Wait - I *haven't* started a 2024 Movies thread? Well, I have now!

[Dancelot]

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

okay, plenty of Oscars, so this can hardly go wrong... or so I thought...

Well, in the end me and Mrs Dancelot stopped before the 30 minute mark when it shortly turned into a Kung Fu Jackie Chan type mess, this was simply going nowhere

Usually I like me some multi-verse stories, Star Trek has been doing this since the 60s, and I was all in.
But this? An App on your mobile phone showing the multi-verse connections and shit...? No... just no.

Watching on my own I maybe would have given it slightly more time, probably even finished just out of curiosity to see where this is going, but I could not do this to wifey.

Since it would be unfair to give this any number of stars, for the time being my rating is "unfinished"

 

[Dancelot]

The Nice Guys (2016)

with Russel Crowe and Ryan Gosling in a typical crime buddy movie, but hell this was fun!!


Placed in Los Angeles in the late 70s with lots of great references and flashbacks, music, newspaper headlines, movie and other billboards in the back, Killer bees from Brazil, smog and pollution protests, car industry and catalysts lawsuits and plenty of other stuff taking you back in time. Basically some neo-noir crime comedy with two private investigators, sometimes even slapstick, very fast paced, hilarious dialogue, decent plot with nice twists, great action, in short, I simply loved this.

Movie has an enormous body count also from innocent bystanders, but the deaths sometimes are so funny and unexpected, this was just awesome. Somtimes I burst into loud unexpected laughter cause it was just too absurd, like…

Spoiler: ... like for example...

…so a main plot point is, they try to find and protect a young women from the baddies, who are after her and try to kill her. After maybe two thirds into the movie they finally find her and hide her in their house. One night shortly after that, they are on an outside mission, but as we found out they were just tricked away, so the killer can come for the girl. When they find out they immediately rush back to save her. Now in a usual movie there are tow possible resolutions: 1: they arrive in time and save the girl. 2: they are to late and the baddie kills the girl.
However, in this movie they found a third resolution: they do arrive in time before the girl gets killed, she is hiding in a closet in the house, then they start a big shootout with the killer. During this the girl escapes through a window and runs away, while they are still engaged in shooting for a while, damaging half the house and surroundings. In the end the killer gets away with his car, and the two buddies return to the house, but now they find out that the girl ran away all by herself.
Now cut back to the killer in his car, he’s driving down the road in this rather high-class residential area, when he suddenly sees the girl running towards him on the side waving her arms desperataly trying to get some help. He just says “Wow” and slows down the car. The girl leans through the car window and begs “I need to get out of here!”. Then a shot, and she drops dead while the car drives on again into the night.

LOL okay, why not this way

This movie gets at least 8,5 maybe even 9 Richard Nixons, funniest things I’ve seen in a while.

 

[Dancelot]

Fawlty Towers
(TV series 1975, 1979)


For the longest time I had to put up with some old VHS tapings from TV and later with some downloaded DVD copy, but now I finally pulled the trigger on the BluRay.

All 12 episodes, lots of nice bonus material, splendid. They could not work miracles on the picture of course with the old tape sources from the 70s, but it’s a bit better I think for the later episodes and season 2, or I simply got used to it.

I watched everything twice so far, one time the original, and one time with the formidable audio comment from John Cleese. Many wonderful insights and quite a bit I learned from it, great info. There is also an audio commentary from the directors which I haven’t watched yet, cause it takes really time for 12 episodes. And there is also the German dubbed version, which I probably will never watch, well… maybe out of fun I will check it out sometimes, but so much gets lost with the translation.

Anyway, the original remains of course the best sitcom of all time, and that is not even up for debate.
The pacing, the acting, they are really never missing a beat, it is jam packed with hilarious dialogue and comedy over some very sophisticated and well crafted plots. OUTSTANDING

10/10

 

[RodeoSchro]

STRAYS
February 22, 2024

I'd been wanting to watch this for awhile - and so the other night, I did.

Decent movie, weak story. This is going to be a recurring theme for the next two posts. Shucks, this year. Of what I've seen so far, only "Maggie Moore(s)" and "The Beekeeper" would rate as satisfactorily written. So - if you want to be a screenwriter, now's your chance! It looks like anyone with 1/3 of an imagination can get some money, and I know you all have better imaginations than that!

"Strays" does have the best line of the year so far, though. I'll tell it in a few paragraphs, so as to save you time and/or money from having to watch this. But on the off chance, you do watch it, I will say that however they did the dogs - real, CGI, stop-motion, I have no idea - that was great. All the dogs move around and talk like people and it really works well.

But be forewarned - this movie is R-rated and it's a HARD R. It's not one of those "we'll throw in two f-bombs so we get an R rating" movie. It's more like "we're gonna go as far as we possibly can with crude language and sex jokes and not get an X rating".

There's really nothing else to tell, so I'll give you that line now. By way of a set-up, keep in mind that this movie is full of f-bombs and depictions of animals having sex. A lot of depictions of animals having sex, and not just dogs. Is your mind filled with images of animals having sex? Good!

In one of the last scenes, one of the dogs finally boinks one of the other dogs he's had a crush on. This is done at the park, in front of all the humans. There are two elderly people sitting on a bench - a man and a woman. They look on at these two dogs boinking and the man laughs and says, "That reminds me of when I was a young man". To which the lady replies:

"You used to #$%^ dogs?!?"

I'm still laughing at that, but that's really the only part of the movie I'm still laughing at. I'm trying to forget the rest of it.

"Strays" is a 1 Human Position out of 5 Human Positions, which is what these dogs call the way humans have sex. That weak joke kind of sums it up.

 

[RodeoSchro]

DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS
February 25, 2024

Continuing on the weakly-written script theme, we come to "Drive-Away Dolls". I think I know who to blame for this.

Lena Dunham.

You won't find her name anywhere in the credits, but hear me out. It goes like this:

Margaret Qualley is one of the stars. She's Andi McDowell's daughter, and she just got married to Jack Antonoff, who fronts a band called Bleachers that puts out decent rock but live? WATCH THEM. Antonoff is a Springsteen-esque frontman. I mean, the cat is really, really good. He also produces music and has worked with Taylor Swift a lot, and we all know how highly we think of Ms. Swift (she's awesome, this is not open for debate).

However, his creative juices were poisoned when he became famous because when he became famous, he met Lena Dunham and started dating her. Try as he might, and I bet he's tried, you can't just wash out the depressing goofiness of Lena Dunham very easily.

He obviously wiped some of that depressing goofiness on Ethan Cohen and Tricia Cooke somehow, because that's the only explanation I can think of for a movie that had a great premise and could have been good, turning into basically a two-hour documentary on how awesome it is to be a lesbian.

​

C'mon, you were thinking of "Seinfeld" too. I know it.

Anyway, the premise is that Marian is a weepy, sad person who hasn't had a date in a long time. This is because she is a very depressing person. No one would want to hang out with her, trust me.

Her friend Jamie is the opposite. She's got a girlfriend and has lots of sex everywhere she goes. But something happens and her girlfriend kicks Jamie out of the apartment. With nowhere to go, Jamie visits Marian and they decide to do a drive-away to Tallahassee to see Marian's aunt.

A "drive away" is a service. You drive someone's car for them to a different city. It's like a delivery. Apparently there are companies that specialize in this, although a quick Google check for drive-away services in Houston reveals nothing but ads for truck drivers. Oh well.

They go see Curlie, who has just been contacted by some mobsters who've told him they left their car at his lot and someone is going to come and get it and drive it to Tallahassee. What the mobsters don't tell Curlie, or anyone, is that the trunk has two things in it - a silver case (contents to be revealed later), and a container filled with ice and also with Pedro Pascal's severed head. As the movie opens, Pascal is seen with the silver case but mobsters corner him, take the case, and cut off his head. You should know that while Pascal as marketed as a star in this movie, he's only it in the first five minutes, although his severed head does make an appearance at the end of the movie.

As luck would have it, right after Curlie hangs up with the mobsters, in walk Marian and Jamie and they ask if there's any cars that need driven to Tallahassee. Thinking these are the people to whom the mobsters were referring, Curlie gives them the keys, and off go Jamie and Marian.

By the way, Bill Camp plays Curlie and is awesome. Camp is one of those character actors that you think you've seen a million times but maybe you're really only seen him in two things. But his list of credits is so long that it has its own Wikipedia page!

The mobsters come by to pick up the car, whereupon Curlie tells them that it's gone. This does not sit well with the mobsters, of which there are three: The Chief, The Lunk, and Not J. K. Simmons (the dude looks like J. K. Simmons and talks like J. K. Simmons but is actually Joey Slotnick and not J. K. Simmons). They rough up Curlie and set out looking for the girls and the car.

Along the way, some things happen. First and foremost, during the multi-day drive to Tallahassee, Jamie makes sure she has sex with as many women as possible. Then they find the stuff in the trunk and here is what's in the silver case: dildos. Five of them. Jamie is ecstatic! Marian is still uptight and is more distraught at Pedro Pascal's severed head than Jamie is.

The mobsters had visited Jamie's old girlfriend but she's a cop and easily subdues The Lunk, who tried to get physical. Not J. K. Simmons is much more rational and converses with Jamie's ex-girlfriend in a manner that gets the mobsters the information they want.

Everyone eventually arrives in Tallahassee and the mobsters locate Marian and Jamie via credit card transactions. They burst into the girls' hotel room but not before Jamie has partaken of the goods in the silver case. And as it turns out, those goods are replicas of the penises of some famous people (another penis-centric sentence I never thought I'd ever type). Some floozy named The Plaster Queen (played by Miley Cyrus in a flashback) boinks famous people and apparently using drugs, convinces them to let her make plaster casts of their junk. One of the dongs she re-created is that belonging to Senator Matt Damon, who is a potential presidential candidate. Understandably, he would not want a dildo made from a cast of his manhood out there, and he's the guy the mobsters have been working for.

And now for the questions. To this point, the movie has been an excuse to show as many women kissing each other as possible while not really focusing much on the dildos or Pedro Pascal's severed head. But I want to know:

1. What good does getting the case do? You've got to have the molds. Miley Cyrus could make as many Matt Damon Dongs(TM) as she wants!
2. Who were the other four famous dudes whose flesh torpedoes had been dildo-ized, and why weren't they also looking for the casts?
3. The mobsters have captured Marian and Jamie, and have them tied up and ready to be executed. But The Lunk gets tired of being made fun of and The Lunk shoots the Chief and Not J. K. Simmons, and then runs away. This allows Jamie and Marian to escape. OK fine, but The Lunk still works for Matt Damon, right? So what happens to The Lunk? Why didn't he take the silver case when he ran away? For that matter, why didn't he finish the job and shoot Jamie and Marian? What kind of a third-rate assassin is this guy? He doesn't show up at the end to help Matt Damon, who has agreed to pay the girls $1,000,000 in exchange for the Matt Damon Dong(TM). But The Lunk knows the girls' names and where they live, etc. Why did he just disappear? How come neither Marian nor Jamie nor Jamie's ex-girlfriend were worried about him any more?
4. Matt Damon does execute the trade and does take possession of the Matt Damon Dong(TM). So what was the reason for immediately trying to kill the girls? It goes spectacularly awry, as I'm sure you have already guessed
5. Finally, being in possession of not only the Matt Damon Dong(TM) but also the dongs of four other famous/powerful men, why didn't Matt Damon do what any politician would do - blackmail the other four dudes for whose dongs Matt Damon has replica dildos?

Matt Damon gets arrested and is caught with the dongs. This is headline news and the funniest thing in the movie is the newspaper headlines about Matt Damon and the Matt Damon Dong(TM), with his "I Can Explain!" quote right under the picture of him being arrested.

It kind of seems like "Drive-Away Dolls" is a movie meant to shine a light on lesbian love. And that's fine or as Jerry Seinfeld said above, "Not that there's anything wrong with that!". But if that's what you want to do, why wrap it up in a poorly-thought-out heist movie? This movie could have been a good lesbian love story, or it could have been a good heist movie, but it tries to be both and doesn't do justice to either subject.

It's not a total bomb but the best I can give "Drive-Away Dolls" is 2 Matt Damon Dongs(TM) out of five Matt Damon Dongs(TM) and don't kid yourself - you knew the second you saw me write "Matt Damon Dong(TM)" that I'd use Matt Damon Dongs(TM) as the rating device for this movie.

 

[RodeoSchro]

Desperado
March 18, 2024

I'll tell you right up front this isn't that good of a movie. It ain't gonna get half of whatever clever rating device I come up with. But I'm not blaming Robert Rodriguez or Quentin Tarantino. Nope, I'm blaming a guy name Al.

Al Gorithim to be exact. Maybe it's because I can't help watching every four-minute snippet of Raylan Givens going nuts on "Justified" and somehow, Mr. Al Gorithim thinks that means I like Westerns? Or maybe Mr. Al Gorithim spied on me a year or two ago when I posted how funny I thought the description of Steve Buscemi was when his picture was used on Peter Griffin's drivers license on "Family Guy"? ("He looks like a human cigarette!" and you have to admit, that's funny)

Who knows? Not me. Who cares? Not me, either. Except to the extent that Mr. Al Gorithim started populating my feed with the opening scene of "Desperado". It's a scene where Steve Buscemi walks into a Mexican bar and tells a story like only he can. Hey, I have an idea - let's watch that scene right now! It truly is one of the best scenes, from any movie, ever:

​

And now you've seen all the "Desperado" you need to see. But I'll still happily skewer it because happily skewering things is what I do!

This is the second of Robert Rodriguez's "Mexico trilogy". It's supposed to be about a mysterious stranger who travels around with a guitar case full of weaponry, killing everyone he possibly can in hopes that during all that killing, he kills the guy who killed his girlfriend. Or something like that.

Antonio Banderas plays The Mariachi aka The Stranger. Quentin Tarantino plays a Scumbag. Robert Rodriguez plays Quentin Tarantino. Salma Hayek gets her big break.

Back to Rodriguez. He tries too hard to be Quentin Tarantino which is weird seeing as how Tarantino is in this movie. You'd have thought Tarantino would have said, "Hey man - quit trying to be me and just be you". But no and sadly, Robert Rodriguez is no Tarantino. There is only one Tarantino and there's a good reason for that.

We can only take one Quentin Tarantino at a time.

Antonio Banderas has a similar problem but with a twist - he can't decide if he's Antonio Banderas or Sylvester Stallone. In the beginning, God created...no, wait. In the beginning, Banderas is a great Silent Killing Machine but after he gets shot a few times and has to be sewn up by Hayek, he gets very wordy, and a whole bunch of his mystique wears off. Baby, mystique is hard to come by and when you've got it, you keep it!

Banderas shoots a whole bunch of people, including ultimately all the dudes in the bar Buscemi told that great story. But he doesn't know yet who Bucho is. I thought he did though, because I thought it was Bucho who killed Banderas's girlfriend in the first movie? It looked that way in a flashback. And if it was, then the whole premise of this movie crumbles, because it turns out Bucho is Banderas's brother. Banderas would have always known who Bucho was.

If my memory is bad and it wasn't Bucho who killed the girlfriend, then why does Banderas have a grudge with Bucho? See - Quentin Tarantino would have never left me guessing like this.

We stumble to The Big Showdown, in which Banderas has brought two friends who also have guitar cases. Their cases don't open to reveal multiple guns but that's OK. They don't have to. One guy's case is a handle-triggered machine gun and the other guy's case shoots rocket propelled grenades. They have a grand time shooting or blowing up everyone they can, that is until they are shot to smithereens on account of not being smart enough to ever take cover.

Banderas ends up at Bucho's ranch, where they kinda/sorta make up, except that it doesn't take and Bucho dies from a severe case of lead poisoning compliments of Banderas. Then Banderas and Hayek drive off into the sunset, and FIN.

If the whole movie had followed the tone Buscemi set in the beginning, it would have been a whole lot better. And if there'd been more Buscemi, that also would have made the movie better. But those things didn't happen, so the best I can give Desperado is 2 Fake Quentin Tarantinos out of 5 Fake Quentin Tarantinos and as we know, there is only one Quentin Tarantino.

 

[RodeoSchro]

GHOSTBUSTERS - Iced Cold Beer!
March 23, 2024

You can tell by my halfway funny title that there's not much going for this thing. Let me put it this way:

If you've seen one Ghostbusters movie, you've pretty much seen them all.

Except for the one before this - which was "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" - they all go like this: (1) the Ghostbusters are down on their luck; (2) a bad ghost that is the embodiment of all evil and is going to destroy Earth appears; then (3) using the same equipment every single movie, the Ghostbusters save the day and are hailed as heroes.

An actor named William Atherton plays the Mayor of New York City. He was in the first "Ghostbusters" - he was the arrogant EPA lawyer that unleashed all the ghosts on New York City. He was also the arrogant TV reporter in "Die Hard" (best Christmas movie ever, fight me on it) and you've seen him in a lot of other stuff, mostly stuff where he's arrogant. In case that doesn't bring him to mind, here's a picture of him, probably being arrogant to someone:

​

In real life, I'm sure he's a nice guy but he was so good at being arrogant in the original "Ghostbusters" that he actually got harassed on the street and challenged to fights in bars. Yikes!

But you don't want to hear about William Atherton getting the lead part in "The Day of the Locust" but being so arrogant that he walked out and refused to film the final scene of the movie, do you? Nor do you want to hear that there was a character in that movie who was played by the legendary Donald Sutherland, and that character's name was "Homer Simpson", do you? (True!) No, Dear Reader, you want to hear about THIS movie.

Errrm....maybe you don't. There's nothing original in it. There's nothing funny in it. There's nothing that touches your heart like the end of "Afterlife" did.

Not even Patton Oswalt can save it and if you want to hear the problem with this flick, it's in Oswalt's scene. You see, some dude has sold a sphere to Dan Ayckroyd that contains The Most Evil Thing In History. But no one knew it. They only knew there was weird writing on the sphere that they couldn't decipher.

So they go to Oswalt, who runs some Paranormal Library. After telling them that the language on the sphere is older than Sanskrit and no one has ever seen it before, he immediately goes to a book with a picture of that sphere, and the book relates how The Most Evil Thing In History is trapped inside it.

How did he know what book to go to? In fact, how did he know what page to turn to? And why is it always an Evil Spirit That Wants To Destroy Earth? Plus, why is it that all Evil Spirits That Want To Destroy Earth can be vacuumed up and that somehow that erases them? Not only that, why did the producers burn $10,000,000 on Paul Rudd (more than they paid everyone else combined) and then not use him very much, much less give him anything funny to say?

I'd pass on it if I was you. But I am not you, so make your own choice.

"Ghostbusters - Baby, It's Cold Outside" gets a Pawn out of a Full Chess Set. Yeah, ghosts play chess.

 

[RodeoSchro]

RICKY STANICKY
April 7, 2024

Finally - a great movie to watch while enjoying a copious amount of adult beverages!

Which I did!

This is a verrrrrrrrrry funny movie, entirely because of the acting greatness of John Cena. Yes, John Cena. He is HILARIOUS.

Grab your favorite beverage, or watch it stone-cold sober. It won't matter - you will laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh. And then you're going to want to watch it again, because there's no way to catch all the great lines the first time!

"Ricky Stanicky" gets 5 Oh Wait Until You See What William H. Macy Does out of 5 Oh Wait Until You See What William H. Macy Does. Come back and tell me I'm not right!

 

[RodeoSchro]

A YOUTUBE RABBIT HOLE OR TWO...DOZEN
Yesterday, Today and Probably Tomorrow

It's not what you think. I haven't gotten addicted to fail videos or home repair videos or car review videos or anything like that. No, I have found the REAL REASON for Youtube:

You can watch the best scenes of good TV shows without having to ever watch the whole show!

Case in point: "Justified".

This was a great show. I watched four or five episodes back in the day and really liked it but never got around to following through. This was probably because I'd read all the Raylan Givens books that Elmore Leonard wrote, so I figured I was good.

I was kinda wrong!

A few months ago we started watching the new "Justified: City Primeval". It was good but not good enough to keep watching. However, since all my devices are always spying on me, all of a sudden "Justified" clips started populating my Youtube feed. And mostly clips from the original series. All of them about 3 - 5 minutes long. And all of them the scenes where Raylan either shoots someone, beats someone up, or otherwise outsmarts someone.

Awesome!

I don't know how many clips I've watched but I've watched all the clips that Youtube sees fit to throw my way. I've watched all the best parts of six seasons in short clips that probably total an hour or two? Hey, does that make me a binger?!? Because up til now, I've never watched more than two episodes of anything in one sitting and I'm pretty sure that the hipsters would not call that "binging".

And then someone told me, "Hey RodeoSchro - you need to watch 'Peaky Blinders' because it's even more awesome that 'Banshee' was".

I made it through one episode.

Sure, there was a lot of action but "Peaky Blinders" has three things going against it: (1) I can't understand the accents very well; (2) everyone is always smoking and I swear I can smell it coming through the TV; and (3) all set pieces, clothing and other stuff are dark and brown. Pass.

But guess what? Youtube somehow spied on me AGAIN and now my feed has lots of 3-minute clips where that one dude named Tommy kills various other unintelligible doofuses. Score!

What else does Youtube think I'll like?

"Yellowstone". No, I ditched that after the hippie chick and Kevin Costner's daughter were made to beat the hell out of each other by Rip.

Most Badass Movie Moments, Parts 1 - 8. Now we're talking!

But the big winner is...

 

[RodeoSchro]

WISHMASTER 2
April 17, 2024

...this is the big winner!

For reasons unknown, Youtube kept throwing clips of this thing at me. And I watched them all! And then I watched the entire movie!

First things first - the movie is pretty corny. The acting is subpar, the writing is amateurish, the effects are just OK. But what IS five-star rated it this guy:

​

This guy is Andrew Divoff. He was PERFECT in this movie. Probably also in the first one but I haven't watched that one yet.

"Wishmaster 2" is one of those movies where every scene that Divoff is in is pure perfection, because HE is pure perfection in this role. Unfortunately he isn't in every scene but he's in most of them. More than enough, in fact, to make watching "Wishmaster 2" worth 93 minutes of your time.

I can't give the entire movie five stars but am I going to let that stop me from giving Andrew Divoff five stars? What do you think?!?

 

[RodeoSchro]

LIE HARD
April 26, 2024

Nope.

 

[RodeoSchro]

BOY KILLS WORLD
April 28, 2024

Dang it. Dang it, dang it, dang it!

You might be wondering what I'm upset about. Well, look one post up.

See that? The one-word review of "Lie Hard"? That, my friends, is an award-winning post. An historical review. One for the ages. It's only two days old - what award has it already won? An award I just now made up but is appropriate - The Calvin Coolidge Presidential Award For Brevity In Publications. Sounds pretty official, right? It's so official-sounding that if it doesn't exist, it should - and I should have already won it.

So you know what I wanted to follow that up with, right? Sure you do!

I wanted to do the same thing with "Boy Kills World", obvs. A movie with such a great title and which by all accounts delivers on that title was just begging for a similar one-word review, except this time it would have been "Yep!" I would have won another Calvin Coolidge Presidential Award For Brevity In Publications - it would have been my second in a row and thus ensured my immediate enshrinement in the Movie Reviewers World Wide Hall of Fame.

Ah, well. Maybe next year. Let's get to the salient question - why isn't "Boy Kills World" worthy of a "Yep!"?

Too slow. Too gratuitous. Too bogged down in senseless slaughters. Too many plot mishaps. Two too many good guys that get killed.

I'm not going to go full-on plot rehash because the plot is too convoluted. Suffice to say that Boy watches his mother and sister executed at The Culling, and then spends the rest of his adolescence being trained by The Shaman to exact revenge on the President/Dictator/Whatever lady who executed them.

Then that's pretty much what he goes out to do.

The thing is, he's good but not great. He gets captured way too many times and needs help getting out. In fact, a couple times he's definitely dead but by some incredible luck provided by someone else, lives to fight another day. Or later on that day, to be precise.

Oh yeah, there's a giant plot twist, and maybe a couple of minor plot twists - and none of those plot twists are in the slightest bit believable. That's a problem. The Boy is a deaf mute on account of the trauma of watching his mother and sister executed but they use a great voice-over technique involving one of those 80's video games where everyone fights each other. But even that is uneven.

"Boy Kills World" is an adaptation of a short film called "Boy Kills World" and I have a feeling the short film is much better than the long one. So if you need to watch "Boy Kills World", I'd suggest finding the short film somewhere.

There are no awards for this post or this movie (although I do think I did a good job here so if anyone wants to nominate me somewhere, I won't stop you). "Boy Meets World" gets 1 1/2 Buckets O'Blood out of the 5 Buckets O'Blood that they had to lather on Boy every day of filming. That had to be less than fun.

 

[RodeoSchro]

THE HILL
May 2, 2024

Today we are going to play a game. At least, I am. And that game is called What, Exactly, Is True? It's a game we play when a movie "Based on a true story". Or sometimes "Inspired by actual events". In other words, you can't ever play this game with a Star Wars movie or a Seth Rogen movie.

"The Hill" is a God movie, a baseball movie and a period piece. It's a great story! So let's run down the story, plot point by plot point, and assign YES or NO to each plot point, guessing whether or not that point actually ever happened. Then I'll Google this movie and see how much of it I got right! Here we go:

A kid is playing baseball - YES
His dad - played by Dennis Quaid, who is looking a lot like Tommy Lee Jones somehow - is a preacher - YES
The kid wears leg braces like Forrest Gump - YES
The kid can hit rocks a long, long way - YES
The kid - whose name is Ricky Hill and will henceforth be called Ricky - has a girlfriend that critiques his swing - NO
Quaid loses his preacher job because he asks people not to smoke or chew tobacco in his church - NO (but should be a YES any and every time!)
Booted from their shack and going who knows where, the Family Truckster breaks down, has a flat, and strands the family in Nowhere, Texas - NO
A kindly rich lady picks them up and it turns out her husband's brother's small town needs a preacher - YES
Now in their new, smaller town, Ricky and his brother try to get into a baseball pickup game - NO
Rebuffed because of his Forrest Gump leg braces, Ricky challenges the best pitcher to strike him out - NO
Ricky misses on two swings but bangs his knees with the bat so that they'll bend - YES
Now with bendable legs, Ricky hits a home run - YES
And now without braces, on account of them getting ruined by a bat, Ricky can walk - YES
Ricky grows up to be a high school baseball phenom - YES
At the end of the season, Ricky trips on a sprinkler while chasing a fly ball and rips all the tendons in his ankle - YES
Upon examination, the doctor says that not only does Ricky have an almost-unfixable ankle, he has a spinal condition - YES
Ricky's family can't afford the operation but somehow, the small town raises the $7,000 needed - NO
The operation is a success - YES
But it turns out that two months after the operation, there's a major-league tryout in Ricky's little town - NO
Ricky's first girlfriend shows back up, and has brought a newspaper reporter from Houston with her - NO
Ricky breaks his cast off his ankle so as to make it to the tryout - NO
The tryout is attended by major league scouts, including the guy who signed Nolan Ryan, Red Something-Or-Other - YES
Ricky hits very well but can't run or field, since he's still limping very badly - YES
Ricky gets cut but convinces the scout to give him one more at-bat - NO
Ricky hits every pitch out of the stadium, and they land in the next stadium over, right next to Red - NO
Red tells Ricky he can be a DH (designated hitter) for both teams in the Big Game the next day - YES
Ricky's dad has never ever seen Ricky play baseball, as he hates anything that isn't preaching - NO
The childhood girlfriend and all of Ricky's family except Dad show up for the Big Game - NO
Ricky goes 10-for-10, absolutely killing all pitchers - YES
For his last at-bat, Red calls out an All Star major league pitcher who's in the minors for a rehab stint - NO
The pitcher gets two strikes on Ricky and then plunks him hard in the ribs - NO
Ricky is told to take his base but says that since this isn't a real game, he's going to finish the at-bat - NO
Ricky's dad shows up at this exact moment, walking through a gate and standing right next to third base - NO
On the next pitch, Ricky creams a home run - NO

The rest of the story is what happened to Ricky Hill in real-life. He was drafted by the Montreal Expos, played four years in the minor leagues, and then had spinal trouble, forcing his retirement. He now lives in Fort Worth, Texas where he is a golf instructor and coaches Little League.

Alright, let's go to the Google machine and check our results!

<Googling, Reading, Taking a Break>

Not bad! I think the only thing I got wrong was that in fact, his dad really never did get to see Rickey (and that's how it's spelled) play. But Dad did support Rickey's baseball efforts, unlike Dennis Quaid in the film. This movie very much does track the real story of Rickey Hill.

But man! As usual, there are a couple things not in the movie that should have been. For instance, Rickey didn't bomb the legendary scout Red Murff (and that's his last name) with home runs - instead, Rickey climbed a 10-foot fence in order to get to Murff and convince Murff to let him hit. Murff was standing on the pitcher's mound. Murff asked Rickey, "Do you know where you are? You're on the hill" and that's how the story got its name. But I don't think that line was in the movie.

I'm not 100% sure on the sprinkler point. But I did find out that in real life, Rickey ran through an outfield wall while chasing a fly ball and broke 38 bones. Thirty-eight! I have no idea why the film makers thought showing a guy trip on a sprinkler head was more visually attractive than showing a guy run through a wall.

Another real-life thing about Rickey was that he was only in the Expos system one year but his minor league roommate was Andre Dawson, who is in the Hall of Fame. Rickey and Andre are still friends. And Rickey remained friends with Red Murff the rest of Murff's life, even speaking at Murff's memorial service.

One of the independent minor league teams Hilll played on won their league championship and somehow everyone got a championship ring but Rickey. However, in an incredible stroke of luck, a reporter was contacted by a guy who said he had Rickey's ring. It had Rickey's name inscribed on it. The guy got it from his father but didn't know how his father had got it. The reporter was able to put everyone together and 37 years after the fact, Rickey got his ring.

The more I type this review, the more I like this movie. And the more I like all the stuff AROUND the movie. I'm giving "The Hill" 4 Rusted Out 1971 Mustang Mach 1s out of 5 Rusted Out 1971 Mustang Mach 1s. And I'll leave you with this, which is a mammoth home run that landed on the porch of a house. The same guy - Dave Kingman - once hit a ball out of the Cincinnati Reds' stadium and into the river, which was the border between Ohio and Kentucky. That means Kingman hit a ball from one state to another!

​

(By the way, Kingman hits 3 home runs in this game but the Cubs lost 23 22!)

 

[RodeoSchro]

THE FALL GUY
May 3, 2024

May the Fourth be with you! Which counts, as I'm writing this on May 4th. So, Star Wars away to your heart's content!

That would be better than watching "The Fall Guy" and I have no one to blame but myself. I know better than to watch a Ryan Gosling movie. I know better.

And yet, I did.

And I got exactly what I deserved.

Two hours of Ryan Gosling not being funny, interesting or anything else you'd want in a movie star.

This is simply a dumb movie that isn't funny, not really very exciting and has two of the most wooden and laconic leading actors since Ben Affleck. You know how I feel about Ryan Gosling. Well, in this movie Emily Blunt is pretty much the female equivalent. There's simply no chemistry between them. Granted, I did not do well in any science class I ever took so I might be wrong. But I'm not.

Before we go any further, let's activate our old friend, The RodeoSchro Movie Previews Indication Device. It's relevant for this!

There were the usual previews - two animated things, a Planet of the Apes movie, and God help us all - a remake/sequel/abomination of a "Twister" movie called "Twisters". It has one of the most tired tropes in Hollywood - the one-time wunderkind who doesn't do whatever it was they used to be the best in the world at because of The Accident, and yet everyone in that industry still knows exactly who this person is. (Adding to the disappointment, not once in the preview was there a reference to the only memorable line in the original "Twister" movie - "Cow!" Fortunately for the other members of my audience ("my" audience?!?) I gave them a "Cow!" to go home with.)

"The Fall Guy" is the same - Gosling was The Greatest Stuntman Ever until The Accident, which caused him to become A Hermit. This meant that no one, not even Blunt, could find him in Los Angeles. Apparently none of them ever ate at the Mexican restaurant he now worked at as a valet driver, which you would think is far away from being a stuntman but then you remember the valets in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and you think, "Oh, yeah. I get it".

This manifests itself when a random movie guy shows up at Gosling's restaurant and remembers Gosling from working together on a movie. It doesn't help that this random guy is a True Hollywood A-Hole, and berates Gosling. But Gosling Ferris Bueller's the guy's Dodge Hellcat, which somehow leads to The Producer calling Gosling.

"How did you get this number?" asks Gosling, which is the only really coherent line in the movie. It's a good question because not even Emily Blunt has it, and she was his Main Squeeze until The Accident. It's such a good question that it never gets answered.

I'll answer it.

The only way The Producer could have gotten it is: (1) the True Hollywood A-Hole tells The Producer, "Hey guess who I saw last night"; (2) The Producer says, "I give up. Who?"; (3) the True Hollywood A-Hole says, "Cole Seivers!"; to which (4) The Producer says, "Who? Oh yeah, the guy that used to do stunts. Where did you see him?"; (5) and the True Hollywood A-Hole says, "At a restaurant that apparently absolutely no one else in The Industry ever goes to, because he's a valet and there's no way that if you went there you'd not see him parking cars"; and then (6) The Producer says, "Hmmm, I need a fall guy for a murder. What restaurant was that?" but then (7) the True Hollywood A-Hole says, "No way! This is my secret restaurant now! If I tell you, then all the other True Hollywood A-Holes will hear about it and I'll never be able to get a table!"; (8) The Producer counters with "You'd better tell me or you'll never work in this town again!"; and then of course (9) the True Hollywood A-Hole says, "OK, it's Herbert's Gro. and Taco Hut on Sepulveda (that was the name of a real grocery store/Mexican restaurant in San Marcos, TX); (10) which prompts The Producer to call the manager of Herbert's Gro. and Taco Hut and somehow get said manager to give up confidential employee information, and I'm too bored to recount THAT conversation.

But this gives you a flavor for the level of thought that went into making this movie.

The Producer is really an agent, and her only client appears to be the biggest movie star in the world. Gosling was that dude's personal stuntman until The Accident. The Producer calls Gosling on his secret cell phone and says, "Hey, remember your girlfriend, Emily Blunt? The camera operator? Well, she's been given a chance to direct a movie and wants you to do the stunts! You're on the first flight to Sydney, Australia in the morning!"

Gosling acquiesces and flies to Sydney, where one of the several weak running gags pops up. Gosling is tired and wants coffee but every single time he pours a cup, something interrupts - usually a fight. But whatever, it takes Gosling half the movie to get some coffee and when he does, the movie makers forgot to make it a big deal. Which reminds me of a story!

In 1981 me and some friends traveled to Austin to watch SMU beat the crap out of the University of Texas in a football game. A friend in Austin was buddies with the doorman at the hottest club on 6th Street and prior to the game, we parked my dad's GMC motor home right in front. After the game, we were basically The Kings of 6th Street.

We also had a our own table inside, and I was hungry. I ordered some food but every time it got delivered, something took me away (usually the ruse of girls wanting to see the motor home), and other people ate my food. This happened two or three times in a row. Finally, a plate of tacos was delivered to me and I wasn't going to fall for the "Hey, RodeoSchro - some sorority babes want to see your motor home!" ruse this time! As I was about to dive into my tacos, a waitress came over and asked if I was from SMU. I was, and she said, "A reporter would like to talk to you on the phone". Yeah, right! But I went to their office phone anyway.

And there WAS a reporter on the line! From the Dallas Morning News! And she asked a lot of questions about the game and how things were going on 6th Street. I was happy to oblige in very descriptive terms. I asked if this was really going to be published and she said, "Oh yeah - it's going to be on the front page of tomorrow's giant Sunday edition". AND IT WAS.

I picked up a copy of the Austin edition of the Dallas Morning News the next morning and sure enough, there was a front-page story about SMU's big victory, and there were a few innocent quotes from me. Whew! But then we got back to Houston and the next day...

...friends started calling me to ask if I was OK. Why would anyone ask that? Because the DALLAS edition of the Dallas Morning News had a much, much longer article and it had a whole bunch more of my quotes. The really drunken quotes, to be exact. Everyone figured that if my dad read me talking about all the hot babes we had on the motor home, and how we had enough gin and tonic onboard to last for a week, my goose was cooked.

Dad did see all that but Dad was super cool. So cool that I ended up getting several copies of the Dallas edition and framing the article for display on various walls to this very day.

Now you know that the reason I'm cooler than Ryan Gosling is that I inherited some of my Dad's coolness. Can you imagine if I'd inherited all of it?!?

IT'S ALWAYS GOOD TO END PART ONE OF A REVIEW BY TELLING YOUR AUDIENCE THAT YOU ARE COOLER THAN THEY ARE. THEREFORE, END OF PART ONE.

 

[RodeoSchro]

"THE FALL GUY" PART TWO AND DON'T WORRY - YOU ARE COOLER THAN RYAN GOSLING, TOO

The movie that Blunt is directing is a really stupid science fiction movie that stars, of course, the guy Gosling used to do stunts for. You know, the world's biggest movie star. But there's one problem - he's missing. The real reason Gosling is there is to find this guy.

For about an hour and several un-tasted cups of coffee, Gosling gets in various tussles looking for this guy. He also gets drugged but he's such a Super Stunt Man that even though the Molly or roofie or whatever they put in his Shirley Temple makes him see a unicorn, he can still beat up just about anyone.

At one point - and I should let you know that this movie is based on the old TV series called "The Fall Guy". That starred Lee Majors and Heather Thomas. They played stunt people by day and bounty hunters by night. In this thing, Gosling is a stunt guy but is not a bounty hunter. Unless this is just a set-up for a "The Fall Guy" franchise in which Gosling spends all the rest of the movies hunting bounties. Ugh, let's hope not.

Where was I? Oh yeah - at one point, there is a little homage to Lee Majors, although it's an homage not to his part on "The Fall Guy" but to his biggest role, that of the Six Million Dollar Man.

Gosling escapes the clutches of some bad guy and while doing it, there's a three-second sound clip of that sound Lee Majors made whenever he did a Six Million Dollar Man move. This sound:

​

The other nod to Lee Majors is that in LA, Gosling's truck is the exact same 1981 GMC K-2500 Wideside truck that Lee Majors drove in "The Fall Guy". As you will see if you make a questionable choice to watch this movie, GMC took advantage of that and did some serious product placement.

Back to the "plot". You'll love this part.

Even though Gosling has not done a stunt in far more than a year; even though The Accident broke Gosling's back; the first thing Gosling is supposed to do upon arriving in Australia is a crash in a Mad Max-type truck that is supposed to result in a world record number of rolls. This is to be done on a beach.

Gosling picks up some sand and says "Bad sand". Say what? "The sand is too loose. I won't be able to get traction. Let's do this after the tide comes in and goes out, thus compacting the sand". OK, sounds reasonable to me. But not to Emily Blunt, who does not like Gosling because he disappeared without a word after The Accident, and also because she says she never asked that Gosling be hired for this movie.

They do the stunt anyway.

The weird part is that Gosling does pull off a world record number of rolls but not before being unable to keep the truck from getting too close to the filming truck, hitting its camera, and ruining The Comic-Con Shot. Oh no!

Long story short, Gosling and his stuntman-buddy/partner-in-fights find the phone of the missing star and find a video on it that shows that the missing star (probably accidentally) killed his new stunt double at a drunken orgy a few days earlier. Gosling knew the stunt double was dead because he'd come across the dude's dead body in a bath tub in the missing star's suite, but he didn't know exactly what happened to the stunt double.

Cutting even more to the chase, Gosling is framed for the stunt double's death via a deep fake done to the video of the stunt double's death but please do not ask me who did the deep fake, how they did it, or when they possibly had the opportunity to do it. Just accept that Gosling's head was magically deep-faked onto the missing star's body as the missing star kung fu-kicked the other stuntman into The Great Beyond.

In a series of incredibly stupid moves, everyone ends up at the Big Scene. The missing star has been found; Gosling was presumed dead when his boat blew up; and now the movie can be finished. Except, of course, Gosling isn't dead and Emily Blunt has helped Gosling set up a scenario in which Gosling and the star are strapped into a dune buggy and Gosling gets the star to admit that it was him who kung fu-kicked the stunt double to death and then deep-faked Gosling's head in order to successfully frame him.

Of course, Gosling is recording all this on the way to piloting the dune buggy to The Impossible Jump, which Gosling proves was not Impossible after all.

But wait, there's more! The Producer - who was behind this whole scheme, as her one and only reason for living was to protect her biggest and only client - shows up in a helicopter and pirates away the star. But not before Gosling is able to jump onboard, have some more fights, and then force the helicopter down.

The movie is finished and premiered at Comic-Con, where the new Comic-Con shot is the shot of Gosling making The Impossible Jump. The end!

Not really. There's a post-credit scene in which The Producer and the star try to make a run for it after the helicopter crashes. But guess who shows up to arrest them? That's right - Australian police officers Lee Majors and Heather Thomas. The Producer gives up but the star figures he can make a call and get out of all this. The problem is, he's right next to all the pyro and you do NOT use cell phones when next to pyro. Because if you do, well - let's just say there's no more star.

Look - the plot is stupid. Gosling is not funny. Maybe it wasn't his fault - I really can't see any of the lines he had to deliver as being funny if they were said by anyone else. But I've seen enough Ryan Gosling movies to know he isn't good at comedy, so he gets the blame.

Like I said, I knew better but I watched this anyway. The way I look at it though, is that I'm currently one for two in the I Know Better Than To Watch This Movie department. While I may have cracked and watched a Ryan Gosling movie, I have not yet watched Jake Gyllenhaal's remake of "Road House". Don't start patting me on the back yet - I might crack and watch that one too. And I'll have no one to blame but myself.

Maybe I'm not that cool. "The Fall Guy" gets 1 Bottle Of Whatever They Used On Gosling's Hair out of 5 Bottles Of Whatever They Used On Gosling's Hair. My hair paint is better!

 

[RodeoSchro]

FREELANCE
June 1, 2024

You know I'm a honk for all things John Cena. Just go up 8 posts if you need proof.

"Freelance" is good John Cena but not great John Cena. See, the thing about John Cena is that he's so Arnold-like that he can take a weak script and, with his patented rapid-fire deadpan delivery, inject humor and machisimo.

That's basically this movie. It's not very inventive but Cena is always fun to watch. Here's the plot, such as it is:

Cena needs direction so he goes to law school and gets a degree but is unsatisfied with his professional life, which bleeds into his personal life (wife and daughter). So he does the natural thing and joins the Army, becoming a member of the elite Special Forces. This makes him happy. And while Special Forcing, he gets to hang out with Christian Slater!

That is, until his entire team is wiped out as they are approaching the mythical country of Paledonia, where they are going to assassinate the dictator. Cena was the first out of the helicopter but as he's repelling down, the chopper gets shot out of the sky and all but Cena die (Christian Slater was not on this mission). Cena blames the dictator for shooting down the chopper and killing all his buddies. To top it off, when Cena crashed to the ground, it messed up his back so he had to go back to being an unhappy lawyer.

He lawyers away unhappily until one day Christian Slater shows up. They hug it out and then Slater takes Cena to see his new operation. Slater is now a global security expert - planes, helicopters, assassins, and the rest. But he's getting into the apparently-lucrative protection of celebrity reporters. That takes the best of the best, and Slater thinks that's Cena. But Cena doesn't agree until Slater throws $20,000 his way. He's in! And just in time, because his wife thinks a separation is in order, as she's not happy with his unhappiness. They love each other but they aren't liking each other.

The job is protecting Allison Brie while she goes to Paledonia and interviews that dictator whose army shot down Cena's helicopter. To make it worse, Brie is a disgraced reporter. She used to be a good reporter but didn't follow up on one source, who turned out to be a liar, and that cost her everything - job, reputation, etc. She ended up interviewing rappers at their cribs, and it's as cringe-worthy as it sounds. For some unfathomable reason, a dictator who never allows interviews wants Brie to interview him, and she sees that as her ticket back to respectability.

Brie and Cena take someone's G-V down (over?) to Paledonia, where they meet the dictator. He's all razzle-dazzle and enthusiasm and Cena does everything he can not to kill him. On the way from Point A to Point B, they're ambushed and Cena is able to kill all comers. Except one, but the dictator saves Cena's life by shooting that guy with his giant golden hand cannon.

Cutting to the chase here, it tuns out the dictator is a good guy and knows everything about all the people trying to kill him - including Cena - but takes all of it with a humorous grain of salt. It's kind of out of place, to be honest.

Cena and the dictator eventually kill everyone that needs killing, along with some help from Slater and his crew, who show up just when needed. Brie - who, by the way, plays unlikable characters waaaaaaaaaay too realistically, whatever happened to that cute girl in "Community"? - anyway she not only gets the interview but livestreams the entire shoot-out and lives happily ever after. And to no one's surprise, it turns out the dictator did not shoot down Cena's chopper. It was the same South African mercenaries that Cena, Slater and friends have just dispatched to the Ever After.

This is one of those movies that's better watched while inebriated. Turn off your brain, throw down some libations, and laugh at most of Cena's lines. If you do that, "Freelance" is a 2.99 Giant Golden Hand Cannons out of 5 Giant Golden Hand Cannons.

 

[RodeoSchro]

ROAD HOUSE
Why even mark the date I watched this travesty?

I tried. I really tried. I knew better. And yet, well...I kind of have a good reason for being an idiot and watching this.

You may have seen on the news three weeks ago that something called a "derecho" hit Houston. Specifically, it hit right where we live. I've lived in a city susceptible to hurricanes and tornadoes my whole life but I'd never heard of a derecho (which is pronounced "dur-ETCH-oh shit!"). Turns out a derecho is a tornado that doesn't spin. It's what they call "straight-line winds".

130 mph straight-line winds. Yep, that's what hit us. 130 mph. Even faster a little north. Well anyway, tons of trees got knocked down. Our neighbor was in the process of taking out some dead trees near our property and we think a branch fell and severed our cable line. All I know for 100% sure is that we have no internet and no cable. At least we have power though, which for three days we didn't.

Our wonderful, wonderful cable company cannot come out for a few more days but I can kind of understand that. A whole bunch of Houston, Texas still has more knocked-down and mostly-cut-up trees on the sides of the roads than you can imagine. I'm sure there are thousands of downed cable lines all over the city.

So we've been living on wireless hot spots and Roku TV. Not one for searching endlessly through all the apps for the next thing to watch after "Freelance", I did the stupid thing and watched a Jake Gyllenhaal movie. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson after watching that Ryan Gosling movie but I am an idiot sometimes.

This was one of those times.

This thing is so bad. So very, very bad. It would be one of the worst movies ever even if John Cena was in it instead of the talent-less Jake Gyllenhaal. It would be a putrid movie even if it wasn't a remake that had to attempt to meet the incredibly high entertainment standards of the original "Road House".

I'm having an debate with myself. Should I point out all the idiocy in this thing, or just some of it? My time is valuable, you know. But so are you! I'll try to fill you in on all the stupidity but be warned - there's a lot of stupidity.

Let's start with Dalton, which is and always will be Patrick Swayze but I'm using "Dalton" now because I'm tired of typing "Gyllenhaal".

Dalton is a former UFC badass. He was fighting for the championship. His opponent was actually a friend of his so naturally Dalton slaps him at the weigh-in.

Then they fight. I guess Dalton had never been beaten before but he's getting beaten now. Of course, he snaps. Not only does he win the fight but he keeps on hitting his buddy until the dude is dead. Thus endeth the seconds-long championship reign of Dalton.

This leads Dalton to a life of showing up at underground all-comers Fight Clubs, waiting for the end, and then offering to fight. Everyone always realizes who he is and no one in their right mind is going to fight him, so he always gets the prize fund.

But that's not enough for any kind of life. He lives in his car.

A lady tracks him down after one of these non-fight cash grabs and says, "I have a road house in Florida called 'Road House' and I need someone to keep the riff-raff in line". Dalton grudgingly accepts the job, for the same reason Cena did in "Freelance" - cash.

At this point we need to realize something. In the original "Road House", Dalton IS a professional bouncer. His expertise is keeping the peace at the bar. He even teaches all the other bouncers how to do it.

In this "Road House", Dalton has no bouncer experience. He's a UFC fighter. That's it. He has no interpersonal skills, no reputation of defusing rowdy elements. Basically, he's been hired to beat the crap out of everyone because that's the only thing he knows how to do.

This will not work. The main reason is that Dalton does not do any real work.

Oh, he beats up some idiots on his first night, all while repeating the lamest "comedic" lines you'll ever hear. That's it. The rest of his job performance consists of telling the other "bouncers" that when someone pulls an eight-inch hunting knife and attempts to kill them, well - Dalton certainly isn't going to come to your aid. But he WILL tell you to take a step back and then quickly punch the knife-wielding attacker in the face. Luckily for one of the other bouncers, that worked. But what would have worked better was Dalton and the other staff taking the knife guy down from behind.

Hey - let's end Part One on that happy note!

END OF PART ONE. I'VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT THIS STINKER OVERNIGHT, SO THERE MAY BE MANY MORE PARTS TO FOLLOW.

 

[RodeoSchro]

ROAD HOUSE, PART TWO OF TBD PARTS

Dalton sent those idiots to the hospital; in fact, I think he drove them there. Like I said, they're idiots. At the hospital, Dalton meets a female doctor with whom there is absolutely no chemistry. I wondered later if there was supposed to be a romance between Dalton and the doctor, but the director realized how dumb these two people would look if they were lovers and made the only good decision they made in this entire mess? Or did the screenwriters not have the intelligence to write a script that included a love interest for the male lead? Who knows? And more importantly, who cares? You should not care.

Dalton is really pretty ineffectual at calming down Road House. Pretty much every night, there are full-on barroom brawls. Dalton's staff always throws them out but for some reason, either those brawlers come back the next night, or other brawlers show up for some brawling. Incredibly, the lady that owns Road House continues to pay Dalton $5K per week for basically being a fight-winner instead of a fight-avoider. Fortunately, the Road House seems to have an inexhaustible supply of chairs, tables and pool sticks.

Also - and this is not fortunately - Road House has live music every night, every fight. But unlike the original "Road House", it's not the same band. It's a different band every night, far as I can tell. But all bands continue to play bland blues-rock throughout all fights, even the fight where Conor MacGregor tears a hole in their protective chicken-wire fence and roughhouses them.

Hey - Conor MacGregor! Believe it or not, I'd forgotten about him. Before we get to him though, let's take a thousand-foot view of what passes for a plot in this monstrosity, then we'll get into the monstrosity that is Conor MacGregor and more particularly, the character that MacGregor plays.

I've never been to the Keys but I do have the internet, so I pulled a map. The Road House owner says that the "historic seven-mile bridge" is just north of her Road House, which means Road House - which is north of the highway - is in probably one of the Torch Keys. There are three, and they are apparently named after the bears from whom Goldilocks filched that porridge. There are Big Torch Key, Middle Torch Key and Little Torch Key. Let's assume Road House is on the biggest of those keys which is, of course, Big Torch Key. That key's population is 7,054 people whose median age is 50. But the Road House is full of young brawlers every night.

The Road House owner tells Dalton that this key is its own world, controlled by The Bad Guy who has all the cops in his pocket. Nevertheless, the Road House owner has lived here all her life and resurrected the Road House from ruin, mainly because it was a place that Ernest Hemingway used to drink.

In reality though, Hemingway drank at Sloppy Joe's which is in Key West. That the script writers chose to put a factoid in that is so easily shown to be false is an indication of the skill level of whoever wrote this. I probably shouldn't, but let's see who those writers are.

Oh. CRAP. No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.

I have to take a detour here. I have to defend the honor of Parker.

"Road House" was "written" by Chuck Mondry and Anthony Bagarozzi. First of all, Mondry. WTF?!? Read this and determine for yourself if we're living in a reality-based world - "Mondry became a professional writer when he broke into the entertainment industry with a million dollar spec sale."

I think you know what comes next. That's right - we are ALL going to write specs and become millionaires! And for the record, Mondry's spec script was never made on account of 9/11. But he got to keep that dough.

Mondry writes his stuff with Bagarozzi, and Shane Black. The only saving grace in what I'm about to divulge is that Black, who wrote "Predator" and that's one of the undeniably greatest movies of all time, anyway Black is involved in what's coming next.

A movie about Parker.

Which stars Marky Mark as Parker.

I'm not always right (don't tell my wife and kids!) and I try to stay away from predictions but I'm almost certain that: (1) I will watch this; and (2) there is no possible way it's going to be good.

Oh well, one disaster at a time. Back to "Road House" and its "plot".

The Big Bad Guy is named Brandt, but we never see him because he's in prison. So his son Ben is the Current Bad Guy Of The Key. Ben has been buying all the land on the key so that he can build a giant resort. He's bought a bunch of land but Road House is in the way, and the owner won't sell. Ben needs money because he owes interest on all the land he's already bought. Of course no reputable bank will lend him money so he's getting financed by mobsters.

Now - in a real movie, it would be the mob who takes over and goes after Dalton and the Road House. But that makes too much sense so Ben's father somehow hires Conor MacGregor to kill Dalton. And that's how we are introduced to one of the most ridiculous characters in movie history.

I'll give MacGregor this - he's a nut and he plays one pretty naturally. But what a nutty nut!

Everywhere MacGregor goes, he does exactly what he wants. Being naked, stealing cars and motorcycles, breaking stuff - he just does it. And he does it like a baby. Everything he sees that he likes, he says, "That's mine! That's mine! That's mine!"

END OF PART TWO AND PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE BY SOME SUPERNATURAL MIRACLE, DON'T LET THESE PEOPLE RUIN PARKER.

 

[RodeoSchro]

ROAD HOUSE, PART THREE AND HONESTLY, I COULD GO ON FOR A COUPLE MORE PARTS BUT THAT WOULD BE SUBJECTING MYSELF TO CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT

Dalton is told by the sheriff to leave town but as it turns out, the sheriff's daughter is that doctor that in any other movie, would be Dalton's love interest.

So Dalton stays long enough to have the crap beaten out of him by MacGregor. Being a quitter, Dalton decides to leave Road House and its owner high and dry and destroyed. But as he's about to board a bus out of town, he finds out that the bookstore owned by a precocious young girl who is Dalton's only kind-of friend has been burned down (although we'll soon see that most of the paper books inside survived the fire), and she and her father are in the hospital.

This makes Dalton mad - as mad as he was when he killed that guy in the ring. So he confronts one gangster and kills that dude with a throat punch. Not bad, but the REAL Dalton would have ripped the guy's throat out; we all know that because that's what the REAL Dalton did in the original "Road House".

About then, a corrupt deputy shows up and he luckily has all the dirty money the mob is supplying to Ben. Dalton ignores the Rule of Law and subdues the deputy and then shoots the dead gangster with the deputy's gun. Then he takes the money. Then he steals another police officer's boat. Then, if I recall correctly, he sends the money off into the wild blue yonder via another boat he stole.

He takes the stolen police officer's boat out to Ben's yacht, where he's been told via the sheriff that the doctor/sheriff's daughter is being held hostage in return for the money that somehow they know Dalton took, even though that just happened and no one else saw Dalton take the money except a tied-up deputy and a dead gangster.

Dalton makes it to the yacht and it turns out the sheriff's claim about his daughter being kidnapped was just a ruse to get Dalton on the boat so he could be killed. Yes, the sheriff has assisted in a plot to murder a citizen. Dalton says a bunch of stupid stuff and then Ben gets mad and says, "Guess what? I really DID kidnap the doctor! Hahahahahaha!" So Dalton does the only natural thing - he detonates the home made bombs he'd stored in that stolen boat, which cause enough damage to the yacht that it will sink. Of course, the doctor is locked in a room below deck, so that's not good.

Dalton rescues her but Ben captures her back and takes off in a boat that's around for some reason I can't remember. So Dalton commandeers the dingy that MacGregor had shown up in but was presumably killed in when the yacht blew up. I know you won't believe this but the dingy is just as fast as the 25-foot twin-outboard-engine speed boat that Ben is in.

Dalton gets on the boat and fights Ben, which leaves the speed boat pilot-less. So - again, naturally - the speed boat heads right for the Road House. Just before the boat runs aground, Dalton and the doctor jump off. Ben, however, is ejected from the boat and crashes through the palapa roof of Road House. He's not dead, though. Yet.

It turns out MacGregor is not dead and being a Super Swimmer, has swam all the way to the Seven Mile Bridge, where he climbs up onto the highway, laughingly stops and steals a truck ("That's mine!") and drives his stolen truck right into Road House.

There's a fight and Dalton is getting his butt beat, so Ben cackles out "Kill him!" which MacGregor translates as "Kill ME!" I don't know why. But MacGregor drops Dalton and snap's Ben's neck. This allows Dalton to completely recover and despite getting stabbed in the side (for the second time in this movie) is able to seemingly kill MacGregor with what I believe are pieces of conch shells. This is an inside joke! Dalton's first meal at Road House was conch soup and in complimenting the Road House owner, pronounces it "conch" instead of the proper "conk". Sadly though, there is no pithy comments about conches from Dalton while he's repeatedly stabbing MacGregor with conch shards. But you know what? Gyllenhaal is such a bad action actor that no matter WHAT the funny line would have been, it wouldn't have been funny at all coming from him.

About this time the sheriff shows up. We are never told how he got back to shore - I guess he's a Super Swimmer too and like MacGregor, is able to Super Swim and yet not have wet clothes when they get out of the ocean.

Anyway, the sheriff does a 180 degree flip flop and is now The Best Friend You Could Have. "Go ahead and leave, Dalton. You were never here". I'm sure that happens all the time.

So Dalton pulls a Jack Reacher - to whom he does not hold a candle - and goes to the bus stop to head out of town. The precocious young girl shows up to say goodbye but as far as I can remember, the Road House owner never even said thanks.

When the precocious young girl gets back to her father's bookstore, they find the trunk of mobster cash. How Dalton got it back is a mystery. How the bookstore owner thinks he's going to get away with keeping the mobster's cash is a mystery. How everyone forgot that The Real Big Bad Guy is still in prison and still alive is a mystery. And one final mystery that I didn't know about because I clicked this off as soon as it was over is that MacGregor survived Death By Conch and ransacked the hospital and staff that had prevented his Death By Conch.

So - sequel? God help us if so.

Let's summarize this by listing the most memorable quotes from each "Road House".

ORIGINAL ROAD HOUSE - "I used to f*** guys like you in prison!" said the hired killer to Dalton, not long before Dalton ripped his throat out

THIS PUTRID REMAKE - "Hi, I am the new barkeeper" said by Dalton who then proceeds to keep no bar whatsoever.

I'm sure I don't have to tell you this movie is a 0.0000 to infinity but under the rules of New Journalism, I tell you that this movie is a 0.00000 to infinity. Avoid.

 

[RodeoSchro]

SNACK SHACK
Doing my best to erase everything about this movie, including when I watched it

Every so often there comes a movie that is so bad, so stupid, so wrong that it shakes your faith in humanity.

"Snack Shack" is one of those movies.

The premise is good - two young boys take over the snack shack at the local pool, hoping to rescue it, maybe meet some girls, engage in hijinks, and make some money. But you know what kills a good premise?

Violating RodeoSchro's First Rule of Moviemaking, and we all know what RodeoSchro's First Rule of Moviemaking is, don't we?

Of course we do. It's that the main character(s) must be likable. Let's check in on the main characters in this movie, shall we?

We are introduced to "Eagle" (because he is or should have been an Eagle Scout) and "Moose" (which given his size must have been someone's idea of a joke) as they are placing bets on racing at an Off Track Betting parlor. They are 14. They are smoking cigarettes. They are betting on dog races while smoking cigarettes. They are winning, which leads to more cigarettes.

And I'm going to stop right here. You all know my deep-seated hatred of smoking. Allegedly, according to people who would know, in the Big Settlement with Big Tobacco, Big Tobacco was prohibited from paying movie makers money in order to make characters smoke.

Bullshit.

There is absolutely positively no plot point or device that is enhanced by or vital to anyone smoking in this movie. Of course, every character smokes like there's no tomorrow. There can be no doubt that however they did it, Big Tobacco paid off the moron who wrote and directed this in order to get their cancer-causing product promoted in this movie.

In case you care - and you should only care so as to make sure you never watch another thing this moron puts out - the moron in question is named Adam Carter Rehmeier. He does not have a Wikipedia page and hopefully his career is over and he'll never have one, unless he (rightfully) gets included in a suit filed against Big Tobacco for all the reasons listed above.

Back to this monstrosity of a movie. These two 14-year-old idiots are hustlers with big dreams. But their dreams get derailed when their parents find out they are smoking cigarettes and also making beer, which is good enough beer to be sold to all the other degenerates in their podunk Nebraska town. What to do? Eagle is allegedly grounded yet that appears to be immediately forgotten about.

The two degenerates find out that the contract to run the snack shack at the community pool is up for bid and are told by the Bravo Brothers - the dudes who had been running the snack shack in previous summers - that the Bravos were going to bid $3,000 for the summer contract. Figuring they can make money at the snack shack but need $3,001 to win the contract, the two degenerates: (1) draw out all of Eagle's savings from the bank - about $1,700; (2) go to a teen poker game and win the rest of the money from the bullies, whose guy had a full house but lost to Eagle's four aces and a joker; and (3) go to a city council meeting and bid $3,001 for the contract. The city council incredibly accepts the bid from two 14-year-old degenerates. Maybe the city council accepted the two degenerates' bid because it turns out the Bravo Brothers bid not $3,000 but $300. Hey! Money talks, and you know the rest. So the game is on. But not before Boobs O'Houlihan moves in next door!

For reasons never fully explained, there's a girl that's Eagle's age that lives next door yet Eagle has literally no interaction with her, ever. But! Another young girl (cousin? aunt? something?) moves in with that family, along with her Army(?) dad (uncle? cousin? uncle-cousin?), and they are shacking up there (no pun intended) until Sergeant Major Dad gets his orders for his next deployment. This girl is at least 16, and how do I know that?

Because Shane is back from Iraq (this is set in 1991) and since he's now a war hero, he does the logical thing and works as a lifeguard at the community pool before going off to all the different colleges various adults have committed him to. This includes Eagle's dad, who is a judge and is simply called The Judge, even by Eagle. Eagle's mom is named Jean so naturally Eagle calls her...Jean. Anyway, Shane states that lifeguards must be at least 16 and Boobs O'Houlihan gets hired, thus confirming that she's at least 16.

All the guys have crushes on Boobs O'Houlihan and she knows it. Even though there's a Certified War Hero who is an adult, Boobs seems to take a shine to Eagle, whom she affectionately calls "Shit Pig".

Meanwhile, the boys are making deals for food inventory, of course whilst smoking cigarettes and bribing delivery drivers to give them anything that "falls off the truck". Yes, a grown-up accepts a bribe from a 14-year-old degenerate and delivers on his end of the bargain.

This little podunk Nebraska town has various teen parties pretty much every night. The 14-year-old degenerates smoke, drink and learn how to be pot smokers. What a town!

The snack shack opens and guess what! It's a gigantic success! The degenerates rake in $1,600 the first day! And it's like that every day - swarms of kids demanding anything the snack shack has to sell them. But it gets better!

Moose or Eagle - who cares who - is dejected because Boobs O'Houlihan is paying attention to whichever guy isn't them. So either Moose or Eagle takes an order for a hot dog from a seven-year-old kid and because he's mad, he writes "F**K" in ketchup on the wiener. "What's that?" asks the seven-year-old kid. "It's a 'F**K dog' and it costs an extra 75 cents," says either Eagle or Moose. We then are treated to five minutes of little kids screaming, "I want a F**K dog!!!!" And they get their F**K dogs.

Now - I went to a very fine college, a semi-fine junior college, and a passable high school (we did turn out Gary Busey, though!). I can do maths. I know how many days are in a summer that, in Podunk, Nebraska, starts inexplicably on July 1. There are at least 50 days before school starts up again and if you're raking in $1,600 per day, that's gross revenue of $80,000 (I did that in my head - impressive!). Given a net margin of 25% (gotta be high because a lot of inventory "fell off the truck" and has no cost of goods associated with it other than a small bribe - that's my juco education kicking in), the two degenerates should have netted around about $20K, or $10k per degenerate.

Do you know any 14-year-olds, degenerates or not, that can net $10K for two-and-a-half months' work? Social influencers excluded, of course. I'm talking about real jobs here.

And that's in 1991 dollars, which would be a little more than $23,000 today (and now you see the results of my very fine college education).

So one would assume that, since money does indeed buy happiness, there would be a lot of happiness between Eagle, Moose, the Judge, Jean, and whoever Moose's parents are. And there probably would have been if Shane hadn't gotten killed in an automobile accident.

Making the two degenerates smoke was a stupid decision but at least we know the moron who made that decision made it because he has no moral center and accepted money to make that decision. But who would possibly pay that moron to kill off a War Hero? I have a feeling money was not involved here. No, it was purely misguided ego.

My hypothesis is that the moron - and his name is Adam Carter Rehmeier, let's not forget it so as to be able to avoid anything he's involved in - anyway, I think that moron thought he'd made the ultimate teen movie, but it needed one little thing. A great soundtrack! You will not be surprised to find out that this movie's soundtrack is weaker than any soundtrack you will ever ever EVER hear. But at least there isn't any grunge in it!

The one little thing that the moronic movie maker thought his moronic movie needed was tragedy, so he killed off the only semi-likable character in the movie. Idiot.

As summer is ending, the Sergeant Major dad gets his new orders, and Boobs O'Houlihan and he have to ship out. By the way, even though the Sergeant Major dad is in two scenes with Eagle, he has no lines whatsoever. As far as the Sergeant Major dad is concerned, Eagle is an invisible entity. Weird.

Boobs O'Houlihan and Eagle never got to boink - they were about to boink when The Judge walked in on them. Boinkus Interruptus! So Boobs O'Houlihan leaves Eagle not with the crabs but with a personalized hanky that says..."Shit Pig". Thankfully, we are never told what Boobs O'Houlihan had to do to convince anyone in Podunk, Nebraska to sew "Shit Pig" on a handkerchief.

As Sergeant Major dad and Boobs O'Houlihan drive off in their Jeep, Eagle sits down on the porch steps with The Judge, who had seen all this happen. So, The Judge does what any good father would do for their heart-broken 14-year-old son - he gives Eagle a beer. Worst. Judge. Ever.

And Worst. Movie. Ever. Making it even more worse is the fact that we had to pay $5.99 to rent it. That makes us as stupid as this movie and on that note, I am washing my brain clean of everything I just typed.