Chabert Watch! Love on Safari (2018)

Watched:  02/18/2025

Format:  DVD

Viewing:  First

Director:  Leif Bristow

Job: Web designer for corporations

new skill:  looking at giraffes, deus ex machina identification

Man: Jon Cor

Job of Man: Safari ranger

Goes to/ Returns to:  South Africa

Event:  Birthday for Lacey

Food:  Cookies

First of all, Brad sucks.  

Brad is Chabert's City Man, and he prides himself on loving spreadsheets.  That's fine.  I love to spend time in Google Sheets, too.  But that and misogyny are his whole personality.  He's a gigantic tool, and we're supposed to dislike him, and, hey... mission accomplished.

Chabert plays a web developer from Chicago.  In the way that only seems to happen in movies, when a great-uncle she hasn't seen in 20 years dies, Chabert inherits a whole frikkin' animal reserve and lodge in South Africa and is now responsible for miles of bushland, the animals upon it, and the people employed by the reserve.  All without a letter or phone call from the uncle forewarning her of his plans.

Chabert Watch! Crossword Mysteries: Abracadaver (2019)

you'd think the prop would indicate this movie is more fun than it is

Watched 02/10/2025
Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jonathan Wright

Job: Puzzle maker and Police Investigation Meddler

new skill:  close-up magic

Man: Brennan Elliot

Job of Man: Detective

Goes to/ Returns to: Remains in NYC

Event:  Birthday at Magic Manor

Food:  I don't think there was any food

In a move that makes total sense from a cost-savings perspective, Lacey Chabert and Brennan Elliot (as Detective Man) return for a third installment in the Crossword Mysteries series - a series which was clearly shot all in one big sprint for these three installments.  Chabert has the same hair, and, occasionally, the same jacket.  The sets for the police office and the newspaper are the same, and the cast remains intact-ish.  

This time, the only tie to a crossword puzzle is that - in order to create a single day's crossword puzzle, Chabert has enrolled in weeks of magic classes at an approximation of LA's Magic Castle.  I do not know if New York has one of these.*  

It is a crazy reason for Chabert to be on site, but I guess it's weird Jessica Fletcher was always floating around when someone dropped dead 23x a year.

Chabert Watch! Crossword Mysteries: Proposing Murder (2019)

Watched 02/08/2025
Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Don McCutcheon

Job: Puzzle maker and Police Investigation Meddler

new skill:  Escaping from enclosed spaces

Man: Brennan Elliot

Job of Man: Detective

Goes to/ Returns to: Remains in NYC

Event:  None, really

Food: you know, I don't think they stop to eat in this movie

If I was concerned this was going to be a series of movies about crimes being hidden in crossword puzzles, I needn't have worried.  Instead, the crossword tie-in here is that the victim is a friend of Chabert who (prior to checking out involuntarily) asks Lacey to hide his marriage proposal in the Sunday puzzle.  A few days later (that very Sunday!), he manages to gets murdered.  

Rather than a crossword housing the mystery, there's a whole thing about cryptography, WWII codes and a hidden treasure.  It's not bad.  The idea here is that Chabert's character is naturally adept at solving puzzles and codes, as well as driven to do so, exploiting her interns along the way - in pursuit of justice!

Detective Man is assigned to the case, and immediately he and Chabert cross paths.  Flirty paths, with meaningful glances.

Our victim, Chabert's platonic college pal, had just received tenure at College University, and was getting engaged to a woman he met a year ago.  She's a chef with access to pointy knives.  In addition to the fiancé, other possible suspects pop up, like a librarian, a faculty member, an antiquarian and an ex who is a surgeon.

Chabert Watch! Crossword Mysteries: A Puzzle To Die For (2019)

Watched 02/07/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Don McCutcheon

Job: New editor of the Puzzles section of a major metropolitan newspaper

new skill: solving crimes!

Man: Brennan Elliot

Job of Man: Detective

Goes to/ Returns to: Remains in NYC

Event:  Crossword contest

Food: There are a lot of pastries seen, and deconstructed canapes

If you're a cord-cutter, you may not know that multiple Hallmark Channels exist on the cable spectrum.  In the holiday season (1/4th the year), they kind of throw the intention of the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries channel out the window, pre-empting their cozy-mysteries format with Christmas movies.  

But the rest of the year, the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries network is dedicated to movie series in which women solve mysteries.  The movie-series idea harkens back to network TV movies of the 1990's, when we'd get, like, Perry Mason movies with Raymond Burr, with a recurring character, set-up, and supporting players.*

I was previously aware of these movies as, in my occasional channel surfing, I'd seen they had really wild titles like "Garage Sale Mysteries" and "Murder, She Baked".  In their wildest dreams, SNL writers were not cooking this up.  But I also hadn't seen any of them.  However, when I was figuring out how many movies Ms. Lacey Chabert was responsible for, I stumbled across "The Crossword Mysteries" series - 5 films in all.  

Yeah.  So.  I guess the deal is we're mixing in hobbies of the Hallmark audience with genre TV, and while it may seem silly on its face, I watch approximately 10,000 hours of superhero content every year.  Let people like what they like.

Chabert Watch/ Forgot to Mention It Watch: Moonlight in Vermont (2017)

Watched: 02/04/2025 

Format: Hallmark 

Viewing: First 

Director: Jonathan Wright 

Job: Manhattan-based Realtor

new skill: talking to peasants

Man: Carlo Marks

Job of Man: Chef at B'n'B

Goes to/ Returns to: Goes to Vermont

Event: MapleFest/ MapleFest ball or some nonsense

Food: Maple syrup

I watched this in January, before I committed to the Chabert-a-thon, and forgot about it immediately after watching it, but saw it pass by on Hallmark and was like "oh, right.  That one."

This movie was bad and I didn't like it.  There are two male leads, and both characters are terrible humans who suck.  The jury is out on what kind of human Chabert's character is, but she's dressed very smartly.

Chabert plays a born-and-raised Manhattanite who is dating a Manhattan guy who sucks.  They break up because she works too much/ is completely inconsiderate of her boyfriend over and over, apparently.

Mad that she's been dumped, she joins with best-pal Fiona Vroom, and they go to her father's BnB in Vermont at the height of MapleFest.  AND WHO AMONG US HASN'T FOUND LOVE AT MAPLEFEST?

Her father had been a big-deal real estate guy in NYC, but after Chabert's mother passed has slowed down and re-married to Rebecca Staab (who this viewer knows from her role as a seductress of older, but viable gents on Superman and Lois).  It turns out Chabert and her father have some tension about him selling the family apartment after her mother's passing, and leaving town to live in Vermont.  She's kind of mean about it to him, but they've saved any discussion of this gigantic topic for the movie instead of when it happened.

Chabert Valentine's Watch: Love, Romance and Chocolate (2019)

Watched:  02/04/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jonathan Wright

Job: Food Stylist for magazines shoots?
new skill: making chocolate/ chatting too much with royalty
Man: Will Kemp
Job of Man: failing chocolatier
Goes to/ Returns to: Goes to Bruges, Belgium
Event: chocolate tasting at palace/ royal ball
Food: guys, you're not gonna believe it...  chocolate

Firstly, salute to Chabert for getting to knock around Bruges for however long this took to film.  Well done.

This is a movie about a woman who flies all the way to Bruges to tour of the city, and spends her whole trip working for free in a chocolate shop that has no customers. 

The start of the movie does nothing to explain what Chabert does for a living, and we're well past the half-way mark when she tells someone she's a food stylist for advertising and the like.  Magazine covers get brought up before I finally figured it out.

What we do know is that she starts the movie with the world's least interested boyfriend who - in a completely whackadoo scene in which he looks like he has a bomb strapped to him and must dump her in under a minute or the whole place explodes - ditches Chabert for a promotion and a quick move to Albany.  This leaves her with airline tickets and a trip she's already booked, wherein she is to tour Bruges and all the chocolate shops.

Chabert-a-Thon: My Secret Valentine (2018)

Chabert and Walker demo how much wine you'll wish you had on hand before you start the movie

Watched:  01/30/2025

Format:  Hallmark+

Viewing:  First

Director:  Bradley Walsh

Job: Restaurant Manager/ Winery heiress
Location of story: somewhere near Portland, Oregon
new skill: None?
Man: Andrew W. Walker
Job of Man:  Acquisitions for a wine distribution company
Goes to/ Returns to: Returns to
Event:  Valentine's Wine and Food Fest
Food:  wine

First of all, congrats to Lacey Chabert who just signed an exclusive deal with Hallmark which will include movies, more of her unscripted show 'Celebrations', and a product line in Hallmark stores.  We'll, of course, be delving into what this means and what products at Hallmark shops carry Ms. Chabert's stamp of approval.  

At the same time, she's also now the face of Purity skin cleanser. Which, yes, that makes sense. 

On to WineFest.

Look, this movie was maybe not very good.  It was the sort of movie where nothing works the way things work in real life, and it feels like no one involved could be bothered to learn how those things work despite the fact Google was about 18 years into its existence by the time this movie came out.

Chabert's father calls her to come home because he has news for her, and after luring her home and away from work, he chooses to refuse to tell her the news until he's at dinner with his full staff.  At which point- he springs the very personal information about his decisions to retire and maybe sell the family name, land, house, cabin, business, etc...  He does this without once speaking to his only child and heir to the family business.  

In any other movie, this would suggest a deeply broken relationship.

Catch-Up Watch: Little Women (2019)

Watched:  01/29/2025

Format:  Amazon, I believe

Viewing:  First

Director:  Greta Gerwig

Somehow I have never seen any version of Little Women, and I've never read the book.  As a testament to how much I dislike movies having a Christmas release date, when I saw the cast line-up for this - and who was directing it,* I was very clear as I expressed to Jamie "hey, I want to see that", but then we absolutely did not see Little Women (2019) with its Oscar-pleasing release date as the holidays became busy.

Well, a couple weeks ago, in the same conversation wherein Jamie mentioned wanting to see Brooklyn, she also mentioned Little Women, and I was on board.  And then, days later!, M.Bell was giving me grief for having missed it, and it seemed like a sign.  

And, holy sugar smacks, that is a fantastic flick.  

Chabert-a-Thon Trilogy Watch: "All of My Heart", "AoMH: Inn Love" and "AoMH: The Wedding" (2015, 2017, 2018)

Watched:  Finished the third one on 01/29/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First for all three

Director:  Peter DeLuise, Terry Ingram x2

Job: BnB owner

Location of story: Pennsylvania?

new skill: running a BnB/ starting a bakery business

Man:  Brennan Elliot

Job of Man: Wall Street Deal Maker/ Goat Herd/ Handy Man

Goes to/ Returns to: Goes To

Event: None/ None/ Wedding

Food: Baked goods.  My God, so many baked goods

Well, this was roughly 4.5 hours spent on a very long walk.

The All of My Heart trilogy maybe doesn't need to exist, and, yet, it does.  Why?  I do not know.  Was the original so successful The People demanded more?  Internet sleuthing tells me that, yes, people loved the first one so much, Hallmark had to cook up sequels.

The series fulfills the fantasy (by someone, absolutely not me) of owning and operating a Bed and Breakfast in the country, where everyone tells you that you are good at baking.  This is clearly a dream of many.

It is also a Hallmark movie series that never says it out loud, but absolutely implies, our leads are living in sin for the equivalent of 2 out of 3 movies.  

As a bonus, it features TV luminary Ed Asner for absolutely no reason, but he's in all three movies as The Wise Old Man.

After finishing some other Chabert movie (I think the Hawaii movie), I was rolled into All of My Heart (2015).  In this one, Chabert plays a caterer who inherits *half* of a house, and sees the possibility to make her dream of opening a BnB in leaf-peeper country a reality.  Frequent Chabert collab Brennan Elliot shows up as the other inheritee, and plays a hard-nosed Wall Street guy who just wants to get half the proceeds of the house's sale.  If she can buy him out, great.

Not-Aimed-At-Me Watch: Brooklyn (2015)

Watched:  01/22/205

Format:  Max

Viewing:  First

Director:  John Crowley

About ten minutes into Brooklyn (2015) I knew I wasn't the intended audience, or even an intended tertiary audience, for the movie.  I believe this was aimed at Not-Me, whomever that would be - perhaps Bizarro League, and/ or people whose flights of fancy involved less in the way of aliens with capes and/ or atomic-powered giant monsters.  Maybe this is more for folks looking for (melo)drama in the way of Jane Austen novels.  And for them, I say - enjoy!  Stop reading now.

Saoirse Ronan is everything you've heard, and the photography was excellent.  The movie is beautifully made, exquisitely acted, and has immaculate period detail and design.  

And I wasn't into it.

SPOILERS

Chabert Lifetime Noir Watch: Imaginary Friend (2012)

Watched:  01/19/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Richard Gabai

After running through something like 10 Lacey Chabert movies during the holiday season, Amazon is now offering up additional Chabert content - which has not helped when I pondered "what if I drove everyone nuts by making 2025 the year I watch and discuss *every* Lacey Chabert movie?"  Because, friends, she has 183 credits already, and is, like, 42.  That's not 183 movies - she's voiced several cartoons (including Supergirl on Harley Quinn), and been on a few TV series.  A glance at her IMDB suggests she's doing like 10-12 projects every year - and a heap of those are 90 minute TV movies.

Anyway - I'm not going to cover all of that.  But I'm also not going to not do it.  Who else will be the chronicler of Lacey Chabert's career arc?

Imaginary Fried (2012) is about eight years after Mean Girls.  It's a Lifetime movie, and part of the "someone close to me is trying to kill me" fantasy that characterized a lot of Lifetime's programming at one point.  Lifetime is a weird bastion of noirish programming that gets overlooked, but if these movies were black and white and the characters spoke with Mid-Atlantic accents, we'd just shrug and include them in the category as maybe B's.

Chabertmas: Pride, Prejudice and Mistletoe (2018)

Watched:  12/23/2024

Format:  Amazon/ Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Don McBrearty

I dunno.  Chabert is maybe an investment banker in NYC.  She comes home to help her mom run a Christmas charity event in the most persnickety version of charity events that seems way too high stakes for something like this - but I also know in real rich people land, there's probably some reality here.

Chabert's colleagues wait until she's gone to also try to poach all of her clients and run her out even though she's a partner, which means - yikes.  What a terrible place she's working.  

She runs into her old high school Debate Club sparring partner, who is now running a restaurant.

Anyway, it kind of writes itself.  

I have no idea what it had to do with Pride and Prejudice other than Chabert's character's name is "Darcy".

Chabert Holiday Watch: A Wish For Christmas (2016)

Watched:  12/21/2024

Format:  Amazon streaming

Viewing:  At least second

Director:  Christie Will Wolf

In addition to riding into the sunset on Hallmark-type Christmas movies, I'm also trying to make my way through the Chabert Hallmark catalog.  I mean - why not?

So, apparently I'd seen this movie before about five years ago.  I'd forgotten because apparently I watched it when I had the flu after a work trip (I very much remember being sick).

In this movie, Santa uses his fantastical powers to bestow Lacey Chabert with her Christmas wish of courage.  This is coupled with a reckless sense of agency and a Zoom-In-Dolly-Out effect familiar to fans of the movie Jaws.  

I don't have much to add to the post I linked to above.  

I will mention that the lead is only two years younger than the woman playing his aunt, and I don't know why on earth Hallmark does this.  Surely they could have dug up an actress who didn't look right as a love interest for our lead.  I would guess the mom is less than a decade older that our lead as well.  

The film also co-stars the woman who played Eve Tessmacher on Supergirl.  

Chabert is Chabert, but they keep commenting on her earrings, which you absolutely cannot see under her hair.  I don't know what happened on this movie, but that's a fixable problem.  And it makes me wonder if they didn't have the earrings people keep describing as "Snowmen" or what happened.  Do not insert details into your movie if they just raise unanswerable questions.

Hallmark Watch: A Holiday Engagement (2011)

Watched:  11/26/2024

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:   Jim Fall

So, I've always wondered why Hallmark used the model they did, of sort of hoarding all of their hundreds of Christmas movies for the their three cable channels.  And, I think. they have an app or streaming service.  But I kinda think signing up for a Hallmark app is for the folks who are a particular breed of cat.  

Now, they've dumped an insane number of these movies on Amazon, YouTube and Netflix.  Jamie was looking for something else and realized this, and as we were doing some Christmas decorating, she randomly picked one, and this is what we got.

The movie is from 2011, so it's an interesting snapshot in time for Hallmark's continual evolution.  They have name-actors, but in supporting roles.  Shelley Long is a major character as the mom who seems like she's entertaining notions about how a a woman plans her future that last got updated in 1961.  It's a thankless role.  Sam McMurray - who you know from everything - is the dad, who is a two note joke, and gets away with cashing a paycheck for just mugging a bit.  Salute.  Haylie Duff appears and you absolutely wonder why she's not the star every time she wanders onto the screen.  A pre-Vice Principals/ Righteous Gemstones Edi Patterson steals the early part of the movie as the star's much more engaging friend.  I wanted to watch her movie, not what we got.  Also - Jan Brady shows up for two shots trying to steal a wedding dress.  

Hallmark Watch: A Very Merry Mix-Up (2013)

Watched:  11/22/2024

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First?

Director:  Jonathan Wright

Ah, the Golden Age of Hallmark.  If you weren't a city-gal falling for a simple boy from...  somewhere else even 45% more rural?...  were you even Christmassing?  This one is still from the Hallmark era of Actresses I Knew From Other Things Picking Up A Quick Paycheck.  And, to wit, Alicia Witt is our star.  

In this movie, Witt plays the world's perkiest depressed girl.  In the wake of her father's passing, she's running his antiques business - right into the ground.  While she has no visible traffic in her shop, she also won't find time to organize the store, do her books, or do much but stand in place behind the counter.  She seems to have no friends and her mother has left.  She's dating a guy who openly has contempt for her, and seems to have picked her because she'll agree to whatever, like a real life Sim.

She is unwell.

Her man is, of course, Business Man.  And that is bad.  Because business.  City.  Cell phone.  He is bad.  Even if, you know, he's rightfully pointing out that she's running her dad's business into the ground.  That is bad.  Do not point out the inevitable failure.  He proposes to her stupidly and publicly, and for reasons, she agrees, because depression is a wild ride, I guess. He then tells her she's flying to meet his family, and he'll catch up.  And she does this.

The titular very merry mix-up occurs as Witt is a moron who meets another moron and neither realizes the other's story doesn't match, and she just leaves the airport with this guy and goes to his house, believing he's the brother of her fiancée.  Btw, she's never even heard her fiancée has a brother also, btw, (friends, do not go with a stranger just saying things that sound vaguely comforting to a second location).  

She, of course, falls for the brother because we can't quite do While You Were Sleeping, but we can come close!  And she loves Christmas, and... get this... so does he!  The brother, Matt, is not much of an actor, and you can feel Witt just over-caffeinating herself to get some energy out of their scenes, because she's, like, good and stuff, and kind of stuck in this movie.

Anyway - she figures out she has the wrong house and goes to the right house, and Business Man's family is hilarious.  Yes, they suck, but that sucking is by far the best part of the movie.  It's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf about to break out at any moment. 

Knowing Witt is ruining her dad's business, Business Man (a) finds a way for her to sell the property for $3.5 million, and then (b) offers to help her set up in another spot a couple of blocks over.  Yes, this will benefit him, too.  Which is something that would help her, is she's marrying him.  It's the definition of win-win.  Yet...  Witt, who thinks owning a business is about nostalgia for one's childhood and not feeding oneself, gets mad and breaks up with Business Man, refusing the deal.  

She gets back with dumb-dumb.  The End.

This is a movie about dumb, sweet people belonging together.  There's worse things. I think they'll likely be bankrupt within a year, but okay.

The movie is full of gigantic plotholes, the main character seems traumatized and that goes undiagnosed (and I worry for her).  It's dumb things happening so movie will happen. It hits all the Hallmark waypoints.  City bad.  Business bad.  Not Business Man good.  Wise old relative.  Stupid stories about the past.  Decorating a tree too close to Christmas.  

It was good to go back and see one of these Classic Formula movies, and I do miss them starring someone famous for something outside of being in Hallmark movies.  

Anyway, if you want to buy me the Alicia Witt Christmas record, I won't complain.  

Witt is, of course, a stone cold fox, which makes this easier to watch.

Halloween Dark Universe Watch: The Mummy (2017) - the one with Tom Cruise

Watched:  10/02/2024

Format:  Peacock

Viewing:  First

Director:  Alex Kurtzman

She had style!

She had flair!

She was there!

That's how she became... the Mummy!

This is an amazingly wrong-headed and bad movie.  I really don't want to write it up, because it's going to take forever.  It's problems are legion, and it's astounding to think Universal went so hard at the "Dark Universe" concept and then this was their maiden flight.  A maiden flight which took off, did a loop-de-loop before crashing back into the airport, and which immediately killed the entire concept.  Thank God.

If you need a refresher:  in the wake of the success of Marvel's Avengers movies making a billion dollars each, Universal looked to see what IP they had laying around to exploit.  And, since the silent era, Universal has had classic horror in their stable.  Dracula, Frankenstein, Bride of, Wolfman, The Mummy, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Invisible Man... all Universal. What Universal decided to do was create a world in which these creatures co-exist and... fight crime?  I don't know.  And this movie didn't say, despite the fact all they do is stand around and explain things to the detriment of plot, character, and enjoyment of the very thing you're watching. 

There was plenty of precedent.  By the 1940's, the sequels had been bubbling up, and we did see Wolfman meet Frankenstein, and all of the monsters show up in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (which was, obvs, a horror-comedy, but featured the characters as audiences knew them in the straight movies).

Around 2015-16,Universal signed with major stars and were going to do this.  Tom Cruise!  Johnny Depp! Angelina Jolie! Russell Crowe!  Utterly missing the fact the stars of the originals were barely the actors - it was the concept.  They did so, so much press about this, and everyone kind of said "...why would you do this press?  Just make the movies."  But, nope, so high on their own supply, they ran into the streets to tell people about it, and then it blew up in their faces immediately, like Wile E. Coyote with dynamite.

The Mummy (2017) is the Tom Cruise-starring action-monster-not-horror vehicle that took the name and a few concepts from the original The Mummy movie and the subsequent Universal sequels, and turns it into a very expensive actioner devoid of plot, characters, charisma or joy.  Or fear.  It's a painful slog through scenes shot without enough light to ever see anything (Dark Universe!  HA!), wherein you can feel Cruise's people touching up a script that's already overstuffed, but with dollar-store baloney.

Angry Animal Watch: The Meg (2018)

Watched:  08/31/2024

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Turtletaub

A while back, SimonUK and I covered this movie in an episode that gave me false belief for what our numbers were going to be at The Signal Watch PodCast.  Just 16 episodes in, and it really took off, with folks enjoying the lively debate over a movie that featured a large shark and Statham.

I think, on a second viewing, I'm much more sympathetic to Simon's point-of-view.  You can absolutely see what this movie could/ should have been, and instead, it's a bit of a toothless exercise in never giving you quite what you want out of a movie about a large shark causing problems for people.

My suspicion, then and now, is that the film had a heavy infusion of Chinese money - which is how we got Li Bingbing as the costar alongside Statham - a setting off the coast of China, and a movie that met Chinese censorship rules with no problem.  

What this movie needed to do was be a bloody mess.  It was not.  

The closest I can compare is if you had a Friday the 13th movie and Jason just kept wandering through Camp Crystal Lake, and the counselors kept yelling "there he is" and running away, occasionally falling into potholes to their death.  And when Jason came upon a mess hall full of campers he just walked through the middle, doing no harm.

Statham clearly wishes he was in a different film and he and Bingbing have almost zero chemistry for a movie that wants them to have hints of romance - but it just doesn't make sense in the middle of a crisis where people are dying around you to fall for someone, even a someone with great hair and make-up like Bingbing, or a head like a battering ram like Statham.  

The movie continually *hints* that we'll get the carnage some of us were hoping for.  They knock off a pair of whales.  There's menacing shots of a shark in the sea.  But when it comes to bumping off the horrendous Ruby Rose, no dice.  

Because water is largely a void, they also have a very hard time showing how big the shark is, which is largely the point of the film.  And so it can seem the shark is whatever size the shark is in that moment.

There are neat vehicles and ideas in the movie, but the certainty that Statham and Bingbing will be fine shades everything else.  

Weirdly, my favorite bits in this movie include elementary-school aged children, one of them a main character, one of them a boy who is probably more like me at that age than I care to admit, floating stupidly in the water with a popsicle.  

I'm not even sure this is in a top 10 shark movies category.  It's fine.  But it doesn't hold up super well on a second viewing, even years apart.  But it is good "let's sit and talk over this movie" movie.

Angry Animal Watch: Lavalantula (2015)

Watched: 08/25/2024

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Mike Mendez

From the same studio that mixed fish and wind, this seems to have been a second stab at the success derived by mixing Animal + Natural Disaster, ie: the Sharknado franchise.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Lavalantula (2015) is that it's a mini-Police Academy reunion - a thing nobody was asking for, but it was nice to check in.  A curiously sweaty Steve Guttenberg anchors this film, but you can expect to see Michael Winslow (the sound fx guy), Marion Ramsey (the squeaky voiced lady - RIP), and Leslie Easterbrook (the blonde training commander) appear.  But no Kim Cattrall, oddly enough.  

In non-Police Academy casting, the film co-stars Nia Peeples* as Guttenberg's ass-kicking, defiantly shirt-free wife, and Patrick Renna, who was in The Big Green with Guttenberg back in the 1990's when he was a kid (you will remember him from The Sandlot).

The basic idea is that, uh-oh, LA is sitting on lava tubes that erupt and start spewing out large spiders that spit flame.  

And that's it.  I mean, Gutternberg and friends need to end the invasion, but that's it.  Spiders.  It's plenty.

Guttenberg plays a washed up 1990's superhero action star who has to traverse Los Angeles during this 8-legged calamity to find his teen/20-something son, who he failed to take to a Dodgers game and who ran off to ride dirt bikes with his friends. 

The FX are...  there.  But this is a movie that knows what it is, and does ok at that.  If you want to see a movie that seems like they blew their entire budget on Police Academy alums, this is it.  But there's also some fun sequences, and no one is taking this seriously.  It co-stars Ralph Garman as a Hollywood Boulevard costume guy and features the Brea Tar Pits with fire CG'd everywhere.  That's the sort of movie it is.

Tackleberry would be so pissed he missed this

Anyway, it was good to see old Police Academy friends, and had they made more Lavalantulas, maybe we could have seen more.

But the movie never quite feels as insane as Sharknado did that first time, which was absolutely catching lightning in a bottle - and then upping the ante by a factor of 10 with each sequel.  And I felt robbed that Easterbrook was in the movie for only a couple of minutes.

*I've never really thought the last name "Peeples" is weird until this very moment, but "Peeples" sounds made up, and yet is not.  Peeples.

Pain Watch: Ember Days (2013)

Watched:  06/21/2024

Format:  Amazon Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Sean-Michael Argo

Where to start?

Since high school, intentionally watching bad movies has been a routine part of my film viewing.  I couldn't count how many bad movies I've watched with the aid of MST3K, RiffTrax, Dug, etc... or just putting a bad movie on myself and giving it a go with no professional support.  But the number of these films watched has been... astronomical.  And, in fact, my guilt regarding watching so many bad movies is part of why I've recently taken on my homework task of watching movies by the big name directors I've previously avoided.

And so it is that, thanks to Dug, I've now seen a movie that was not just bad for many of the reasons a movie doesn't work out (flat acting, a wandering script, horrendous editing...), but Ember Days (2013) pioneered new and innovative ways in how it chose to be a very bad movie.  It's one of those movies where you'd love a whole other movie to cover what went into this movie, what the filmmakers were thinking, and how they think of their product now.  

I do not say this lightly:  this is possibly one of the worst movies I've ever seen.  That's a spot which is, honestly, pretty hard to reach (and I'm pretty sure is usually occupied by Monster-a-Go-Go).  And I say this in the same year I watched Showgirls 2: Penny's From Heaven.  

If I have any sympathy for the film, it is most certainly due to the zero-budget nature of the production.  And, yes, I appreciate that a bunch of people outside of Hollywood decided to make a movie, and you shouldn't bag on people trying.  

But I watched it, and I'm here to tell the tale.

What makes Ember Days so magical?

Mars Watch (Revisited): John Carter (2012)

Watched:  06/08/2024

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  I've lost track.  5th?

Director:  Andrew Stanton

Selection:  Joint household

You can see prior posts on John Carter books and movies here.

Back in 2012 when this movie came out, I'd read the novel A Princess of Mars at least twice.  It's a breezy, fun read, the first of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars/ Barsoom novels.  If you can get past some very not-21st Century politics and concepts, they're an interesting read, and I recommend.

Those books were almost 100 years old when the movie was released, so, suffice to say, folks have enjoyed them for a while.  And there's something to be said for any novels that last a century, and double that appreciation when it comes to any genre material that manages to last beyond a few decades.  There's something there.   So it came as a bit of a surprise to me at the time that this movie got the critical lambasting it received, currently residing at a 51 on Metacritic.   And most of the folks who saw it at the time told me "oh, I hated that."  

Look, your faithful blogger has just enough ego to assume it's everyone else who is wrong sometimes, but this was a case where I said "ah, well, it's working for me.  I dunno." and moved on with my life.

But, to be truthful, it's been quite some time since I re-watched this movie or read that first novel, and with some separation, I now more or less get why this movie got the reaction it did.  And TheWrap put out a fascinating history of the film, that I consider good reading.    

To be blunt, I was familiar enough with the book that the movie was just seeing portions of the book come to life, and knowing there were many more books, I thought they were just moving things forward in order to make a more seamless narrative.  

Nope.

There's essentially two large problems with the movie in my mind at this point -