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Whalefall Review

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Spoiler free review: This movie is ridiculous and you should go see it. It’s actually incredibly well made and Austin Abrams performance is phenomenal.

Spoiler Review

I’m going to describe this in the way that my mom wants me to describe movies to her: in three sentences.

The story is a simple one, Jay’s father went missing during a dive that he was taking because he’s dying of cancer and wanted to go for one last go. Jay wants to find his body to bring it home and so he dives on his own only to be swallowed by a whale. He then has to escape while having pertinent memories of his time with his father that will assist him in his escape plans.

You might be thinking as someone who has often spoken of his deceased father that this movie would affect me emotionally. It didn’t because my dad wasn’t an asshole. Jay’s father certainly is. A drunken jerk that constantly tells his son to man up, which is just so fucking toxic. The movie does one of the worst things in reinforcing that this is the right way to raise a son by showing how all of these harsh lessons help Jay. There is a median where you can point out the importance of things without smacking your kid and being emotionally abusive.

Anyway, let’s get into it. The movie doesn’t hesitate to throw Jay into the middle of that whale. He gets swallowed because a giant squid is just trying his best to not get eaten. When he wakes up he is in a claustrophobic’s nightmare. I believe he’s in the third stomach because he has to pass through another two to get back to the mouth.

What follows is an absolutely torturous amount of pain that he has to go through. These are the wounds that I can remember: squid beak through the hand, blown up hand, broken ribs(possible), broken ankle, squid bite wound in the neck, burned hands because of stomach acid, busted ear drums from the whale diving too far too fast and possible jellyfish stings. Those are the ones that I remember.

He manages to climb back to the mouth of the whale when it surfaces for air. The climb is done with a jellyfish that he’s using for light. He spends his time talking to the jellyfish, apologizing for not being able to save it. This is also when he drops the only f bomb in the movie: “I’m in the fucking whale!” and the movie should have been R because it would have been far more realistic if he was constantly screaming obscenities.

After that, the whale dives and the movie takes a turn towards the sentimental goofy. I’m going to take this from the Whalefall wiki article: As his oxygen runs low, Jay begins to accept the possibility of death and imagines conversations with his father, whom he envisions as having become one with the whale. When I read that, I had a hope in my head, that we would see a whale with the face of Josh Brolin but no, it’s just an auditory hallucination.

The two of them have the heart to heart conversations that they missed when Jay’s father was alive. I’ll give whale-dad credit that when he asks about a potential partner, he asks about both a boyfriend and girlfriend and that would be fine either way. I’m glad my whale-dad is LGTBQIA+ accepting.

Eventually, the whale is attacked by orcas and is mortally wounded. Other sperm whales show up to show those Shamu motherfuckers whose really got the big dicks down in the ocean. Whale-dad starts making for the surface and is like “you’re going to have to do it, son. You’re going to have to blow me up.” And Jay’s just like “you got it dad, I love you. Time to blow this whale to hell.”

And that’s what happens, Jay blows up his oxygen tank and the side of the whale and swims to the surface. He’s found by a tourist boat. And you would think after this, he would be ready for no more ocean.

Nope, his fucking family takes him out on his dad’s boat. I would be furious. It’s been like a week! He reads the letter his father left behind for him and starts to laugh and cry, letting loose the emotions that he’s blocking for all this time.

I know I was making jokes but this movie rips from head to toe. Austin Abrams plays every moment of this to the bone. It makes me want to watch Resident Evil though I don’t know if I can handle the gore. I would also like to see Austin in a movie where he might be having a good time at least for a little while. Though it feels like if he was in a romcom, him and his partner would be heading off for their love vacation and there would just be dudes with bats waiting for him.

My Personal Bias

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I’m going to make this simple because there’s not much to it. If a movie or TV show isn’t being continued in either of those forms but instead is being continued in comic book form. I don’t care about it and I don’t count it as canon.

I don’t know why I have that bias. I love Marvel and DC and other kinds of graphic novels. If it’s an adaption from a comic or graphic novel then I’ll go see it. It might be because it doesn’t feel like it’s done out of love? But just so that the company can hold onto the license of the property. I read one volume of the Firefly comic series and I liked it okay. But I just couldn’t get into the rest of it.

I think it might have to also do with the fact that comic books’ authors change between runs. Without the consistency of a filmmaker that might have made the movie or show, it feels like there’s less of a steady hand on the wheel.

Maybe it has to do with how long the series has been going on for. I love the Star Wars expanded universe novels but that series has been going on for the better part of five decades. Marvel and DC have been going on for even longer. Maybe because the franchise has already been passed hands so many times and proven itself, that shows that I can trust what is happening.

I have a thing I do with really popular shows. I don’t bother watching until I know the ending is good. I did this with Lost and was happy that I missed out on getting invested with that dogshit ending. I didn’t follow my own rules and got my heart broken by Game of Thrones. (Why did you have to do that to Dany, guys? Who the fuck thought Bran being the king was a good idea?).

Any reason to post Emilia Clarke is a good reason

These are just some random thoughts I’ve had about this topic. Thank you for joining me on this journey.

Primetime Review

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Before the storm came, Suesie and I went to go see the movie about Chris Hansen and To Catch a Predator, Primetime. It was… it’s hard to explain what it was.

The movie is what I would call a full arthouse movie. It doesn’t come down to hard on either side on what kind of person Chris Hansen is, but presents his attributes and actions and leaves it up to you to make your own decision. What I took from it, is that we’re watching the unravelling of a man as his personal and professional falls apart. He tries desperately to save both but ends up destroying them.

When we first see Robert Pattinson’s Chris Hansen, he’s well dressed and articulate. We hear the classic lines of To Catch a Predator, “Why don’t you have a seat right there?” he’s in control. He’s capable.

We next see him with his producer, Andie and they’re told by the head of NBC that they’re going to be put up against Lost, the biggest show on television during primetime. The unraveling begins soon after that. You can learn more at the end when I get to the spoiler section at the end of this article.

I might do a spoiler review when it’s out of theaters. The performances are all top notch. Pattinson of course steals the show as Hansen himself. It’s not just that he nails the voice but he nails his charismatic personality as well. He draws you in but there feels to something dangerous underneath it all.

Merritt Wever plays his producer, Andie. Her continual put upon and sick of Hansen’s shit is so fun to watch. Her journey is interesting as well. As she tries to figure out whether she should stay or she should go.

Skyler Gisondo, brings vulnerability, earnestness, uncertainty and fear to Dan Plum. Dan is a young actor trying to get screen credits to gain admittance to the screen actor’s guild. Because of his youthful appearance, he’s able to portray one of the male decoys. They don’t tell him what the job is up to the point that he’s shocked during their first shoot he gets flashed by a predator who then puts whipped cream on his genitals. From there, he learns that most decoys quit after a few days. His determination and manipulation from Chris keeps him going throughout the movie. He excels in the role. But it costs him a great deal.

There are various other side characters including the other decoy played by Phoebe Bridgers who took time out of writing beautifully sad songs. Everyone in this movie is bringing their A game. Especially the directing. Lance Oppenheimer blends the blurriness of early oughts video with the crispness of the modern age. The movie blends shadow and light to make everything murky and threatening.

The movie is a little under two hours long. It doesn’t feel like that and moves along at a pretty good clip.

I would highly recommend it and I’m going to talk about it in more detail below. Spoilers ahead. Turn back now.

*****SPOILERS AHEAD*****

This movie doesn’t portray Hansen in the best light. As stated above when you see him for the first time, he’s wearing a suit and at the top of his game. The obsession with getting his show on top of the ratings will wipe all of that away. We see from the beginning how he hyper focuses on things. There’s a scene where he goes to get a rice krispies treat from a vending machine. It gets stuck and he calls the vending services about it. He’s high strung and desperate for approval. From the public, the network and his wife. Despite that last one, he’s having an extramarital affair that is going to come to light later in this movie.

There isn’t much that he won’t do to further his own interests. Andie knows how to manipulate and she manipulates him into manipulating Dan. Chris gives him a speech about how he’s helping to destroy an ancient evil. He calls him a superhero. It works because he needs Dan, but he wants Dan to think that he needs Chris.

That doesn’t work on the next stop of his manipulation tour with his affair partner. She has more power over him and thus it doesn’t work as well. She begins crying and because of that he’s caught. The National Enquirer will threaten him throughout the movie. Every time that happens, he starts to crack a little bit more. He flubs an interaction with a rabbi predator. He begins to make the series of decisions that will lead to his downfall.

There can be seen a lot that when he is surrounded in the world of the feminine, he’s more at home. Things work. He’s listening to his producer Andie, who in many ways acts as a matriarchal figure to him. He eats snacks like a little kid throughout the movie, at one moment trying to unravel a Fruit Rollup. It’s only when he starts listening to the masculine, that’s when things start falling apart.

Particularly Matthew Maher’s Xavier, the online lure for the predators. When he starts telling Chris in his desperation that he might have a whale, a senator or someone higher, Chris listens because it’s what he wants to hear. This leads them to Fort Worth, Texas and the ending of the film.

They set up their sting house, they think that they’ve been had and that the perp got away. He hasn’t, he shows up as planned but it’s not the one they’re looking for. Chris is left destroyed by this and is lying on the floor. Dan has to step up and takes over Chris’ role.

They finally get a lead on their whale and it’s the local district attorney. He’s too smart though and won’t go to the trap house. So they go to him.

The masculine takes over here with the local police showing off their very phallic guns and weaponry. Earlier, a man on a plane is talking to Chris about how he would just kill the predators. Chris is obviously disturbed by this and redirects saying that what he does is far worse. He gives speeches about pillories and other type devices for public shaming.

The descent on the district attorney’s house is like watching a hostage situation. Every police officer seemingly in the county is there. They’re driving armored personnel carriers. When they get there, he’s holed up in his house. The police breach the door and in full view of Chris Hansen. He shoots himself in the head.

Chris at this point has been left with no suit, just an opened white shirt showing a bulletproof vest. His mind broken either by the stress he’s put himself under or the that he just saw a man die, he mumbles his lines. Reading the transcript and going through his usual dialogue. The movie ends with “What would have happened if I wasn’t here?” as he’s left alone. Before this, his wife confronts him about getting reached out to by the National Enquirer. That she has an inkling of knowledge about the cheating. The last thing he says to her during the film is “You’re going to be so proud of me”.

The character of Andie is being courted by other channels. Particularly ABC. We see her fortunes change as much as Chris’ and she has a glimmer of hope that the district attorney is going to pan out for them. She is often annoyed by Hansen’s eccentricity and downright angry when she realizes that she can’t control him and that he might cost her a job.

The nature of art is to make you think. I haven’t stopped thinking about Primetime since I saw it on Friday. I think the movie is intelligent for not leaning one way or another on what it thinks about Chris Hansen as a person. Maybe others will see something that I don’t. But I think it presents you a deeply flawed man and you can decide for yourself who he is.

It’s a fascinating watch and I think you should check it out. Pattinson is on an all star run and honestly think he should get at least an Oscar nod for his performance here.

Attack on Titan American Live Action Movie

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I’ve had this idea for a long time and while I think that American remakes are terrible, I think that this would be fun. For those that don’t know, Attack on Titan is a show where what remains of humanity are locked inside of a group of walls to save them from the Titans, massive naked humanoids that seek to eat them.

Here’s hoping you get swallowed and don’t have to deal with being crunched.

I watched the first season and most of the second but then found out that the main characters become fascists and gave up on it after that. There was a live action movie, which I saw with my friends and it sucked. The thing about these movies is that technology is stuck somewhere in the realm of I want to say revolutionary era America. Guns are single shot and not that useful. Also, titans have to be killed by having the back of their necks sliced open. They do this by using swords and something called ODM gear to swing them around the city while they fight.

That part is sick as hell. So, now that we have all that backstory, what’s the big idea I’ve had? Simple. They should make a remake of this, hype all the big names in it, all the best talent in Hollywood. Show them in the gear.

Then murder all of them immediately.

Jenna Ortega, eaten. Tom Holland, knocked out of the sky and eaten. Brad Pitt, stomped on.

Just a full ten minutes of popular Hollywood actors getting merced to show that no one in the franchise is safe. After that, start the actual movie with a group of unknown actors. Maybe make Inde Navarrette the Mikasa Ackerman substitute. I don’t know.

You have to subvert expectations because the original show does that so well. Especially for…

Click here to reveal spoiler! In the fifth episode of the show, Eren Yeager the protagonist gets eaten by a Titan, the first time he tries to fight.

Anyway, that’s what I would do. But we don’t need anymore live action anime remakes especially because Jordan Peele had the beautiful and talented Keke Palmer perform an Akira slide in Nope and that kind of won for best anime adaption of all time.

Baby Assassins Review

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We like making movies about assassins because it combines what we all have to do(a job) with the fantasy that we have when we see a zombie movie(to take care of your problems through killing). We use that to tell stories about the human condition. John Wick trying to escape his life of murder only for it to cling and drag him back. The same thing with the Professional. Kill Bill. Okay, so maybe there’s only one real assassination plot. Someone wants to live but their hands are stained with blood and they can’t get away from the things they did.

Well, what if that didn’t happen. What if the two assassins didn’t care and were just kind of happy living their lives as killers? What if they were just lazy slackers when they weren’t killing? And that’s what Baby Assassins is in a nutshell.

Chisato and Mahiro, a pair of assassins, are told by their handler that they need to get part time jobs to make sure that the taxman doesn’t come looking for them. Unfortunately, beyond killing they’re not good at much else. We see Chisato working at a waffle place, she can’t quite get the whipped cream on the waffle as well as she’s supposed to. She puts in it in front of the customer and he states that he doesn’t like whipped cream and gives it to his date. Seeing her hard work cast aside, she screams at him “What the fuck is your problem?!” and slaps him with her tray. The owner comes over and using her bare hands, Chisato breaks her neck. Always with a bright smile on her face after she’s committed the violence.

This becomes the tone for the entire film. There is a subplot where Mahiro doesn’t think that she can fit in with anyone in society so she doesn’t see the point of trying. Chisato manages to succeed at a maid cafe until the subplot pops in. The subplot being a yakuza trying to modernize his operation by welcoming women into the fold. A male and female yakuza member are trying to find out who killed one of their members and guess what it’s the girls. The girls barely acknowledge what’s going on with the yakuza until the end of the movie.

The movie knows what it’s about. It knows that the true heart of the film is the two assassins and sticks with them throughout all of it. Their relationship is actually generally sweet and reminded me a lot of Buddy Daddies minus the child(I would not trust Chisato and Mahiro with a kid). It has good action, it’s interesting and a breath of fresh air where most action stars are giant hulking dudes who are good at everything, you have these two gremlins who are barely functional.

If you’re looking for a chill time, watch it on Tubi or Youtube. I highly recommend it.

Plus the director does a rad thing where he made another film that’s in the same universe called A Janitor and the two women appear as antagonists. But unlike the movie, Ballerina, which did that so that John Wick could show up and tell the protagonist what a good job she’s doing, they just appear to be road blocks for the main character.

Character Profile: William Adama

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The character profile series is going to be me going over characters. The things I like about them, hate about them, find interesting or confusing. To start this series off I’m going to start with one of my favorites, Admiral William “Bill” Adama from Battlestar Galactica.

Spoilers for Battlestar Galactica

There’s always been the conversation of whose your favorite starship captain and it always boils down to two choices: Picard or Kirk. Well, you could be a cool kid and go with the radder third option: Adama.

Adama doesn’t have anything backing him, no Federation, no shields, no backup fleet. It’s just him, his pilots an their Vipers and the Galactica herself. The Galactica being nothing more than an upgraded aircraft carrier. Despite all of this, he’s entrusted with the safety of the remnants of humanity. All 50,000 of them, a number that steadily decreases.

He’s a man of principle and brute stubbornness at times. But he still allows his mind to be changed when he’s presented with new information. He’s also willing to listen to those around him when he takes particular lines of action that might not be the most intelligent.

When the fleet splits over the president wanting to remain at Kobold and search for the tomb of Athena, it takes his communications officer to tell him that he’s making a terrible choice. Hell, he wants to stay and fight the Cylons until Roslin has a sit down with him to tell him that that’ll get everyone killed. They end the conversation, he goes away and has a think then comes back to admit that she was right and he was wrong. It’s after the former that the two of them get on the same page and become an unstoppable tag team.

The man also believes in fairness, justice and the law. He has one of the greatest lines in history about the role of the military: ““There’s a reason we separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.”

I’ve seen all kinds of captains of starships. Some of them are happy go lucky, others are reckless and wild. Adama looks like a stick in the mud in comparison. But the sternness in his nature I think is the perfect fit for this show. Those other captains can dance because they have the room to do so. Adama lives on the edge of the knife. If he messes up, that’s the ball game. He could end the entirety of the human race. He’s not the teacher you want every day but when the shit hits the fan, you’re glad he’s running your classroom.

He also passes the Han Solo test. It’s a test that they brought up in the Red Letter Media review of the prequel trilogy. That a good character is one you can describe without bringing up what their job is. Thus, Han Solo is a great character because you don’t need to know he’s a smuggler/pilot to know what kind of person he is, charming, funny, rash, loyal and secretly kind.

Adama is stern, thoughtful, quiet, honorable and stubborn. He makes his presence known without too much effort.

I think alot of this kinds from the fantastic actor that is Edward James Olmos. Also known for killing it in Stand and Deliver. I couldn’t possibly imagine anyone else in the role. Thanks to his masterful work, we also got one of the best romances of sci-fi history which I’ll cover in the Laura Roslin profile.

Adama is a great character amongst greats. He embodies everything that makes Battlestar Galactica stand the test of time. You’ll be seeing more of these show as I keep doing this series.

The Aunt Gladys Movie is Pointless

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https://people.com/weapons-prequel-gladys-officially-in-the-works-after-amy-madigans-oscars-win-11941324

What a useless and pointless cash grab. I don’t normally say that about prequels and sequels but this one feels particularly egregious. Weapons was such a good movie but it doesn’t need to be a sequel machine like all the others. It’s like a magic trick and a prequel would explain how the magic is done, thus ruining the trick.

If you haven’t seen Weapons yet, you should go do that. It’s an amazing film and very scary. I know I’m a bit of a scaredy cat for horror movies as opposed to reading horror so maybe I can’t judge it that well. I’m going to get into a few spoilers in this post so you can skip it if you like.

SPOILERS START AFTER THIS

The story of Weapons is that 27 children have gone missing. Based on ring camera footage, all the children got out of their beds at about 2am and they ran off into the distance. What follows is several figures living through the aftermath or actively trying to find out what happened to the kids. We see the story from several perspectives.

One such perspective, is Alex the only boy that didn’t run into the woods from his elementary school classroom. We find out that weeks before the incident, Alex’s mother invited their Aunt Gladys to come to stay with them.

There she is

Turns out that Aunt Gladys is a witch and is hundreds of years old possibly, I don’t know. The movie leaves you to make your own lore for her. She can control people by performing her witchcraft and appear in people’s dreams, maybe, once again the movie tells you that context is for other movies.

She uses this power to make Alex’s parents act as enforcers and hostages. There’s a horrifying scene where she makes them stab themselves in the face with forks when Alex disobeys. She was behind the missing children who she’s hiding in Alex’s basement and forcing him to feed them cold soup along with his parents. She’s going to suck the youth from them or something, once again, the movie is not forthcoming with answers. Alex eventually uses the same witchcraft to have the kids chase her down and tear her limb from limb in a scene that can only be described as hilarious.

The movie leaves you with nonstop questions about Aunt Gladys, where did she come from? How did she learn her powers? Are there other witches out there? Is she part of a coven?

These are the questions I had after this movie and I don’t need any of them answered. Whatever answer I’m going to come up with is going to be better than anything that the movie studio could figure out.

I’m not against prequels, don’t get me wrong. I just think that this is going to become the worst kind of prequel, which is shitty reverence as opposed to fanfiction, which is the good kind of prequel. Allow me to explain the difference.

Solo: A Star Wars story is shitty reverence. They make such a big fucking deal about every goddamn part about Han Solo’s life. My name’s Han, I’m alone, alright we’ll call you Han Solo. Stupid. There’s a part where Woody Harrelson disassembles this large rifle and it turns out to be the blaster that Han used in the first two movies. He even kisses it before he gives it to Han. Why? Why would he kiss it? We see the Kessel Run, which is kind of fun.

What I’m getting at, especially with Woody Harrelson kissing the blaster is that it’s like he knows how important it is. It’s like if all the characters were like “I can’t believe we’re hanging out with the Han Solo! Can you believe how historical this all is!”

It also just makes Han Solo lamer. I didn’t need to know he was a floppy haired idiot running around not knowing what to do half the time. It’s like finding out Marlon Brando’s Godfather got his position because his predecessor was killed through a series of pratfalls that started by him slipping on a banana. And there was a yakety sax style chase at some point.

All it is, is a handjob. It doesn’t matter. There’s no reason for it to exist except for fan service. I didn’t ask where han solo’s blaster and vest came from. Now let’s look at the fanfiction.

This might be cheating because it’s technically a sequel-prequel. But the whole thing focuses on Rocket Raccoon and explains his past. Mostly while he’s unconscious after getting fucked up by Adam Warlock. What works about it is that we see how much his friends give a shit about him and are willing to go to any lengths to save him.

During his comatose state, Rocket remembers his life as a creation of the High Evolutionary a man looking to create the perfect world. Rocket is thrown into a jail cell that becomes his whole world along with his friends, Teefs, Floor and Lylla. They help the High Evolutionary create his perfect world but he hates Rocket because Rocket is so much smarter than he is. This leads him to attempt to kill them. Rocket attempts to escape but all of his friends are killed. Partially because he refuses to run and instead attacks the High Evolutionary. He brutalizes the High Evolutionary and flies to the stars eventually meeting up with Groot and the others.

We’re not shown his meetup with Groot but this backstory recontextualizes everything that’s happened to him before. In the first movie, where he yells at Drax for summoning Ronan to attempt to kill him and just gets his ass kicked, Rocket shouts at him “Everyone’s got dead people, that’s not an excuse to get everyone killed” and now we know he knows that from personal experience. When he wants to flee to protect Groot instead of going to fight Ronan and most likely die, he’s not being a coward, he just knows that he has to survive and protect what remains of his family.

We know now why he hates himself so much, because he thinks that he got his friends killed. It also makes him losing Groot twice and the rest of the guardians that much more heartbreaking because he lost his family three times. There’s also a payoff from the first movie where they were ready to run away and let Ronan kill the universe because fighting him would lead to their deaths. Now in this movie, there is no discussion, they’re going to go save people whether they be a bunch of kids or animals.

I liked Rocket before this movie. I loved him after this. And that’s how you do it. You don’t need to create a giant neon sign about their motivations. You can just show their past and let you make the connections.

Weapons was an enormous hit. I don’t think you need to add anything to it. It doesn’t need Aunt Gladys doing her first magic. I can know she did it and be satisfied. There’s no way it would be shitty reverence.