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Blade Runner is often considered one of the best science fiction movies ever created, and it came out in the 1980’s. Oh well, back then we had a lot of classic films that people love forever, so what do I know.

I didn’t see it until over a year ago, mostly because I knew that this sequel, Blade Runner 2049 was coming out, and I wanted to make sure I got it. Well, I knew why Blade Runner was considered a great film, but not my cup of tea. I was a bit excited about Blade Runner 2049 as well, because of the director only. After many great films like Sicario, Prisoners, Enemy, and Arrival (one of my top films of 2016), I would watch anything that Denis Villeneuve touches.

So why did I wait so long? I don’t know, because I suck. But I did wait so long, and then it got nominated for boatload at the Oscars. I did watch it before the ceremony, and wrote this review, but wanted to save it for my theme week, where I finally reviewed things I should have definitely reviewed in 2017.

In the future, we will have robots that look like Ryan Gosling!

K (Ryan Gosling) is a Blade Runner, not an agent who works for the Men In Black, but I can see why you get them confused. K is a replicant, and he knows he is a replicant, and his job as a Blade Runner is to find older models of replicants. He has to hunt them down, sometimes to kill them, sometimes just to bring them in. I have already almost hit my quota of saying the word replicant!

On a mission, K finds the remains of a replicant child. Like, not one that was created, but one that was birthed out. People didn’t know that replicants could birth replicant children. This is a game changer. Now K is told by his boss (Robin Wright) to find the baby and hide the truth, b ecause if this gets out, people will start warring again.

Of course with a secret this big, different sides are going to come together after this knowledge. Some toe hide it, some to let it out to the public, some to steal the technology for their own nefarious slave making purposes.

And K is starting to question what it means to be a replicant. He wonders if he can deny orders. I mean, he is called a replicant, not a repliCAN, so you’d think he would accept his limitations.

Also starring Ana de Armas, Barkhad Abdi, Carla Juri, Dave Bautista, Edward James Olmos, Harrison Ford, Jared Leto, Lennie James, Mackenzie Davis, and Sylvia Hoeks.

“Wanna know why they call this place the Brown Town?…Racism.”

I said it before and I will say it again. Tron is not a good movie. Tron: Legacy is definitely not a good movie. Avatar obviously wasn’t a good movie. But they were all very pretty movies (for their time). Some both pleasing to look at and to listen to, while offering mostly shitty plots and maybe shitty acting.

Blade Runner 2049 has a shit plot. It is long, not too exciting, not as deep as its predecessor, and a bit convoluted for my tastes. But it is really pretty to look at.

It is visually stunning. Its cinematography is gorgeous. Its choices were so well thought out and given a loving touch that it is hard to look away. Well, it would be if I ever felt engaged. Because the acting was poor, the twists were mostly expected, and it doesn’t feel incredibly original. But it was still pretty to look at.

I don’t really understand how this made best of the year lists for people, maybe they were just blinded by the flashy lights and visuals, or riding the hype of one of their favorite films over the last few decades. But Blade Runner 2049 is all flash, no substance, and an incredible waste of my time.

Ghost in the Shell came out a whole year ago, March in 2017. The oldest film on my list of things I should have totally seen last year. And reviewed. And this time there are just no excuses.

I mean, it came out on DVD and Redbox in the summer. Plenty of time to catch up to it. The only reason I didn’t see it was straight up apathy.

I didn’t see the original anime, but the controversy behind it makes sense. Good old white girl playing an incredibly Japanese role. Well, she is a robot, but that barely makes it okay. I went into this film not too stoked, but hey, maybe it is pretty.

This is the strange robot nakedness that gets certain jollies off.

In the future (!), humans have started to add robot parts to their bodies. Or special programs. Things to make them stronger, smarter, better eye sight, whatever. Normal helpful things. But one corporation decided to go further. They made an entirely awesome robot body, all the strongest best technologies. They just need a human brain to put inside of it to make it work.

Mira Killian (Scarlett Johansson) is almost killed in some cyber terrorist attack, her body mangled beyond repair, but she is still alive. Heck, her parents were killed in the same attack. So Dr. Ouelet (Juliette Binoche) think she is a perfect subject to put into the shell, to keep her alive.

And they can’t just let anyone be in this fucking amazing body. They decide to make her part of the counter-terrorism force. To hunt down crime and put a stop to it with her sexy robotic body. Basically, a sexy RoboCop.

Anyways, Mira doesn’t remember a lot about her past. But she is now going against a hacker with her small team, so you know she is totally going to get mind fucked.

Also starring Pilou Asbæk, Takeshi Kitano, Michael Pitt, Chin Han, and Peter Ferdinando.

Sort of hard to find an actual Japanese element in this film at times.

Sure, yeah, Ghost in the Shell is a pretty film. Not like gorgeous as fuck, like Blade Runner 2049, but not ugly either. Instead, it is mostly just a mass of CGI and lights and technology. It is technically pretty, but it feels empty. Like…like a shell of a movie.

In terms of plot, it is very hard to follow and specific. It is certainly not entertaining. It feels like a goddamn chore to get through it. I obviously watched it in the comfort of my home, so I was able to pause it and do other things multiple times, because I didn’t want to just pass out throughout the whole film.

I wanted to sleep during the movie, but I knew I needed to know how bad and pointless it was.

Another film that wants to be deep, most likely shitting on the source material all the way through it, and just feeling like a waste of time. How much of a waste of time? Well, less than two hours thankfully. But this film is a travesty to science fiction.

Holy fuck. Today is the day. Today we have reached the biggest milestone yet. Because that is how numbers work, and each review is the biggest number yet, so of course milestone wise, that would increase as well.

Two. Thousand. 2000. Two thousands reviews on Gorgon Reviews!

I have been slacking a bit, mostly because I didn’t feel any inspiration, but my last Milestone Review was when I hit 1750, at the beginning of 2017, with the Resident Evil Franchise review. I figured that every 50 was getting me a bit burnt out, and most people didn’t care when they were that frequent. That is roughly one every 3 or so months. I figure after this one, I will just do every 100 a Milestone Review, to keep it fresh and fun for me.

But this is too much nonsense. I need to talk about the 2000th film. To catch you all up, I used to say that I didn’t review horror films, just to avoid The Human Centipede, which was popular when I first started writing. For my 1000th review, I changed all of that around and opened up the genre.

For my 1500th review, I did the second film, just as the third one was finally about to come out. And it made a lot of sense to me to make sure I saved The Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence) for when I hit this magical 2000 number, even if I really never wanted to see this film.

With all this backstory, I can say for sure right now that I have no idea what my 2500th film will end up being. I have nothing on the docket right now, but I have 499 movies to watch first before I have to make any hard decisions.

Hard decisions, like whether or not I need to make a human centipede.

In the second movie, the original film was just a movie. In the third film, the first two are both movies, and this one is totally set in the real world this time.

This time it is also set in a prison, in some Southwestern state. This is a prison of anarchy, of brutal prisoners, and a staff who doesn’t give a damn. Led by the Warden, Bill Boss (Dieter Laser), who yes, you would maybe recognize as the evil doctor from the first film. Don’t worry, that isn’t our only reunion! We also have the main assistant/accountant of the warden, Dwight Butler (Laurence R. Harvey), who was the sadistic security guard in the second film!

there are a few notable new people to the series though.

Don’t worry, this isn’t just a big sausage fest. We have a woman character! Her name is Daisy (Bree Olson). She is a secretary. She also has to give the warden blowjobs, gets generally sexually harassed all the times, is clearly just an object and not a person. And of course she is played by Bree Olson, known for her work in the adult industry.

Overall, this may have been better to be a full on sausage party. Then we wouldn’t have the unnecessary sexual violence against women also taking part in this movie.

And this time, the hammer is not his pistol.

Back to the prison. Man, these inmates are really pissed off at everything. In a mini riot, one of them stabs an officer, so the warden breaks his arm. That is the kind of justice they serve here. The prisoners unfortunately cause problem after problem, where the Warden decides on a whim what to do about it. Like random castrations, which he is happy to do personally. Or waterboarding but with boiling water.

Overall, the warden is a fucked up man. He has a jar of cut off Clitorises from Africa to snack on for strength.

Look, you came into this review knowing the movie would be a fuckshow.

All of these issues cause the governor of their state (Eric Roberts) to stop on by, demanding that the violence in this prison be put to a stop. It turns out that the prison has also been spending a lot of money, going almost bankrupt in the process, due to all their extra medical fees.

Good old accountant Dwight though has the solution. He has known for the whole film how they can save money, reduce fighting, and be heroes for the state! You see, Dwight is a fan of a certain two films, which are claimed to be scientifically accurate!

He just needs permission to turn the prison into one giant human centipede, and everyone will love them!

Do you really want to know where this blood came from?

No! There is no way this is plausible! It is just a stupid goddamn movie!

But Dwight insists. Hell, they even bring the director, Tom Six (Tom Six) of the first two movies (and yes, he wrote and directed this one) to be an adviser over the whole thing. He has ideas for them, as long as he can also observe and see it happen, because hey, seeing his film come to life would be cool.

They have other issues going on with this idea too. For example, prisoners eventually get to leave the prison. They cannot just make a permanent huge centipede. They have to be able to be removed from teh centipede when their time is up, meaning so taking out their knees, or permanently attaching mouth to anus. There are rules, damn it.

Good news, their doctors know how to make it all work, realistically!

Just needed a goddamn planning session, to brainstorm this shit.

Needless to say, the inmates were not too thrilled with the prospect of having to eat shit. They decided to show them that this is not okay, and have another riot! In the process, they messed up Daisy a bit too, and she certainly didn’t deserve any of that. She certainly didn’t deserve to be raped by the warden either, while in a coma after the fact.

I can’t even make jokes out of this shit.

But the film can, specifically shit jokes. Because not all prisoners are medically able to join the centipede. Due to weak blood, or constant Diarrheaing. But those aren’t real problems, they are just punishments for other people!

Either way, the 500 or so prisoners get put into the centipede! For those prisoners who have no chance at parole, they are put into an extra special Human Caterpillar, that doesn’t have those pesky limbs getting in the way of some good old fashioned mouth to anus action.

Caterpillar picture not included.

The governor shows up as soon as they are finished. He hears their pitch on how this will save them money on food, on walls, on staff, on riot induced hospital visits. Or even punishment based visits. And the governor is pissed. He thinks they should be locked up. They are certainly fired. This is fucked up, this is fucky, this is oh so so so so bad.

And they put poor Daisy in the chain accidentally, but no one except Dwight cares!

Just when the warden is going to go out in a blaze of glory, the governor has a change of heart. He thinks that it is swell and that they are geniuses.

Oh yay! Too bad that the warden still is a literal walking pile of feces, killing Dwight so that he can have the sole credit.

And now he can run his prison on his own, shirtless, firing his gun into the air and just taunting the prisoners with his loud mouth. The. Fucking. End.

Also featuring people like Clayton Rohner, Robert LaSardo, Tommy ‘Tiny’ Lister, and Jay Tavare as inmates or doctors.

They also have some permanent scars so everyone knows you were once part of the prison centipede.

The third and so far final act to this franchise is over 100 minutes long and manages to do something the other films could not. It is for the most part NOT about a gross human centipede contraption. Seriously, it is over halfway through the movie before the accountant is able to finally tell the warden his ideas. That means we have 50 minutes of a warden just being an overall asshole, to other assholes, and we as audience members just have to take it.

And what is the goddamn point? The other films were terrible for focusing on gross aspects, while being worse than torture porn, and poor acting. This one has the poor acting, and seems to focus on MORE gross aspects, just a more diverse set than previous editions.

This film is strange in that it ends on a mostly happy ending for the person who did this to the people. At no point does this version feel scary, it just feels like a waste of time. Bad guy is comically bad, while doing gross things, until he does a bigger grosser thing, the end.

Oh, but again, this one has one woman character, who is used as a sexual object, beaten, and raped, just for the lols. It is downright terrifying in that manner, especially as it is always played as a joke, which is the biggest shocking points of this whole movie.

The third film in this franchise is indeed, different than the first two. But in the end, it is just a different bad way to waste an evening with. Zero. Fun. Sir.

A Wrinkle In Time is a very famous Science Fiction book, written in the 1960’s. It was a historic achievement when it comes to the genre, because it was written by a woman, and it was even about a girl.

Not many books in the genre, especially at that time, catered to women at any level. It would take decades for them to get any sort of real success in that area.

Now, so many decades later, it is being haled as a film celebrating those beginnings by trying to do the same thing for the genre. Avu DuVernay, famed director of Selma (who many feel should have been nominated for Best Director for that film) and 13th, is getting her hands on a big budget fantasy/sci-fi romp. And she is going to make sure it has people in it that will speak to people of all ages, of all colors and creeds. She is getting diversity across all the levels, and it is honestly a great move on her part.

No matter how good or bad the film is, the movie is an experiment gone right when it comes to casting. She wants to make sure girls out there have more diverse people to look up to, because everyone has the right to see themselves in the media they consume.

And look! A character for those gingers out there as well.

Meg (Storm Reid) was a happy go lucky girl, good at math and science, lover of life. Her dad (Chris Pine) worked for Nasa and mother (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) also was a scientist. They were smart, and happy, and about to adopt another child, Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe). Things were great.

And then her dad disappeared, without a trace. The parents had pretty strong scientific opinions on space travel and time travel, but most people did not take them seriously. Either way, with her dad gone, Meg has gone on hating her life, becoming a shell of her former self.

But things are about to change. Life is about to get a bit weirder, thanks to her younger brother. He is very trusting and wise beyond his years. And he starts to introduce Meg to the “Misses”, including Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon), Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling) and Mrs. Which (Oprah Winfrey). They are denizens of the universe, much like Meg, but more in tune with its frequencies and have heard a cry of help from her father.

So these ladies are going to take Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin (Levi Miller), a nice friend of Meg, on a journey across space and time, to see just where her father went.

Also starring Zach Galifianakis, Michael Peña, André Holland, Rowan Blanchard, and the voice of David Oyelowo.

Ah, here he was, the last place I would expect. A very orange room. Yuck!

A Wrinkle In Time is supposed to be a fantastic book, part of a pretty good series, and tells a story across space and time. And based on who I have talked to, that is believable. This movie is unfortunately not the book.

This movie is surprisingly under two hours, but it has a lot of hardcore concepts it wants to talk about and use in the movie. Instead of explaining them in a nice wrapped box, the movie just runs with these ideas, you either understand or you don’t, and blasts off into its plot. It is so fast and high energy early on that it is hard to keep up and understand where it is going.

The only part of the film that takes its time is the ending, which is a bad move for a few reasons. At this point, a regular member of the audience who didn’t read the book is so lost and confused that having a more explained ending won’t fix that. A lot of people watching will have already lost interest, and then get annoyed when the pace finally slows the fuck down.

We have some scary stuff by the end too. Stuff that should have large impacts on the audience based on who is involved and how drastic the changes feel. But without the proper build up, it feels very wasted.

At the end of the movie, I cried. There are still emotional points. I get the final purpose of the film, what it says about growing up and the pains associated with it. But I felt like I was just along for a ride that didn’t care if I needed to stop to pee or eat along the way.

There are so many concepts that you are just forced to accept. Hell, we have a character who is brought along they say for diplomacy reasons, and then fail to include any sort of diplomacy scene. A Wrinkle In Time is probably a good film if you include what was cut out in the editing room. But this is the type of movie that might only be understood if you have read the material before hand, which is unacceptable, especially with a budget and scope of this size.

It is a shame, because this film won’t do great, and the execs might blame it on diversity reasons, instead of the more obvious confusing as heck plot lines. It is still a very pretty movie, with some fun characters. I am just left struggling to really explain what the heck I watched.

The first trailer I saw for Game Night, I sort of knew I was hooked.

If anything, I would love to watch a movie about people who like to just play games. Board games and party games. I knew they wouldn’t get into the nitty gritty of great games, but any positive spin on board games is good in my book.

And yeah, sure, comedy and death. The other two things that go great with a nice game night amongst couples and friends.

And puppies. All gamers love puppies.

Max (Jason Bateman) met Annie (Rachel McAdams) on a trivia night at a bar. They were both captains of different teams, kicking ass, and knowing the same questions. It was love at first sight.

Over the years their competitive nature took them many places. Mostly to their living room, hanging out with friends and loved ones, playing games of skill and chance, and eventually getting married! But if there is one game they are not succeeding at, it is the whole pregnancy thing. Max cannot perform on that level.

And the doctors think it could be performance anxiety. It turns out that Max has a more successful older brother (Kyle Chandler). I mean, he looks better, he is richer, he wins all of the games against his brother, and just his life is so fucking awesome. And when the brother shows up, he wants to beat him at hosting duties as well.

He throws his own game night, with alcohol, and a game where people will come and abduct one of the guests! They have to follow the clues to find the kidnapped victim first, and the winning pair will win a goddamn car. Yeah, his game night is way cooler. Unfortunately, the brother was into some hardcore bad stuff. And the kidnappers this night are real, just the rest of the party won’t realize it until things are too deep.

Also starring Chelsea Peretti, Danny Huston, Michael C. Hall, Lamorne Morris, Kylie Bunbury, Jesse Plemens, Sharon Horgan, and Billy Magnussen.

“I throw my hands and guns in the air, like wayooooo!”

Bateman and McAdams play a delightful couple, who really care about each other and generally want each other to succeed. They aren’t perfect and they have disagreements, especially in the family department, but they work through it, they communicate, and they have a good time in the face of adversary.

In many ways, their coupling in this film is one of the best couples I have seen lately, outside of TV. TV usually has a lot more happy couples. Movie couples tend to have divorces. And that is a lot of words on just how great of a couple they are.

The film ended up disappointing me on the levels of shenanigans that were promised by the trailer. Honestly, everyone found out the truth of the situation way too early. If they could have had the characters think it was a game and really realistic for longer periods, there could have have been some much longer and happier jokers. But the jokes were too few and far in between.

Sure the overall movie is still amusing, or even cute. There are intense scenarios, surprise cameos, and twists you might not see coming. But these twists are more done for twist reasons, and don’t really end up making a lot of sense.

Game Night if anything has a lot of heart and can be a good time for those who watch it. It just doesn’t have any sort of repeatability factor and cannot live up to its plot potential.

Red Sparrow is one of those films that seemingly comes out of nowhere and feels like it is part of something bigger. Like, is this an extended universe? It is certainly based off of a book, although I would have guessed a graphic novel.

In fact, from the trailers, one might just assume this is the Black Widow standalone film we have been waiting for. Russian school to train girls to be assassins and to use their bodies as weapons. Secrets. Yeah, this is just Black Widow.

But instead of Scarlett Johansson, we got Jennifer Lawrence, so that Disney doesn’t try and sue anyone’s ass off.

And if they sue anyone’s ass, they would potentially think twice before taking hers.

Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence) is one of the best ballerina’s in Moscow. She has risen up by her boot straps to train hard and become the best. Her mom is sick and relies on her job for doctors and a place to live. Oh, Dominika is also the niece of Vanya Egorov (Matthias Schoenaerts), someone high up in the Russian politics/military ladder, so maybe not entirely by her own bootstraps.

Then one day, an accident occurs, her leg gets broken on the stage, and her dancing career is done. That means her mom’s life is in jeopardy. Thankfully, her uncle knows a program that she can join. If she can find herself helping the Russian government, then the Russian government can find themselves helping her.

This is unfortunately a Sparrow program, to train young men and women officers to seduce anyone to get information needed, along with the ability to kill them should it come up. Oh good, selling his niece’s body to the government, what a swell family.

All of this ties into a separate plot, about American Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton), a member of the CIA who was also in Russia, dealing with a mole in their government, who accidentally put a target on his and the mole’s back.

Also starring Charlotte Rampling, Mary-Louise Parker, Bill Camp, Jeremy Irons, Sakina Jaffrey, and Ciarán Hinds.

See, I could probably withstand one Jennifer Lawrence. But two? One in mirror land?

Red Sparrow is one of those films that is going to appear to be much smarter than a normal movie, and it is unashamed about that. Because after all, the viewer has to be tricked and sold lies as well so the bigger reveals are more exciting.

However, before things could be revealed, I was left annoyed and bored with the movie already. It has layers and layers and layers of plot. Characters coming and going with some importance to the story. And you have to suffer through it all in order to get to the “cool ending.”

But it tries way too hard to be layered. It is so easy to get lost in it, that interest is unfortunately lost. I just didn’t care by the end about any of the characters. I didn’t care who would get quadruple crossed, who the mole was, or how people would get out of their tough situations.

It is over two hours long and full of itself.

It still had some decent moments early on, when I cared about where it was going. Some very different acting from Lawrence, and Schoenaerts does an amazing visual Putin. But this film is now forgettable for me, and not the Black Window solo film we deserved.

Generally, if you throw the word babysitter in a movie title, it now seems to allude to sexy stuff. Maybe that is because of the film a decade ago, The Babysitters, about sexy underage stuff.

But The Babysitter still has a similar theme going on. Attractive ladies, people who want to bone them, and sacrifices to the dark lord.

Oh wait wait, that last part is a bit different. Although, ritual sacrifice in film usually, strangely, comes with an air of sexual tension too.

The only film to go against this trend is Adventures in Babysitting, which thankfully, is very unsexy.

This scene looks photoshopped.

Cole (Judah Lewis) is too old for a babysitter, and yet, he has one anyways. Seriously, he is now in high school. A freshman, but still in high school. His parents (Leslie Bibb, Ken Marino) sometimes take extended weekend trips to stay in hotel rooms in order to rekindle their relationship, and don’t trust their son alone. And he is a total straight up nerd, not like he would throw a rager.

But Cole doesn’t care too much either, because his babysitter is a total babe. Bee (Samara Weaving) is like a perfect human, with confidence, humor, looks, you name it. She is also down to earth and treats Cole like a real goddamn person, and not some burden. Sure she gets paid to hang out with him, but she seems to be the type to still find him to be a friend.

Convinced by his friend to stay up past bedtime to find out if she ends up having sex with a boyfriend when he sleeps, he instead finds a whole gang of people in his house. Normal, teenage stuff is mostly going on, until one of the group gets stabbed in the head, his blood collected, an unwilling sacrifice.

Holy shit. They are making deals with the devil. They also need the blood of someone pure, which of course means him. This is not how Cole saw his night going. He loved Bee!

Also starring Robbie Amell, Hana Mae Lee, Bella Thorne, Emily Alyn Lind, Andrew Bachelor, and Doug Haley.

Best friends, no romance at all? They should kiss.

The Babysitter is a very chaotic film and going for a specific audience: one that just wants to have a lot of fun. And honestly, it does feel like a lot of fun.

The film isn’t that long and it feels like it takes awhile to get to the point. But it is filled with dynamic and fun camera angles, making seemingly (and actually) boring events early on feel a bit more special. This is a throw back to the 80’s in terms of plot, but really it didn’t go 80’s enough. I mean, if you are going to do a ritual sacrifice for power to the devil, can we get a little bit of devil? Come on.

Instead we get upper aged teenagers having to carry out most of the evil deeds. Once this aspect of the film starts, it gets crazy and stays chaotic until the very end. It was highly entertaining, watching them try to get our main kid, dying in horrific ways, while also not just outright trying to kill him back.

I mean, these real people have some standards, you know?

Amell was the most hilarious of the group, totally doing better than many of his other recent works. Maybe it is just because he had his shirt off the whole time, and that appealed to my senses.

The Babysitter takes awhile to get really going, isn’t a great movie at all, but it is very, very fun once it fully embraces its plot.

The Strangers was a really popular horror film a decade ago when it came out and I of course never watched it. Okay, I did see it last week, just to prepare for this sequel, to see why people were excited. There is a lot to like for those who want more realism in their films about people getting killed.

It was terrifying because it was set up as a completely random occurrence, it was something that could ¨happen to anyone¨ and not just people who drank or smoked or whatever. The bad people don´t have some strange backstories, hell, we never get to see their faces. They just torture, kill, and leave.

I watched that movie just to have some context for The Strangers: Prey at Night, and boy howdy, I am surely glad I did that. If I did not see the original, I would have never known just how badly this so called sequel actually was.

The lady in the back will help her fit through those holes.

This film centers us on a family going through turmoil. No, not people with knives, just teenage disobedience. We got a mom (Christina Hendricks), a dad (Martin Henderson), an older brother (Lewis Pullman), and our hero I guess, Kinsey (Bailee Madison).

Kinsey is a bit of a fuck up. Besides the underage drinking and smoking, she got into some serious problems over the last year and now her parents cannot deal with her anymore. She is going to boarding school, and they are all going to drive her down there. It is the last shot they have to fix her. They are staying the night in a trailer at one of their relative´s resorts, their last night as a family.

Oh, and then they find out that everyone is gone or dead there. And the three masked people are around, trying to spook them, or even kill them, or worse, sell them on the black market. Probably not the former. They just want to kill them for the lols.

Starring Damian Maffei, Lea Enslin, and Emma Bellomy as our masked killers.

Fear is imagining the hardworking Hendricks as a boring stay at home mother.

Everything good and wonderful about the first film was thrown out of the window for this follow up.

There was one or so surprises in the sequel. I will give it that. Things that I didn´t think would ever happen did happen, so it gave some nice shock. But that was the only positive.

Instead of regular people getting tortured by seemingly regular people, we instead have a whole family being terrorized by superhuman monsters. They are seemingly invulnerable at times, including one of them near the end that just never stops. Suddenly the guy with the bag head is Jason I guess.

Not to mention their ability to teleport around this trailer park area. It is crazy how they always happen to know which house they are hiding in. They always have someone nearby ready to go, even if they were just at some other place. I am having a hard time typing it, but coincidence central could be this movie. The movie was better when it was a single house because it all made sense then. But a giant resort village? Yeah right.

This film feels like it was not meant to be a sequel to The Strangers, but they changed their mind and said fuck it for some of that sweet brand recognition. Everything that made the first film work was just ignored and left to rot.

When We First Met is a time traveling based Netflix original movie, and honestly, one I only really went out of my way to watch because of the cast members.

Because it sounds like Friendzone the movie, and the friend zone is fucking stupid.

I told my wife the only way that this film could be maybe good is if he realizes this whole time travel thing is bullshit and that he needs to let life happen as it is, so that it feels a lot less rapey.

In general I prefer my comedies to not get rapey.

Apparently they time traveled back to World War II.

Noah (Adam Devine) really loves Avery (Alexandra Daddario). She just thinks he is a friend. You see, three years ago they met at a party and had a wonderful night. It was special. They had so much passion! And yet it ended with a hug. The next day, Avery met Ethan (Robbie Amell), they fell in love, and now they are getting engaged to be married soon!

Sad times, guess it wasn´t meant to be, Noah! Time to take it all back in, count your chickens, whatever, and move on. Psyche! Time to get wasted, cry, and be a nuisance. Somehow, this leads him to a photobooth that takes him back three years to the day they first met.

Oh wonderful! Time to fix everything and make them fall in love, or at least have some sex. But, shenanigans, it turns out that messing with time can have some consequences.

Also starring Shelley Hennig and Andrew Bachelor.

These business outfits probably came from my closet.

Look, I don´t need to waste too much time on this review. The film never really feels original. It never really feels super funny (although occasionally amusing). Our main character is a total dumbass. He believes he had the perfect first date with this lady, except he couldn´t kiss her to seal the deal. So one would imagine if he goes back in time to ¨fix things¨ he would recreate everything the same, but also, you know, kiss her or make his intentions clear.

But no. He wants to recreate himself every time. Ultra cool, ultra dick, ultra successful, all these iterations are just awkward and pointless. He is apparently a man of extremes only. It was like a really bad version of Bedazzled. Yes, I am saying that Bedazzled isn´t bad.

The film is very predictable as well, which is only an issue because nothing else really works for it. The acting is poor, the plot is poor, the jokes are poor, and if you also already know what is going to happen, then you are left wondering why you are watching the thing in the first place.

When We First Met reminds us that just because it has a time travel component does not a complex movie make.

I received a screener for the indie film Flower awhile before it came out, at least a whole month. It seems like they were going hard on the advertisement campaign, at least from the critic level. I of course accepted to watch it, I love online screeners. All of the value of theaters, but in my chair at home.

But really in this introduction, I just want to talk about the plot description. “A sexually curious teen forms an unorthodox kinship with her mentally unstable stepbrother.”

Oh. Oh no. They are going to have sex aren’t they? That is the only thing I am getting out of this, and well, from the first frame of the first scene, I assumed there’d be some forms of pseudo incest in this movie.

Well, that is probably not the stepbrother.

Erica (Zoey Deutch) is a 17 year old girl, and she is obsessed with dicks. Like little kid Jonah Hill in Superbad obsessed, except she doesn’t have one of her own. She also loves blow jobs. Erica and her friends (Dylan Gelula, Maya Eshet) use these obsessions to their advantage, by giving blow jobs to older people, especially those with authority, in order to blackmail them for cash. This is a fun review so far.

Erica is doing it (besides for enjoyment) to raise money to bail her real dad out of jail. In the mean time, her mother (Kathryn Hahn) has found someone new to finally be with (Tim Heidecker). Someone who will put up with Erica’s antics (not in that way).

Well, he also comes with an older son, who is about to get out of rehab. That means Erica is going to gain a soon to be step brother (Joey Morgan), who took lame drugs, has anger issues, and is totally overweight. She still has agreed to be nice to him and to get him better into society. What she learns is that he also claims to have been sexually assaulted by a teacher a few years back.

Now Erica and Luke are going to get together, to get revenge, and maybe form a bond for their dysfunctional family.

Also starring Adam Scott and Eric Edelstein.

Nope. Neither of these people are probably her stepbrother either.

Without a doubt, Flower took my worst fears as to what this movie might be about and ran with them. They were not worried about being a film that had morals or anything to stop them, they just wanted to tell a story no matter how fucked it was. Underage girls talking about and doing blow jobs, blackmail, blackmail, and blackmail. Love of a step sibling, or soon to be step sibling, which is technically not wrong just frowned upon. We´re looking at you Brady Bunch.

And that isn´t even all of the messed up events that occur, just the rest of them would constitute spoilers, and I am not going to do you like that.

Deutch carries this film as our wild lead, straddling the line between extremely in control young person and winging it girl who always manages to squeeze by. She cares not about her reputation, so her actions can become quite erratic and it is a fun film to see.

I was very surprised by Morgan as well, assuming I would hate him, solely based on his looks and backstory. But as a troubled individual, he carried his own weight and they both felt like individually unique star crossed characters.

Flowers is not a great movie. But it is especially out there and a bit weird, which is all I really want and need to appreciate sometimes.