Let's Cee a Movie

Who’s your daddy?

If you think that sounds creepy, good. These are two creepy movies. (Unmarked Spoilers)

The Stepfather (1987) is about an unnamed serial killer (Terry O’Quinn) who’d marry single mothers, only to kill his new family when they inevitably fail to live up to his Leave it to Beaver aspirations. He is currently married to Susan Main (Shelley Hack) and her daughter Stephanie (Jill Schoelen), whose father died a year before the movie’s events. Oh Stephanie, they served the leftover food from your father’s funeral at your mother’s wedding. Prince Hamlet feels your pain.

Ex-Couple Goals

And through their strange hours. (Unmarked Spoilers)

Strange Days is the 1995 cult classic that put director Kathryn Bigelow’s career on life support until she rebounded with The Hurt Locker. In the then-future, two days prior to Y2K, Strange Days is the tale of civil unrest, militant police forces, racial tension, and a high crime rate. You know, kind of like what’s happening right now, Except for how we don’t have the Superconducting Quantum Interference Device or SQUID for short. A device that lets you relive the memories of yourself or others.

Another game?!

When will this all end?

Ezekiel “Zeke” Banks (Chris Rock) is a cop who plays by his own rules and who doesn’t work with no partner because the rest of the precinct thinks he’s a rat. Yes, he is the coppiest cop in all of fictionland. Zeke must solve the case of a Jigsaw copycat killer who wants to play a game with the departments’ corrupt officers. To do so, he must work with his new partner William Schenk (Max Minghella). Meanwhile, Samuel L. Jackson is wasted playing Zeke’s former police captain father, Marcus.

Viva

This movie is not what I thought it would be. (Unmarked Spoilers)

Scott Ward (Dave Bautista) must assemble a team to perform a daring casino heist. First, they must sneak into a quarantine Las Vegas, avoiding the numerous undead, switch on the casino generators, break into the uncrackable vault, make their way to the casino roof with the abandoned helicopter, and fly away before the whole city gets nuked. Yes, that is their entire plan, and only one person points out how utterly crazy the whole thing is.

The joys of motherhood III: And now for something completely different

Much better than actually eating eggs.

Karen (Christina Hendricks) and her husband Don (David Alan Basche) decide to have lunch with Tina (Alyssa Reiner), an old art school friend of Karen’s. In trying to one-up her friend, Tina reveals that she and her husband Wayne (Gbenga Akinnagbe) are going to have a baby. Except as opposed to Tina giving birth, her egg has been implanted in a surrogate, Kiki (Anna Camp), who will also be the child’s mother. What they’re going to do is dismantle the traditional family unit in favor of a more shared economy with a redistribution of roles that doesn’t make any sense until Tina says she’s going to be like the child’s nanny.

What’cha mean walk the earth?

As the opening scroll explains, following a reduced demand for sheetrock, Empire, Nevada shut down its plant and turned into a ghost town. After this and the death of her husband, Fern (Frances McDormand) decides to sell off most of her belongings and become a nomad. She travels all around the country, working various odd jobs and meeting plenty of new people.

Odysseus

Meet mid-life crisis John Wick.

In a past life, Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk) used to be an “auditor” for various US government agencies, which is similar to how Frank Sheeran used to paint houses for the mob. Now Hutch is a suburban family man with a wife named Becca (Connie Nielsen), two beautiful kids (Gage Munroe and Paisley Cadorath), and a humdrum life driving him crazy. Though all of that starts to change the night his home gets broken into by two thieves.

Rise and Fall

The movie that started one tremendous franchise.

Today marks a special occasion as this is my 100^th review on this website. To celebrate, I decided to do something a little more personal. The original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie, the prototype of my favorite tv series of all time.

Ready, steady, go 1.5

What? Can’t I get tired of reviewing movies? (Unmarked Spoilers)

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is a 2011 novel that tells the tale of James Halliday, an eccentric genius that created a virtual reality videogame called the OASIS. Upon his death, he set up an elaborate Easter Egg hunt to determine who was worthy of becoming his heir and inheriting his vast riches. The person who discovers the Egg is Wade Watts/Parzival, with a little help from his friends, the High Five, and Halliday’s old business partner Ogden “Og” Marrow. Its film adaptation, which you can read more about here, was released in 2018 and a sequel, Ready Player Two, came out in 2020. Since a film adaptation of Ready Player Two is still a long way away, I thought it’d be fun to take a look at the novel in the meantime.

The trilogy that made Batman movies cool again

Even with that voice, you know the one. (Unmarked Spoilers)

Batman Begins should have been entitled The Dark Knight Begins, but hindsight, as they say, is 20/20. After he loses his chance to get his revenge on Joe Chill (Richard Brake), the murder of his parents (Linus Roache, Sara Stewart), Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) sets out on a journey to understand the criminal underworld. Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson) finds him and introduces him to the League of Shadows and their mysterious leader Ra’s al Ghul (Ken Watanabe). From them, Bruce learns everything he needs to become Batman.