One hundred and sixty nine.
That’s how many movies I’m up to for 2021. That puts me needing 31 more between November and December to hit that lofty goal of 200 that I set for myself.
Well… I say it’s lofty, but then other folks tell me they are shooting for 300 or 400 or whatever. But hey! You know, it’s… actually, I have no excuse. I have plenty of time. I just can’t look at the TV that much. I get bored. Also, I nap a lot. I might hit 300 naps by the end of the year. There have been several Sundays where I took two.
(OHHHH! I should start counting my naps for 2022! What a fun article series that will be. Is there a Letterboxd, but for naps? I have some solid 5 star naps)
Between October 3rd and October 26th, I watched 24 movies. So my pace to round out the year can afford a little slack (though I recall December being my most movie-heavy month last year). Let’s see how the back half of the month shook out!
MOVIES
You’ll notice a whopping THREE Batman movies on that list that I’m not going to get too into, because they were all discussed on what will be future episodes of the Stew World Order podcast. But you can at least see my scores and speculate from there!
Urban Legend and Escape The Undertaker were the bottom feeders this round (less Batman Forever, anyway). Urban Legend is a movie that starts off with an admittedly excellent opening scene; it’s very Scream-esque in how gripping the first ten minutes are. And after that, it just gets progressively and progressively dumber. Danielle Harris is in it as a college student! That’s fair – she was 21 or so.
NINE YEARS LATER, in Rob Zombie’s Halloween, she would play a high schooler.
Escape The Undertaker barely counts as a “movie”, but I DID watch it, and Letterbox DID have it, so I recorded it. It’s rough. Even the 1.5 stars I gave it are weighted by how much I love The New Day. It’s about a tenth as impressive as Bandersnatch was. I went more in depth on escaping The Undertaker on the 10/20 episode of The NOMcast!
(We also discussed The Movies That Made Us episodes for Halloween, Nightmare on Elm St, and Friday the 13th because Escape The Undertaker was NOT worth a full episode)
Next up the ladder at two stars we had… just Scream 3, I guess. I’ve been seeing some “I like Part 3 better than Part 2” hot takes online recently, and… I don’t see it. Scream 3 was quite bad. Everything I liked about it was Parker Posey just trying her damned best. I will eventually get to Scream 4 by the end of the year, but Scream 3 threw me all the way off my Scream spree.
At 2.5, I found Scream 2 and Footloose to be the bell curve of movies. Neither immensely enjoyable nor insufferable. Scream 2 started the franchise’s decline sharply and immediately, as its sequel lost a lot of what made it great (Matthew Lillard. It lost Matthew Lillard) and just felt so formulaic for a franchise that started out lampooning the formula. That said, the soundbooth scene with Dewey and Gail running from the killer is WONDERFUL. Too bad the whole movie wasn’t that.
I have never ever been the kind of person who watches a movie and jumps on any tiny hint of homoerotic subtext. I don’t say any movie with two same sex friends should have them get together.
THAT SAID!
Screw Footloose for not having the guts to follow through on the INCREDIBLY OBVIOUS Kevin Bacon / Chris Penn love story. They have a dance montage together, and they had 800% more chemistry than Bacon and the female lead had. We never got a proper Footloose 2 where Bacon and Penn’s characters ran off together because the town may have accepted their dancing, but it would never accept their love!
(Shit, that was good. Am I going to write Footloose fanfic now?)
All my three star flicks are covered elsewhere, which is weird. You can read my Halloween Kills review HERE. You can hear my thoughts on Batman 1989 in… a few months (I am really anxious about my podcast and record far in advance; leave me alone!). And while it isn’t up YET, I talked Terrified on the Pint O’ Comics podcast. That ep might be out by the time you read this.
Terrified is an Argentinian horror film available on Shudder. I love Shudder! Such a great service for a great price. It starts very strong, but tapers off in the back half… UNLESS you buy into my personal fan theory from watching the movie on what is ACTUALLY going on.
Seriously, the Multiple Jasons thing broke me, and now I refuse to accept any movie at face value, guys. I watched Terrified and was immediately like “Yeah, but WHAT IF…”
A second time viewing of JCVD is my lone 3.5-er. Still a disarmingly great movie based around one stellar performance NO ONE saw coming before it came out. It drags a bit in the middle, but you really have to see it.
Searching… was an incredibly gripping movie that handicaps itself somewhat by its own gimmick (everything is seen from a screen, like a neo-found footage flick). The problem a movie like this runs into is that the ending will either be too convoluted or too underwhelming. To its credit (?), it goes with the former.
The Emperor’s New Groove remains my favorite Disney cartoon, and I’ll be taking no questions on this other than to say it doesn’t waste my time with songs I don’t want (except once), AND it has Patrick Warburton, who is a big fan of mine.
I have seen Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead both a few times in my life, but I never watched Day of the Dead before, probably because it wasn’t filmed in or around Pittsburgh. So color me surprised when I enjoyed Day more than either of its predecessors! There is a scene where a zombie experiences heartache, and that shouldn’t work, but it does.
I could see Day going up to a 5* rating after another watch. I REALLY enjoyed it.
TELEVISION
Not much TV watching, much to my wife’s chagrin. Between movies, podcasting, writing, STILL PLAYING FALLOUT 4 (didn’t I beat this game already?!), and yes… napping, I haven’t felt like getting invested in too many TV shows. So I fell all the way off Stargirl (shucks!) and Titans (*shrug*).
I have gotten a few episodes into Doom Patrol once she found out that it was back. I LOVED Season 2 of this show. One of the better series of television I’d seen in quite a while. I’m only two episodes into this season, and it has all the promise!
And that’s it! It was a movie heavy month, like I said.
How did your October shake out? What did you watch/play/read that you enjoyed? Or didn’t enjoy! Let us know in the comments!
Until next time… take care!
SWO Productions 