The Review: Bloodhounds

Bloodhounds 8/10

I saw a clip from this show online and was like “What is this?!” Found out that it was Netflix and decided to watch while I still have the service considering I forget it exists. This show kicked all kinds of ass for the most part. It got weird (for weird life reasons) towards the end and I could tell that they had to pivot in a large way. This is about this kid named Gun-woo that is a fucking amazing boxer. He fights amateur and is taking everyone out with one punch to the kidney. He is also good at blocking which is very helpful as the story goes on. He ends up facing this guy named Woo-jin who is also very good and ends up beating him. Woo-jin is tough. He actually got up after the first knock down. Later Gun-woo meets Woo-jin and asks if he wants to get something to eat. These two become the best of friends!

The Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mutant Mayhem

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mutant Mayhem 9/10

It takes a certain style of art and humor for me to be into any new animated movie. Some I look at it and go “Meh” or “That bothers me” and I won't watch. But after Ro suggested this after seeing that I have made a ton of turtle based designs said I would enjoy this. When I say this movie got me from the start I mean it. A damned ninja turtle movie started off with “Ante Up” by MOP! By the way, the music in this is incredible. The ones they use and the original soundtrack. This movie was delightful as fuck.

The Review: Demascus

Demascus 10/10

This was an incredible series. I found out online a couple of months ago that this show existed that was gonna be on AMC and then dumped and Tubi picked it up. Me and my lady decided to check this series out and I was thoroughly invested in this. I was in such a hurry to finish that I accidentally skipped an episode. This takes place in 2023 and this guy Demascus who goes to a therapist named Dr. Bonnetville. He is trying to figure out who and what he is. She tells him to give this new virtual therapy device called D.I.R.T (Digital Immersive Reality Therapy). Using this he gets to go into his subconscious and experience other versions of reality featuring him and people he knows (or possibly don't really exist.

The Review: A Wesley Christmas Wedding

A Wesley Christmas Wedding 0/10

Another Wesley movie another piece of ass. L and I started watching the third movie on accident and were trying to piece together what we recalled from the first movie. She then discovered that we missed the second movie (this one) so we started watching. This movie dumb. Its based around the bootleg Chris Brown son getting married to his sisters friend from the first movie. Turns out his ex wife that cheated is still married to him and he never settled that. He does by paying her two million dollars. His future wife, Ryan, has a mother that was acting like she was auditioning for a sequel to Mommie Dearest. Like, her character was far too outlandish for even this film.

The Review: Renfield

Renfield 5/10

This movie had the potential to be really good but a shoehorned love story/cop tale turned this into something that felt more like the pilot of a series on NBC that would get canceled halfway through the first season. This is about Renfield. He is the familiar for Dracula. Like, the for real ass Dracula. He eats bugs and gets powerful and knows martial arts. He begins to feel like he is in a codependent relationship with Dracula and goes to a support group to learn how to deal with it. Meanwhile a cop whose father was murdered and no one was ever caught crosses paths with him because he has to slaughter people for Dracula to survive. This movie has a great cast (except for one person who I struggle to listen to when they talk) and some creatively crazy fight scenes. But this just felt flat and I wish I liked it more.

Nicholas Hoult as Robert Montague Renfield

Nicolas Cage as Dracula

Awkwafina as Officer Rebecca Quincy

Ben Schwartz as Tedward Lobo

Shohreh Aghdashloo as Bellafrancesca Lobo

Click here for previous The Review.

The Review: T.I.M

T.I.M 2/10

Taking a break out of writing another review to knock this one out. My lady told me about this movie called T.I.M and said that I was gonna like it or shit on it. Well, I got my cheeks spread and not in joy. This movie is pretending to be a lot of other better films. If this had come out in the early 2000's or maybe late 90s it would have been more novel. But watching this in 2024 I knew what was gonna happen, who was gonna die, and how it would end within the first ten minutes. By the way, this movie moved by at a snails pace. This engineer named Abi gets a high position at the robotic company she works at. She gets a prototype for for a robot servant named Tim that she has to take. Excuse me? Abi and her husband Paul move into this new home for a fresh start because Paul is a ho. Since she can't trust him around other women I guess moving to a place where there is no one else works. Oh, and he doesn't have a job as far as I could tell.

The Review: American Fiction

American Fiction 10/10

This was a great film! That's all I should say and make you watch this on Amazon but people need more evidence so I will talk some about this. Thelonious “Monk” Ellison is a smart ass writer of books but rubs people the wrong way constantly. In his class one of his students is uncomfortable with him using the n-word in a old book and he causes her to storm out the room. I didn't disagree with him, though. I don't use the word but I remember in high school they had us reading Tom Sawyer and it was the first time I got to use that word with the hard R. I felt good because they were making us read that wack shit but bad because I hate the word. Back to the movie.

The Review: The Marvels

The Marvel 0/10

This movie was ass. That's all you need to read because I am gonna ramble about how much I disliked this nonsense that had no need to be made. “Does anything really need to be made?” Shut up. No one likes you. So I watched Captain Marvel years ago and it was ass. I couldn't force myself to finish the Ms Marvel series. I really enjoyed Monica in WandaVision even though she was kneecapped from the start. I wrote a blog about how she was actually the first Captain Marvel (click here to read that). So this movie starts with Captain Marvel destroying a planets sun and bouncing. The villain of this who I won't bother mentioning by name because she was so terrible is looking for some bracelets that will give her the power to replenish her planet and be powerful. Its 2010 level Marvel villain shit and I hoped we were past that. When she uses the bracelet it starts messing with the different Marvel powers and each time they use them they switch places. Sometimes. Not all the time. This movie is inconsistent with this and the fighting skills of all three ladies.

The Review: Barbie

Barbie 8/10

I liked this weird ass movie. I wasn't in a rush to see it in theaters because the people rushing to see it honestly. You know how you can like a musician but not the fans? Yeah. Same thing. So Barbie is living her best life in Barbieland. The Barbie's, of which there are many kind, just enjoy life doing Barbie things while the Ken's just battle for their attention. One of the Ken's is into barbie and is only happy when she is around. One day Barbie wonders out loud about death and the party stops. She plays it off but the next morning wakes up with bad breath, her food is coming out wrong, and she suddenly has flat feet which freak everyone out. They tell her to go see Weird Barbie which made me crack up because my cousin had one when we were little. Turns out almost every woman I know had some weird ass barbie that they beat up or gave bad haircuts to. I did not know this was a for real thing.

The Review: Dream Scenario

Dream Scenario 9/10

The other night L. and I watched this movie she found called Dream Scenario. I had not heard of this movie at all but am glad I watched it. Her, not so much. She got legit mad at the stuff that was happening to the main character in this. I should explain what the movie is about. This guy named Paul who is a biology professor is in the backyard with his daughter when things start raining from the sky. He has no reaction to it. Suddenly she starts floating into the sky while he just watches. It turns out to be a dream. Students at school start looking at him weird and he and his wife bump into one of his old girlfriends. She says that she had a dream about Paul as well and they decide to meet up later. Paul is a very bland kind of guy who plans to write a book about ants while an old colleague is already in the process of doing the same in a magazine. This man never stands up for himself.

The Review: Poor Things

Poor Things 1/10

I gave this a 1 instead of a 0 because L. and I finished it. We had half an hour left before going to sleep and finished it the next morning. This movie was ass. There is literally nothing I liked about it. It felt like it was trying to imitate better films and directors and failing at every aspect. I should probably talk about what happened in this four hour feeling ass thing. This lady jumps off of a bridge and lands in some water. A guy fishes her out and a doctor pays him for the corpse. Next thing you know the doctor who looks like something from a horror movie has this woman who seems to have the personality of a toddler. His named is Godwin Baxter aka God. The woman is named Bella. She eats food and spits it out. Pisses on the floor. Just all manner of strange shit.

Documentality: They Called Him Mostly Harmless

They Called Him Mostly Harmless 8/10

Spoilers!!! This was insane! L. mentioned hearing about this on a podcast and we checked it out. This hiker known to other hikers as Mostly Harmless was found dead in his tent in 2018. He had money and food but weighed about 83 pounds. He had no identification on him and even when he was fingerprinted nothing came up. They speak to other hikers who met him and took pictures with him but no one knows his real name. They had experts and others talk about how hard it is to actually be as unknown as this guy was. I just wanted to know if they eventually found out who he was. L. assured me that we would know his name by the time this ended. His body was discovered by some other hikers after smelling some dead human funk and alerted authorities. They tried their best to make an image of what he may have looked like alive from his body. It looked horrifying.

The Review: The Color Purple

The Color Purple 1/10

The funny thing about me giving this a 1/10 is that it still feels a little bit too high. L. and I watched this last weekend on a whim. I remember when I heard this was being made and scoffed. I know that the first movie (which I saw every week as a child because my parents were strange and rented it from Cal-Fal) is based off of a book (which I read a tiny bit of) and this movie is based off of the musical (which L. has seen). That being said...wow. This was super bad. I know that a lot of reviews praised this movie and that is because they don't wanna come across as racist. I'm Black. I'm gonna just come across as a asshole. Don't get me wrong. I love musicals. I just didn't like this movie. Let me explain why.

Documentality: Chowchilla

Chowchilla 7/10

So L. and I watch this documentary on HBO that was originally done on CNN called Chowchilla. This was insane. I had never heard about this case before where a bus full of 26 students and the bus driver were kidnapped. So these kids riding the bus just living their best weird ass Central California life when these guys wearing stockings over their face and holding guns stop the bus. Now the bus driver let them on and all I could think about was that if this ever happened on the public transit that I ride. The bus driver would immediately let anybody on seeing as how they let on screaming, yelling homeless people daily. So these kids get taken for a ride and then they're moved into this underground bunker type thing and next thing you know they hear dirt being shoveled on top of them. These kids started having hallucinations and pretty much losing their minds as you would expect. The bus driver tries to rescue them by lifting this lid and he can't do it but one of the boys is able to. This boy is a true hero this story but what sucks is that the bus driver got all of the credit. Even on this bus driver's Tombstone when he died years later they put that he was a hero.

Documentality: Natalia Speaks

Natalia Speaks 4/10

I have to stay for the record that L. and I did watch the first Natalia Grace (which I would have given a 9/10 just for pure nonsense factor) documentary. For some reason I did not write about it and assumed that I had. The basic premise is that this couple name the Barnett's adopted this little girl named Natalia who was from a Ukrainian orphanage. Over time they started saying that she had mental problems and that she was violent and would do things like stand at the edge of their bed holding a knife and attacking other children. Next thing you know they got this girl in a mental hospital and then moved her own her own to this two-story house and then they also moved her to this place that looks like the type of area you would go to do drugs and die. So the entire time the family is saying this is an adult woman pretending to be a little girl because they said she got her period and had pubic hair and the way she talked seemed to adult for a child. That's the basic story going into this chaos.

The Review: Candy Cane Lane

 

Candy Cane Lane 6/10

Another holiday movie that we watched was Candy Cane Lane. This was an okay movie but it just felt a little bit too long and as if there were way too many stories going on at the same time. It's about this guy named Chris Carver who likes to make his own decorations for the holidays. His neighborhood goes crazy when it's time for Christmas and the entire street is decked out. He ends up going into work and laid off right before the holidays like a lot of these movies do because everybody has a horrible boss. He also finds out that this year that there will be a prize of $100,000 for whoever wins the best decorations on the street. He also has three kids with his wife. His youngest daughter is named Holly and she's the light skin child of this movie. I bet you I thought I was joking, but every one of these movies no matter what the couple looks like there's going to be a little curly hair light skinned child as the daughter. He also has two other kids with holiday themed names. His son Nick plays a tuba and wants to make music but they want him to do something else. And their daughter Joy is a track runner and they want her to go to USC but she does not want to.

The Review: Christmas Of Yes

Christmas Of Yes 6/10

I have a lot of Christmas movie reviews to do so I'm going to be trying to knock out the easier ones first. The first movie that L and I watched was called Christmas Of Yes. This is about a woman named Amy who does nothing but work. She's not interesting. That seems to be a premise of a lot of holiday movies that involve women who are very busy. They have no life and all there is is work and they don't have time for relationships or friends or anything. They just work. They have no personality. So she goes into work where she is high up and very well respected and loved by everybody because not only does she work hard, but she also makes incredibly good coffee. So at work they tell her after a merger that she is no longer needed. She ends up getting fired right before the holidays. To cheer her up her brother and his boyfriend decide to make a bet with her that until Christmas she cannot refuse anything and must say yes to whatever they ask or anyone else ask her to do. This sounds incredibly dangerous but I'll go with it.

The Review: Leave The World Behind

Leave The World Behind -3/10

The amount of hatred I have for this movie is incredible. I am a semi-rational person and I understand that art is supposed to be subjective. But the movie Leave the World Behind is legitimately one of the worst movies I have ever seen in my life. L. suggested that we watch this and I was not super opposed to it because I didn't know anything about it but was aware that two big actors were in it. I was very surprised and I discovered there was a big actress in it as well. So we started this movie and right now I am trying my best not to jump to the ending that pushed me over the edge and just stick with the fact that this movie had no redeeming qualities. I have watched some really terrible movies where I can say at least it was shot well or at least it had good music. This is not one of those movies.

Curtain Call: Freight The Five Incarnations of Abel Green

Freight The Five Incarnations of Abel Green 10/10

This past weekend L. took me to see one of the best live performances I have ever seen. It is called Freight: The Five Incarnations of Abel Green. It stars J. Alphonse Nicholson who I know from seeing in the background of a few TV series and also on the show P Valley. This is a solo show and I don't think I've ever actually seen a solo show live before. He plays a man named Abel Green and it goes through five different monologues and each one is a different version of Abel throughout time. The first one takes place in the early 1900s where he is part of a minstrel show. The second one he's a faith healer who gets really popular and very wealthy only to discover the truth about his healing abilities and his faith. The third one he's an FBI informant that's pretty much snitching on the Black Panthers in the 1960s. The fourth he's an actor who has all of the guilt for turning his back on a friend after discovering he is HIV positive. The final one he's a homeless man around 2010 and he tells a story of how he became that way.

Documentality: Love Has Won The Cult Of Mother God

Love Has Won 8/10

Last week L. and I watched this crazy ass documentary called Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God. This is about this lady named Amy Carlson who started a cult called Love Has Won. What is the point of this cult? What was their main goal? What is their mission statement? I have no idea. I have looked online I have watched other videos about this group of people and I have absolutely no idea what the point of it was. From these three episodes it seems like she had a pretty normal life. She also has an abusive husband and different relationships and then one day she quit her job at McDonald's and left her kids behind. Next thing you know she's with this old man and they're doing a bunch of seemingly hippie stuff together. She ends up leaving him and some other men that she ends up calling Father God until she settles on this one guy who is so crazy seeming it is scary.