The other film I rented off Fandango at Home/Vudu was entitled I Saw the TV Glow, and Zi had heard plenty of buzz about this, in both positive and negative ways. I thought this would be a good film to give a try.
I have to say that this was very surreal, dream-like and metaphoric. It was a difficult movie to follow and so much of it was shot intentionally to create that feeling of confusion or interpretive.
According to IMDB, “Teenager Owen is just trying to make it through life in the suburbs when his classmate introduces him to a mysterious late-night TV show a vision of a supernatural world beneath their own. In the pale glow of the television, Owen’s view of reality begins to crack.”
One of the film’s main themes deal with reality and identity… who they were on the inside. I do believe that this was a metaphor showing the way some people can deny whom they are, pretending that they are something else. I have a feeling that this movie will reverberate with some people considerably more because of that theme.
I also believe that there are several ways that this movie could be interpreted and that no one way is exact. Since this narrative is not one with straight-forward situations and answers, the audience member brings a lot of what they infer with them centered around their own personal knowledge and background. That makes this material quite rich.
The film was trippy and psychedelic in the best ways. Some people are going to look upon this movie with disdain for any number of reasons, but I was fascinated with it and I was intrigued with what was happening with these characters. I’m not sure how many times I would watch this movie on rewatches, but the first time experience was worthwhile of my time.
In honor of those movies that feature large casts without a clear protagonist, it is time for the Avengers: Endgame Ensemble Cast of the Year Award. This has been around since 2019 and has had a strong list of movies win, as seen below.
The Avengers: Endgame Ensemble Cast of the Year Award
Previous Winners: Avengers: Endgame (2019), The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020), In the Heights (2021), Mass (2021), Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022), Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022), Oppenheimer (2023)
Runners-Up: I considered giving this award to the movie I saw today, A Complete Unknown, but I decided that there is too much of a lead character in Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan, despite the fact that the cast surrounding him was excellent. Another Chalamet film this year was Dune: Part Two that could have been a winner in this category. Another potential Oscar film was in consideration for this category with Conclave, the story of choosing a new pope. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever had a great cast, especially of young actors that deserve recognition in this category. I loved Wicked, but again, that film is more of a two person lead and may not be right for the ensemble award. Alien: Romulus was a fantastic movie with an ensemble that wound up as fodder for the Xenomorphs. Civil War was a strong film earlier in the year and its cast had a tough story to delve into. Emilia Perez had a strong ensemble as did The Piano Lesson, both on Netflix.
Winner of the Avengers: Endgame Ensemble Cast of the Year is…
Saturday Night
The film focuses on the opening night for SNL, as a group of performers running around unsure if they were actually going to get on the air. There are some great performances among the cast and the roles are beautifully cast. There may be some weaknesses in the script, but the cast itself is impeccable.
As the year is coming to an end, I went to Fandango At Home to see if I could find several films that I missed during 2024. I picked up a few rentals to watch over the next couple of days. The first one I watched was A Different Man, an A24 film starring Sebastian Stan and directed by Aaron Schimberg.
According to IMDB, “Aspiring actor Edward (Sebastian Stan) undergoes a radical medical procedure to drastically transform his appearance, but his new dream face quickly turns into a nightmare as he loses out on the role he was born to play and becomes obsessed with reclaiming what was lost.“
There are many A24 films that are like this one, though different. There are wild, bizarre situations that seem to be taken in a normal, typical way. In this case, there is a sci-fi technique that led to Edward, who had Neurofibromatosis- a genetic condition that sees tumors grow on the body, to fixing his face, and it just was a way to change his appearance in the film.
Stan was excellent as the twitchy, malformed Edward. His change of facial appearance did not truly change him at all. It just opened some areas up to Edward, but he was just as uncertain and shaky as he ever was.
Adam Pearson played Oswald, another misshapen man, who brought himself into the play Edward was working in and kind of took over the stage. Pearson was amazing in the role and he had a complex character who seemed to be trying to take over the play while still being extremely likable.
Renate Reinsve played Ingrid, the playwright who had lived next door to Edward, gave a fantastic performance. She was very compelling with her relationship with Edward and Oswald.
I thought this was a very interesting film that was difficult to watch at times. The scenes where the tumors were being peeled off Edward’s face was horrific. Still, it is interesting that the film clearly is saying that the looks were not going to make everything better and that Edward regretted his decision in the end. Sebastian Stan did a great job in this role.
“What If The Red Guardian Stopped The Winter Soldier”
One of the strength of the What If show is taking characters who would not usually work together or you may not expect to be together. Episode one had Sam Wilson and Bruce Banner. Episode two was Agatha and Kingo. Now, we get Red Guardian and Winter Soldier.
David Harbour is a gem. His work as the Red Guardian is so silly and over the top that it works, especially when paired with the stoic, more quiet Winter Soldier. This is clearly a “buddy cop” style of episode with the two main protagonists being pursued by Bill Foster, aka Goliath, once again voiced by Laurence Fishburne.
The pairing kicks off when Red Guardian prevents the Winter Soldier from killing Howard Stark and his wife as we see in Captain America: Civil War, and then they wind up thrust together into Las Vegas.
This was the episode from where they dropped a clip after last year’s season two, hinting to us that season three was closer than we thought.
They had some nice moments between Red Guardian and Bucky too, as the episode was more than just a bunch of action strung together. The scene where Red Guardian helps Bucky remember about Coney Island was very sweet, and it was obviously important to Bucky.
I found it odd that Oscar nominated America Ferrara did a voice of a secondary side character, Ranger Morales who teamed up with Bill Foster to chase after Red Guardian and Winter Soldier. That seemed to be a huge casting for such a minor character who, as far as I know, has no connection in Marvel Comics (After some research, I discovered there was an Agent Morales who worked for SHIELD that perhaps this character was based upon).
I love how What If…? has been using different styles to tell their stories. First episode was a Kaiju/monster story, episode two was Old Hollywood and this is a buddy cop tale. It shows the variety that the show can present effectively.
Season Three Episodes So Far
E2 What If Agatha Went to Hollywood?
E3 What If The Red Guardian Stopped The Winter Soldier
2024 had plenty of films that fell into the middle of the range between good and bad. Honestly, however, it had a bunch of films that were surprises too. Thus, we have this year’s Gomer Award being quite a challenge to present. There are so many potential choices.
The Gomer for the Biggest Surprise
Previous Gomer Award Winners: The Gift, Ferdinand, Edge of Tomorrow, We’re the Millers, The Campaign, Ouija: Origin of Evil, Bumblebee, Crawl, Greenland, Free Guy, Deadstream, Totally Killer
Here are the runners-up:
First off, Late Night with the Devil from David Dastmalchian was a huge surprise because it just was something that I had not heard much from. I did hear Kevin Smith mention it on an episode of Fatman Beyond, but still. for it to be one of the best of the year, who saw that coming? Then, since I disliked the original film, who would have guessed that a new version of Roadhouse starring Jake Gyllenhaal that went immediately to streaming would be any good. It was and I couldn’t believe it. Another one that was a reboot of sort from a movie that I did not like was Twisters. No way that was a film I was going to enjoy and yet I did. Abigail was a surprise until I realized that Alishia Weir was the star. I knew it was going great after that. Hit Man was another I saw on streaming that had no right to be as good as it was. It’s the second film on the list from Glen Powell. Sharks in Paris? No way that was anything other than a member of the worst movies of the year list, right? Wrong. Under Paris was a lot of fun and way better than it should have been. Longlegs provided one of those shocking moments in the theater when you discover that Nicolas Cage was going to go over the top and still be awesome. I spoke about how much I was surprised that I enjoyed The Best Christmas Pageant Ever as I was trying to find an award for Best X-Mas Movie. Skincare? Another one that had no appeal to me that turned out to be fully entertaining. Strange Darling was weird, but really wonderfully constructed and engaging.
Yet after all of this, one film was the biggest surprise of the year. Spoiler for an upcoming Batman and Robin Award for Rottenness winner, this film one of the worst trailers of all time and nearly caused me to skip the film. Little did I know that this is probably a top 10 film of the year (certainly in consideration, at least).
Transformers One
This was an amazing movie and was one of the best animated films of the year. I never thought making Optimus and Megatron friends when they were younger would work. They weren’t Charles Xavier and Magneto, and yet this was done so well that everything made perfect sense. After so many years of utterly hating Transformers films, loving this one, especially after that horrendous trailer, was totally unexpected… and thus a Gomer winner.
PS: Interestingly enough, this is the second Transformers movie to win this award, with Bumblebee being the other. The original Transformers movies brought the bar so far down that I have trouble seeing them as a positive thing.
When the 2019 Lion King “live-action” remake broke the billion dollar club at the box office, you should have known that we were getting something more. My guess is that Mufasa: The Lion King will not be the same kind of demand.
Mufasa: The Lion King from Disney came out this weekend. The film was directed by Barry Jenkins and featured a “live-action” cast of CGI animals in a CGI generated African land. How this could be considered a “live-action” film is up for an argument.
Unfortunately, I did not like the 2019 remake of the Lion King and I am not a huge fan of this new film either. I do think that this film is better than the 2019 version. Specifically because this film does a better job of avoiding the uncanny valley of the 2019 film. Those lion characters in 2019 did not show us any emotion on their faces at all, lacking any ability to emote, making them all seem very distant from the audience. That is considerably better with this movie.
In fact, the strength of Mufasa: The Lion King is easily the CGI. This film looks absolutely gorgeous and it has some of the most realistic artwork that you are ever going to see in a film. In fact, I could see people claiming that some of these animals were real and not contrived on an artist’s board.
I did have some major issues with Mufasa: The Lion King, most notably that there was not much new in the story. It was basically the origin story of Mufasa and Scar as the two lions went on an adventure and met other characters from the original Lion King. Not much else.
There was a devise used to tell the story with Rafiki (John Kani) telling the story to Simba’s daughter Kiara (Blue Ivy Carter), Timon (Billy Eichner) and Pumbaa (Seth Rogan) which was a total waste of time. Nothing that happened in this framing device was funny or worth taking away from the main story.
I also thought that the sound mixing was horrendous. Perhaps this is the theater I was in, but I had trouble hearing a lot of the dialogue because the music in the background was playing so loudly or dominating the moment of the scene. Speaking of the music, I did not find any of the songs interesting or song that I would remember later. Even the songs written by Lin-Manuel Miranda were unremarkable. They were fine when watching it, but there is not one song that I can recall as of this minute.
Mufasa: The Lion King had its moments for sure. It is a stunning accomplishment of visual arts, but there just seems to be little else that makes this an important story to tell. While it is not a waste of time, it is anything but a great movie.
This is one of our first recurring awards in the Year in Review. The John Carter Memorial Award, which is to recognize the film that is the “flop” of the year.
A flop is a film that failed to connect at the box office and lost a lot of money for its studio. A film could flop for any number of reasons, and a film can be great and still flop. Looking at the previous award recipients…
John Carter Memorial Award
Previous winners: John Carter, Alice Through the Looking Glass, The Lone Ranger, A Million Ways to Die in the West, Expendables 3, Jem and the Holograms, Pan, Rock the Casbah, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, Robin Hood (2018), Mortal Engines, Playmobil: The Movie, The Rhythm Section, Reminiscence, Strange World , The Flash
A lot of these films are ones that I did not like, but there are some that were okay, but just either did not bring in the crowds or spent way too much on its budget.
This year, there have been a lot of films that would be considered flops. Particularly, some of the early films of the year were problematic for the studios. Furiosa: A Mad Max Story was well reviewed and beloved by some, but the crowds just did not come to see it. I don’t know if it were the recast of Furiosa with Anya Taylor-Joy or the lack of Mad Max, but Furiosa did not do well. Neither did The Fall Guy, a movie that I really liked and will probably make my end of year list. Fact is that this is a film remaking a TV series from the 1980s that very few people remembered, and, even with the exciting action, The Fall Guy just could not make it a success. It is a fun film though. On the other hand, a film that is not a good film is Borderlands. Borderlands reportedly cost $120 million to make and it had an $8.8 million dollar opening. Ouch. But that was not the worst thing yet. Borderlands dropped 72% in week two. Boom. Joker: Folie a Deux is the next film to talk about, because although Borderlands dropped 72% in its second week, Joker: Folie a Deux dropped a staggering 81%. It is poised to lose between $150-200 million dollars. Finally, and most recently, Kraven the Hunter made a dismal $11 million dollars in its opening weekend and I am curious to see what its second week drop will be. Kraven the Hunter received horrendous reviews, with people even claiming that it was worse than Madame Web (which could be in this category as well).
This year’s “Winner”:
Megalopolis
It made $4 million opening weekend on a budget of $120 million. After four weeks in the theater, it made $7.6 million dollars domestically and a whopping $12.5 million worldwide. All on a budget of $120 million. Reports say that director/producer Francis Ford Coppola put up a lot of his own money for this film. Whoa. I have not seen this film, so I cannot comment on the quality of film (this is probably a June Swoon film next year), but there is no denying that as a box office movie, this one flopped hard.
Previous winners: Stan Lee (Big Hero 6*, Deadpool, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse* ), John Cena (Daddy’s Home), Chris Evans (Thor: The Dark World, Free Guy), Sigourney Weaver (Cabin in the Woods), Hugh Jackman (X-Men: First Class), Yoda (Star Wars: The Last Jedi), J.K. Simmons (Spider-Man: Far From Home), Harrison Ford (Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker), Rudy Giuliani (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm), Val Kilmer (Top Gun: Maverick), Rhea Perlman (Barbie)
Every year brings us a ton of awesome cameos in movies. In honor of our beloved Stan Lee, we are continuing to honor those actors who show up as a surprise or a short appearance.
Runners-Up: We will touch upon a bunch of these movies. In The Fall Guy, there were three decent cameos. Jason Momoa showed up at the end as a replacement for Aaron Taylor-Johnson character and that was fun. Then we got Lee Majors and Heather Thomas, who, of course, were from the original Fall Guy TV show. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire had the original Ghostbusters again, but the top cameo from this film I think was William Atherton as Walter Peck back, now as the Mayor of New York. Danny DeVito showed up in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, but honestly, my memory of that one was lacking. There was a cool cameo in Wicked as Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenowerth, who were the stars of the Broadway play version, were an awesome inclusion, even though my theater had no idea who they were. Then, Deadpool & Wolverine dominated the cameos this year. I am not sure I would count Westley Snipes, Jennifer Garner, Channing Tatum and Dafne Keen as cameos. They all were really important cast members, almost to the level of supporting actors. However, Henry Cavill is absolutely a cameo as the Cavillrine and it nearly won this award.
However, the winner of this award is…
Chris Evans (Deadpool & Wolverine)
Chris Evans appeared in Deadpool & Wolverine as Johnny Storm from the Fantastic Four instead of Steve Rogers, despite the teasing that he was actually Cap. The theaters exploded when he said “Flame On!” Then he brought some great foul mouthed dialogue. He came a long way from “Language.”
This also ties Chris Evans with Stan Lee himself for three separate wins in this category. Evans won this award for Thor: The Dark World, when he played Loki playing Cap, and Free Guy, playing himself made over the use of Cap’s shield. It is amazing that Chris Evans has now tied Stan in the category that was named after him.
Taron Egerton and Jason Bateman star in a New Netflix action flick called Carry-On, directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, who was known for The Shallows, Orphan, Non-Stop and Black Adam.
Carry-On is like Die Hard 2 meets Phone Booth. It is an exciting action movie with some preposterous situations that should not work. However, everything is so thrilling and dramatic that you excuse the improbable and embrace the excitement.
Egerton played Ethan Kopek, a down on his luck TSA agent whose girlfriend Nora (Sofia Carson) is pregnant. Kopek, who was denied his dream job of joining the police force, is going through the motions at his TSA job at the airport. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Kopek gets blackmailed by a man (Jason Bateman) who wants him to make sure a carry-on case gets through the security check and he says that if he does not, Nora will be killed.
Most action movies requires a lot of suspension of disbelief and this is no exception. However, the film is very exciting and everything is put together so well that even on those time when it feels like the film has stretched credibility, you are okay with it because of the well done story.
Egerton and Bateman carry on a conversation over a headpiece for much of the film and they are very engaging during this time. I did not expect Bateman to be able to play such a cold monster as he does in this film, but he does it exceedingly well. Egerton is a perfect foil for Bateman as he played the young, lacking confidence hero beautifully and we see him slowly gaining more strength as the risks pile up.
It does a good job of building the tension in each scene and the anxiety of the situations. The over the top scenes are still set up and executed well. If you have to pick apart the situations, a lot of the film would not hold up, but you could say that about most action/adventure movies, especially this type of action movie like Die Hard.
There is one scene involving a car crash that has some wonky special effects, but most of the movie is practical effects and looks pretty solid.
And I suppose we could argue about this being a Christmas movie.
Carry-On is a lot of fun and brings an electric action thriller despite some of the most implausible moments. Egerton and Bateman were excellent and carry the film on their backs.
Kraven the Hunter is the final film in the Sony Extended Spider-Man Universe, which has included the Venom movies, Morbius, and Madame Web. And I think I can speak for everybody when I say, THANK GOD!
I had a lot of hopes that Kraven could be an exception for the Spider-Man-less films. Unfortunately, this was the rule instead.
Kraven the Hunter was terrible.
I am not sure what this movie was supposed to be. The story was all over the place and the film jumped about willy-nilly.
Where to start? I mean… everything that we saw in this film made no sense and the film did not seem to care much about making it make sense.
There was a tremendous cast here that somehow brought some of the worst acting you have ever seen. Aaron Taylor Johnson was okay as Kraven, but Russell Crowe and Ariana DeBose, both who had won Oscars, gave some of the worst performances I have ever seen. How does this happen?
Part of it was that the writing was some of the worst of the year. The dialogue was horrendous, laughable and did no favors for any of these actors. It was on the level of Madame Web which was one of the worst of the year.
Another part of the dialogue that was terrible was all of the ADR. This is a thing when the movie will have voice overs, re-recording scenes for whatever reason. The fact is that the ADR is done really poorly. I swear the character The Foreigner never moves his mouth. It was very noticeable and distracting. All movies do ADRs, but why does the Sony Spider-Man movie do this so badly (because Madame Web was terrible too).
There were some action that was okay, particularly a chase scene with a car and Kraven on foot. However, most of the action of this movie were average, at best. With the action being okay, the film needed it to be much better to overcome the other negatives of it.
Sadly, it feels like Kraven the Hunter has joined the race for the worst movie of the year. There are legit 6 films that could be in that number one slot at the end of the month for my Worst Movie List. There was just no life or any sort of joy here. Every time Kraven cracks a quip, it was totally flat and felt out of place. Some of the CGI was as poor as you would expect. There just is not much to enjoy about Kraven the Hunter. He has always been one of my favorite Spider-Man villains, but this does not work on any level.
We added this category recently, but backtracked to award some previous films the award.
Movie Musicals
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), Whiplash (2014), Pitch Perfect 2 (2015), La La Land (2016), The Greatest Showman (2017), Mary Poppins Returns (2018), Rocketman (2019), Hamilton (2020), Tick, Tick… Boom! (2021), Matilda the Musical (2022), The Color Purple (2023)
We had some musicals in 2024. There was Piece by Piece, which was a musical documentary, in Lego format doing the life of Pharrell Williams. Moana 2 is a huge box office success, but, truthfully, the music just did not hit as well as the original. That’s what happens when you do not have Lin-Manuel Miranda doing your music. Speaking of Miranda, he is doing the music for the upcoming Mufasa film from Disney, and while that is probably going to be great, I do not think it will match this year’s winner. Joker: Folie à Deux was a disappointment in a lot of ways, and musically was one of them. They really did not take advantage of Lady Gaga. Mean Girls was very forgettable from way back in January. Emilia Perez was a powerful movie, but I can honestly say that much of the music in this film, I do not remember. I do not consider Bob Marley: One Love to be a musical, though I could mention it as an effective use of music.
2024 Movie Movie Musical of the Year:
Wicked
Yeah, this one was easy. This is a massive hit and a tremendous film. The rendition of “Defying Gravity” in this film is goosebump creating. Both Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo were stunning with their voices and made this iconic Broadway play a must see movie…even as a Part 1. Could this be foreshadowing next year’s winner too?
I was struggling with this award this year. This is one of the most recent awards we give out during the Year in Review. It came around because I wanted to give Violent Night a specific award.
Here are the list of winners
The X-Mas Movie of the Year
Previous Winners:Violent Night, The Holdovers
You can see there has only been two winners so far. I could have gone back and retroactively given this award out to films such as Netflix’s Klaus, Home Alone, Christmas Vacation, The Muppets Christmas Carol, Scrooged or (sorry Bruce) Die Hard. Heck, I could have named this award the Die Hard Memorial X-Mas Award (I really wish I had done that).
Looking at the Christmas movies that I had watched this year, all I had was Red One. Red One was disliked by a lot of people. I did not hate it, but it was not very good for sure. There was an animated movie on Netflix called That Christmas which was in consideration, but sadly I only thought it was passable too. The second half of that movie was really great to be fair, but I was bored through the beginning.
I chose to go to a film today because I did not have a distinct choice for this award. It was a film that I had no interest in seeing, but had a great Rotten Tomatoes score. I had a lazy Sunday planned and there was a 9:15 AM showtime at Cinemark and I thought that would be a good opportunity.
The movie I saw this morning is officially the winner of this award…
Winner: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
Based on a novel, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever was funny, well written, and full of interesting characters who have to decide what Christmas means to them. This was a really solid movie and it works extremely well as the winner of the….
It was a strange path to arrive at me watching this movie. After seeing trailers, I had zero interest in going to see this Christmas movie. It looked very much like a Lifetime special and Christmas is down my list of holidays. I had pretty much decided I would not go to this.
Then I started doing the Year in Review and I realized that the only Christmas film that I had seen this year was Red One, and that was, at best, okay. It felt wrong to give it the X-Mas Movie of the Year Award so I watched an animated movie called This Christmas on Netflix. Sadly, it was just around okay too. I then looked at the Rotten Tomatoes score for The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and it was at 91% critics and 97% audience. This made me wonder if I should take this basically open weekend and go see it. It was only an hour and a half. How could that be painful? So even with a doubt in my head, I went to Cinemark this morning for a 9:15 AM showing.
This was really a good movie. I liked this way more than I ever expected.
Historically, I have not been a fan of the faith-based movies, but that is not what this is. This is a movie featuring characters who are being reminded about what Christmas means to them, and how important the Christmas story can be for them. It was about characters. And it was really well done.
Based on a popular novel, we are introduced to The Herdmans, a family of six children who were the biggest troublemakers in the town of Emmanuel. They were feared by children and adults alike.
At this time, the director of the local pageant broke both of her legs, making her unable to continue to do her duties. Grace (Judy Greer) volunteered to take over the job. Unbeknownst to her, the Herdmans decided to come and join the church’s pageant (to get the snacks they were told would come with it). The Herdmans, led by the scary Imogene (Beatrice Schneider), forced their way into the main roles of the pageant, which just happened to be the 75th Annual event.
This was well written, solidly acted and had some genuine funny moments. You can’t but help to like the antics of the Holdman kids, and you can see the diamonds in the rough beneath their surface, especially Imogene. Young Beatrice Schneider does a fantastic job in the role, bringing a humanity to this character that is gruff and unappealing on the surface.
I will admit to getting kind of emotional during the film. I was amazingly impressed with the kindness and unbelievable patience shown by Grace, who could have easily bowed to city pressure and dumped the Holdmans from the play. As a teacher, I was inspired by the way she reacted to these troublesome children and watching the Holdmans respond to the play and trying to answer the questions they naturally had (by a trip to the library) was awesome to me.
You kind of knew what the film’s resolution was going to be, but it was well constructed and still managed to tug on those heartstrings. This was one of those times where predictability was not a negative.
As a Christmas movie, this is much better than much of the sentimental slop that is out there and it gives us a chance to really question if we know the true meaning of Christmas.
I spend a lot of time watching YouTube. It is probably the app I watch the most on my Roku TV. There are so many channels and programs on this site that I watch regularly. So every year I have to find the list of my favorite YouTube shows and personalities.
I am counting down the Top 15 YouTube series/channels of 2024. Many of these are repeats from last year and several have moved up or down.
#15. Songs from a Suitcase. Vocal coach watching cool stuff. She watched Agatha All Along.
#14. Alex Hefner’s TV and Movies. A reaction channel that has slipped a bit this year for me. As in most reaction channels, it depends on what the reactor is watching. I do enjoy Alex even if I do not watch him as often as I used to.
#13. Dodgers Nation. A big year for my Los Angeles Dodgers meant I spent more time watching this Dodger discussion show.
#12. Jeremy Jahns. Jeremy Jahns has been one of my favorite online reviewers for years. I always thought our opinions matched up. It seems as if some of my thought differed more this year than in the past, but I still think Jeremy is a good time, no alcohol required.
#11. Dan Murrell. Another of my favorite online critics, Dan is also very well spoken and intelligent. His Charts with Dan show featuring box office reports is always informative and compelling.
10. Fatman Beyond. Kevin Smith and Marc Bernardin together are always a good time. I will admit that I do not watch this as regularly as I have in the past, but anytime I have the time to watch FB, I have a laugh and enjoy myself.
#9. Ashleigh Burton. Another reactor, but I seem to enjoy seeing her react more than some others. I just watched her react to Spider-Man: No Way Home and it was wonderful. She does the MCU and is currently doing Buffy season two. All of that interests me.
#8. New Rockstars. When a great new Marvel trailer comes out, there is no better place to go than to New Rockstars for the break down with Eric Voss. There are a lot of other shows on the New Rockstar lineup, but the breakdowns are still the bread and butter here.
#7. The Geek Buddies. John Rocha, Michael Vogel and Shannon McClung have excellent chemistry, being close friends. Their opinions on geek culture is not always the same, which makes it all the better. I love their long reviews of certain projects, including the great review of Agatha All Along this year.
#6. Ups and Downs. Simon Miller from WhatCulture Wrestling uses that finger of power to give the good bits and up and the bad bits a down. I watch him do these reviews for WWE wrestling and Simon is such a Positive Pete that he brings such an energy that makes the show even better than it was.
#5. Settle the Score. I enjoy this game show very much as Matt Knost hosts and Andy Merryweather plays the music. A combination of movie trivia and name that tune, Settle the Score is a hoot each week. I will say that when I know the contestants, I enjoy the show more, but there are still some winner from people I do not recognize.
#4. FYC. An Oscar discussion show featuring Scott Mantz, Perri Nemiroff and Jeff Sneider. The hosts are the strength of this show. They can disagree with one another and yet hold a civil and intelligent conversation. They clearly respect one another and it shines through the show.
#3. The Reel Rejects. Another reactor channel, but this year the team has exploded. They are doing a ton of movies, TV shows and trailer reactions and they are thoroughly entertaining, whether it be Greg and John, the original rejects, Roxy, Coy, Andrew, Tara, Aaron or any other, The Reel Rejects have had some awesome live streams that are extremely fun, such as the one this year where they were following news from ComicCon and found out Robert Downey Jr was going to play Dr. Doom in the MCU. It is great.
#2. pReview’d. It’s Jay and Adam… it’s pReview’d! Hey Peaches! The highest of the movie/TV reactors again this year is the pReview’d boys. Jay and Adam just feel so authentic and they are downright funny. So whether it is them watching Agatha All Along, Deadpool and Wolverine, Shogun, Cobra Kai, The Princess Bride, Daredevil, The Penguin, or doing a trailerpalooza in order to GAME THE SYSTEM, BA-BEEE!, Jay and Adam are awesome.
#1. Bonus Action Vol. 2. Jay Schmidt and Adam Lash from pReview’d are back with their D&D roleplaying group, creating one of the most thrilling and engaging story around. DM David Armstrong creates the story for Adam, Jay, Amanda Nichols, Ja-Ron Young, Josh Hurley and Jason Spina. These players are as creative and outstanding as improvisers which brings the gaming session to such an entertaining result. This was the #1 YouTube show on the list last year and the second season/volume has returned to the top spot. I’m not a fan of their time slot (Mondays, meaning I have to watch it the next night), but that is my only complaint. These players are so in touch with their characters that it is a joy to watch them play them and to interact with each other. So much chemistry among the group! And David is one of the best DMs I have ever seen.
It is once again time for the annual look at the best and the worst of films/TV etc. from the world of the cast of the Expendables. Yes, this might be a bit of a joke award, and a little too easy, but … whatever.
Best Movie with an Expendable: Hit Man. This was an excellent film starring Expendable 3 star Glen Powell. Powell has become a real star and he could dominate these Expendable Acting Awards moving forward if he continues to take these interesting roles.
Best Expendable Actor: Harrison Ford (Shrinking). It is the second year in a row for Harrison Ford winning this award for his work on the Apple TV + series, Shrinking. He is just perfect in that role, steals every scene he is in and absolutely rules. His comedic timing is so great and he has chemistry with every actor on the show. He has made the grumpy old man trope his own and his is brilliant on this show.
Worst Movie with an Expendable: Monster Summer. Starring Mel Gibson, this film was a weak 1980s type film that wanted to be like Monster Squad, Goonies, Hocus Pocus or Sandlot, but just lacked any of those films’ strengths or any of those films’ charms. Gibson was miscast in the role too.
Bruce Willis Quantity over Quality Award for Most Movies Made by an Expendable: Antonio Banderas. He had four films (five if you include the London release of Paddington in Peru). The four films were Cult Killer, The Clean-Up Crew, Babygirl and the short Mercedes-Benz: In Her Shoe. I expect to see Babygirl, but the others I missed.
Best Expendable Cameo: Wesley Snipes (Blade, Deadpool & Wolverine). One of the best cameos of the year came from Snipes, reprising his classic role of Blade for the new MCU film. Despite the rumors of a feud with Ryan Reynolds stemming from Blade 3, Snipes appeared in the love letter film to the MCU and was an absolute highlight.
