#90
Flow
Released: November 22, 2024
Runtime: 85 minutes
Rating: PG
Animation Style: painterly 3D environments with stylized, expressive animal characters.
Academy Award winner that followed a black cat and a group of other animals trying to survive a flood. It is a beautiful movie that came out of nowhere.
Voice cast: None
Spoilers
“After, Before”
Episode eight of the final season of the Agents of Shield finds the team in major trouble aboard the Zephyr-1 as the time drive was not working properly. It was making jumps in time at a quicker and quicker intervals, leading to the potential of collapsing on them.
Yo Yo’s power becomes a key to fixing the time drive, so Yo Yo and May go on a trip of discovery to try and get Yo Yo’s Inhuman powers back… which meant going to Afterlife to ask for help from Daisy’s mom, Jiaying.
This episode becomes an internal story of Yo Yo, her doubts, her guilt and how she had been holding herself back. The episode uses both Yo Yo and May in a great interaction, but only the way that they could do it.
As Yo Yo was discovering her inner truth, other problems and tidbits popped up for the show.
I chose to only do this one episode for a couple of reasons. The first one was the time available was short, but the main reason was that, in my memory, episode nine of this season may be my favorite episode of the entire seven years, and I wanted to make sure to give that episode its flowers. And since I went ahead and watched “The Totally Excellent Adventures of Mack and The D” with episodes 4,5 & 6, instead of pairing it with this one, that meant I needed to do one by itself.
With Nathaniel and Kora setting themselves up as some “big-bads” for the last few episodes, this was an important episode to connect the series to where it was going.
July 8
Another loaded week of books. Lots of fun covers.
Also-Rans: From Parts Unknown #3, Daredevil #4, Fury of Firestorm #4, Black Cat #12, Tyler Rake: An Extraction Story #3, Exquisite Corpses: Rascal Randy #1 (B cover), Star Crossed #1 (E cover), and Innards#2.
Bronze Medalist
Operation: Iron Coffin #1
Cover art by Tyrell Cannon
Dracula vs. Nazis. So awesome. The great cover by Tyrell Cannon seeing Count Dracula ready to snatch a train. The big red moon in the background is beautiful too.
Silver Medalist
Clayface: Celebrity Dirt #1
Variant C Cover
Cover art by Dave Johnson
This felt like a movie poster cover to me, and I have found those to be some of my favorite ones over the last year or so as there have been a bunch of these. I am also a fan of the white background as I always am. The look of the folds across the cover is cool as well.
Gold Medalist
Exquisite Corpses: Rascal Randy #1
Variant Cover D
Cover art by Javier Pulido
It’s a PEZ! I loved this virgin cover. It was an expensive book but I could not deny it. I could not leave it on the shelf. It is truly a brutal and beautiful and bloody cover.
Spoilers
“Rise of Apocalypse, Part 2”
The origin of Apocalypse is revealed as Apocalypse gains his form and all kinds of bad things are underway.
The death of Magneto in this episode was dramatic, although I never buy the death of him. Is he coming back as a Horseman?
We see Kang as he is while Rama Tut was fleeing the scene. He also mentioned his names “Richard, Victor and Kang.”
This episode showed a Celestial too, making everything a real cosmic encounter.
This showed a lot about Magneto and his arrogance. Magnus believed that he could make things better, and he forced the X-Men to follow. He also forced the X-Men back to the 1990s when they were ready to fight Apocalypse.
The animation was beautiful as well.
I can’t wait to see where this goes from here. The post credit scene at the end with Captain America, Black Widow and Wolverine was fun and will surely lead to Logan reclaiming his adamantium.
#91
Soul
Released: December 2020
Rating: PG
Runtime: 100 minutes
Animation style: photorealistic details with abstract, 2D-inspired designs
Soul was a Pixar film that debuted on the streaming service, Disney +. during the heart of the pandemic. Soul is a two-time Academy Award winning film.
Voice cast: Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Graham Norton, Rachel House, Richard Ayoade, Alice Braga, Phylicia Rashad, Questlove, Donnell Rawlings, Angela Bassett, Daveed Diggs, and Margo Hall.
Spoilers
“Out of the Past”
“A Trout in the Milk”
“Adapt or Die”
“The Totally Excellent Adventures of Mack and The D”
This continues to be my favorite season so far, and the show has been taking some gigantic swings.
How about a whole black and white, noir episode? Coulson with the monologue over the scenes (which is an internal monologue), the cool mystery and the saving of Sousa, sort of.
Daniel Sousa was supposed to die in 1955 after he delivered an object to Howard Stark. Coulson said that he was a hero and that he was taught in SHIELD history. The team decided to save Sousa, fake his death (by using Coulson) and bring him with them in the Zephyr.
All in black and white.
Turned out, the black and white came from a malfunction of the Coulson LMD.
The next episode was into the 1970s and the show had a seventies style opening theme, with voice over introducing the cast.
It was clear that the writers had a freedom to come up with remarkable situations over the time stream and that they were having a hoot. There is drama, comedic moments and some great action.
Mack goes through a lot as his parents are killed and replaced by Chronicoms. He gets left behind with Deke in 1982. He spends a year mourning in isolation as Deke tries unsuccessfully to help him. Deke created a cover band…as a cover. The Deke Squad was his covert Shield group filled with weirdos and losers. Deke shows some real character development during these episodes and Jeff Ward is just remarkably funny. His dialogue is some of the series’ best.
Coulson destroyed his body in an explosion that killed the Chronicoms. Coulson wound up a Max Headroom-type character in 1983 with Deke.
Sousa and Daisy are growing closer as Daisy was getting tortured and experimented on by Nathanial Malick, who wanted Daisy’s powers transferred to him. He was able to do it, but he could not handle the new power.
It was awesome to have General Rick Stoner, played by Patrick Warburton, in his real body in the 1970s. Warburton played Stoner as a hologram when the Lighthouse closed up a few seasons ago. That hologram was based on a past Shield executive, and now we got to meet him.
Again though, Shield and the Chronicoms were playing havoc with the Sacred Timeline and I wonder what the TVA was doing.
Spoilers
Guest: Peter Ustinov
Guest: Bruce Forsythe
Guest: Sandy Duncan
Three more Muppet Show episodes and three guest stars. Looking at the three guest stars, Peter Ustinov would not be a guest star that you would expect on the Muppet Show. He was a two time Academy Award winner and had that high brow feel to him. However, he seemed to be fully engaged and willing to put himself out there. He was clearly having a good time with whatever silliness he was put in. Bruce Forsythe and Sandy Duncan make a much more understandable guest for the Muppets, but Ustinov was great.
It was on the Peter Ustinov episode where Kermit sang his iconic Sesame Street song, “(It’s Not Easy) Bein’ Green.” This was the song most connected to Kermit until the Rainbow Connection came along in the Muppet Movie.
The running storyline of the Peter Ustinov episode was that Kermit was feeling jealous of Ustinov, especially how everyone was fawning over him. We come to find out at the end that Peter Ustinov was jealous of Kermit because he always wanted to be a frog. Silly, but fun.
Bruce Forsythe helped Fozzie finish off Statler and Waldorf and their heckling. Forsythe was great because he was a comedian, a singer, a dancer, piano player and he showed all of these off during the show.
The Sandy Duncan episode found Fozzie at the heart of the backstage storyline as he was telling people that his writer was the legendary Gags Beasley. Fozzie then said he was going to do the famous Banana Sketch, which EVERYONE except Kermit knew. Kermit was getting frustrated when everyone would laugh about the Banana Sketch and would look down on Kermit when they discovered that Kermit was unaware about it. Even Sandy Duncan got into the act, barely able to contain her laughter with Fozzie when thinking about the Banana Sketch. There was no real pay off to this, outside of Kermit driving himself crazy. The bouquets of bananas her had Fozzie give Sandy Duncan at the end was a nice little punctuation to the storyline.
Of the most memorable moments for me on these three episodes, (outside of Bein’ Green) I would say that it was the song “Never Smile at a Crocodile” which was a fun respite. I did not remember hearing “I’m My Own Grandpa” on the Muppet Show before, but it was there. I am most familiar with Ray Stevens’ version of the song.
The Furious is a English-language Hing Kong martial arts action thriller that came out earlier this year in theaters. It did not stay in theaters very long, and I had wanted to see it there, but scheduling just did not work out. So when it appeared today on Fandango at Home, I rented it immediately to watch this afternoon.
The story is straightforward and fairly simple. A father fought against the people who snatched his daughter for their child trafficking ring. He teamed up with another man who was in search of his journalist wife who had been investigating the traffickers.
However, just because the film has a simple story, does make it a bad movie. In contrast, the film knows what it needed to be and what it needed as a story to get the film where they wanted it to go. Some films like this make the story needlessly convoluted with storylines that do not make sense or are just crammed into the movie in order to have it. The Furious did what it needed and gave us just enough to be engaged.
Our main character, Wang Wie (Xie Miao), was a mute handyman who clearly had some kind of a background that made this guy a real bad ass. Navin (Joe Taslim), the journalist, had some amazing training somewhere too. Those things are not necessary for this film, and it is very important to suspend your disbelief in this area.
The action is just unbelievable. The fighting is the standout of the film as the choreography of this film and its fight scenes are masterful. Words do not do justice for the action/fight scenes that they present in The Furious.
I was impressed with the young girl who played Wie’s daughter Rainy. Her name was Enyou Yang, and she was an awesome part of the film and helped give Wie the humanity he needed.
High energy action and non-stop tension made this a thrilling and completely entertaining movie that reached a level that we have not seen in a long time. It was one of the best films of the year so far.
4.8 stars
#92
Bambi
Released: August 13, 1942
Runtime: 70 minutes
Rating: G
Animation style: hand-drawn; blends strict anatomical realism with exaggerated, expressive cartoon features
I can remember watching a matinee on Bambi in the Voy Theater when I was young and being sad when the hunter shot Bambi’s mother at the beginning of the film. It was one of those traumatic death scenes in an animated movie that required some explanation from parents.
Voice cast: Donnie Dunagan, Peter Behn, Paula Winslowe, Stan Alexander, Will Wright, Cammie King, Fred Shields, Margaret Lee, Mary Lansing, Perce Pierce, Thelma Boardman, Tim Davis and Sam Edwards.
“The New Deal”
“Know Your Onions”
“Alien Commies from the Future”
I kicked off season seven of Agents of Shield today with episodes 1-3. I think it might have been my favorite season of the show because of the wild time travel aspects that they have, plus the addition of Daniel Sousa, from the Agent Carter series.
The time travel of this show is different than the greater MCU, which, I choose to believe, is where the Agents of Shield show went off the wire for the MCU. Up until a certain point, it maintained continuity with the movies, but that clearly changed. It might have been when the agents came back from the future, but there is no doubt that with the whole crew back in the past, they would have been creating branch timelines all over the place.
The TVA must have been extremely busy cleaning up the sacred timeline here.
First, we landed in 1931 and we got involved in an attempted assassination of FDR… or so we thought. Instead, the Chronicons were after Freddy Malick, who we know would become the father of future Hydra leader Gideon Malick.
We also met the first of the Koenig family involved, Ernest “Hazard” Koenig. He learned a bunch about the Shield group, which probably is what started his family’s involvement down the line. Enoch got left in the past as the Zephyr time jumped on its own. I remember the first time that I saw this episode being so sad about Enoch being left behind. He had become one of my favorites, and this rewatch has only helped solidify him as a personal favorite secondary character.
In 1955, they have Simmons pretend to be Peggy Carter, which was both inspired and crazy, to infiltrate Shield base at Area 51. Coincidentally, Peggy’s old partner Daniel Sousa showed up for the testing as well. I was not a big fan of Sousa on Peggy Carter, but when he came to jo0in Agents of Shield, I found him to be an exceptional addition.
Both May and Yo Yo are having problems. May was lacking emotions, even more than before, and Yo Yo has not been able to use her Inhuman power since the alien parasite had infected her.
The show continued to have that great action mixed with laugh out loud moments and created a different brand of sci-fi genre than it had had before.
Spoilers
Disney + has a special episode of The Simpsons drop on the streamer, and it was tremendous.
It has been a long time since I have watched anything with the Simpsons in it, so when I saw this parody of a film noir called Simpsley, I was intrigued. I am a fan of noir.
The black and white aesthetic worked well for this stand alone episode that exists outside of the Simpsons’ typical continuity. In fact, this was a total switch for the characters.
According to IMDB, “When penniless con artist Marge Bouvier is sent to Italy to convince wealthy sap Seymour Skinner to come home, she’s tempted by the trappings of his affluent lifestyle. But there’s a big fat fly in the ointment: Skinner’s clingy, dim-witted mooch of a houseguest, Homer Simpsley. Lies, lust, and Italian lira abound in this Disney+ exclusive Simpsons noir.”
I loved how these characters were put into different roles, yet showed some of their own normal traits. I also loved the way that the episode place Homer and Marge into a situation where they are clearly the bad guys, despite being the show’s protagonists.
I have to say that the cameo from Bart was shocking and brilliant.
The show had its share of shocks moving through it as it embraced the style of noir well and gave us a satisfying episode contained within.
This is a parody of The Talented Mr. Ripley.
The Enola Holmes franchise on Netflix has had two really solid, enjoyable movies and now Enola Holmes 3 joined the trilogy in a very effective way.
I hadn’t heard about Enola Holmes 3 coming until some time in mid-June of this year. I had no idea they were doing another one, but I think they presented another winner. Millie Bobby Brown has grown into this role, and she does an admirable job in the role. Her breaking of the fourth wall moments, as she acted as a narrator, worked very well. I realized in the middle of the movie that I had not thought of her as Eleven (from Stranger Things) once. That shows how effective Millie Bobby Brown has been as Sherlock Holmes’ sister.
Sherlock Holmes is kidnapped, disrupting the wedding of Enola Holmes and Lord Tewkesbury. Enola is on the case, investigating the mystery.
Several returning actors reclaimed their roles from previous films of the franchise including Henry Cavill as Sherlock, Helena Bonham Carter as Eudoria Holmes, Louis Partridge as Tewkesbury, Himesh Patel as Dr. Watson, and Susan Wokoma as Edith.
This movie succeeds on the back of Millie Bobby Brown and her relationship with the characters around her. She is very charming as Enola and she and Partridge have great chemistry.
I was not as impressed with the mystery with previous Enola films. I can’t speak about the plot without spoiling so I won’t go into it further.
I found this to be an entertaining addition to the franchise and I thought it was an easy watch. This is a great Netflix film that is worth the time.
4 stars
#93
Charlotte’s Web
Released: February 22, 1973
Runtime: 94 minutes
Rating: G
Animation Style: traditional, hand-drawn 2D cel animation
Produced by EYG Hall of Famers Hanna-Barbera, Charlotte’s Web is a film I have not seen for literal decades, but it was one of my favorite films as a child so when I was compiling this list, there was no way I was leaving this movie off. I was a fan of Paul Lynde, who was one of the voices (Templeton the Rat) and his work drew me to the movie.
Voice cast: Debbie Reynolds, Paul Lynde, Henry Gibson, Martha Scott, Danny Bonaduce, Agnes Morehead, Rex Allen, Dave Madden, Herb Vigran, and Pamelyn Ferdin.
Spoilers
“Something Ricked This Way Comes”
“Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind”
“Ricksy Business”
I finished up season one of Rick & Morty on HBO Max today with the final three episodes of the comedic animation.
Rick and Morty continues its strange storytelling by almost making a hero out of the Devil. Summer gets a job in an antique shop run by the Devil. Rick tries to get her out, but she does not want to go.
Meanwhile, Morty and his father Jerry are taken to Pluto because the residents of Pluto like the fact that Jerry called Pluto a planet.
We get the debut of the Trans-Dimensional Councils of Ricks in episode 9. There were all kinds of Ricks around as well as a bunch of Mortys as well.
Party in episode 11 with all kinds of weird stuff including Abradolf Lincler, who was a DNA combination of Abraham Lincoln and Adolf Hitler.
These three episodes were okay, but felt a little lesser than some of the earlier episodes of season one.
Spoilers
“From the Ashes”
“The Sign”
“New Life”
The shorter season six finished off with some awesome action and a bunch of subverting of expectations.
The main expectation that is subverted is something that they teased throughout the season. The fact that Sarge was created as part of Coulson made everyone think that he would turn out to be saved by the team and we would get Coulson back yet again.
However, he turned out to be the villain after all.
I talked about Deke’s hero moment in the last block of episodes, and he has one here as well. He does disappoint his grandparents (Fitz & Simmons) with some of his motives, or at least they way the way they saw it. I loved how Mack appreciated him, he thanked Agent Shaw, for the sort of rescue. Deke is a great character with a lot of contradiction within him. He is one to show silliness on the outside, only to hide the pain inside.
The end episode sets up season 7 big time, including the time travel aspect, the Hunters chasing them, and LMD Coulson. It was an intriguing choice to do it this way and not just use Sarge, which would have been an easy choice. I like how they kept the character of Sarge in the manner in which he was.
Thinking back, whatever happened to Flint? They created him with the Monoliths and then had Piper take him to get help for his broken leg, but we never see him again and they head back into the past right away. We also never see them rescue Benson from the pod that he was dropped in. I do not recall if these are threads that are picked up again in season seven or if these are just dangling threads never to be considered again.
I do think this was a strong season, but the final few episodes felt a little messy. There were still solid results from them and I love the set up for season 7.
EYG- Embrace Your Geekness 