Missile Test Predicts! 2016 Degenerate Gambler Edition

The Oval Office Thunderdome desk hasn’t been all that busy this election cycle, but that certainly isn’t because of a lack of subject matter. This election has been among the most anguished in all of American history. Much of the electorate is in disbelief that someone with as many disqualifications for public office still has a shot at winning the Oval Office. Continue reading “Missile Test Predicts! 2016 Degenerate Gambler Edition”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Independence Day: Resurgence, or, Who Are the People on the Boat?

This fucking movie, I swear to God. More than once while I was watching Independence Day: Resurgence did I utter that profaneness. It’s just such a silly movie. It’s also breathtaking in scale, as evidenced by a moment when the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, which also happens to normally be in Dubai, is dropped on London. This is a movie whose aspirations for an international audience are plain to see. There’s the requisite inclusion of token Chinese characters, and even a scene where a Chinese city is sucked up into the sky. That’s how one can know the Chinese have arrived as a world power. We are now destroying their cities in apocalyptic movies. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Independence Day: Resurgence, or, Who Are the People on the Boat?”

Half-Baked Ideas: Baseball

Major League Baseball games are too long, especially during the postseason. Lengthy commercial breaks and players slowing down the game as the pressure mounts in later innings take the designed, leisurely pace of the game and grind it to a halt. Because of the very nature of the game, changing things to speed up the game is difficult without altering the game too much. How much is too much is up for debate, but baseball is more than just the sum of its rules. More than any other sport, baseball’s past is still relevant to players’ and fans’ senses of the sport. It is a game hostile to disruptions of its core elements, leading it to grow increasingly anachronistic as time goes on. It’s a sport ripe for some half-baked ideas. Continue reading “Half-Baked Ideas: Baseball”

October Horrorshow: Halloween: Resurrection

I don’t know what I’m going to do. This is the eighth year that I’ve done the October Horrorshow, and at the end of every year, on Halloween, I’ve reviewed one of the Halloween movies. But, with Halloween: Resurrection, I’ve run out. This is it — the last of the movies from the original franchise. I already reviewed the Rob Zombie remakes before the Horrorshow existed, so those are out, as well. There is a new flick in the works, but apparently it’s stuck in development hell and won’t be in the can before next year’s Horrorshow. Oh, man. My hands are shaking and my heart is beating fast. This feels exactly like when I graduated college and the rest of my life was staring me in the face. I can see far but there’s nothing but blackness at the end. I’m…lost. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Halloween: Resurrection”

October Horrorshow: Hush

A film doesn’t have to have a boatload of jump scares or shocking moments to be frightening. I’ve found that jump scares in particular, when overused, to be detrimental to the quality of a horror film. But Hush, the 2016 film co-written and directed by Mike Flanagan, and starring fellow co-writer Kate Siegel, does not rely on quick instances of surprise to juice up its fright with adrenaline. Rather, Flanagan and Siegel place their protagonist in a situation that is naturally horrifying, and use the tension that creates to settle a viewer into deep, feature-length unease. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Hush”

October Horrorshow: Class of 1999

It’s the future, 1999, and the inner cities of America’s once great metropolises have been overrun by youth gangs. Areas surrounding high schools have been declared free fire zones. Police and authorities do not enter. Violence and drugs are rampant. Citizens are warned that if they enter these areas, they do so at their own risk. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Class of 1999″

October Horrorshow: The Conjuring 2

The Conjuring, the 2013 horror film from director James Wan and screenwriters Chad and Carey Hayes, is among the most frightening horror films I’ve ever seen. It did such an effective job at giving me the heebies that I won’t watch it again for a while. Not because it’s too scary for me to handle, but because I don’t want to become so familiar with the movie that it’s no longer frightening. I want enough of the film to be lost to my memory over time that the next viewing will still catch me off guard. The Conjuring wasn’t a master class in filmmaking, but Wan and company showed that they could use some pretty well worn haunted house tropes and still scare the bejesus out of a viewer who has seen hundreds of horror films. This year’s sequel…not so much. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Conjuring 2″

October Horrorshow: Eight Legged Freaks

Sometimes horror films can be a downer. In preparing for this month of reviews, I watch a lot of horror. For every film that makes it to the Horrorshow, I probably watch two others that didn’t interest me enough to write about. That means I spend a lot of evenings listening to young women scream in terror, watching grievous bodily injury, and living in a state of general anxiety brought about by all that scary stuff on the screen. Sleep is no respite, as we tend to dream about things that are on our minds. It’s not uncommon for me to watch yet another gory horror film followed up by a night of dreaming about the zombie apocalypse or a demonic presence in my home. Good grief. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Eight Legged Freaks”