Category: 3.5 stars
Okay, it was kinda good.
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Doctor Strange (2016)
Everything is better when you add magic. Got a medieval-ish story? Throw in some wizards and necromancers and let’s have fun. Grim and gritty urban noir setting? Add an asshole detective who can cast spells and it’s automatically a hundred times better. Have one of the most successful film franchises in history? Let’s add Doctor Strange to the mix. MUC March is continuing on, now talking about the magical side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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Captain America: Civil War (2016)
This is a movie about division. An argument springs up that splits a group in two, pitting them against each other in a fight neither side can truly win. I’m talking of course about how my husband and I absolutely disagree about who was “right” in Captain America: Civil War, and it causes a lengthy discussion every time this movie gets brought up. Welcome back to MCU March! We’re in the endgame towards Avengers: Endgame as the Marvel Cinematic Universe has officially entered Phase Three.
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Thor: The Dark World (2013)
Let’s start this entry of MCU March with a question: do you remember who the villain of this movie is? Ten points if you remembered Malekith. But do you remember what his plan was, or why it had to happen at the specific time that it did? Thor: The Dark World is generally considered to be the weakest of all the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and a lot of its details are forgotten. But with hindsight, this movie has some very important moments that set up everything that happens afterwards. What do I mean? Well, read on and…
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The Incredible Hulk (2008)
MCU March continues with The Incredible Hulk, the reboot to the Hulk movie released 5 years earlier. Gotta say, it’s pretty gutsy to make a reboot that soon after the previous version, but this was also before Sony rebooted Spider-Man twice in a 5 year period. Superhero movies are strange beasts. But anyway, let’s begin!
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Feast (2005)
Do you ever watch a movie and immediately forget the characters’ names? Like, the Friday the 13th reboot was about… uh… Mr. Jared Padalecki looking for… someone, and uh… okay, I remember one of the stoners was named “Chewie,” but that’s it. Gun to my head I couldn’t tell you any of the others’ names. Well it’s not just me, because that issue is addressed by Feast and its sequels! We have characters with descriptive names that tell you everything you need to know, like Bartender, Beer Guy (Judah Friedlander), Honey Pie, and… Jason Mewes (Jason Mewes)? You get the…
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The Phantom (1996)
Good heavens, look at the time! It’s been a while since I rolled randomly on the list of movies I’ve referenced but haven’t reviewed yet, so let’s do that again! Out of a list of 291 movies (why do I do this to myself), the random die roller picks… #247! And that film is… available exclusively on HBO Max, a streaming service I don’t currently have access to. Oh no, it looks like I’ll have to talk about a secret agent monkey another day. So let’s roll again… #195! The Phantom! This I can do!
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A Recipe for Seduction (2020)
We’re taking a short break from non-stop Christmas movies to review something special. This is a first on two fronts for this blog: the first review of a short film and the first review of a commercial. That’s right, Lifetime and KFC partnered up to create A Recipe for Seduction, a living, breathing meme. And how could I not review it? It’s just a few steps away from a televised Chuck Tingle adaptation, or a Super Bowl commercial actually making use of its budget. And it stars Mr. Mario Lopez as Harland Sanders? I’m delighted and intrigued!
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Black Christmas (1974)
We’re going old school today! While the original Black Christmas was not the first movie involving what we today would refer to as a “slasher” killer (the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre came out the same year), it helped popularize the horror subgenre. But is this film really about Christmas? Absolutely not. It would’ve been just as easy to set it during spring break. But it happens right before Christmas, so here we are, talking about it in December. Merry technicality!
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The Spirit of Christmas (2015)
Ah, Christmas… It’s a magical time of year overflowing with romantic opportunities. Or at least that’s how it is in Lifetime original movies where the only gift the female lead needs to buy is for her love interest, friends and family be damned. These movies generally follow a plot of “woman sad, woman meet man, woman kiss man in snow,” but when a film breaks with that pattern, sometimes true magic happens. So let’s talk about a Lifetime movie where a lady wants to fuck a Christmas ghost!
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Spiral (2019)
Leading up to talking about horror movies every weekday in October I got a Shudder account. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a streaming service that caters specifically to the horror genre. That’s actually where I watched Mandy after Amazon was a lagging piece of garbage! I don’t know if I’ll keep with it after the free month is over, but in the mean time it has been interesting to watch some Shudder exclusives like 2020’s Spiral, a queer horror thriller! Not to be confused with 2021’s Spiral, which is the revival of the Saw franchise.