. But then there's also the smoking hot tattoo artist named Claire, who I'm going to be honest with you, I've never set foot in a tattoo parlor. This guy is about as clean as pure as humanly possible. So, all I know of tattoo artisans comes from movies and television shows. And so from what I've gathered over the years, thanks to the stereotyping of such a beautiful community, I think of a tattoo artist as kind of a little rougher around the edges, not the most cleancut looking person. But when I look at Claire, an actress I wasn't familiar with, which I should have been because she stars in the Kissing Booth franchise. We all love the Kissing Booth franchise in the horror community, right? [laughter and gasps] Cuz those movies are scary as [ __ ] I just wasn't buying her as a tattoo artist. She was, and if you are a tattoo artist, no disrespect, she was too pretty. She looked like she would be more at home playing an older fun sister on a Disney Plus TV series rather than being a tattoo artist who can communicate with someone on the other side. Another knock against this movie, just a slight one. I actually thought this movie was 90 minutes going in. I was pretty excited for it, only to find out it was an hour and 45 minutes. Had they just shaved down 10 minutes, even five minutes, I think we would have been cooking really nice here. As it stands, the movie drags a little bit in the third act to the point where I thought, h this was this was a pretty damn fun film, but it's starting to like waffle a little bit. Too much exposition is happening. Can we just cut to the chase? As for the lead star, Amelia Eve, very impressive. Nice work by her. She I believed the scares. I believed the tense situations. She gives it all. She puts it all out there and I'm picking it up. She looked great. She acted great. All around no notes. And as for her daughter Maya, played by Island Austin, her [ __ ] name is Island. That name is awesome. I don't know who names their kid Island, but I want to meet them. And I'm honestly really disappointed that I named my kid such basic [ __ ] If I could do it all over again, my son would be Megatron. Yes, the villain of the Transformers franchise. And my daughter would be Mittens McGee. Mittens McGee Olinger at your service, mate. I gave her an unidentified accent in this scenario, too. Subscribe. I don't want to go too far into the plot details any further than I already have, but um yeah, overall insidious. Back. We're back. We're We're back, friends. I don't I don't know. Were we ever really there to begin with? One or two decent movies and then a whole pile of [ __ ] And here we are on the other side. Uh, we're kind of doing okay. This one's not an amazing movie by any means. Certainly not in the top five I've seen this year for horror films, but I think it's a good time at the theaters. I had fun. I was engaged. There's a couple intense moments. There's your your traditional jump scares that caught me. I got hit with at least two of them. And they weren't the really obnoxious JUST [screaming] [groaning] blasting the music super loud. They certainly hit you with the noise, but uh I don't think it was egregious. I think they did a good job from a production standpoint. I was also really impressed with this one. It looks really damn good. Very pretty. They kept the tasteful bluish hues when you're inside the further. You better believe they got that [ __ ] smoke machine revved up. There is smoke all over this [ __ ] If you're here for the carnage, if you're here for the blood and gore, why? You should know by now that's not what Insidious does. All right. They typically have some scares. They usually have a little bit of heartstrings pulled at, and this is no exception. There's some nicer moments in this thing, and I would say this is one of the better films in the franchise. Not that that's saying much at all, but I would put it right next to number one. It's been a minute since I've seen number one with the Darth Maul villain, but I think it's it's pretty close. And I think that's probably good enough. I'll leave it there. Number two, I love you. You love me. Oh my god, that's that's burned into my brain still. Barney. Jesus, what a what a time that was to be alive. It feels like a million years ago. Kind of. Honestly was at this point. The 90s were a wild ride. I had a I had a sister that was much younger than me and she would have that stuff on repeat for years straight. So, I'm very familiar with Barney. I'm less so familiar with Buddy, who's a character that was created to to rival the purple mascot, I suppose, in this bizarre new horror flick that I was very interested in seeing, especially with the kind of gorilla marketing campaign just giving tiny little flashes of what you can expect. Well, I saw the movie last night. It was kind of what I expected and unfortunately also what I was not expecting. I'm going to give you the pros and cons in a spoiler-free review right now. Buddy, you stupid orange unicorn son of a [ __ ] You really let me down, buddy. You really You really dropped the ball, buddy. And it is the ones that let you down the hardest that really sting the most because the first act of this film is perfect. I freaking love this thing. And then unfortunately it kept going and it kept dropping the ball over and over until what I was left with was an entertaining, pretty fun, definitely interesting disappointment. I will be entering a fresh score for this on Rotten Tomatoes and I imagine it's going to have a very positive overall score from critics and audiences. That said, this could have been so much better and it sucks because it's all right there. the director, the writer, they had a great concept having kids trapped in this imaginary world where they're singing these cheesy songs, doing their choreographed little dances, talking to Pee-Wee Herman type objects and furniture, smiling and waving at the mailman as he comes on by, or the nurse when you get a little boo boo. And then, of course, we have our lovable sidekick, Buddy and his pals. The film doesn't even attempt to veer away from the fact that it's Barney. I mean, he sounds like him. He has the same cadence, the same mannerisms, and that stuff is all just perfect. Now, if you don't know Barney cuz you're younger or just were fortunate enough to avoid the show, like the plague, good for you. But you also are probably familiar enough with shows like that there. There's so many of them, the colorful kitty shows where they're singing and doing the whole educational thing while, you know, showcase the importance of friendship. If you at least have a toplevel understanding of it, you will find enjoyment by the parody going on here. And they play it incredibly straight, man, which is really funny. I also have to say I was snickering and laughing a lot throughout this movie because of how ridiculous and uh just surreal all of it is. Seeing a couch with giant googly eyes, seeing a dumbass train with little arms going down the tracks, it's so well thought out. And anytime the camera creeps on Buddy or one of his friends and they do this like stupid ass face or they just have this stiffness to them, the director of this film, Casper Kelly, absolutely needs to be commended for those. I am going to be very vague on the storyline because it's kind of shrouded in mystery. I will just say again, the first third of this film is just perfection. I was so excited for where this was going to go. And the roller coaster, it it's just on such a good uphill climb and then a great downhill run that you just think, "All right, we're going to have twists and loops and turns." And no, unfortunately, after that initial hit, the coaster just kind of coasts. Occasionally getting on another uphill climb, but never giving us that downhill fun drop that we want desperately. This audience was hungry. We were thirsty for anything remotely close to a bloody funny swearfilled film. And this does not deliver that. Instead, it opts to be just a peak, just a tinge more hardcore than Five Nights at Freddy's, that PG-13 slop house dra. But he is rated R for blood, for some swearing, but you don't really see a lot of it. And some people will be very happy that the kids are not getting tortured. This is not a bring her back situation, which is a very hard watch if you haven't seen it. A very strong, powerful film. It's a great, well-made movie, but it can be very hard, especially for parents to watch as some of these kids just get completely abused. This does not thankfully do that for a lot of people. But because of that fact, you're just not getting those cool kills, even with the adult characters that may or may not meet their demise. So, anytime it pushes a little bit overboard where where Buddy might shove one of the kids back into place so they can sing their songs, the audience breaks out laughing because we we want more of that. You know, at one point he calls someone a [ __ ] and it's so freaking funny. But they never go all in on that kind of stuff. The violence is not there. The dialogue, which starts very straight man and starts to get more unhinged, never gets more clever, never gets more interesting. And that's where the film really just dropped the ball. Now, there's a lot of strengths to this movie. I love the look of this thing. I love the uh the 4x3 aspect ratio, really hearkening back to the '9s films. It's got that distortion on top of it all. And then that aspect ratio is going to shift to modern-day looks. We're going to get widescreen format. It looks beautiful. And that's where we're going to get to the Kristen Milliotti side of it. She plays a character who knows something's not right with her family. And I'll leave it at that. But that stuff's built up really well and it's a great juxtaposition from all the stuff going on with Buddy. You get this over here and then you get the more dramatic side of things over here where she's kind of losing her mind. Things aren't adding up and so she has to get to the bottom of it. Very well done. I loved all this [ __ ] But once that switch happens, once that second half starts up, I was so led down by the direction it takes. And everything that's built up gets virtually no payoff at all. Listen, it sucks watching a movie that's just terrible from front to back. It's a miserable time, of course, but at least you knew what you were getting into typically after the first 15 minutes. Like watching a stranger's movie. Okay, I know this sucks. Let's just continue on the journey with them until the suckfest is over. But something like Buddy where it starts at such a high and they get all the pieces in place only to completely drop the ball and forget about the pieces altogether, it's disheartening and it makes the experience sour. This felt like a film you could show your kid to when they're ready to start watching R-rated movies. Kristen Milladi's character, Grace, is married to the actor Toeer. Grace is character Toeer Grace. Her name is Grace. That's that's weird. It doesn't matter. Uh Grace is nice. It was really fun seeing Toeer in this. I haven't seen him in in a quite a while. And sadly, the last thing I probably remember him in is Spider-Man 3 is as Venom. [laughter] Not a great film to remember him. I always like Toeer Grace though, especially on that 70s show. Eric Foreman's awesome. He's good here. They have uh you know, some marital fights and man, the the writer like nailed it. It felt like I was having a stupid argument with my wife. Just the way they interacted together, they had a good dynamic. the chemistry really worked and and it was very raw and it felt it felt real. And again, because it was so good to just drop the ball ON IT PISSES ME OFF. GOD, WHAT DID THEY WHY? WHY? Not only did that work well, but the kids, I got to give props to all the kid actors. They were fantastic. And for once, a movie doesn't do the thing that I cry about all the freaking time, which is have characters make dumb choices that don't make any sense just so they can be put back in peril. Here, the kids all say things kids would say. They all do things rational kids would do. They also do things irrational kids would do. It makes sense. Horror films have gotten so bad with this over the years that I was actually tensing up. Whenever one of these kids was given the option to do something or to say something, in my head I was thinking the kid's going to say this or should say this and they should do this and the kid would do it every single time. It was great. And even when they did something by mistake or they they made a wrong choice, it felt justified. It made sense with the kid's character. It was all really well handled. So, from a human choice perspective, it's all working. The acting is very solid in this. I I loved Buddy's character. The voice work is awesome. The costume designs are amazing. The set designs are perfection. The way it's presented is just out of this world great. And so, again, the disappointment hits that much harder. But overall, much like the other film I saw the other day, Coyote versus Acme, it's worth a watch. It just could have been so much better. This could have been honestly one of my top five best movies of the year because of that first act. This could have leapfrogged Obsession pretty easily. I'm beating a dead unicorn at this point. All right, there you have it. My thoughts on Buddy. Good, not great, which is a sad thing to say. Number one, a janitor sweeping. [gasps] Cydney versus Acme. Well, no. That's a name I haven't heard in a long time. Since 2023 when the film was originally supposed to come out, but because of a bunch of shenanigans going on at Warner Brothers and some corporate shakeups, the film was left to die like Batgirl, which will never come out. But we did get to finally see Coyote versus Acme. I checked it out at a matinea the other day, so it was a nice cheap $18. What are we even doing at theaters anymore? And so now I'm going to report back and let you know whether or not the three-year wait was worth it. Watching those animated shorts as that poor son of [ __ ] coyote tries to kill the bird that's faster than the blue blur. I think I mean you put roadrunner and Sonic next to each other. That's definitely an argument that some 12-year-old is having right now. Granted that would require the 12-year-old to know who the Roadrunner is. And I'm not sure this is going to be the movie that's going to put him in the spotlight. Although it would be nice if uh parents took their kids out to this one because it's a nice little film. It's got some problems, but overall I left the theater positive. There was plenty of moments in this 90minute flick PG rating that put a smile on my face. I take that back. IMDb says this movie is an hour and 41 minutes long. It seems like it's 90 minutes. Maybe there's a lot of credits. I don't know. I didn't stick around for those. Now, if you know nothing about Coyote versus Acme, it is a hybrid animated/liveaction film, much like Looney Tunes: Back in Action, or even further back, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Two films I happen to really enjoy. Maybe you're only familiar with like Space Jam or Space Jam 2. God, that movie sucked. Anybody remember LG Rhythm? The algorithm. Everybody get up. It's time to suck now. And the story line for Coyote versus Acme is actually very fun. It's very clever. It follows our wy coyote who's still going after the bird all these decades later. After failed attempt number a million, he's starting to finally realize that perhaps he's not entirely at fault. Maybe the products he's using from the company that's making them is the real villain here. So he heads into Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he's going to see a bunch of billboards featuring a lawyer with a bad comb over who is a voice for the cartoons. And he's willing to take the big wigs to court. A sleazy lawyer in Albuquerque, New Mexico, operating out of a dingy little place where his clientele are less than savory. This sounds awfully familiar to a different character from a different series. And therein lies one of the biggest mistakes this movie made. I kept thinking of Better Call Saul. Breaking Bad's character Saul Goodman, one of the greatest lawyers in the world who takes on some very questionable cases but manages to find a way to win them. If Ketchup Studios, who did this movie, uh, no, Chuck Jones was not resurrected from the dead to draw his characters again. Unfortunately, if they somehow would have secured Bob Odenkirk as Saul Goodman and had him in this film, holy [ __ ] it would have been amazing. Unfortunately, we're following the lawyer Kevin Avery, played by Will Forte. Now, I like Will Forte. He's been very funny in the past on SNL. His character McGruber is great. That show Last Man on Earth was pretty fun for a couple seasons. And I know he was one of the big champions to get this movie into the eyes of the public over many years now. And I just kind of wonder why because he sleepwalks through most of this film. He's just really not a presence here. He's kind of a straight man almost in a world full of zany cartoons that can work when you have that polar opposite. Unfortunately, every single human in this film is a boring straight man character, especially his tag along niece. Lana Condor plays Paige Avery and she has zero presence in this film. It's unfortunate. She's likable as a character, but who cares about likability in a Looney Tunes property? Do something, lady. You're just like a rock that gets moved from scene to scene. We are so far removed from Brendan Frasier going over the top with Looney Tunes back in action or Bob Hoskins using his trademark rage to beat the crap out of that annoying rabbit. The only human actor that's at least somewhat entertaining is John Cena. But even Cena feels very deflated and he has been that way for the last few years now. I don't know if he needs to start hitting the juice again, but whatever he needs to do to get that charisma back in check, that would be appreciated. Now, as disappointing as the human characters were, it was an absolute blast being back with the tunes. I'm going to sound very bipolar in this review because overall, I did enjoy the film, but it has a lot of issues. So, I'm going to be constantly pushing and pulling at odds with myself. Overall though, I think it's worth at least a watch. But if you're going in expecting something amazing, I I can't imagine that's going to be the case, especially when you have some great Looney Tunes characters animated in such a horrific way at times. Granted, it works, I would say, more often than it doesn't, but since this film does not do traditional 2D animation, there's no handdrawn stuff. These are all 3D rendered characters that they try to pretend are 2D ones. Think Fortnite whenever they release one of their animated skins, and it just looks pretty awful. or whenever they take a Family Guy or a Simpsons show and they turn them into video game characters, it it just never lines up very well. South Park was the only one that got it right. But I think the way that that show is presented works much better and translates better. It's it's a onetoone thing. So from like a visual character model standpoint, it's definitely very rough. Animation though is very strong. They really do nail that old style of, you know, the momentum of the Roadrunner is definitely present. You see the road whipping up around and since it's like a real road, but definitely not a real road, but rendered to look real, it's great. That stuff all works really well. The hyperrealistic anvils falling, characters getting punched in the face. It's good stuff and it's animated wonderfully. And because we have mountains of years of stuff to work with, it was fun seeing them kind of go back and make nods to the old classics, even show some footage to remind people of just how long these two have been going at each other's uh throats. Well, really, it's just Coyote going after Roadrunner, but you know what I'm saying. It is always great to see Porky, Daffy, Bugs, like the gang showing up here and there, throwing out some of their iconic oneliners, doing their whole thing. And this whole weird cell-shaded 3D stuff, it works well enough, especially when they light the characters properly, and there's some nighttime scenes, so you get shadows bouncing off of them. That that looks pretty good. It is amazing though how much better Space Jam looks compared to this when it comes to those animated characters, because again, that that one's using the traditional approach and it holds up so much better. Fogghorn Leggh horn, one of my favorite characters from Looney Tunes, looks like absolute nightmare fuel. He is horrifyingly bad in this. And unfortunately, he's in it quite a bit. And the more they show him, the more I want them to not show him. He looks awful. But let's reel back into the positives again. The story really does help everything. thing. It holds up all ships here because we have such a fun premise because we have a premise revolving around decades of abuse featuring Acme products. And so putting them on the stand, putting them in the courtroom leads to some fun hi jinks. And there are a couple of twists and turns here. There is a mystery looming underneath that breaks this thing wide open. There are some different avenues the film goes down that keeps it fresh. As for the laughs, this is not Emperor's New Groove levels of funny here. This is more your standard Looney Tune stuff. Anvils falling on people, a lot of slapsticky gags. There were a few lines of dialogue that made me chuckle and I appreciated the the sign humor where he's constantly flipping the signs around. And the biggest thing that I liked about this was there was some good emotion. There was some heart and it hit. It landed really well for me. I thought, well, [ __ ] I didn't think I was going to be feeling things in a Looney Tunes property, but here we are in the grand 2026. So, the overall takeaway is I'm happy I saw the movie. I'm I'm glad it came out, especially for everyone involved in making the film. I'm sure it was a very deflating thing for many years to not be able to see the product you spent probably you're working on off and on, see the light of day. And so, now we have it. It's another one to add into the lineup of these liveaction hybrid films. And I think it's I think it's fine. I think it it works well enough to justify its existence. It is not near as good in my opinion as some of the previous ones I mentioned, but it's a hell of a lot better than Space Jam 2. Wow, what a [ __ ] month. August may have been the worst month of movies all year. I mean, what was good? We had Buddy, which I really enjoyed, but even that one kind of let me down in the final act. Still very creative, very fresh and unique take if you didn't see uh Mr. Crockett, but that movie was kind of a croc of [ __ ] This was much better. Uh, Coyote versus Acme. A solid watch for sure, but again, not not like a great film in my opinion, a good film. So, you have Buddy, that's good. You have Coyote versus Acme, that's good. And then there's The End of Oak Street, which many of my friends said was absolute ass, I feel even with all the issues I have with the movie, which there are a magnitude of them, I was still able to enjoy it at least enough to give it a recommendation for a one-time watch. But the negative side of things, holy [ __ ] the ice cream man. Oh my god, was that bad? That complete cashg grab [ __ ] XFiles I want to believe recut director's edition thing. What a joke. And then of course there's the always reliably bad straight to streaming exclusives on Amazon, on Netflix, on Pick a Lane, it doesn't matter. So overall, yeah, August, what a nightmare. I'm really hopeful September is going to be much better. And I'm hoping you're going to stick around to hear those thoughts in the next video. Please think of subbing to the show. Adam does Movies. I'm on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcast. I would absolutely appreciate your time. Like the video if you liked it. Hype it if you have the hype points to spare on YouTube. And hopefully I see you for the next video. Take care. [music] Thanks again for watching the video. If you didn't know, I'm a oneman operation here at Adam's Movies. I also have a full-time job. I got a family to take care of and I would absolutely love if you supported me on patreon.com/adamdosmov like these beautiful people did here. These are the silver and gold members. There's also a bronze membership starting at $1 plus access to over 300 videos from the Atom vault at any support level. I would really appreciate it. It's the best way to support the show. Hope to see you there.