Author Archives: Doc

Night Swim

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Well, it is January. That usually means that we are up for some terrible movies that the studios want to dump. Those January horror movies are typically some of the worst of the year. However, last year, January brought us some actually really great movies including M3GAN, Plane and Missing. Perhaps the month will be turning over a new leaf.

Nice thought, but nope, not with this movie.

Night Swim is a bad horror movie that had too many laughs, unintentional of course, and suffered from some of the worst writing that you’ll see.

A family moves into a new house. Ray Waller (Wyatt Russell) was a baseball player who was diagnosed with MS so he and his wife Eve (Kerry Condon) and their two kids Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle) and Elliot (Gavin Warren) look to start over. One of the house’s biggest selling points was the swimming pool. Unfortunately, they did not know the tragedies surrounding the pool and the fact that it was haunted.

Yes, the pool was haunted. We don’t really know why or how. It was just there. And the actors had to do so many stupid things to keep the drama going. I don’t know how many times I just said, “Get out of the pool” during the film. It would have been over.

I will give credit to the four main actors. I think they did the best they could with this stinker. Wyatt Russell and Kerry Condon are both talented actors, and both kids were good. Amélie Hoeferle especially had a quality about her. It was just that the script was so dumb it did not give these actors much chance to make the material better.

The problem is that this movie was based on a live short from 2014 and it did not seem as if there was enough of a concept here to stretch it out to a 90-minute movie. 

Sadly, 2024 does not start off with a splash. More of a drip.

1.3 stars

Dicks: The Musical (2023)

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I chose not to save this on for the June Swoon and include it in the Genre-ary.

I’m not sure how I feel about that decision.

Dicks: The Musical is raucous, dirty, profane, obscene, potentially blasphemous, and offensive, but there were some scenes that were surprisingly full of heart and that may have won me over from completely crushing this movie in this review and, instead, hemming and hawing about the picture.

Two identical (that term being used in a non-identical way) twins, separated at birth, find each other and make lots of dick and sex jokes and innuendo. Then they try to reunite their parents who had each taken one of the boys to raise.

Yeah, there is not much of a plot here. 

If you like musicals and movies that are crude and profane, this is the film for you. I do like musicals, but, honestly, I have never been much of a fan of the real raucous and abrasive type of movies and this is one of the most brazen films of that type I have ever seen.

Honestly, I disliked the two main characters, Trevor (Aaron Jackson) and Craig (Josh Sharp). These characters are designed to be unlikeable, though. In that manner, they did a great job.

Their parents, Harris (Nathan Lane) and Evelyn (Megan Mullally), are definitely the best parts of the movie. Nathan Lane, in particular, really rises above the material and gives that standout performance that you expect from him. There is a joke with Megan Mullally’s character’s vagina that is borderline hilarious, yet amazingly offensive.

I did find the songs to be fun and catchy, albeit also obscene. 

I really did hate this for awhile, but by the end, I would be lying if I said that I did not have sort of a smile on my face. 

Tommy (1975)

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“Tommy, can you hear me?”

That is a repeated line throughout the rock band The Who’s film version of their rock opera Tommy. 

Tommy is a psychadelic trip of a film based on The Who’s album from 1969. 

Apparently. the film is very different than the album, with songs in different orders and others performing some of them.

The film was filled with stars including Eric Clapton, Tina Turner, Elton John, Jack Nicholson, Roger Daltrey, Keith Moon, and Pete Townshend. The music played throughout the entire film with the only dialogue being sung as well. 

It was a real bizarre film that was engaging. You had to watch this thing closely if you wanted to keep up with what was happening. ”Pinball Wizard” was easily my favorite song from the movie.

Ann-Margret played Tommy’s mother and wound up winning a Golden Globe for the role. She was also nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress, though she did not win the award.

I did enjoy this movie, but it was not one that I would consider watching again.

Top Hat (1935)

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Today’s Genre-ary DailyView musical goes back to 1935 with the iconic pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

This was a classic comedy with the old mistaken identity trope was very cute and charming. Both Astaire and Rogers were very fun to watch. Their dancing was on point every time. 

There were some iconic songs that I did not know came from this. ”Cheek to Cheek,” “Top Hat, White Tie and Tail,” and “Isn’t This a Lovely Day (To Be Caught in the Rain).”

Though Astaire and Rogers were wonderful, I do think the best comedic performance of the movie was provided by Eric Blore, who played Edward Horton’s ‘man-servant’ Bates. He was just silly enough running around the film and I laughed every time.

I also enjoyed the comedic performance of Helen Broderick, who played Madge Hardwick, too. 

This was light and fun, charming as could be. I can see why Top Hat received four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture.

EYG Favorite Comic Cover of the Week

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Week of January 1st

I had three choices this week I had a tough decision on my hands. 

Ghostlore #7

Boom! Studios

Cover Art by Reiko Murakami and Vincenzo Riccardi

Issue title: ”Babe at the Threshold“

This week I have added two runners-up because both of these were close to actually taking the crown, and to be hones, I may look at them tomorrow and think that I made the wrong choice. Those runners-up were Vengeance of the Moon Knight #1 (by David Finch) and Captain America #5 ( by Taurin Clarke).

And a special this week… Back-issue cover of the week.

I purchased several back issues today and my favorite cover of those were the following: 

Deathlok #29

Cover art by Kevin Kobasic and Greg Adams

Percy Jackson and the Olympians S1 E4

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Spoilers

“I Plunge to My Death”

Okay, this was my favorite Percy Jackson episode so far.

And it ended so quickly. It seemed as if I had just started watching it and suddenly the episode was over. 

It was great too. The Mother of Monsters showed up with a creature of some kind, poisoned Percy, chased them through St. Louis and confronted Percy in the St. Louis Arch. 

Then the episode title shows the relevance. Percy plunged from the arch after trying to battle the monster. However, Poseidon whipped some water over to Percy and saved him. We then learned that Percy could breathe under water. 

Walker Scobell continues to be just excellent as the titular character, showing some real heroism and bravery in this episode, and hearing the words spoken to him from his father’s emissary was a real awesome moment.

Moonlighting S3 E11

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Spoilers

“Poltergeist III- DiPesto 0”

At the end of the last episode, The Straight Poop, they promised a new episode next week. It was a new episode, but it was an Agnes DiPesto episode. Worse yet, it was the one that started the Herbert Viola downward spiral.

Miss DiPesto is unhappy when she heard that Herbert was getting case work at the office. When she confronted Dave and Maddie, they dismissed her, saying they needed her in the office. 

A case came in that, Maddie and Dave, agreed to turn down a case. Miss DiPesto overheard this and decided to do the case on her own. Herbert saw this and felt threatened and horned his way into the case.

It is a haunted house story, with Agnes and Herbert trying to Scooby-Doo this adventure.

Again, this episode was fine, but it just is not Moonlighting when they focus the main story on anyone that is not Dave and Maddie.

Picket Fences S4 E17

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Spoilers

“Bye-Bye, Bey-Bey”

Some uncomfortable discussion going on in Rome on the episode “Bye-Bye, Bey-Bey” of Picket Fences. Turns out that Laurie Bey had given birth to the baby for her brother and his husband. Laurie announced this at the baby’s baptism that she was giving the baby to be raised by the gay couple.

This led to so much hatred and homophobia in Rome as this small town has so many hate groups and repressed angry people that it is amazing. 

So many of the comments made throughout the show, including by some of the main cast members, were disgusting and so very much language of the 1990s. In 2024, this sounded way out of touch.

Although they do not come out, during this episode, Jill feels very judgy when she is treating Laurie’s brother. During this rewatch, I have to say that I am not a big fan of Jill Brock. She is very judgmental and does not seem as liberal as I expected her to be. Especially after the episode 15 of this season, I have found myself really disliking the Jill Brock character.

Kinky Boots: the Musical (2019)

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What a treat.

Today’s entry for the Genre-ary was a filmed version of the musical stage play, Kinky Boots. I found this on Vudu and I was curious about it. I only had a slight knowledge of this play and it surprised me how much I loved this.

Charlie Price (Killian Donnelly) took over his late father’s show factory and, in an attempt to save it, adjusted the plan of products into a niche market for kinky boots directed toward transvestites and drag queens. Charlie had been inspired by Lola (Matt Henry), a feisty drag queen that he met in London.

Based on a book by Harvey Fierstein, the music of Kinky Boots was written and scored by Cyndi Lauper. I did not know any of the songs from Kinky Boots, but they were catchy, energetic and thoroughly entertaining. 

The stage show was amazing. I especially enjoyed the “Everybody Say Yeah” routine with the choreography and the treadmills. It was spectacular.

I found myself feeling vey emotional at the end of the film too. I did not expect that and it was a welcome situation.

I would love to see more Broadway plays filmed in this format and available for those of us who are not near these productions. Kinky Boots: The Musical was a joy this morning.

The X-Files S2 E14 E15

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Spoilers

“Die Hard Die Verletzt”

“Fresh Bones”

Boy, what a double feature this was. Satan worshipers and Voodoo practitioners. Spooky.

Episode 15 visited a small town that had a group of parents who were Satan worshipers and terrible things were happening and being covered up by the group. There was another teacher in the school, Mrs. Paddock, who was the true antagonist of the episode. She was a creepy

In Fresh Bones, there also a creepy semi-villain named Pierre Bauvais, who was an imprisoned refugee from Haiti. As well as him, there was a kid running around named Chester Bonaparte who Mulder and Scully discovered at the end of the episode had died weeks earlier. The real villain of this piece was Colonel Wharton, the head of the compound.

Both of these episodes had similar structure to them and both featured Mulder and Scully in real bad situations that looked as if they were doomed, only to sneak by with their lives intact.

Mulder and Scully are lucky to be alive after both of these episodes, neither of which they were able to capture the guilty party. Honestly, neither of them are very good field agents. They are much better in the lab or the profiling area. 

Moonlighting S3 E10

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Spoilers

“The Straight Poop”

Rona Barrett shows up at the Blue Moon Detective Agency to do what only she could do… find out why there is no new episode again.

This was a clever episode that took the rumors and speculation about the on set feud between Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis and poked fun at the random release schedule of episodes. They use this set up to create a clip show of the best moments from the first two and a half seasons of Moonlighting.

Clip shows are a normal thing that happens during seasons when a show needs some extra time, and there was no show that needed time more than Moonlighting. Using Rona Barrett as the transition between the clips is a stroke of genius.

There were some fun cameos in the episode as well, including Pierce Brosnan as Remington Steele, a Moonlighting-type of detective show that was airing on NBC. They also interviewed Peter Bogdanovich, the director who worked with Cybill Shepherd on several of his movies which led to an affair between them and a several year relationship. The show joked about their relationship and how he took up with Maddie after the relationship with the other model went away. 

They added bloopers at the end over the credits which are always fun.

Moonlighting caught a lot of criticism from the public and the media for the amount of weeks where they did not have a new episode ready to go. There were several reasons behind it, but this is a funny and neat way to address it as well as remind everybody why they loved the show in the first place.  

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982)

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Happy New Year to everyone. We start the new year off around EYG with our second annual Genre-ary DailyView. This year, the genre we are watching will be musicals, and we are starting off the month with The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, starring Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton. The movie was an adaptation of the stage play that came before it.

The Chicken Ranch was a legendary place in the county of Lanville, in Texas. It had been open for decades with nary a problem. When its iconic madam passed away, Miss Mona Stangley (Dolly Parton) took over. She had been in a side relationship with Sheriff Ed Earl Dodd (Burt Reynolds) for years. He would protect the Chicken Ranch and make sure things went well for Miss Mona.

When consumer advocate and television personality Melvin P. Thorpe (Dom DeLuise) started to investigate the Chicken Ranch, things got more troublesome for the ladies of the night. 

There is an overall silliness to this movie that, I think at times, overwhelms the film as a whole. Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds are no doubt charismatic figures and carry a heavy load of the film. When they are on screen, everything is working. 

Dom DeLuise added an antagonist that you can really root against without being a true villain. He seemed to be doing what he believed was right, even if some of the things he did would not be considered right. Charles Durning had a memorable turn as the Texas Governor and provides one of the best, most ingenious songs of the film.

I did enjoy the duet between Dolly and Burt, “Sneakin’ Around” even if Reynolds’ voice could not necessarily match that of Parton. 

Jim Nabors was the narrator, Deputy Fred Wilkins, speaking directly to the camera as the film would go on. Nabors played the basic character he did in his other TV appearances.

While there is nothing amazing about the film, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas does have some fun scenes and some decent music and dance routines. It may not be a standout of teh Genre-ary, but it was a fun way to start the month off.

The X-Files S2 E13

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Spoilers

“Irresistible”

This was a disturbing and scary episode of the X-Files, and it really didn’t have anything to do with aliens or the paranormal. What it had to do with was a frightening man who had a terrible fetish that led him to do atrocious things.

The man started by digging up bodies in the cemetery and defiling them, cutting hair and puling out fingernails. That was disturbing enough without needing to go into it further. Mulder and Scully was called in because the police officer believed that aliens may have been invovled, but Mulder shot that down quickly.

However, Scully was having reactions to the case, having flashbacks to her recent abduction and it was affecting what she did. It showed her own PTSD over the incident that she has clearly not gotten over as of yet.

Nick Chinlund was cast as the ‘monster’ this episode and he was remarkably chilling. His tone and normal feel made him all the more sinister. 

The local police detective involved in this case was a well known face to police show enthusiasts. Bruce Weitz played Sgt. Michael “Mick” Belker for years prior to this on the NBC show Hill Street Blues. He had won a Best Supporting Actor Emmy for the role, and he provided a nice foil for Agent Mulder. It was cool to see a local cop not turn the stink-eye to Mulder for once. It was a different kind of case, but Weitz was very supportive of Mulder, including being a believer at the beginning.

It was cool to see Mulder and how efficient he could be as an agent with his profile skills that was not paranormal related. You could see why Agent Mulder had been regarded as highly as he was at the bureau prior to his involvement with the X-Files.

I do like how Scully was able to fight back before Mulder arrived. I would have liked for her to have been able to subdue the suspect before Mulder came to the rescue, but I guess her fighting back was enough. I do not want Scully to be seen as a victim.

However, the scene at the very end when Scully broke down in tears with Mulder was a very strong scene too. It showed how important the characters were to each other.

Very good episode. Different from other X-Files episodes and that keeps the viewers unsure about what is next.

Picket Fences S4 E16

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“Dante’s Inferno”

This Picket Fences episode was quite the step up from the last one. 

It is also an episode that feels very current day and was filled with hatred. The way Chuck Dante, as played by Charles Rocket, is portrayed here made me think very much about some of the political discourse that happens regularly in our society today.

Admittedly, this episode was certainly pointed more toward Howard Stern than it was Donald Trump, as Chuck Dante was a thinly veiled caricature of the shock jock. Still, it felt very much like something that could happen today.

The influence Dante showed in this episode over his listeners was eerily similar. The anti-feminist hatred that the character spewed on his radio show felt much like some of the hatred that happens on the Internet on a regular basis. 

Wambaugh used the words of Dante to defend his client, a man who shot Maxine who had been appointed as the acting mayor while Laurie Bey was on maternity leave. The shooter was just as unlikable as Dante. As Wambaugh cross examined Dante, the defendant would snicker at some of the outrageous comments he made during his testimony.

Of course the jury found him no guilty which was horrendous. Judge Bone sent the shooter to a mental institution for observation. 

After the case, the people turned on Dante, which is something I wish would happen today to these people who try to use their words to rile up the influential of the country.

By the way, Jill Brock was back to her normal routine after her complete psychotic break last episode. She said things last episode that were really cruel and she said them for no reason. I guess we are meant to forget about that.

Most Anticipation for 2024

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With the year 2023 officially reviewed, it is time to look forward to what 2024 will bring us. There are ton of TV shows and movies for the calendar year of 2024 and there is a lot to look toward.

To be fair, some of the things I am going to include on this post could be pushed to 2025, because that has been happening quite a bit lately. 

Movies for 2024

Leading the pack is Deadpool 3. The only MCU film out in 2024, seeing Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool in the MCU with Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine… I mean.. what else can a geek ask for? It is my most anticipated project from 2024.

Other movies I am looking forward to include Inside Out 2, Joker: Folie a Deux, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Argylle, Dune Part 2, Furiosa, Fall Guy, Beetlejuice 2, Kung Fu Panda 4, and Wicked Part 1.

TV for 2024

Who would have thought that the show that I was looking forward to the most was Echo. Dropping all five episodes at the same time, Echo changed perspectives with a great trailer. 

Coming up in 2024 include True Detective: Night Country, The Penguin, Agatha: Darkhold Diaries (if it comes out in ’24), X-Men ’97, Eyes of Wakanda, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, The Artful Dodger, Doctor Who, Stranger Things and Jinx Part Two.

Happy New Year everyone!