I feel like this will be a very short discussion this portion of the month, as I could probably just plug in “I played Fallout 4, like, A LOT” and be done with it. Why did I not play more of that game way back when I bought it?
MOVIES
After a movie-heavy start to the month, I really tapered off in the back half as, like I said, I pretty much just played video games (and watched TV with the wife, but we’ll get there). This was also a very middling stretch. I bottomed out at just a 2.5, but nothing broke 3.5 in the other direction.
Snatch is a perfectly fine movie that it seems a lot of people like more than I did. It picks up well enough, but it starts… so… slow. Our Internet went out after the first 15 minutes, and I really wrestled with whether or not to start it back up a day or two later. It’s a bit too convoluted for convolution’s sake, but the characters are mostly fun. Especially Dennis Farina. Man, I miss him.
Bloodsport was my other 2.5, and while this movie has quality corresponding with being a Cannon Film, it’s just so fun once the fighting starts. Again, it’s a slow starter (and the acting is HORRENDOUS early on), but the turnaround is so wild. I love that our hero wins a fight by punching someone in the balls. And I love everything about Chong-Li. He should be the antagonist in every movie. I’d pay good money to see Avengers 5: The Rise Of Chong-Li.
Next up, we have both Cop Land and Big Trouble In Little China at 3 stars. Cop Land has a LOT going for it, but it’s actually hurt by being too short, a complaint I seldom levy. But in our post-True Detective world, this movie feels like it should have been a mini-series. There is just SO MUCH going on in it, and I feel like it needed more time to flesh out the subplots and minor plot points. It could have been an upper echelon series instead of a good two hour movie.
Big Trouble In Little China… man, I already need to watch this again, because I’m not sure I appreciated the subversiveness of it enough. It starts out feeling very “white savior” with a Chinese man telling the cops that Jack Burton saved all of Chinatown, but then you get the Burton character being entirely hopeless and incompetent all movie. WHILE DOING A JOHN WAYNE IMPERSONATION THE WHOLE TIME. Big Trouble was flipping and lampooning the white savior trope back in 1986!
Or I’m giving it too much credit. But I don’t think so. I’ve seen Halloween. I know what Carpenter is capable of.
The best of this small batch was a rewatch of We’re The Millers, which is a delightful comedy from the last decade when so many others wrongly decried that comedy was dead. Its ending is a bit of a cheesefest, but the ride there is a lot of fun, and Will Poulter came out of it looking like a god damned star. He carries the first half of this film until everyone else rises to his level in the back end.
READING
I picked up the third issue of Static Season One from DC Comics, and… I think I’m going to drop the book. I actually really like the story, but the art is just doing it no favors. I’m having to read pages two and three times to fully “get” what is happening, and it all feels a bit tedious.
It definitely makes me want to go rewatch the cartoon, though. I assume it’s on HBO Max, right? I hope so.
Larry Hama is BACK ON WOLVERINE, which is absolutely great and takes me back to my childhood when Hama/Silvestri on Wolverine was my A+ #1 comic book ever. Wolvie and Jubes having adventures in the Far East again? I’m going to enjoy this run as long as we have it.
I’m proud of myself for remembering I wanted this; I first heard about it months ago, and was like “September? I’ll never remember to look for this then!”. But, man, don’t underestimate how much I loved Hama’s run on Wolverine.
TELEVISION
God, I have been watching a LOT of TV of late. So many things I am watching or have wanted to watch all dropped at the same time.
Starting off with season two of Stargirl! Last season saw Courtney Whitmore form a new JSA to battle the evil adults of the ISA. This season… Courtney’s new JSA fights the evil KIDS of the ISA! Different!
Well, Eclipso is there, too. So that’s new. And Hourman is keeping Solomon Grundy as a free-range pet? I kind of want to see the payoff there.
All told, it feels a lot like season one. The acting, outside of Bassinger, Owens, and Smart is extremely uneven (all of my love, though, to Jonathan Cake just playing The Shade with all of the joy in the universe). It’s a CW DC show; it has its fun moments, but it’s not great TV or anything.
Titans season three came out on HBO Max, and man… I am NOT AT ALL used to shows dropping all at once again. I’ve been getting through it slowly, about an episode per day. Like Stargirl, it is FINE, if not very good. The Hank & Dove episode was pretty extraordinarily well done, so I’ll give it that. It really stuck with me. The rest of it has just been “fine” so far. I think the last one I watched was the one where Starfire freed her sister from the underground prison.
Next on ALL I WATCH ARE COMIC BOOK SHOWS, I’m following along with What If…?. The quality of this show has largely depended on the episode since everything is self-contained. There have not been any outright stinkers, but if I recall correctly, I have tended to like the odd numbered episodes more than the even. Party Thor was the top of the heap for me, if I’m being honest. The only episode I really want to go back and watch again already because it was so much fun. I just wish they’d gotten Brie Larson to voice Carol since she had such a big role.
And that is it! See, I said it’d be a short one. Fallout 4, work, and sleep, man.
What is my movie pace for the year now? I bet it took a dip. 142 in nine months, extrapolated over 12 months… 189 by the end of the year. I just CAN’T get on pace for 200, man. I bet I go absolutely berserk in December trying to squeeze it all in.
All right, that’s it for this month! See you mid-October!
Until next time… take care!
SWO Productions 