Movies & TV / Columns
October Movie Thoughts: Venom 2, You Cannot Kill David Arquette, More
Image Credit: Sony Pictures
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 month shook out!
MOVIES
I went another movie spree to start October, with, what, 14 movies in 15 days? Pretty happy with that! I’m not doing the 31 horror movies in 31 days thing for October–I watch horror all year, so what’s the point? Even with my breakneck pace at times, a movie per day seems ROUGH. I’m shooting for 200 by the end of the year. To hit 365 seems very Man Of La Mancha.
I typically talk about movies from the lowest rated to the highest, and I am DEFINITELY building to something here in the first half of October, and I am excited!
A whopping THREE one-star movies this go around! Wow! Well, when you do 14 in 15, they can’t all be winners. Idle Hands is a trash movie. Seth Green is trying his level best, and there is some decent physical comedy from Devon Sawa early on, but aside from that, it’s a sloppy mess of bad jokes and lame “horror”. I gave Halloween Resurrection a 1.0, and that is generous. I get much, much more in depth on that in a soon-to-be-released episode of Pint O’ Comics, and you’ll find the link to that on my Twitter when it’s out. It remains the worst Halloween movie.
Does anyone actually unironically enjoy Point Break? Flick is BAD, and Johnny Utah is in the running for Worst Movie Character ever. Keanu Reeves is a star who absolutely became a powerhouse actor, and he absolutely did so sometime AFTER filming Point Break. I was reviewing Point Break before the movie fully ended, and I had it as 1.5, but as the movie was ending, I said “I swear to god, if he lets Patrick Swayze free to go surf that wave, I’m knocking the last half star off of here”.
And he did.
And I did.
Speaking of not-that-good cop movies from that era, we have Tango And Cash! I kept hearing podcasts I listen to reference this work, so I checked it out. Not impressed! It tries to be funny and mostly fails, and some scenes (The Cleopatra Club) and characters (Kurt Russell’s Q-Lite buddy) feel like they were imported from an entirely different piece of celluloid.
See No Evil 2 is a bad horror movie that stars Danielle Harris and Katherine Isabelle, so I can’t even be mad at it. Venom: Let There Be Carnage is a bad movie that has Tom Hardy talking to himself a lot, so I also can not be mad at that. These Venom movies need to stop being action flicks and just go full odd couple sitcom instead. riot and Carnage take such a backseat to the Eddie/Venom bromance.
Con Air is what Point Break and Tango & Cash WANTED to be. It’s stupid, awful, and self-indulgent, but all in very good ways. The last half hour or so is just a treasure trove of absurd lunacy, and it let me forgive the many, Many, MANY things the flick did wrong on the way there. Like… why was Steve Buscemi here again?
Both of my 3.5 star ratings–Blade and Kingsman: The Secret Service–will be up as episode-length reviews on a future episode of the Stew World Order podcast! Subscribe and check those out when they release!
A BUNCH of movies clocked in a 4.0 in this stretch, which made for a good run, even though three out of the four were rewatches. The new experience for me was You Cannot Kill David Arquette, a documentary about the star’s venture into the world of independent wrestling. It was entertaining and heart-warming enough. I’m sure much of it was manipulated for the drama of the doc–no part of me believes Arquette would have done the backyard wrestling federation if he wasn’t doing the movie–but I still greatly enjoyed it.
Scream I watched for yet another review on another show–my October is FULL of things I have watched and am yet to watch either for my show or another I was invited onto–this time for the Collateral Cinema podcast. There are 1990’s classic movies that have aged very well (Terminator 2, Jurassic Park) and ones that haven’t (The Matrix), and I’m pleased to say Scream is one of the former.
Remember what I said about Con Air being a better version of Point Break and Tango & Cash? The Rock is an EVEN BETTER better version. Ludicrous, over-the-top, loud and unapologetic action movies can still be fun! Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle still makes me actually laugh out loud. The subversiveness of it all holds up–it may be better now than it was back when it came out–and Kal Penn and John Cho give such star-making performances.
And then… that leaves the one five star film.
Your Name (I’ll leave the period off of the end for ease of reading) was simply beautiful. There are very few movies I’ve watched in my life where WHILE I WAS WATCHING THEM, I knew I was beholding something special. But that was the effect that Your Name had on me.
I was a little confused at first because it seemed the movie was telling things in a weird order, and then there are some strange cuts where the movie almost kind of feels like a TV show, but after the first 20 minutes, I was entirely hooked. The twist was stunning, and by the end of the movie, I cared more about the characters than I do myself.
Loved Your Name. LOVED IT.
I almost never give a movie five stars on one viewing. Not only did I give Your Name a five, but I also put it in my top ten movies ever.
It was glorious.
As for the back half of the month…
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 Killsreview 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.
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!
