Purple and Black
Taking Independent and Unofficial Back

Let's Hope 2025 Brings Better Movies Than Last Year!

HAVOC, PART 2 OF ____ PARTS

The cop that got crushed by the cocaine-laden washing machine is in the hospital and it turns out he's part of a five-member crooked cop gang out of Narcotics. Also in the gang are Timothy Olyphant and, kind of, Tom Hardy. Hardy was a full-fledged member of the crooked cop gang but went soft so they kicked him out of Narcotics and put him in Homicide.

The crooked cop gang has a secret - they'd shown up somewhere to steal a bunch of drugs but a dude walked in on them. He got throat-slashed but before he died, the crooked cop gang found out that dude was a cop too, although an undercover cop. Hardy insists they have to get him to a hospital but Timothy Olyphant disagrees and settles the disagreement by shooting the undercover cop. This was the point at which the other four guys considered Hardy "soft" and booted him out of Narcotics.

Now that we know all the relevant facts, the rest of the movie is dedicated to the shooting, stabbing, scything, clawing, burning and bludgeoning of as many people as possible - all in the service of getting Forrest Whitaker's son and that girl to safety.

SIDENOTE: The girl has an uncle who owns a salvage yard and produces fake passports on the side. The uncle is played by Luis Guzman. Here is Luis Guzman:

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You know that guy! You're probably like me - you think you've seen him in a million things. I sure did! But when I checked his filmography, I found out I'd only seen him in maybe three things. Wow, talk about a recognizable face!

Back to all the havoc. In what can in no way be described as a spoiler, everyone gets blown to bits except Hardy, the guy and the girl. Literally everyone else dies via the multiple ways I described above.

It's clear that "Havoc" is aimed squarely at the demographic of which RodeoSchro is a member - there are 1,750 reviews on Google and there are as many 5-star ratings as their are 1-star ratings. I need to find the 875 dudes who rated this as five stars and hang out with them.

You can go ahead and insert a "2" in the line at the top of this post because really, even I have only so many ways to describe being shot, stabbed, scythed, clawed, burned or bludgeoned to a bitter end. Suffice to say that I'm giving "Havoc" 4.5 Speargunned Chinese Crime Lady Karate Champions out of 5 Speargunned Chinese Crime Lady Karate Champions although - and this IS a spoiler - there is only one Chinese Crime Lady Karate Champion in "Havoc".

It's still the best movie of the year so far, though!
 
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FIGHT OR FLIGHT
May 13, 2025

More like Fight AND Flight, amirite?

Of course I am! Let me summarize thusly:

Josh Hartnett gets on a flight and spends the entire time fighting bad guys.

Ta-dah! The one-minute movie review!

And really - do you need more? Nope, but you're gonna get more!

There's a baddie called "The Ghost". No one knows who The Ghost is or if The Ghost is a man or woman. All they know is The Ghost is a master techno thief whose taken down companies, countries and whatnot. The Steely-Eyed Lady needs to capture The Ghost and gets a chance when The Ghost is spotted on CCTV leaving a place in Bangkok where The Ghost has killed a bunch of people. They know that's The Ghost because it's the only person that left that building alive; therefore, The Ghost.

She and her horrible assistant are able to track The Ghost into a cab and it's apparent The Ghost is going to the Bangkok airport. Quick, get a Tac Team on it! Except...the closest Tac Team is in Singapore and can't possibly get to Bangkok before whatever plane The Ghost is going to board - and aren't you proud of me for not calling The Ghost "Tha Ghost"? You should be!

The Steely-Eyed Lady's horrible assistant says, "We don't have anyone!" but the Steely-Eyed Lady says, "We have one option, if you can even call it that".

And here comes Josh Hartnett! He's hung over, passed out in a Pedicab, and in the process of having an eight-year-old with a cigarette behind his ear take Hartnett's folding money. But of course Hartnett wakes up, stops the kid, fires up the cancer stick, remembers he hates smoking, and lets the kid go. He then does the only natural thing and heads to his local bar for a liquid breakfast.

Whereupon he's set upon by The Steely-Eyed Lady's goons who, I guess, are goonie enough to apprehend Hartnett but not goonie enough to apprehend The Ghost. And as it turns out, they aren't goonie enough to apprehend Hartnett either, so the Steely-Eyed Lady made the right choice in not sending the goons after The Ghost. They'd have been mincemeat in no time at all. How do I know this?

Because Hartnett turned them into mincemeat! But the Steely-Eyed Lady calls Hartnett and convinces him to go after The Ghost.

Hartnett had been in the Secret Service but got fired when, while on a detail in Thailand or somewhere, stepped in and stopped a pervy American dude from beating up a prostitute for fun. The pervy American dude did not come out of that confrontation alive, which was bad for Hartnett because the pervy dude's brother was the Deputy Director of the CIA and declared a jihad on Hartnett, forcing Hartnett to run for his life for the rest of his life.

But if Hartnett can just get on the plane with The Ghost and bring The Ghost in alive, all will be forgiven. What choice does Hartnett have? Well, only one if he wants to finish the movie!

One of the Steely-Eyed Lady's tech dudes finds an itinerary for The Ghost hidden on the Dark Web. What a break! Now they know WHICH plane The Ghost is getting on! It's the one heading for San Francisco, so Hartnett gets on it.

And that's where both the flight AND the fight begin!

HEY WHAT A GREAT SEQUE THIS WOULD MAKE INTO A PART TWO SO I'M CALLING "SEGUE!" AND NOW FOR SOME REASON I WANT TO RIDE A SEGWAY, WHICH IS SOMETHING I HAVE NEVER DONE.
 
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FIGHT OR FLIGHT, PART TWO. GREAT SEQUE, BUT NO MORE SEGWAY REFERENCES, AS THIS TAKES PLACE ON AN AIRPLANE AND THERE'S NOT ENOUGH ROOM TO RIDE A SEGWAY ON AN AIRPLANE. THAT DOES NOT MEAN MY DREAM TO RIDE IS A SEGWAY IS GOING TO GO UNFULFILLED THOUGH!

Hartnett has a seat in first class and his seatmate is both an aspiring singer/actor AND a contract killer. He gives Hartnett a loaded drink but because Hartnett is a Professional Drinker, all it does is make him woozy but not woozy enough to be killed. There's a great fight in the first-class shower/bathroom/locker room, during which at one point the contract killer bonks his head on the toiler and I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE THINKING:

He's gonna get killed via getting boinked on the head by a toilet lid because no one can survive getting boinked on the head by a toilet lid!

Alas, he is not boinked on the head by a toilet lid but he is dispatched in quite the imaginative manner.

Two flight attendants discover the mayhem and Hartnett has to level with them. As it turns out - and this is no spoiler - one of the attendants is The Ghost and in fact, Hartnett somehow knew almost immediately who The Ghost was. It also turns out The Ghost's itinerary had been discovered by all the contract killers in the greater Bangkok metropolitan area, and there are a LOT of contract killers in the greater Bangkok metropolitan area. They somehow all made the flight and: (a) there's a $10 million bounty on the scalp of The Ghost, so they all want to kill The Ghost so as to collect the bounty, and/but (b) Hartnett is the only person on board who wants to take The Ghost alive. Therefore, Hartnett and The Ghost have to partner up.

This would have worked great except someone texted a picture of Hartnett to all the contract killers on board and it's not exactly clear why, but now all the contract killers want to kill Hartnett - either because they think he's The Ghost, or they're told he stands between them and The Ghost/$10 million.

Thus begins the fight part of the movie in earnest.

Great fights too! Luckily, The Ghost has three female Samurai Warriors on board as a security detail - although they all ultimately die in amusing ways - but the general mayhem is very entertaining.

Now, for the actual SPOILER ALERT and really - don't read it if you want to enjoy "Fight or Flight" to its full Enjoyment Capacity.

SPOILER ALERT

NO, REALLY - SPOILER ALERT

FINAL WARNING - SPOILER ALERT

First of all, the Steely-Eyed Lady does NOT work for the government, although we're led to believe that. Nope, she works for an evil corporation. The Ghost has invented the most powerful computer ever and it could be used for incredible good OR to illegally amass incredible wealth. The Steely-Eyed Lady and her horrible assistant are focused on the latter.

But not The Ghost! Hartnett got thrown out of the Secret Service basically because he has a conscious and as it turns out, so does The Ghost, In fact, all that hacking The Ghost had done was done to attack various child trafficking organizations. The Ghost is a force for good!

Hartnett figures all this out and in the end, he and The Ghost defeat the Steely-Eyed Lady. They did not need to defeat the Steely-Eyed Lady's horrible assistant, as the Steely-Eyed Lady did that job for them.

In the climactic battle, Hartnett is wounded and when he wakes up, he's in a battlefield hospital. You know it's a battlefield hospital because a big battle is taking place outside.

The Ghost bursts in, untethers Hartnett from the various tubes keeping him alive, and says, "Come on! It's not over! We've got more to do!"

Fin.

And sequel! And franchise! And, really?

Because we shall end this by going down the Josh Hartnett rabbit hole and after we do, you'll be as surprised as I was that he signed up for what is hoped to be a franchise.

First of all - wait, let's start with second of all. This is a Prince-related site, after all.

Hartnett is from Saint Paul, Minnesota and yes - he DID get to hang around Prince some. He had an ex-girlfriend who knew him, back in the 80's/'90's. He spoke highly of Prince, saying he never saw Prince make his bodyguards give him piggy-back rides.

But FIRST of all - his dad played guitar in Al Green's band! Apparently not for very long, as a quick Google search of "Daniel Hartnett Al Green" didn't turn up any credits, but HE PLAYED WITH AL GREEN. Clearly, Josh Hartnett grew up in a very cool environment.

Mainly though, Hartnett likes acting but doesn't like fame. At ALL. He's 46 and he's still not sure he even wants to BE an actor. So he seems like an unlikely guy to commit to a franchise, but it looks like that's exactly what happened.

Will that be cool, too? I don't know, that's up to the writers. OR - that could be up to me! You all know that I would make a great writer, so maybe I should start now! This would be a daunting franchise to tackle - "Fight or Flight" had five-count-em-five people credited as "Crowd Dressers". This movie takes place mainly on a plane and it took five people to blandly dress all the contract killers from the greater Bangkok metropolitan area?

I can handle that. I know I can!

Therefore, knowing that if I write the sequel it will get five stars, I can only rate the original, non-RodeoSchro-written film as 4 Stab Wounds out of 5 Stab Wounds. Gotta save the top slot for me and my imminent Oscar!
 
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SINNERS
May 21, 2025

To spoil or not to spoil, that is the question.

The answer - of course - is to spoil! So there WILL be spoilers and this is your only warning.

First spoiler - the more you think about this movie, the more you get bummed out. So for some of you, here is my advice - go see it, turn off your brain while in the theater, and then turn your brain on again when you leave but don't think about the plot holes.

"Sinners" is a movie that looks great. It's almost a great movie, too! Don't get me wrong, I liked it. But seeing as how we went to the No Booze But Chow theater and had no booze OR chow, my brain was and is working at 100%. And that leads me to plot holes.

The plot - before the holes - is that two Black guys come back home to Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1932. This is when and where Robert Johnson allegedly sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads, although that particular bit of legend is never mentioned in the movie. Well, maybe it was when I went to the bathroom in the middle but I highly doubt it. So we're going to call this PLOT HOLE #1.

These two guys - Smoke and Stack, played by Michael B. Jordan and Michael B. Jordan respectively - are criminals just back from working with/looting Al Capone in Chicago. They want to open a juke joint in their home town and make people happy, plus also make money.

They have a cousin named Sammie, an aspiring blues guitarist who actually opens the film by staggering into his father's church, covered in blood and carrying the broken neck off a guitar. Then we go back one day in time to see why Sammie is covered in blood, etc. etc. etc.

Wait - the REAL opening of the film is some voodoo stuff telling us that every so often, a musician comes around who can connect us with the dead, or something like that. THEN Sammie staggers into the church. OK, we're now all caught up.

Smoke and Stack buy an old sawmill from a white dude on Saturday morning, planning to convert it into that juke joint and open it that night. Lots to do in one day, huh! So they split up.

Stack and Sammie go to the train station and pick up Delta Slim, a legendary harmonica player and played legendarily by the legendary actor Delroy Lindo, whose name itself is legendary. Stack runs into his old girlfriend Mary, who's white and that of course complicates matters in 1932 Mississippi.

Smoke goes into town, buys some supplies for the juke joint, shoots two dudes for trying to steal the hooch out of the back of his truck, then visits his estranged wife Annie for some reconciliatory boinking, although they disagree on how effective Annie's voodoo was whilst Smoke and Stack were fighting in WW1.

Meanwhile, a dude all covered in blood shows up at the shotgun shack of a KKK couple. At least, Wikipedia tells me they are a KKK couple but I never saw that mentioned in the film. Maybe when I went to the bathroom? Whatever, the bloody dude shows up at the shotgun shack where he is greeted with, of course, a shotgun.

He asks to be let in because Choctaw Indians are chasing him but the shotgun lady says there aren't any Choctaw Indians in 1932 Clarksdale, Mississippi. Nevertheless, she invites him in.

POP QUIZ - what is the one thing you should never invite into a room? A vampire, of course! PLOT HOLE #2 - It's daylight. While the vampire is covered in blood, IT'S DAYLIGHT. At the end of the movie, daylight dissolves most of the newly-created vampires. So how is this guy still alive in the daylight?

Sure enough, some Choctaw Indians DO show up at the shotgun shack, where they too are greeted by a shotgun. They try to tell the lady that the bloody dude isn't who she thinks he is and that she needs give him up to the Choctaw Indians. But it doesn't matter because (a) although she hasn't been vampire-ized yet, she won't admit the guy is inside; and (b) the sun is going down, which means the vampire will...regenerate? Anyway, the Choctaw Indians are too scared to hunt the vampire at night, so they leave. Which is PLOT HOLE #3. They are professional vampire hunters. There are four of them. All professional vampire hunters know how to kill a vampire. Even if the head vampire turned Mr. and Mrs. Klansman into vampires, they still outnumber the vampires. The Choctaw Indian professional vampire hunters are SO CLOSE. Why did they leave and more importantly, why don't they ever show up again?

I don't know but I do know you're going to show up for part two! (Man, my segues are on FIRE.)
 
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SINNERS, PART TWO
DISAPPOINTMENTS, ALL OF YOU

Have y'all seen that t-shirt? The one with Jesus saying, "Disappointments, all of you!"

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It pops up on my feed but the other day, James James did a lesson wearing it.

James James is a great guitarist who covers classic rock songs and also gives lessons on how to play them. He's got an AWESOME t-shirt game. He wears brand-new t-shirts in almost every video. They're almost always music-related, so I was quite surprised to see him wearing the "Disappointments, all of you" t-shirt.

Incredibly, the juke joint is completely ready by nightfall, so the entire black population of Clarksdale, Mississippi comes out for the fun. Sammie plays his guitar and is so good that Bootsie Collins emerges from the future. Or someone that looks like Bootsie Collins. Plus a lot of other spectral guitarists from the past and the future appear, although I think we're the only ones that can see them. And when Sammie quits playing, they all spectrally disappear.

That one vampire - his name is Remmick, which I think is a popular vampire name - shows up with the Klansman Vampire Couple and they ask to be let in. Smoke and Stack say no, but not because they know that these people are vampires. However, Stacks's old girlfriend Mary figures they need the money so she goes out to talk to the threesome. Of course, they turn her into a vampire but no one in the juke joint knows it.

Mary gets back inside and takes Stack into a room for some boinking. And other things, the main thing being the eating of Stack so as to turn him into a vampire. As she's chowing down on Stack's neck, someone comes in and sees it, which leads to Mary - and this is PLOT HOLE #4 - fleeing the juke joint. Now, if you are a vampire who is immortal and basically indestructible and you've just made your way into a target-rich environment, would YOU leave? I didn't think so.

But Mary does and then right before Stack dies humanly, he tells everyone "She bit me". Smoke's estranged wife Annie then realizes that because Smoke told everyone the party is over and they all had to leave - in other words, go outside where Smoke forgot that they'd become fodder for vampires - they are now surrounded by vampires.

They lock Stack in the boinking/throat-eating room, knowing he's going to wake up and want to eat them. Annie has everyone eat some garlic to give them bad breath not suitable for vampire eating but as we see, that worked not at all. The guys break up all the chairs and whittle the pieces into stakes. Various people who've been turned into vampires show up, looking normal, and ask to be let in. Honestly, the best part of the movie is all the inventive dialogue the vampires use to be let in. Remmick even tells Smoke that the only reason the white dude sold him the sawmill is because that guy is the Grand Wizard of the KKK and they are coming back in the morning to kill everyone in the juke joint. And what Remmick really wants is Sammie, on account of Sammie being able to musically summon demons with his guitar, but Smoke declines the offer of Sammie's life for everyone else getting to live.

One vampire is the Chinese shopkeeper Bo. His wife Grace knows he's a vampire and to put it bluntly, she's getting tired of this crap - especially the part about Remmick saying he's going to bite Grace's daughter so ha-ha-ha. She screams "COME IN YOU MF'ERS!" and the battle is on.

The humans are way out-numbered and despite breathing on the vampires with their garlic breath, most of them die. Sadly, Smoke has to shish-ka-bob his estranged wife Annie when she gets bitten. Smoke and Stack have a brawl, with Smoke (the human) apparently getting the better of Stack (the vampire). For some reason, Vampire Mary hauls butt out of the fight but Delroy Slim gets eaten. Bummer!

Sammie runs outside but is caught by Remmick in the river. Sammie smashes Remmick in the head with his guitar, the steel face of which penetrates Remmick's brain. That hurts and since all vampires feel what Remmick feels, they all scream. But of course, a steel guitar face isn't a wooden stake, so Remmick re-groups. Not for long! Smoke comes in from behind and rams Remmick through the heart with a stake, plus also the sun rises, and all the vampires die via dissolving/getting fried to a crisp.

PLOT HOLE #5 is that Annie had explained that vampires are trapped in between worlds or something like that, and can never be reunited with their dead loved ones unless they too are killed. It would seem that any vampire that's killed wouldn't scream in pain but rather would say, "Thank you for staking me through the heart! Elizabeth, this is the big one! I'm coming to see you!" (I'll save you young 'uns the Googling, that's what Redd Foxx would say on "Sanford and Son" whenever he wanted to fake a heart attack and get some sympathy.)

Coming right behind is PLOT HOLE #6. Remmick wasn't lying - that white dude WAS the Grand Wizard of the KKK and he and the rest of the KKK DO show up at the juke joint in order to kill everyone. But they show up in, like, mid-morning. Assuming it had been a vampire-less night before, everyone would have been long gone by the time the KKK showed up.

There is one guy still there, though - Smoke. He took Remmick at his word and was laying in wait for the KKK with his sniper rifle, machine gun, and grenades. He blows them all away but is fatally shot, which leads him to see his dead wife and dead infant daughter. In fact, he sees them BEFORE he blows away the Grand Wizard which may or may not be another plot hole.

Now, we're back to Sammie staggering into his father's church. His father says, "Give up that sinful music and live a sin-free life with me" but the title of this movie is "Sinners" so Sammie says he'll see you later and goes on to a 60-year successful career as a blues man.

We fast-forward to 1992. An 80-or-so-year-old Sammie (played by Buddy Guy) has just finished a set with Kingfish (a real, young blues man. I heard him tear up "Purple Rain" one night on Beale Street in Memphis). Everyone else has left the bar but there's a knock at the door, someone asks if they can come in, and what's the one thing you never do?

Invite a vampire in!

It's Stack and Mary. They haven't aged a bit, although they're wearing the worst 90's-era garb you'll ever see. Stack explains that Smoke didn't drive a stake through his heart in exchange for Stack and Mary agreeing to let Sammie live. Incredibly, you CAN take a vampire at their word!

Sammie plays one more song and then he, Stack and Mary agree that until the vampires showed up, that day back in 1932 was the best day of their lives.

The end!

"Sinners" is so close. Had I turned my brain off, this would probably be a 4.5 star movie. But my brain never turns off, and I can't get over the disappearance of the Choctaw Indian vampire hunters. Surely over the course of the ensuing 60 years, they'd have caught up with Stack and Mary? You'd think so.

Therefore, I have to give "Sinners" an honest rating and that rating is 3.5 Legendary Blues Men out of 5 Legendary Blues Men, and it appears that there were about 8 legendary blues men either in the movie or had their music playing in it.
 
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MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: IT'S REALLY IMPOSSIBLE AT THIS POINT
May 25, 2025 or even cooler - 5/25/25 or 5-25-25

You can tell this isn't going to go well, can't you?

It doesn't but let me be clear - it doesn't go unwell, it just doesn't go well.

It's boring.

At least, to me.

I just didn't care. I didn't care about the plot, I didn't care about the characters, I didn't care about the stunts, and I didn't care about Tom Cruise's long hair.

OK, that's not true. I did care about Tom Cruise's long hair.

I didn't like it.

Making Tom Cruise's long hair worse was that we saw this on an IMAX screen. Biggest possible size, I guess. Most hair that I could see.

Near as I can tell, the Hair Fiasco was because Tom Cruise, like all of us, is not immune to the effects of aging. In Tom Cruise's case, his face has...filled out. Gone are the razor-sharp cheekbones and steely jawline. I'm not saying he looks bad - he just doesn't look like TOM CRUISE. At least, not like the Tom Cruise of the last forty years. But hey - he IS forty years older, as are we all. OK, enough.

Tom Cruise's hair is way down the list of things I didn't care for in this thing. First and foremost, the plot is not believable. AI is going to kill us all. Sure, THAT is believable. But the steps Cruise and his team take to defeat Big Brother are simply disconnected.

For instance, how does Simon Pegg know everything that needs to be done to The Entity? How did Luther know that stuff? What thought processes were used, what information was discovered, that filled in the knowledge gaps? How did the team - and that is the favorite term in this movie, calling all these people a "team" - get all those cool gadgets seemingly out of thin air and at the snap of a finger?

Not credible, In My Humble Opinion.

There's no real reason to get much deeper into this. Let's be positive for a change and talk about the BEST part of the movie. And yeah:

SPOILER ALERT

Everyone remembers this scene from the first "Mission Impossible":




At the end, that lone computer dude comes in to find Tom Cruise's knife stuck in his desk. This guy:

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His name is Rolf Saxon and he's in this movie too. You might not recognize him - you wouldn't recognize him without me telling you he's in this movie - but when the audience finds out who he is, there will be some applause. At least, in our IMAX theater there were about eight dudes who were sitting together who were thrown into a fit of whooping, hollering and applause-matic ecstasy when Saxon and Cruise figure out who each other are.

That was cool.

But the rest? This one is Movie #8.

In My Humble Opinion they should have stopped at Movie #7.

I know I gave a poor rating to "Mission Impossible: Fall Out Boy" but there's a new champion of the bottom. "Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning" gets 2 and Eleventy-Sevenths of a Care Bear out of 1600 B.C.-Era Wine Presses and if that confuses you, now you know what watching this movie is like.
 
NOVOCAINE
May 27, 2025

Now THIS is a movie worth watching!

It's not a comic book movie, or a sequel, or anything else. It's ORIGINAL.

At least, it is to me.

Nathan Caine has a rare disorder which makes it impossible for him to feel pain. He can get injured, he just doesn't feel pain when that happens. And this is real, but do NOT Google it because the pictures that come up with it are photographic proof that there are those who can have certain body parts rearranged in a way neither God nor nature intended, and smile about it. Yech!

You're welcome!

Anyway, Nathan is an assistant manager at a credit union, and he falls for a pretty teller. Because of his condition, Nathan has had a bad life - when his school classmates found out he couldn't feel pain, the bullies naturally put that to the test on a daily basis. Shucks, Nathan can't even eat solid food because for some reason, there's a chance he'll bite his tongue off. So he's never had a girlfriend or probably even a date. All he does is go home and play video games with an internet friend. I believe that guy is what's called a "gamer".

Nathan reluctantly agrees to have a cup of coffee with this girl - her name is Sherry - and he even tries a slice of pie. And then later at home, he tries a slice of something else. Nathan is in heaven!

But he goes to hell the next day, as three robbers dressed up as Santa Clauses rob his credit union, killing the manager in the process and taking Sherry as a hostage.

Jack Quaid plays Nathan and at first, he's way too much of a milquetoast. Quaid is the son of Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan and yeah - he'll agree he's a nepo baby. He's also a good actor and as the movie progresses, Quaid plays Nathan with more and more bravado.

Nathan chases one robber (the robbers took off in two cars) and has a great fight in a restaurant kitchen. He wins, although to do so he has to retrieve the robber's gun from the deep fryer. But it doesn't hurt, so why not?

After sort of accidentally shooting robber #1 through the throat, Nathan figures the dead guy's tattoo is a clue and calls up his internet gamer friend - Roscoe - and asks Roscoe to see if he can find out who did the artwork. Roscoe does, and Nathan ends up at the tattoo parlor of a giant guy.

Nathan himself is covered in tattoos, all of which he did himself, so he has some tattoo cred. But the giant tattoo artist isn't fooled by Nathan pretending to know that dead robber, so we have another fight.

It turns out beating up or killing a guy who can't feel pain isn't very easy! Nathan gets the name he needs and heads to that dude's house. And then...

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER​

It's not really that big of a spoiler but you deserve to be warned, so you are warned!

There are three robbers. Two of them are brothers - one of whom is the guy Nathan killed in the restaurant kitchen fight, although the other robbers don't find that out for awhile.

The third robber - Simon - is nutso, and he has an adoptive sister. His sister is...

...Sherry, Nathan's boinking partner/employee!

The plan was to steal enough money and hide in Mexico. The plan was NOT to kill anyone but Simon killed the manager because Simon's Santa beard slipped off and exposed Simon's face. This angered Sherry but Simon reminded her that they'd done lots of jobs together before and she didn't complain when he killed people in some of those jobs. Yeah, I know.

Nathan goes to the dead guy's home looking for clues but it turns out that dude had bobby-trapped his home. You know what's coming - Nathan gets hit with a spiked ball and has an arrow shot through his leg but does that stop him? Of course not!

What DOES stop him is getting caught in a snare. He can't get out so he calls Roscoe to come get him. Roscoe - who has told Nathan he's 6'5" and drives a Harley - says he'll be there in 10 minutes.

And he is, but five minutes before that, the other robber brother arrives. He's looking for his brother but finds Nathan in a snare. Nathan tells this dude that hey - I killed your brother. I know you're mad but please don't torture me or throw me in that brier patch!

This is done to buy some time for Roscoe to show up, which he does although not before Nathan loses a couple ends of a couple fingers. Also, it turns out Roscoe is not 6'5" and does not drive a Harley. Man, you can't believe ANYTHING you read on the internet!

The cops also show up. There are two detectives on this case and the male guy is HILARIOUS. He spouts lines right out of "Airplane!". "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking!" Sadly, he gets killed before he can say "I am serious. And don't call me Shirley" or "Joey, have you ever been in a... in a Turkish prison?"

Roscoe creates a diversion and Nathan makes it to the warehouse. Many things ensue and - hey! Remember when I did that awesome review of "The Union" and since it was such a bad movie, I focused on the stupid catchphrases the NFL uses? And how I said that nowhere else would you hear the word "ensuing" except in an NFL football game review, as in "On the ensuing kickoff..."? I don't want to freak you out but since then, I've used both "ensuing" and "ensue" ON THIS THREAD. Look at me, I've co-opted the NFL!

Back to "Novocaine" and also, please don't tell the NFL that I co-opted them. They have more lawyers than I do.

As you might have guessed, Nathan broke a lot of laws in his vigilante pursuit of Sherry, who broke way more laws than Nathan did. Even though all the robbers get killed - by Nathan - there are repercussions. Nathan gets six months of house arrest and somehow, accomplice to murder Sherry only gets a few months in the joint.

Then they live happily ever after, I guess!

Man, there are a LOT of scenes where I closed my eyes as Nathan either broke his own bones or sewed himself up. Yikes! But isn't squinting the sign of a good movie? It sure is! "Novocaine" gets 4.5 Slices of Cherry Pie out of 5 Slices of Cherry Pie. It's as good as cherry pie! Warrant, play us out!

​
 
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POKER FACE, SEASON 2
Boo hoo

It turns out that ripping off "Columbo" is a one-season trick. Or maybe...

...Let's say YOU were the head writer for this show. Your character has the ability to tell when people are lying. What lines of work could this possibly be entertaining to use?

  • Police investigator, obvs
  • Legal assistant for a lawyer who takes lots of depositions
  • Host of your own kind of “Cheaters” show
  • Proctor who asks kids if AI wrote their term papers
  • Etc.
Well, Charlie has found her calling as an alligator whisperer. And that's no lie!

So far, the plots have been lukewarm at best. Last week's episode had Charlie solving the murder of some cop based on Joe Fantastic or Joe Glorious, or - what is that tiger guy's name? Joe Exotic! Yeah!

A Florida Panhandle police officer rescued an alligator when it was a baby. Now he goes around the Florida Panhandle, grown-up alligator in tow, solving crimes, slinging catchphrases, and hawking an energy drink.

Another cop accidentally kills him by poisoning the cop's energy drink. She only wanted to make him sick but I guess the dude had a heart condition or something?

Charlie figures it out, and that cop ends up getting away with it because the dead guy got eaten up by the alligator, and then escaped but somehow Charlie captures it. LSD or meth or some hallucinogenic has lot to do with this as it's implied that the alligator is actually The Lizard King.

Charlie goes back to rescuing alligators and other animals, until everyone realizes that the alligator they released into the Florida swamp has a taste for human blood and probably now will eat anyone it can, so Charlie heads to another state and goes to work at a minor league baseball park. And the murderer there gets away with it, too! Although, just like in the alligator episode, the murder was accidental. Which makes all these cases of manslaughter and not murders, or so about 247 various "Law and Order" episodes leads me to believe.

Even Mrs. RodeoSchro commented on the lack of suspense, humor or intrigue so far in Season 2. But Season 1 was so awesome that I'm going to quit ragging on Season 2 and instead give you a slice of the real TV Columbo, which is who Natasha Lyonne is now shamelessly mimicking to a degree that's not acceptable.

This is from the Dean Martin Roast of Frank Sinatra. The full cast is AWESOME: Ronald Reagan, Gene Kelly, Don Rickles, George Burns, Dom DeLuise, Redd Foxx, James Stewart, Telly Savalas, Jonathan Winters, LaWanda Page, Red Buttons, Milton Berle, Ernest Borgnine, Orson Welles, Rich Little, Peter Falk, and, of course, Dean Martin.

Check it out! And if "Poker Face" gets any better, I'll let you know. But no news is not good news.

​
 
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ANOTHER SIMPLE FAVOR
June 5, 2024

The title of this thread is

Let's Hope 2025 Brings Better Movies Than Last Year!​


"Another Simple Favor" fails completely.

This is SO BAD.

Nothing about it makes sense. None of the acting is good - none. Of special note for horribleness are Elizabeth Perkins and Allison Janney and Elena Sofia Ricci and Henry Golding and I guess I'd better stop before I name the whole cast, although that could be the fault of the writers. The writing is atrocious. But you want to know the worst thing about probably the worst movie of the year?

It takes place on the Isle of Capri and no one wears capri pants!

There, that's the most amusing, entertaining thing I could possibly say about this monstrosity and even I will admit that wasn't very funny. Not even booze made this worth spending five minutes of screen time. How it got to 60% on Rotten Tomatoes only goes to prove that we are truly a nation in artistic decline.

No one needs to say anything else about this crapfest, so I won't.
 
DEN OF THIEVES 2
June 6, 2025

Point of Parliamentary Procedure - and surely you know where that comes from, right? What?!? You don't?!? Watch this so as to get up to speed on the nomenclature and cliches you're about to be deluged with:

​

Point of Parliamentary Procedure - I am going to have a jacket made just like Eric "Otter" Stratton's! Man, that is one cool jacket. So anyway - back to the original Point of Parliamentary Procedure.

"Den of Thieves 2" was released before "Another Simple Favor". I was all set to tell y'all that the people who made "Den of Thieves 2" must have watched "Another Simple Favor", realized it would be in the running for Worst Film of 2025, and said, "Hold our beer". But in reality, Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively must have been the ones saying "Hold our Chardonnay".

You might be confused by all this, but don't be. All we're really trying to establish is what was the worse movie - "Den of Thieves 2" or "Another Simple Favor"?

I know you think I'm going to cop out and say, "Both! It's a tie!" but nope, I am not. The award goes to...

..."Den of Thieves 2". Here's why - we watched all of "Another Simple Favor" but bailed out forty-five minutes into "Den of Thieves 2".

My goodness what a crapfest and if any movie has earned the right to be called a crapfest, it's this crapfest. Given as how we only watched about 33% of this bomb, I can't recap the whole thing. Guess what? No one can. Wikipedia tried and failed. Near as I can tell, this thing is about Gerard Butler trying to re-create Mel Gibson's character in "Lethal Weapon", complete with long hair and the ever-constant Marlboro cancer stick.

He fails.

Worse, O'Shea Jackson, Jr. doesn't even come close to being the Danny Glover of this thing although it's possible he let out an "I'm too old for this shit!!!!" at some point after we quit watching. But I doubt it.

I will happily dump on the first 45 minutes and thank goodness we DIDN'T watch the whole things, or there could have been four or five parts to this review. Ain't nobody got time for that!

​

The movie starts with a very cool heist at the Antwerp Airport in Belgium, complete with masks, hidden fake cop cars, and split-second timing. They get away with it.

Then we are cinematically transported to Los Angeles, where Gerard Butler - who I thought in the beginning was Charlie Hunnam and boy is Charlie Hunnam probably ecstatic that he isn't in this belly-flop - anyway, apparently Gerard Butler has just been divorced and isn't happy about it, as he takes off his wedding ring and throws it on the ground.

This is as far as my understanding of events went.

Gerard Butler is suspended by the LAPD and somehow makes his way to Belgium, hooks up with O'Shea Jackson, Jr. and is now a member of the Den of Thieves. But also still a cop?

Who knows and I never found out because after the gang's big smoking scene at Da Club, we bailed.

Sooner or later I'm going to find a good movie, and don't even get me started on Season 2 of "Poker Face". Ugh. It did NOT get any better. If anything, it got worse.
 
@RodeoSchro
How do you rate this year so far, compared to 2024??? It’s not looking good, from the posts I’ve read.

I don’t go to the movies often but I’m going to see ‘The Phoenician Scheme’ (Wes Anderson). Are you going to see it?

I asked a friend who goes to the movies almost weekly what movies he’d recommend so far this year. He mentioned ‘My Penguin Friend’ (I checked and I guess it was released in 2024). And another Argentinian-made movie called ‘I’m Still Here’. Both are true stories set in Brazil.

He also recommends a “real movie movie”, which, when he remembers the name, I’ll return and update.

Maybe you need to go South?!

On the other hand, I enjoy reading your reviews of really bad movies!!!
 
barnswallow said:
@RodeoSchro
How do you rate this year so far, compared to 2024??? It’s not looking good, from the posts I’ve read.

I don’t go to the movies often but I’m going to see ‘The Phoenician Scheme’ (Wes Anderson). Are you going to see it?

I asked a friend who goes to the movies almost weekly what movies he’d recommend so far this year. He mentioned ‘My Penguin Friend’ (I checked and I guess it was released in 2024). And another Argentinian-made movie called ‘I’m Still Here’. Both are true stories set in Brazil.

He also recommends a “real movie movie”, which, when he remembers the name, I’ll return and update.

Maybe you need to go South?!

On the other hand, I enjoy reading your reviews of really bad movies!!!
Click to expand...

I'm going south for the rock and roll this month with at least two GREAT new bands from Brazil, so maybe I DO need to check out the films from South America!

Hmmm, Wes Anderson. Not really a fan. I think I've seen three of his movies? I know I've seen "Rushmore", which I hated, and "The Grand Budapest Hotel", which I did not like. But I did enjoy "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More", so maybe I'll check his newest one out.

This year has not been a good year for movies but it's been a great year for reviews! Thanks for reading them. I hope they make you laugh - that is their sole intent.

I'm thinking this entire year is going to hinge on "Spinal Tap 2 - The End Continues". No pressure on y'all, Michael, Christopher, Harry and Rob but everything is riding on your movie!
 
A WORKING MAN
June 17, 2025

Here is all you need to watch re: A Working Man

​

That's Hulk Hogan saying "Brother" about 50 times, which isn't much more than you're going to hear "brother" in A Working Man.

Oh, brother!

This was not Jason Statham's finest hour, brother. Or really, finest two hours, brother.

Statham is, as usual, a retired Super Soldier. He has a precocious 8-year-old daughter who is completely superfluous to the story. She lives with her grandfather, a complete boob but somehow has custody of the girl since his daughter - Statham's wife - killed herself at some point. Statham was apparently ruled a "dangerous parent" because in his career as some kind of dual American/British Super Soldier, he killed a lot of people. Which is what he was hired and trained to do but Boob Grandfather is rich, hired a ton of lawyers and in something never seen before, got custody from the only surviving parent - a parent with a job, no drug issues, no arrests or no anything else that is bad.

Boob Grandfather hates Statham because he thinks that Statham being a Super Soldier who gets deployed quite often is what drove his daughter to commit suicide.

But like I said, absolutely none of that means a single thing in this movie. What does?

Glad you asked, brother!

Statham is the project foreman in Michael Pena's family-run skyscraper construction company. They are building a giant skyscraper in downtown Chicago. But apparently, Pena doesn't make enough money building a $350,000,000 skyscraper to pay his number one guy enough money to live anywhere except in his pick-up truck. A rented pick-up truck at that.

Pena's 19-year-old daughter and her friends go to Da Club in order to celebrate finishing one semester of college, as one does. While at Da Club, she gets kidnapped by a human trafficker, as one also does while at Da Club.

Pena says to Statham, "I know what you did as a Super Soldier. Please get my daughter back, as the Chicago police do not actively investigate kidnappings committed in the course of human trafficking". Statham replies, "Sorry, I'm not that guy any more".

C'mon, brother. You are ALWAYS that guy.

So Statham drives out to the woods, where he meets with David Harbour, a former comrade-in-arms or as you might say, a brother. Harbour and Statham say it a lot.

Harbour is blind on account of Statham being able to save his life in some war but not before the bad guys took his eyes. Nevertheless, Harbour loves his brother and tells Brother Statham, "You didn't come out here to ask me permission to get the girl, you came out here to tell me you ARE going to get the girl, and I am OK with that, brother. Be safe, brother and we'll be here when you get back, brother".

Now - you get three guesses who took the daughter, and the first two don't count. Yes, it was the Russians. The worst caricatures of Russian mobsters that you will EVER see. They call themselves "The Brotherhood".

Statham tails the bartender from Da Club home, elicits some information from him, and then kills two Russian mobsters in horrible track suits who show up unexpectedly. But wait - these two dudes are the only two actual brothers in the whole movie. If you ask me, they should have survived just based on that.

Killing the two brothers somehow leads Statham to their dad, and let me be clear - in this review you will see the word "somehow" almost as much as you the word "brother". A lot goes unexplained or against any kind of logic.

Super Soldier Statham binds the Russian dad to a chair, elicits some information out of him, and then drowns him. Of course he's captured on all the security cameras in the house but does he care? No way, brother! Not even a little bit, despite having a precocious 8-year-old daughter who lives with a Boob Grandfather. I guess Statham had read the script and realized that the precocious 8-year-old daughter was superfluous.

Next, Statham wants to buy some meth and is directed to a country version of Da Club, where the front part is a honky tonk and the back part is another Da Club, where all the cool hookers and hipsters hang out while being ruled by a big Black dude in the Game of Thrones chair. Statham gains entrance to that part of Da Club, beats up all the Throne King's men, and then they realize they both served in the military, so they are brothers.

Statham gets the meth, which he immediately throws in the river. He's really after a meeting Dimi, who somehow is not the Big Boss but more like the Kind Of Medium Boss. You will laugh at him while wondering what in the world he has to do with human trafficking.

He's a human trafficker though.

END OF PART ONE AND SOMEHOW I THOUGHT I'D HAVE BEEN DONE A LONG TIME AGO, BROTHER
 
A WORKING MAN, PART TWO BROTHER.BROTHER.BROTHER.BROTHER.BROTHER.

Let's recap what we've learned so far:

​

OK, now that we're up to speed let's see what happens next. Really though, it doesn't matter until the very end. Statham just keeps killing people, as is his wont.

Statham tells his brother the meth dealer/King Of Da Club - Joliet Version that he wants more meth, and his brother the meth dealer/King Of Da Club - Joliet Version says, "Then you'll have to talk to Dimi". Bingo!

Statham has The Big Meeting with Dimi, kills a bunch more people, ges tied up in van but breaks out, and then at some point he has to go back to see David Harbour. He's going to raid the country house where the daughter is. She'd actually escaped and gotten away and she ran into some country cops but rather than protect her, they gave her back to the Russian Mob. The female cop did say she was very sorry although does not end up saving the female cop's life when the bullets start flying.

Harbour tells Statham, "I'll be your weapons sommellier today, brother" and it turns out that a blind guy has a secret room full of every kind of killing device there is. Before all this, the Russian Mob had somehow gotten Boob Grandfather's address, tied him up, and set his house on fire. Statham arrives just in time to save Boob Grandfather, which of course heals all the bad blood between them and makes them brothers.

So Statham takes a trunk full of weapons, leaves his own daughter with Brother Harbour and Harbour's wife, and goes to the country house where he kills everyone and saves the kidnapped girl.

Wait - he kills everyone EXCEPT the father of the two brothers he'd killed at the very beginning, plus he actually never got to the top of The Brotherhood, so all those sleazebags lived, too. For some reason the father lives and howls into the air at all the dead sons, friends, and fellow mobsters killed by Statham.

Please tell me that isn't a setup for a sequel, although we all know it is. So please tell me further that no one will finance the sequel that you can bet has already been written and will star Statham AND Blind David Harbour, who this time will leave his cabin in the woods and using the four senses he still has, wreak havoc on all the bad guys with Brother Statham.

Probably other stuff happened but except for the Death By Mirrored Rifle Shot experienced by the ugliest goon with the dumbest haircut you'll ever see, none of it is of note. AND I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE THINKING - "Dang RodeoSchro - now I have to watch this movie because who wouldn't want to see the ugliest goon with the worst haircut ever?!?"

Because I love you, I found a picture of this dude. But it was on imdbdbmimdb.com, which does not allow you to copy or save images. So I went the extra mile - I took a picture of it with my phone, sent it to myself, and here you are (I have an old monitor, hence the lines on this guy's face although to be honest, they make him look better). Now not only do you not have to watch this movie to satisfy your morbid curiosity, you also know you can count on me and every other Certified Movie Reviewer you know.*

A Working Man.jpg​

Statham delivers the girl back to Michael Pena and then goes back to Harbour's to pick up his daughter. "I'm glad you made it, brother. Welcome home".

Generally I am stoked to spend several hours meticulously cataloging all the stupidity in movies like this but not this time. Have I mellowed? Matured? Changed?

I don't know, brother. But I do know "A Working Man" gets only a Step Brother out of Actual Brothers, which makes no sense and is somehow the best way I can think of to review this. Better luck next time, brother.

*I am the only Certified Movie Reviewer you know.
 
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28 YEARS LATER
June 20, 2025

Let's start with the end first because so far, the end is the best thing about this movie.

We walked out before the end so we don't know how it ended.

Best decision I've made all year!

Ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourselves for a skewering the likes of which hasn't been seen around here in a long, long time. Most of the time I skewer movies through a veil of pain. After all, I'd just wasted a couple hours of my precious time - why spend more painful hours with the skewering? But this time, oh this time I am going to enjoy the skewering. I only wish I could inflict actual pain on the filmed presentation that I wasted last night on, because "28 Years Later" richly deserves pain.

I don't mean the people who made it mind you, although this HAS to be a career-ending movie and for that I am sad for those people who will now be forced to work in another industry and/or change their names because people will never forget this monstrosity. No, I wish "28 Years Later" was an actual sentient being so that I could pummel it into not being a sentient being any more.

I guess I should start at the start, which I think was a scene from the original "28 Days Later". These kids are locked in a room, watching "Teletubbies" and yes I said "Biiig Huuuuuuuuug" right along with the yellow Telebubbie but then the zombies came. They ate the mom and ate most of the kids. One kid got out and made it to a church, where the priest was kneeling down at the altar in prayer. "Help me help me!" screamed the kid to which the priest replied, "This is a GREAT DAY. IT'S JUDGEMENT DAY!!!!! Here, take my chain with the big cross on it!" The kid does and then zombies break in and eat the priest, who is quite happy to be eaten.

This isn't anywhere near the stupidest thing that happens.

Now it's 28 years later and there's an island on which about 200 or so regular people live. The island is connected to the mainland by a reef that's only accessible during low tide, so I guess it isn't really an island. Reminds me of almost every "island green" in golf - those too have land bridges so they aren't really islands.

Except the one at Coeur d'Alene! It really IS an island! Mrs. RodeoSchro and I played it once. It's awesome! You have to take a boat to the green.

Where was I? Besides being blissfully not thinking about this movie?

OK - it's 28 years later and these island inhabitants are basically living in the 1700's, amenities-wise. No electricity, cars, TV, internet, phones, or anything else that your basic Amish farmer wouldn't have. There's a 12-year-old kid named Spike whose mom is "sick" and whose dad says, "It's time you went to the mainland and killed a zombie". Most kids don't get to kill a zombie until they're 14 or 15 but Spike is special, so he and dad wait for low tide, walk the half-mile or so down this perfectly straight and level reef, and are now on the mainland, which is actually an island.

It's the island that all the zombies have been forced onto somehow. The guy that reviewed this movie in our local Houston Chronicle - and gave it three and 1/2 stars, guy must have been on 'shrooms - said the dad and Spike went to kill zombies AND gather food, but there was no food gathering of any kind. Ever. No, they were there to hunt fat, worm-like zombies that slithered on the ground and ate worms. Honestly, those zombies couldn't hurt you unless you were asleep but they made good target practice.

The only weapon the humans had were bows and arrows, You had to shoot a zombie in the head or the heart to kill it, which is what Spike does. Yay, he's a made man now!

Until the fast zombies show up. Spike and dad have to shoot their way out, but high tide has started. And there's an Alpha chasing them! What's going to happen????

Part two - that's what's going to happen.
 
28 YEARS LATER - PART TWO. WHY COULDN'T THEY HAVE ACTUALLY WAITED 28 YEARS TO RELEASE THIS? OR EVEN BETTER, 128 YEARS SO THAT NEITHER MYSELF NOR ANYONE I KNOW AND LOVE WOULD EVER BE SUBJECTED TO THIS TRAIN WRECK?

As luck would have it, high tide is coming but not all the way here. So the land bridge to the faux island is only under six inches of water. Spike and dad sprint as best as they can down the land bridge, but the Alpha is gaining on them. And that's actually impressive, for reasons that shall be revealed later.

The islanders have a watch tower and see Spike and dad being chased by an Alpha and because they're all expert archers, they rain flaming arrows on the Alpha and kill it before it can reach Spike and dad. Why no other zombies joined in the chase, we'll never know.

Naturally there's a big You Killed Your First Zombie party, but dad embellishes the zombie fight a little bit. Spike got nervous and missed on all his shots but his dad tells everyone Spike killed a lot of zombies. This makes Spike mad.

So does walking in on his dad engaging in a pre-boinking ritual with a woman who's not his wife/Spike's mother.

Speaking of which, Mom just lies in bed all the time. Everyone knows she's sick but no one knows sick from what. All they know for sure is that she isn't infected with the zombie virus.

While on the mainland, Spike had seen a fire off in the distance. "Who was that?" Dad tells Spike it's probably Dr. Kelson. A doctor?!? Awesome! The doctor can cure Mom! "No, son - Dr. Kelson is a raving lunatic. He can be of no help". So you know what's going to happen next.

Yep - Spike and Mom leave the pretend island, go to the mainland, see an airplane contrail in the sky and call it an angel, and get attacked by zombies. They try to take refuge in an abandoned gas station but that's no step for the zombie steppers. Just as Spike and Mom are about to get eaten, a Swedish soldier named Eric screws up every cinemaphile's life and saves Spike and Mom. Boo, Eric! The movie could have been over but for you!

Eric is in the Swedish Navy and his patrol boat hit a rock and sunk off the coast. Nine guys went into the drink, nine guys made it to the mainland, and eight guys got eaten by zombies.

In the midst of explaining this Eric makes references to all kinds of modern conveniences like delivery drivers, cars, pizza and so on, not to mention he has an iPhone. Spike has no idea what any of those things are, and now come the questions.

First of all, if there's a phony island with 200 survivors on it, and we still have aviation which of course includes helicopters, why weren't those people helicoptered off to safety? Who made the decision to just leave them there for the past 28 years? And why?

Second, if all the zombies are contained on the big island - which was either Scotland or a Scottish isle - why didn't all the countries nuke or bomb the heck out of it, thus killing all the zombies?

And third - wait! This is 28 years later? Wouldn't the zombies have been dying off by now? Couldn't death take its course and eventually eliminate all the zombies?

Because surely zombies don't boink and can't reproduce, right? Right? RIGHT?!?!?!?!?!?!?

You know what's coming, don't you?

Yeah, you know.

Spike, Mom and Eric make their way to an abandoned train, where they hear screams of pain. Screams of the kind of pain that comes with un-anesthetized child birth. ZOMBIE un-anesthetized child birth.

Here's something - all child-bearing women relate to each other. Even zombie child-bearing women and regular women! The zombie mom holds Mom's hands while a baby pops out. Spike cuts the cords. Guess what? The baby is normal! It's not infected! This does not stop Eric from blowing off the zombie mom's head, which is witnessed by the zombie dad, who'd just showed up. Typical dad, huh? Late to his own child's birth!

But not late to the murder, which makes him mad but thankfully not aroused. I don't know how to say this - as you can guess, all zombies are naked. I don't know what makes an Alpha male an Alpha, but this Alpha male has an Alpha penis. You'd think that would hamper his ability to run, wouldn't you?

Like all Alphas with huge dangling members, this Alpha can run. He catches and beheads Eric and chases Spike and Mom through a field. Just when it appears Spike and Mom are going to become dinner, up pops Dr. Kelson, who shoots a blow dart into the Alpha, which paralyzes it.

The dart has morphine on it and Dr. Kelson is covered in iodine, although I forget why. Sadly, I still remember almost everything else about what I saw. Poor me. Dr. Kelson takes Spike and Mom to his encampment - BUT DOES NOT KILL THE IMMOBILIZED ALPHA, WHO IS JUST BEGGING TO BE KILLED - anyway, the main feature of his encampment being a 25-foot high pyramid of skulls. You see, Dr. Kelson had been recovering corpses eaten by zombies, boiling off their faces, and memorializing them by constructing a pyramid out of their skulls. Spike touches the bottom and skulls fall out but later, well - you'll see.

"My mom's sick!" Well, there's a doctor in the house and that doctor does a quick examination and declares, "You have cancer". Apparently Mom is the first person in 28 years to get cancer - that has to be the case because no one on their pretend island can figure out why Mom is sick.

Dr. Kelson does the only humane thing - he puts Spike to sleep, puts mom to sleep and at her request kills mom, cuts off her head and boils it down to the skull, wakes up Spike, and says, "Here - put your mom in the very best place". That place, of course, is the top of the skull pyramid. Even though earlier that pyramid looks about as stable as Jello, Spike climbs to the top and puts the angel on top of the Christmas tree, so to speak.

Then I left.

I know how this ends - I read Wikipedia. But I hate this movie so much that I'm not going to tell you....wait. That might make you want to watch this, so as to ring me up and fill me in on the ending. We can't have that! OK, let's see...reading Wikipedia now...OK.

Spike takes the baby to the island, drops it off, and then hops on a boat with some weirdos The Brits here probably know who Jimmy Savile was. now I do, too. The weirdos are apparently a gang of Jimmy Saviles - Wikipedia's words, not mine so you know they're true.

The end, but not of the franchise. There's one more movie coming and maybe two. The movie makers - and I use that term verrrrrrry loosely - want this to be a trilogy, forgetting that this abomination is ALREADY the third movie in the "28 Insert Measurement Of Time Here" trilogy, thus rendering any more movies superfluous (like the daughter in "A Working Man"). Not for me though! I'll never watch another movie that has "28" in the title.

I think my skewering has been substandard. I fear I haven't fully fleshed out the incredible stupidity contained in this nightmare. Part of it comes from the acting. All of the actors are horrible and I feel bad about including a kid in that, but he can't act. Part of it comes from not degrading the soundtrack, which includes songs named "Alpha Intro", "Alpha", "Alpha Baby", "Alpha Tunnel 1", "Alpha Tunnel 2" and "Happy Eater". Part of it comes from me telling a linear story and not alluding to the multiple flashbacks that were surely written by someone on the same 'shrooms as the guy who reviewed this for our local newspaper.

EDITOR'S NOTE: After re-reading this, I am satisfied that my skewering is actually up to my lofty standards. I pat myself on the back.

Whatever - I can only end this skewering by urging you to never watch this, for any reason ever. If you do, that's on you.

This movie gets no stars; in fact, it owes me stars.
 
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VELOCIPASTOR 2
Unknown

First of all - yeah, that's me squatting down behind the "F1: The Movie" promotional piece. It's supposed to look like I'm driving the car but it doesn't. Who cares - the picture has me AND Brad Pitt in it! Just try to keep from getting the night sweats now!

"Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Not funny, RodeoSchro. And what does that have to do with 'VelociPastor 2' anyway?"

Nothing, I just thought some might need an explanation that explains I rated "F1: The Movie" as 4 Pictures of Me and Brad Pitt out of 5 Pictures of Me and Brad Pitt.

From time to time I like to go back and read past reviews. Partly because I hope to publish them one day and I might as well get the editing and spell correction out of the way now, but mostly because sometimes I make myself laugh. I'm thankful for a number of things but being able to entertain myself is right there at the top of the list.

So as I was perusing the 2023 movie thread, I happened upon my review of "VelociPastor". Here's the link if you want to go right to it, which you should because I really out-did myself on this one: https://www.purpleandblack.org/inde...let-the-exclamation-points-abound.1062/page-2

Remember the Kickstarter these guys did for the funding of "V2" (I'm tired of typing "VelociPastor" mainly because I always put an "e" instead of an "o" at the end of "Velicpaster". See?)? They have all kinds of benefits for various levels but of course the only one we're interested in is the "We will literally get a tattoo" benefit.

So I checked on the progress. I have good news, bad news and weird news.

GOOD NEWS - The Kickstarter's goal of $75K was blown away! They're at $118,297 - about 58% MORE that they were looking for!

BAD NEWS - Ummmm......they took the money and ran? I don't know but I do know the movie has not been finished, or released, or anything. And all the social media accounts for the movie and its principals are inactive. Apparently the director and the creator quit. Not good.

WEIRD NEWS - And if the BAD NEWS is what I think it is, then the WEIRD NEWS wouldn't matter anyway, but no one went for the $6,969 giving level which would have resulted in VelociPastor tattoos for the dudes who wrote this. Also, one guy on Reddit - always a trustworthy site for information - says the creator was just the editor for V2 and has submitted a finished but of the movie. People think that they're just waiting for "festival season" to submit it.

I don't know but what I do know is that all the GOOD, BAD and the WEIRD stuff is buzzkill. If "V2" were to come out tomorrow, I don't know if I'd bother to watch it.

Who am I kidding? Of COURSE I would. But I might not be all that excited.
 
YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES
2025 IS SAVED
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HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!!!!!!
YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES
​
 
HEADS OF STATE
July 5, 2025

"Let's drop some warheads on foreheads!"

And there, ladies and gentlemen, is everything you need to experience re: "Heads of State".

I really do wish I could gush on and on about a summer action movie starring John Cena and Idris Elba. I really, really, really do. You KNOW I do.

But I can't. It's just not good.

It's not bad, either. It's like lukewarm water. Who wants lukewarm water?

"Heads of State" gets 1.5 Warheads on Foreheads out of 5 Warheads on Foreheads. Hopefully a better movie will come out and confiscate that semi-clever line.
 
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