Ten Points About Rob Gronkowski

SEASON'S GREETINGS, BRAH

Robert James "Gronk" Gronkowski has officially been suspended one week by the National Football League. Speaking as a die-hard, unapologetic fanboy, I am in favor of this suspension. His hit, which I will not embed in this blog post, was illegal, unnecessary, and totally out of line. That much is not being debated any serious-minded people. Nevertheless, I have been asked my thoughts about this situation by no less than five people since this happened. I've decided to collect my thoughts in this blog post, and will refer to it when the next person asks me if I think the All-Pro tight end ought to be jettisoned into the heart of the sun. What follows are ten points that I think are absolutely and inherently true.

50 Shades of Grey - Whips, Nips, and the Drizzling Shits


I wasn’t planning on writing a review for this shit. Fifty Shades of Grey is two (!) hours and nine (!) minutes long. Dozens of scathing deconstructions already exist, both for the books and the movie. Some of those reviews were written by people with far better knowledge on BDSM and romantic relationships than I. I was just going to get reeeeally high, watch the movie, laugh a lot, and go to bed. It was supposed to be easy. Fun. A lighthearted romp with a movie that grossed 167 million God-Bless-America dollars and received a steady 25% on RottenTomatoes. The leading pair were known to have no chemistry, and supposedly the book author had a total stranglehold on production. It was incidentally nominated for an actual, honest-to-god Academy Award. This should have been great! I love pig slop that’s easy to point and laugh at- that’s why I’m here. Plus, I’d already read the books. And by ‘read the books,’ I mean ‘floated in a pool listening to the audiobook.’ Really, who has time to read actual books nowadays? Not this mess of a human being, that’s for sure.

So here I am, taking deep breaths and readying my brain for the onslaught. These next couple hours surely won’t be intellectually stimulating, but they might at least be pleasantly bad. And hey! I hear people get naked!

The USFL: Three Years, Three Dollars


I'm going to spout off a list of names for you. Ever hear of Tom Brady? Peyton Manning? Jerry Rice? Brett Favre? Barry Sanders? Dick Butkus? Of course you have. You don't need to look them up. You already know them, even if you have only a passing familiarity with the NFL. Every one of those players is either enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, or will soon be enshrined there. Unfortunately, the commutative principle does not apply here. When you hear about the NFL, you don't think about Joe Montana, Rob Gronkowski, Adam Vinatieri, or Aaron Rodgers. If you're Joe Public, you think about the controversies; you think about the multiple instances of domestic abuse; you think about the epidemic of concussions, the CTE destroying the lives of former players; and you think about players kneeling during the national anthem, and the time-wasting debates over whether this is appropriate. Yes, the NFL is in dire straits right now, and not the good kind like you want


It used to be even worse.

Häxan (1922): Häx on, Häx off





Director: Benjamin Christensens
Genre: Documentary/Fantasy/Horror
Year of release: 1922
Country: Swedish/Danish
Runtime: Too damn long

Halloween is right around the corner, and the realization that I haven't published anything on this website is starting to gnaw away at my conscience. Mr. Pataki's been getting me more and more into horror, like an otaku slowing sucking a seemingly normal, slightly impressionable associate into Autonomous Angel Extra-Spicy Neko no Wan Wan Speciale Uber Deus +purasu+: Return of the Kakkoi Knight R2xdomo W. One of the ones he pushed on me some months ago was The VVitch, which I quite liked. 

Silent Hill 3 - Just a Little Bit Overrated


Taking a break from my massive Tekken retrospective, I deigned to replay the original Silent Hill  a couple days ago. It still holds up as one of my favorite games ever made, and my pick for the scariest game ever made. Even though the 1999 PS1-era graphics make it look like the Blocky Horror Picture Show, the first Silent Hill game is fascinating in just how well it succeeds at creating an effectively chilling, horrific atmosphere. There are flaws to be sure; the aforementioned graphical limitations do no favors unless one is into that sort of thing (like I am), the voice acting is about as bad as one might expect for a PS1-era survival horror game, and it's a bit hard to buy the idea of an all-powerful cult when you only see one of its members, yet I find myself replaying it at least once a year to remind myself just how scary it is and how engrossing the atmosphere is. Silent Hill has to be one of the absolute finest games ever made.

Tekken: The Motion Picture - Somehow Not the Worst Tekken Iteration

Someone actually drew this.

Tekken: The Motion Picture

Directed by: Kunihisa Sugishima
Written by: Ryota Yamaguchi
Starring: nobody
Runtime: under an hour

I'm not entirely sure how long it's been since I began writing about the Tekken series, but I've never been one to give up on finishing what I start (unless it's my dreams). It's not like this has been a special review, long in the making: I've just been putting it off because I know exactly what it is. For me personally, Tekken died right after Tekken 3, so the initial plan was only to write about anything from the first game to the third, with anything in between. Sadly, this includes the anime that Japan saw fit to release on January 21st, 1998.

Announcing Our New Terrible Podcast


Terrible Podcast for Terrible Listeners

It is my great pleasure to announce to everyone who's been following this site that, in order to diversify the content we provide on an entirely irregular basis, Big Bob Pataki and I have collaborated on a brand new podcast. Mr. Pataki has seen fit to name it Reel Deal, No Sex Appeal (he confesses he can't even remember coming up with this name), and I wholeheartedly endorse it for its accuracy, if nothing else.

Fantasia 2000


Fantasia 2000


Fantasia was released some 77 years ago, a result of Walt Disney's misreading of the citizenry's support for animation. What should have been the zenith of Joe Public's recognition of animation as high art was instead a masterpiece that didn't make any profit until 1969 - 29 years after its initial release - and even then it was released as a sort of gimmick with a psychedelic-styled advertising campaign (if you need drugs to enjoy Fantasia, there is something dangerously wrong with you). Featuring some of the most beautiful animation the world had ever seen set to some of the most beautiful music the world had ever heard, with the entire crew working the hardest they ever had or would, the movie should have been the biggest thing to hit the art world, more powerful than a revolution - a giant steel obelisk standing as testament that none before or since would compare to the majesty of Disney.

But it didn't make enough money.

Goosebumps - The Haunted Mask (Part 1)


The Haunted Mask (Part 1)
Season 1 - Episode 1
Aired October 27, 1995
Directed by Timothy Bond
Starring a ton of Canadians

Tales from the Crypt - The Thing From the Grave (Season 2, Episode 6)


The Thing From the Grave
Season 2 - Episode 6
from Tales from the Crypt #22
Aired May 8, 1990
Directed by Fred Dekker
Written by Fred Dekker
Worst pun: "Which leaves poor little Stacey fresh out of boyfriends. Oh, well...I'm sure she'll dig one up somewhere."

A jilted Romeo murders his sweetie’s suitors…but maybe there is such a thing as a love that cannot die. 

F8 of the Furious - A Quarter Movie at a Time



Directed by: Same guy who made Straight Outta Compton
Written by: Chris Morgan
Starring: Don’t pretend like you don’t already know
Runtime: 35 minutes

On Wednesday, April 17, 2017, I saw a movie called Your Name. at the Angelika Film Center in Fairfax, VA. It was a lovely Japanese movie, one of the best fifty films I’ve ever seen, and I highly recommend everyone see it as soon as possible. I cannot guarantee that a review will be coming shortly; it’s not something that’s easy to write about.

The Fast and the Furious franchise is not particularly easy to write about either, unfortunately. I’ve spent some time in the Terrible Blog Scientific Research Facility and Laboratory and developed a pretty solid theorem which states that any average human being currently occupying Earth has either a) seen all of the Fast and the Furious movies or b) seen none of the Fast and the Furious movies. The theorem does not allow for anything in between. You’re either a fan or you’re oblivious. You either think it’s an above-average action/thriller series that has deviated from street racing to heist set-ups, or you’re vaguely aware that some beefy bald guy drives a car really fast in them.

I can personally count myself a casual fan of the series; I’ve seen ‘em all, and I have my praises and criticisms. I love the drifting in Part 3, I hate the protagonist in…well, Part 3. I’ve made jokes in the past that the Fast and the Furious is the benchmark for action films and film trilogies, but we all know that’s horseshit. There is no grouping of three Fast and the Furious movies that matches up to the Evil Dead trilogy or the Dollars trilogy. The highs of the Fast and the Furious never comes close to the highs of Mad Max: Fury Road or The Seven Samurai. What it does – and this is not insignificant – is surpass The Expendables trilogy. Being above average in today’s film world, replete with remakes and practically devoid of creativity and originality, is respectable. They made eight of these for a reason, boys and girls. (This is my best excuse for why I went to watch it.)

I went to watch Fate of the Furious at a Regal theater in Arlington, VA, not thinking for a fraction of a second that it could possibly live up to the heavenly experience I had watching Your Name. I was accompanied by two associates, Josh Brody and Alex Sinar. I’m naming names so that they can confirm that what I’m about to describe to you folks actually happened.

We made our way to the theater in some worthless mall I’m never going to revisit, and discovered the theater had reclining seats. Not exactly Alamo Drafthouse, but a hell of a lot better than most of the theaters I grew up with. There was even a little tray to put the bucket of popcorn on so the butter doesn’t leak and drip all over your crotch. Regal thinks of everything (except showing good movies).

The first part of the movie involved Dom Toretto being forced/inserting himself (some blurred lines here) into a street race with some Big Shot Bobby on Cuba; Toretto is forced to race his cousin’s car, the slowest on the island, against this guy’s car, the fastest on the island. Despite his cousin’s protestations, Dom’s pretty confident he can take what appears to be the shittiest car in recorded history to the limit to take down some guy we’ve never seen in seven (7) prior movies. The first thing he does is tear apart half the car, stripping off excess weight that would only be wasted protecting a driver against collisions or some bullshit. He then outfits the crummy engine with pure unfiltered Cuban nitrous oxide, as Letty Ortiz warns him that the engine can’t handle it. Nah, it’s okay, he comforts us; it’s not about the engine, it’s about the driver. No, you don’t understand, continues Letty, the engine will literally burst into flames and explode. Toretto says something asinine like “just you watch” or whatever. Homeboy’s driving a car that’s one step away from a horse and buggy and he just knows he’s going to beat the best car in Cuba. N2O is this series’ deus ex machina.

Half the fun is just watching Vin Diesel haphazardly rip parts off the car.

Toretto obviously wins the race (whoa, unmarked spoilers Chris, stay in your lane), but the journey to the finish line is really something special in this stupid movie for idiot babies. He’s obviously losing for most of the way (Suspense 101), so he hits the N2O button. This propels him into competitive speed, but it’s still not quite enough. Also turns out Letty was right for once in her life, and the engine – what little of it actually constitutes a motor – is shaking around like a belly dancer in an earthquake. It literally bursts into flames on the final stretch, and Dom gets a hilariously great idea: he spins the car around and goes into reverse like it’s Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, uses the explosion of the engine to boost across the finish line for the win, then spirals the car into the ocean. Oh yeah, then he gives his beautiful, perfect car to his cousin, who is never named and is referred to only as Cousin, for no real reason in particular. Something about family, I’m sure. Then he gets forced into a job by Charlize Theron in blonde dreadlocks.

The movie then cuts to The “Dwayne Johnson” Rock as a little league girls soccer coach, leading his team in a Haka dance. This is a very special dance in Samoa, one that is very special in Polynesian culture. Word has it (I did a crummy youtube search) that this dance was blessed by the elders. Then The Rock makes this weird sorta dragon face with his tongue flaring out and everyone lost it. A government agent pulls him back in to acquire some technobabble thingamajig, and ol’ Rocky says “Oh, don’t worry. I’ve already got a team I trust.” You people have no idea just how much I wanted him to bring along that soccer team.

The Rock and Toretto team up with the usual suspects to steal the whatever-it-is technology thing, but Toretto goes rogue and steals the thing for himself. Wham bam thank you ma’am, The Rock gets imprisoned along with none other than Jason Statham, who’s really in rare form in this movie. He’s talking way faster than normal and keeps thinking he can fight The Rock one-on-one. Bear in mind, The Dwayne is the biggest he’s been in a movie since Pain & Gain. An excellent prison escape ensues, where The Rock gets shot with rubber bullets and just grunts “big mistake.” Both Statham and The Rock are saved by Kurt Russell (still riding his never-made-a-bad-movie streak) and…

The film cut to black. The projector died.

Immediately screams, groans, moans, yells, yelps, shouts, roars, bellows, howls, hollers, and shrieks filled the theater. The guy next to us cried out “TORETTOOOOOOOOOOO!” Everyone began pounding their seats’ trays. Alex yelled out “no, you guys don’t understand, that’s where the movie ends!” and the same guy responded “NOOOOOO IT WAS LIKE TWENTY MINUTES!” I swear on my life he yelled like a Jets fan when they drafted Roger Vick. In between demands for a refund and spilling Sprite on his friend’s jeans, he also instructed us to add him on snapchat. Never miss an opportunity to promote your brand (incidentally, you can read more about the Fast and the Furious here).

Some background: Josh and I used to work at a Regal movie theater in Rockville, MD, and whenever something like this happens, it’s a genuine nightmare. Refunds are given and the entire theater is shut down. Very bad for business to say the least. Usually the staff is very conciliatory and apologetic. Everyone was shouting so loud, however, that the projectionist was shouting above the clamor about how he was trying to rewind it, and people were laughing back at him. It was a near riot. They were able to get it to rewind, but the projector died at the exact same spot it died at before. The yelling got even louder and we all filed out for our refund tickets. They didn’t even have the decency to show us Boss Baby.

I’m sure the movie lasted longer than the 35 minutes I got to see of it, but I wouldn’t know. As far as I’m concerned, the movie ended right then and there. It’s not like I could go out and watch the rest of it; nothing is ever going to live up to that theater experience. Besides, it's not like immediately after that point in the movie the plot is going to become a convoluted, nonsensical mess while Charlize Theron gives a horrendously boring performance and they try to make Clint Eastwood's shitty kid a part of the crew. 

I’m so happy Alex paid for those tickets. I guess this is just going to have to constitute as my review, consider this Gonzo journalism.

Except without this guy hanging around





Horror Movies in 2017 - I'm Mad As Hell About Sequels and I'm Gonna Tweet About It

2016 was an amazing year for horror. Not only were low budget, independent studios putting out some of my favorite movies of the year, but even major studios were consistently cranking out some solid scares. I'm still riding high off that sweet, sweet adrenaline rush so I decided to compile a constantly-updating, ever expanding list of big horror releases for this year. 

This will be updated throughout the year because amazing five star movies just appear out of nowhere at a festival in Toronto or Austin or pop up on Netfilx without warning. This will consist of all theatrical releases and then a smattering of notable Netflix/Hulu/Shudder exclusives as well as direct to DVD. I won't do every single one of those because I only have a finite amount of time left in this world. 


X-Men 10: Wolverine 3: Logan



I have been dreaming of this Wolverine since I was a fat little kid watching the 90's cartoon and putting knifes between my fingers like an asshole. As a fat little adult, I can say it was worth the wait. 

The Top 5 Movies of 2016


"Look at me, I'm Chris. I saw high-concept foreign cinema instead of paying to see Batman v Superman twice." 

Ranking the Comic Book Movies of 2016

2016 has come and gone and somehow by the grace of God we're still alive, even if we're only living in the most literal sense of the word. There were eight comic book movies plopped into theaters last year, squeezing every red cent out of my already empty pockets. Time and time again I left the theater and opened my wallet like a Looney Toon and let the moths fly out. I'm a fat guy on the Internet, so why wouldn't I rate them? That's what I'm here for: to pick apart things that other people love to give myself a sense of purpose. I'm only doing the theatrical releases, so I'm not including the DC animated movies. Why? Because I don't want to.

Funny story, I wrote the intro last and it was only then that I remembered The Killing Joke was in theaters for one night via Fathom Events. Am I going to go back and add it? Nope. There's a review already and spoilers: it fucking sucks. 

So sit back and enjoy this page sponsored by Marvel Studios, the company that pays me to talk about their amazing and ground breaking content.