Evil Dead Burn

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Okay… so I am in the minority on this film.

I hated it.

The Rotten Tomatoes score as of this writing sits at 71% critics and 81% audience. Some of my favorite online reviewers enjoyed the movie.

I hated it.

This one was just not for me.

According to IMDB, “After the loss of her husband, a woman seeks solace with her in-laws. As one by one they transform into deadites, she comes to discover that the vows she took in life – survive even in death.“

This was just a brutal film, filled with nastiness, anger and cruelty, that had remarkably graphic gore and blood, but, for me, it was lacking that fun, humorous aspects of previous Evil Dead films in the franchise. This is officially the sixth Evil Dead film in the franchise and some of them prior I enjoyed. This one just felt like a sludge to get through and when they did add in the humor element, it never felt like it fit.

This felt overlong and replaced the parts of the story, which was the human interactions, with silliness and over-the-top violence.

Clearly, there will be horror fans and fans of the franchise that will love this movie. It just was not the film for me.

I was bored through much of the film and I just wanted it to be over. There was a moment about two-thirds into the movie that I considered walking out and going home, but I stuck it out until the end ( I did leave midway through the mid-credit scene. I said, out loud, “Oh, there’s more.”). I’m not sure between Scary Movie (which I saw on Thursday) and this film, which one I would agree to watch again. With a gun to my head…. ugh, choices…

1 star

Moana (2026)

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Disney has been doing live-action remakes of their animated movies for decades now, but the most recent push of this trend started with Alice in Wonderland in 2010. Since then, we have gotten Maleficent, Cinderella, The Jungle Book, The Lion King (although it is technically all animated), Beauty and the Beast, Dumbo, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, Mulan, Snow White, and Lilo & Stitch. This weekend, the most recent of the animated movies to receive this treatment debuted in theaters.

Moana, the animated series was released in 2016, and just under ten years later, the live-action film was made and released.

I did not watch the original animated Moana before going to see the new live-action film, which was probably a good idea. I believe if I had watched the animation, I would have not enjoyed the live action version at all. Fact is that the Moana live action is a complete recreation of the 2016 animated version with almost nothing new, and it would have stood out even more had I watched the animated movie in preparation for the new film.

Another problem with the film is that the look of the new film is nowhere near as vibrant and magical as the animated film. This looked like they had a lot of the live action actors filming in front of a green screen or an animated background, which you can see easily. The best section of the film was in the middle of Dwayne Johnson’s song “You’re Welcome” when they animated everything.

Catherine Laga’aia as Moana was probably my favorite part of the film as I thought she was lovely and I could not take my eyes off her. Her performance was solid, and I believe she has potential to be much better in future projects. Laga’aia had a presence on screen that really worked for me.

Dwayne Johnson, who I love so much, felt much more underwhelming than he did in the animated movie. There were times when he was noticeably more thick in the waist and torso area than he was in other moments of the film making me think they did some CGI with him, or perhaps put a muscle suit on him. It was noticeable, and not in a good way.

The songs were all decent, except for “Shiny” by Jemaine Clement as Tamatoa. I thought that sounded terrible, so bad that I wondered if it was the theater’s sound system that was causing the problem. The other songs sounded fine so I am not sure why this standout song sounded so poor to me.

I did enjoy the live action dance sequences showing off Polynesian culture, especially in the opening scenes. I wish the backgrounds would have helped amplify the beauty of the dance, but it did not help it at all.

While it sounds like I did not enjoy this movie, I did like it. It is the same movie as 2016’s Moana, and I loved that movie. It does feel like the same movie, but with less of that Disney magic. If you have never seen the animated movie, this would be a sufficient remake, but if you have Disney + and have never seen the animated movie, watch that version.

2.9 stars

Daily Countdown: Animated Movies #88

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#88

Porco Rosso

Released: July 18, 1992

Runtime: 119 minutes

Rating: PG

Animation Style: hand-drawn 2D

Here is the first film from the EYG Hall of Fame studio, Studio Ghibli, from EYG HoF director Hayao Miyazaki. It is a story of a pilot in World War I who has been cursed by being turned into an anthropomorphic pig. Yup, a pig. It is surprisingly more deeper than you would think.

Voice cast: (English dubbing)- Michael Keaton, Cary Elwes, Kimberly Williams-Paisley, Susan Egan, David Ogden Stiers, Tom Kenny, Brad Garrett, Bill Fagerbakke, Kevin Michael Richardson, and Frank Welker.

Daily Countdown: Animated Movies #89

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#89

Treasure Planet

Released: 2002

Runtime: 95 minutes

Rating: PG

Animation Style: 70% of the movie is traditional hand-drawn art, and 30% is computer animation.

Treasure Planet is one of the hidden Disney classics that many people have not seen. It flopped at the box office, but it is a tremendous film. Based on the Robert Louis Stevenson novel, Treasure Island, the film featured characters based on Jim Hawkins and John Silver.

Voice cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brian Murray, David Hyde Pierce, Emma Thompson, Martin Short, Roscoe Lee Browne, Laurie Metcalf, Tony Jay, Peter Cullen, Jane Carr and Mike McShane.

The Invite

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After a terrible movie at first, the afternoon picked up dramatically with the extremely funny and truly unexpected film starring Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde, Edward Norton and Penelope Cruz called The Invite.

Olivia Wilde directed this film from A24 that went in a way that I had not expected.

According to IMDB, “Joe and Angela’s marriage is on thin ice. When they invite their enigmatic upstairs neighbors for a dinner party, the night spirals into unexpected places.”

The Invite was funny, intelligent, well-written and shocking. The film, basically, took four characters and put them together in an apartment and they carried this film through an amazing film. It feels like a stage play in this way.

Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde, Edward Norton and Penelope Cruz are absolutely wonderful and they share an amazing chemistry. They bounced back and forth between these characters and the intelligent dialogue was fabulous.

I was very surprised at some of the stuff that they went into during these conversations. I did not expect the way this went. It was funny and turned into a serious film as well. All four of these actors showed a great range in the film and delivered.

I was fully engaged with this movie and I was thoroughly entertained by these talented actors and writers. I was looking forward to this movie and it came through big time.

4.5 stars

Scary Movie (2026)

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I was going to see The Invite at 4 PM today at Cinemark, but I wanted to do a movie in the afternoon to watch to waste the time. The movie that fit into that window the best was a movie that has been out for several weeks, but I had not seen. It was the new film from the Wayans Brothers, Scary Movie.

I was not sure if this was a movie that I wanted to see, because it just did not feel like it was a film that was in my wheelhouse. I had nearly gone a different time, but it just did not work out. So today would be the day for me to see the film from a previous franchise, returned to the public’s eye.

I definitely found a movie to waste my time with.

I hated the newest Scary Movie. Truly hated it.

The film parodied a bunch of horror movies over the last few years, specifically Scream as they used the Ghostface killer from that franchise. However, they also poked fun at It Follows, K-Pop Demon Hunters, M3GAN, Nosferatu, White Chicks, Sinners, Get Out, Wednesday (TV show on Netflix), Smile, The Substance, Terrifier 3, and several more. The problem was that none of the parodies had any cleverness to it and the writing was just poor.

The film was just drug jokes, dropping the n-word, sex jokes, and killing a bunch of people. None of them were funny at all. The only pieces that made me smile a bit were the meta jokes or the breaking of the fourth wall. However, they overdid these too.

I did not laugh at this movie and that is a sin for a comedy, especially a spoof film that has all kinds of leeway to be ridiculous. I was hoping that I would enjoy this with the return of the Wayans, but it was clear that I was just not going to.

1 star

Agents of Shield S7 E9

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Spoilers

“As I Have Always Been”

Phlebotinum!

Absolute genius of an episode.

I wanted to give this episode its own post since my memory of it was that it was a great episode. I am underestimating it, because this is, by far, my favorite episode of Agents of Shield from the entire seven season run.

Season seven has been using some overall themes for the previous episodes. Their first trip into the past was played like an old school b-movie type sci-fi. We got the black and white noir episode. There was the 1970s action show (which had to have an influence on WandaVision) and the 1980s sci-fi type film including max Headroom (which Coulson hilariously namedrops in this episode).

This one was Groundhogs Day mixed with Doctor Who. The thing was, it was so much more than just re-using the trope of repeating the day over and again.

It took the situation and gave us remarkable humor, much of it coming from the exquisite Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson, the LMD. It gave us a fantastic mystery about who was preventing the implant from being removed from Jemma Simmons’s head. It forwards the relationship between Daisy and Sousa. And it provided the most selfless self-sacrifice I have seen in ages with Enoch’s removal of a part from his own Chronicom body, leading to his death.

The episode is featured around Daisy, who was inside a healing pod at the beginning. She goes about the process of discovering that the Zephyr was trapped in a timestorm and was in danger of being wiped out of existence. The episode was wild, and then took another major step when she went to activate Couslon, who was recharging. He filled her in that this was not the first time that she had come to activate him and that she had died.

The frustration and annoyance of Coulson was extremely funny and delivered so perfectly by Gregg. It played right into the feelings that Coulson was having last episode where his predicament as an LMD was starting to get to him. The show added the character growth of Coulson into a list of amazing stuff this episode addressed.

Enoch was another standout of the episode. We discovered that he was the one killing the crew members to prevent the implant from being removed from Simmons’s head, and there were some of the best scenes of the episode as the team confronted Enoch and he fought back in the most amazing and hilarious ways. We did not see much, if any, of the actual fight, just the aftermath with the team scattered across the floor. They added the line “Deke’s dead” in one of them and it was such a gas.

Each time loop brought the Zephyr closer to the center of the timestorm, providing real jeopardy for the team and not just the trial and error until they figured it out. They did not have unlimited time. Time was ticking away.

There were two outstanding monologues during the episode. The first was Daniel Sousa’s explanation of why he stayed with Daisy as she slept. His explanation of wanting to be near “…people like Diasy” was such an awesome character moment and made allusions back to his time with Agent Carter, who he was clearly referencing. The second monologue was Enoch’s dying words, spoken to Coulson and Daisy, after he had pulled his electrochron displacement mechanism from out of his chest. I had tears during this moment. Who knew that I would have become so connected to this robot who was introduced in season five as a Chronicom sent to retrieve the team? Watching Enoch slowly succumb was heartbreaking and painful, while providing important healing for Coulson and Daisy. Joel Stoffer brought his amazing character to life here and you couldn’t have asked for a better heroic send off for Enoch than what he got.

Elizabeth Henstridge, who played Simmons, was the first time director of this episode, which was just a remarkable feat. She provided an exciting and energetic show despite many scenes needing to be repetitive because of the episode’s hook. Every time we got a repeat scene, something new was added. I have to shout out the entire cast as well as they had to repeat lines and adjust to the situation and they all did it wonderfully well.

I love this episode and I would put it at the top of the MCU TV show episodes along with Agatha All Along’s “Death’s Hand in Mine,” Moon Knight’s “Asylum,” WandaVision’s “We Interrupt This Program” and “Previously On,” and Loki’s “Journey Into Mystery” and “Glorious Purpose.”

Daily Countdown: Animated Movies #90

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#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

Agents of Shield S7 E8

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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.

  • Simmons provided Sousa with a new prosthetic leg.
  • Coulson was becoming somewhat down on his LMD-ness.
  • We find out that Enoch can keep the tempo on drums.
  • Daisy is slowly healing from her traumatic situation at Nathaniel’s hands.
  • Nathaniel arrived at Afterlife, coming to recruit Kora to his side.
  • Kora asked how Nathaniel knew about her and Nathaniel told her it was his new friend, Sibyl.
  • Nathaniel and Kora have the Inhumans at Afterlife captive.
  • Simmons sends a emotional message to Fitz.
  • Yo Yo’s efforts with the time drive did not work and the Zephyr jumped again at the end of the episode.

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.

EYG Favorite Comic Covers of the Week

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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.

X-Men ’97 S2 E4

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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.

Daily Countdown: Animated Movies #91

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#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.

Agents of Shield S7 E4, E5, E6, E7

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“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.

The Muppet Show S1 E12, E13, E14

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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.