Thunderbolts (2025)

A movie about C-list characters forced to work as a team against a superman rip-off. I wasn't thrilled about the idea when it was first announced, but my interest began to grow over time and the movie was actually pretty decent.

Florence Pugh is pretty good as Yelena. Even when playing a cold hard assassin, she has a lot more personality than Scarlett Johansson, who was always a huge bore to me. Wyatt Russell returns as his "dime-store" Captain America, doing way better than he did in that piece of crap Falcon and Winter Soldier show. David Harbour returns as the Red Guardian, the comic relief Russian version of Captain America, but he's likeable in most of his roles. Lewis Pullman plays Bob/Sentry/Void, and is also pretty good. It's always weird when these seemingly twinky actors take off their shirts and reveal a buff physique.

Sebastian Stan returns as the Winter Soldier, another boring character that Marvel likes to shove down our throats. But in this movie, he's actually... still pretty boring. What's truly ridiculous is that this brainwashed 100-year-old murderer is now a congressman? Well... that's actually pretty realistic now that I think about it.

This movie also features a lot of misdirection in its marketing, prominently featuring a certain character in the promotion that's barely in the movie at all, but it's no real loss considering that character was lame as hell and far from the comic origins.

An entertaining flick, a step in the right direction for Marvel, and featuring a pretty good ending, though the post-credits scenes everybody raves about aren't worth the hype.

#Review

Why did America save tiktok?!

Why was this a priority? Save the replaceable platform so underage girls can continue to shake their booties to try to get out of having real jobs?

zeds ukraine excursio

countdown before I go
a few points.

Im not going to fight

but I will be on the front lines, because I have to

2025 Crime Challenge

Yeah, let's dig into some crime for the month of May.

We'll keep this easy. 1 point per minute of any crime movie or show watched.


Mark your spots!

Halloween: Aftermath

Not official, but a fan film. Looks pretty damn professional, though.
Comes out this October.

Terminator Stuff

In Terminator 1, Kyle Reese refers to the machine as "T-800, model one-zero-one" and claims it is just being systematic. Yet in T2, Arnold refers to himself as "T-800, model one-oh-one". Furthermore, the film is set in 1995 and Arnold says John sent him "35 years from now", even though 2029 would only be 34 years from then. I always thought that was strange. I can understand replacing the 'zero' with 'oh' because it's more efficient and less syllables, but rounding the date was weird.

Deja Vu (2006)

Anybody have any strong opinions about this? I hadn't watched it in a long time, before I watched it (again) last night.

The Wikipedia page about it says the screenplay writers were VERY critical of the film. They say it left out a lot of important details that they had in the script.

I will have to think more about that. I just wanted to say that I kept being reminded of Arlington Road in various ways, having to do with the characters and the general situations portrayed in the film. Also, it made me think of Bad Boys in terms of the visual effects, and Die Hard With a Vengeance, just in the ways that the law enforcement guys were presented. More importantly, it made me think of Frequency, bigtime, in a whole bunch of obvious ways. And, of course, I had a bunch of flashbacks to Enemy of the State, for the effects and just the whole situation of a near-omniscient government agency tracking down... either people they are just designating as criminals, or actual criminals.

Sorry, I just wanted to record my thoughts on some of the likely inspirations for the film, before I forget. Hopefully I will come back to this and have more to say, later on.

I just wanted to say that at least visually, if not plotwise, I thought it was pretty spectacular. Just the colorful razzle dazzle and zooming in and out of many of the scenes.

Had to share.

The Strangers: Prey at Night

I rewatched this one. A pretty solid slasher flick, loads better than the first movie from 2008, and also way better than Chapter 1 from 2024. The soundtrack is great, both the score and 80s ballads.

Spoilers for anyone 7 years behind on this: I assume "the" strangers are supposed to be the same ones in all films, hence the newer trilogy being a prequel since they're all dead by the end of this film. This leads us to the dilemma of the new trilogy having no real stakes since the villains are assured to escape in each film. Not sure what crawled up Renny Harlin's butt and possessed him to go this route, but hopefully, Chapter 2 will be better than the first. Richard Brake better have a purpose, since he's naturally an ugly and evil looking dude.

Also to note is Lewis Pullman as the brother in this film. He's the son of Bill Pullman, bearing a resemblance to Tom Holland of Spider-Man fame, and also joining the MCU in the upcoming Thunderbolts film. I think the pool scene at the end is pretty brutal, with him bleeding out in that artsy "Total Eclipse of the Heart" moment. Damn killers always stabbing the back! He sure did lose a lot of blood, and the morbid curiosity has me wondering about the open wound and if chlorine water seeped into his internals... Can't slap a band-aid on that!

Also, shame on those strangers for killing Christina Hendricks before she had time to have a gratuitous sex scene with her husband...

"The Believers"-ish near miss. Yikes.

I think I narrowly missed electrocuting myself. Jesus. I'm glad I'm here to ramble about it.

Remember the movie The Believers (1987), with Martin Sheen, Helen Shaver, Jimmy Smits, and Robert Loggia? Remember the scene towards the beginning, when Martin Sheen's character's wife electrocutes herself in the kitchen, while doing routine, normal morning tasks in the kitchen? Well, I think I just missed doing something like that to myself.

My mom recently got me an "electric kettle," which boils water incredibly fast. I use it to make instant coffee, when that's what I want in the morning. I keep it on my kitchen counter.

I also have a habit of sometimes using a large frying pan full of warm water, to (fairly) quickly cool off the food in a smaller frying pan, after I have finished cooking it. (I put the hot smaller frying pan in the larger frying pan, which is filled with warm water, and it helps dissipate the heat from the smaller frying pan. It speeds things up a bit, saves me a few minutes).

Sometimes the water in the larger pan sloshes out onto the counter, where my electric kettle is (was) sitting. You see where I'm going with this.

The other day, I had a very close call. I was obliviously sloshing water all over the place on my counter, when suddenly I realized that my electric kettle was A.) plugged in, and B.) probably less than an inch away from an expanding puddle. I should add that the handle on my larger frying pan, which I almost grabbed, is uninsulated... it's just metal, attached to the rest of the pan that was sitting in a puddle of water, which was rapidly expanding toward my plugged-in electric kettle.

YIKES.

Somehow I had the presence of mind to just back away from my counter, and stop and think about what to do. I unplugged the electric kettle, and survived. I have since moved the electric kettle elsewhere.

I mean, maybe the electric kettle was perfectly well insulated, but.... maybe it WASN'T. I'd rather not find out. At least, not in that way. I mean, DAMN.

Anyway, I'm glad I'm still here. Everybody please take this opportunity to review any kitchen and bathroom habits you have that might be dangerous, and take steps to make your life safer.

Kirk out.

Drop (2025)

Christopher Landon was supposed to direct Scream 7, but that fell through. So he gave us another film instead, which happens to take heavy influence from another Wes Craven flick, Red Eye. It's a lot like that movie, except instead of being set on a plane, it's set in a fancy skyscraper restaurant.

The movie is decent. However, in typical Chris Landon fashion, he includes a really annoying gay character. The lead does good, and Brandon Sklenar is pretty suave. He was great in 1923, which is why I wanted to see this to begin with. Also a good flick because it doesn't have a pretentious runtime. Just a regular length thriller, which is a rarity these days.

#Review