Scream (2022)

August 24th, 2023

The same movie critics who lauded 1996’s Scream for being original, self-aware, and revitalizing horror films will absolutely love 2022’s identically named Scream. Where the former was praised for going meta by calling out and breaking the cliched rules of the genre, the latest film in the series goes meta meta by referencing the series itself.

Scream (2022) opens with a scene that mirrors Drew Barrymore’s scene from the original’s opening scene. In the fictional Scream universe, a series of movies called Stab based on the events (murders) that took place in the Scream universe were released. When a new generation of teens begin to once again meet the Ghostface killer they quickly realize they are being targeted by a copycat murderer attempting to recreated the past, and the only people who can help the kids from 2022’s Scream are the ones who survived 1996’s Scream.

A pivotal bit of exposition toward the end of the first act explains to the teens (and viewers) what’s happening. “We’re stuck in a requel,” says one of the teens, all of whom are both potentially the killer and on the chopping block. “A requel is not quite a reboot, and not quite a sequel.” The character points out that requels don’t have any weight unless original characters connect it with the original franchise. She references several recent films including Ghostbusters, Star Wars, and Halloween, and true to her theory, it isn’t long before Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), and Dewey Rules (David Arquette) have all returned to the Screamiverse.

Just as the 1996 film lovingly poked fun at horror films, the 2022 film attempts to do the same by eating its own tail. The characters end up partying in the same house that appeared in the first film, 25 years later. During one particularly meta moment, Ghostface sneaks up behind a teenager on a couch as she watches the scene from the fictional Stab in which Ghostface sneaks up behind a teenager sitting on a couch; that scene, of course, is a recreation of a scene in 1996’s Scream in which Ghostface sneaked up behind a teenager on a couch — the same couch in the same room we’re watching again — and killed them. As the teen on the television mockingly screams “look behind you!” unaware that Ghostface is standing behind them with a knife, the teen we’re watching also screams “look behind you!”, unaware that Ghostface is behind her, too — same room, same couch, same knife. Anyone who doesn’t see what’s about to happen would not survive as a character in a Scream film.

The returning characters have seen it all before, and while within a knife’s blade of the fourth wall, explain the formula to the other characters. They conject on who the killer or killers may be, who will die, and what will happen, and pretty much nail it all. That’s not to say there aren’t shocks and surprises along the way, but at the end of the day these characters have seen it, we’ve seen it, and now we’ve seen them see it, which is kind of the point.

I don’t know that the killer’s motive or the big Scooby-Doo reveal toward the end helps Scream make any more or less sense than any of the other films. Ten years after Scream 4 and 25 years after the original debuted, the new crew (RIP Wes Craven) bring the story to a mostly logical solution. The rules are both mocked and followed, and according to IMDB’s trivia section, the final rule of scary movies — something the actors and characters weren’t privy to at the time of filming — will be followed. Based on the success of this film, a sixth film in the series has already been greenlit.

Magnificent Warriors (1987)

August 23rd, 2023

In [i]Magnificent Warriors[/i], female Chinese secret agent Fok Ming-ming is sent to a city near Tibet to connect with another secret agent and rescue the ruler of the city, Youda. Ming-ming is told she will know her connection because of the watch he wears, but when she arrives she initially teams up with a silly conman who ended up with the watch. Ming-ming eventually finds the right contact, Youda brings along his girlfriend, and soon the pack of five are leading a Chinese rebellion against the Japanese soldiers occupying the city.

I’ve watched a lot of kung-fu movies and most of them are set either in China or modern day, but this film feels like a World War II film — and, at times, an Indiana Jones film. The setting is a small city near Tibet during the Second Sino-Japanese War, so there are a lot of sandbags, and Jeeps, and soldiers with rifles and bayonets, and at least one aerial dogfight. Ming-ming arrives in a yellow biplane and is handy with a whip, which adds to the Indiana Jones feel.

The pacing of this movie is slightly off. The film is exactly 90 minutes long, with three nearly exactly 30 minute acts. The first act has plenty of action, but mostly with characters we’ll never see again, and it’s not until the end of the first act that Ming-ming actually arrives in the city and the story begins. In the second act the team is assembled and the mission is underway, but before you know it that’s over and we’re back into a full-on WWII film. The film’s structure follows the 30/30/30 plot arc to a fault; if this film were made today, it would be more like 10/35/35/10.

What sets this film apart, other than the rather unique setting, is the amazing cast. Michelle Yeoh plays Fok Ming-ming, a full 35 years before film critics were goo-gooing over her performance in Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. Yeoh’s work in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Supercop, and tons of other films established her in the martial arts pantheon, but her fight scenes in this movie rival her contemporaries. The conman she crosses paths with is played by Richard Ng, mostly known from his appearances in all the Lucky Stars films. Ng is one of those guys that can make you laugh one second and knuckle up moments later. Secret Agent 001, Ming-ming’s original connection, is played by Derek Yee (Tung-sing), who appeared in more than 40 Shaw Brothers films before eventually becoming the chairman of the Hong Kong Film Awards Association in 2017.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/lqZj1wr.jpg[/img]

[i]Magnificent Warriors[/i] isn’t a great movie, but it’s a good movie with some great scenes. The scale bounces between small fights between a couple of people and large-scale fights that take place between the entire city and a regimen of soldiers. Like a lot of these films, [i]Magnificent Warriors[/i] isn’t sure what it wants to be — an Indiana Jones film, a WWII film, or a straight up kung-fu films. It does each of these things pretty well, but not a great job of combining them seamlessly into one coherent movie.

The Muppets Mayhem (2023)

August 22nd, 2023

The Muppets Mayhem is a 2023 10-episode series on Disney+ starring the house band from the original Muppet Show, Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem.

Nora, one of two employees at a failing record label, aspires to be a music mogul in her own right, despite being a lowly assistant who is current crashing at her sister Hannah’s pad. While shredding papers, Nora discovers the Electric Mayhem once accepted a large cash advance from the label in exchange for an album it never delivered. (The band promised to deliver the band after their tour ended, and then went on tour for 45 years.) Nora, with help from Hannah, music mogul and ex-boyfriend JJ, and Mayhem superfan Moog, plan to wrangle in the Electric Mayhem, squeeze a debut album out of them, and reap the rewards.

The glue holding the show together is the Electric Mayhem, who ironically can’t hold anything together. The six-piece band, consisting of Dr. Teeth, Sgt. Floyd Pepper, Janice, Zoot, Lips, and Animal, can’t seem to focus for long or get much of anything done. The show revolves around Nora attempting to wrangle the band and drag them into the 2020s by arranging sessions with modern producers, giving them cellphones, and introducing them to social media.

Like many (most?) of these series, this 10-episode series would have worked better as a two-hour movie. To fill the time, viewers are “treated” to looooong side excursions, like the episode in which the Mayhem spend the night in the desert to find themselves, ingest a bag of marshmallows 30 years past their expiration date, and spend nearly half of a 22-minute episode tripping and having hallucinations in a way-too-long Doors-inspired segment. In another episode, due to a misunderstanding Animal thinks he is no longer needed, and spends half an episode at an employment agency applying for work (his tenure answering phones is short lived). On Family Guy these would be 5-10 second clips, and in a normal length film they would get two minutes, but in today’s episodic format they become entire episodes that are slightly entertaining but ultimately don’t move the needle forward.

With Adam F. Goldberg (from the Goldbergs) at the help you know this is going to be a nostalgia fest, and true to form there are classic Muppet references galore. More than that, with Disney money comes Disney connections, and the show has more cameos and licensed music than it can handle. Through the ten episodes, the Electric Mayhem run into Billy Corgan, Morgan Freeman, Cheech and Chong, Kevin Smith, Peter Jackson, Ziggy Marley, Ryan Seacrest, Paula Abdul, Weird Al, Danny Trejo, and dozens more. There’s also a steady stream of appearances for younger viewers, like deadmau5, Charlamagne The God, Lil Nas X, and Zedd. This huge spread guarantees you’ll recognize some of these people, but unlikely to recognize (or care about) them all. Some of these cameos are so forced that they feel cringy, like when Susanna Hoffs (former lead singer of the Bangles) drops by and not only has to introduce herself but admit that Lips is the one who “taught her to walk like an Egyptian.”

There’s a price to pay for that kind of access and it comes in the form of product placement. The band makes an excursion to shop for groceries all to set up a bit where Animal fills a shopping cart with Fritos, and then says “Fritos!” ten times. Restaurants, businesses, and products are constantly being mentioned. Sgt. Floyd Pepper spends a few seconds coming up with a new jingle for Bennigan’s. In an establishing shot, the camera pans down from the Chateau Marmont sign to catch the band’s bus driving by. Animal plays with a Simon toy for 30 seconds, during which the band says “Simon” 20 times. Animal gets a job at Teppanyaki Terrace, works around people in Teppanyaki Terrace uniforms, and appears on a Teppanyaki Terrace billboard. Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok are frequently mentioned by name.

The series has 10 half hour episodes for Nora to succeed, for the love triangle between Nora, JJ, and Moog to get resolved, and the Electric Mayhem to record an album, all of which we know is going to happen. The final episode ends with the Electric Mayhem heading out on tour, which they had been doing for the past 45 years before the show began. It’s possible this could lead to a second season, but more likely it’ll lead to even more Disney+ series. What we need next is a 10-episode series about Fozzy the Bear’s journey through the world of stand up comedy, or how Sam the Eagle left the forest and found the Muppet Show, or…

The Wrath of Becky (2023)

August 21st, 2023

Two years after the first film ended, Becky is back, and this time she’s mad…der. She’s madder.

To recap, in the first film a group of white supremacists crossed paths with Becky, demanded she return an item, killed her guardian, tortured her dog, and chased Becky around the woods while she violently and gleefully murdered them one at a time.

In The Wrath of Becky, which picks up after a three year gap, a group of white supremacists cosses paths with Becky, demands she returns an item, kills her guardian, tortures her dog, and chases Becky around the woods while she violently and gleefully murders them one at a time.

Stop me if that sounds familiar.

The movies aren’t identical, of course. This time around, it’s a group of “Noble Men” (clearly a stand in for the Proud Boys) who get tangled up with the world’s most dangerous teenager. And this time, it’s a USB stick containing the names of every Noble Man that Becky has made off with. There are other differences too, but the devil is in the details; by and large, both of these films are about a teenage girl who pushes back when pushed too far.

Because we know who Becky is and we understand that the Noble Men are bad guys, the film doesn’t need to waste on character development and can get right to what everybody came for. The first Noble Man lured outside the home finds himself fastened to a chair with a hand grenade duct taped to his mouth and a string connecting the pin to the front door of the home, and that’s just the beginning. Unfortunately for the Noble Men, there’s a stockpile of weapons out in the barn just waiting for Becky to discover and find creative uses for.

Like the original, The Wrath of Becky is over the top; while not a cartoon, it feels more like a comic book than the real world. To squelch anyone from saying “but that wouldn’t happen in real life” on the way out of the theater, at the end of the film sixteen-year-old Becky — with the list of Noble Men — is hired by the CIA and issued a rocket launcher, so… yeah.

Both Becky and The Wrath of Becky are grindhouse revenge films from the 70s redone with HD cameras and slick CGI special effects. Grenade-exploding heads never looked so good. The plot’s about as deep as one of Becky’s hole traps, but it’s all in fun… unless you’re someone in this film other than Becky.

Hard Knox (1984)

August 20th, 2023

While browsing the entertainment section of Walmart or, more likely, the “please buy me” table at a garage sale, you have probably run across one of Mill Creek Entertainment’s “MegaPacks” of DVDs. These large box sets contain 50 movies and come with exciting names like “50 Drive-in Movie Classics” or “50 Sci-Fi Invasion Films.” Sometimes they even bundle them together — I paid $5 for “100 Awesomely Cheesy Movies,” which included two smaller collections (“50 Swinging Seventies” and “50 Excellent Eighties”). When you think of “excellent eighties movies” you might think of movies like Footloose, Karate Kid, or Top Gun, but… those are a little out of Mill Creek’s reach. Instead, you’ll find a stack of movies you’ve never heard of with titles like “Tuareg the Desert Warrior”, “My Mom’s a Werewolf”, and, from 1984, “Hard Knox”.

The recipe for Hard Knox is pretty simple. Mix equal parts of Police Academy and Stripes in a blender and then use a sifter to remove any humor, intelligence, or actors with talent.

In the film, retired military pilot Colonel Joe Knox arrives at the military school he previously graduated from only to discover it may close down. Knox’s mission is to whip a new wave of recruits into shape and ultimately lead them in competition against a rival school. This is literally the plots of Police Academy 1 and 4 combined. One of the few recognizable actors is a young Alan Ruck (Cameron from Ferris Bueller) who plays Frankie Tyrone, the stereotypical “if I act crazy I can get out of here” character. There are several other characters of course, but for the most part you’ll just want them to go away.

The kids break each other down before building the team back up, and even ol’ Knox is forced to learn new tricks when the school lets some danged-ol’ women-folk join the club. The film jumps between dorm scenes, people in military uniforms having boring conversations, and training sequences. All of these scenes build toward a showdown between the newly recruited dopes and another school (see: Police Academy 1). Each squadron of recruits is given a pouch full of paint-filled balloons and sent out into the forest to do battle. The kids are given balloons instead of guns with live ammo because they would have taken out the director before turning on one another.

Mill Creek goes the extra mile here by providing a DVD directly sourced from a VHS tape (occasionally the tracking breaks loose). Every 8-10 minutes the movie fades to black, revealing that Hard Knox was actually a made for television film. According to IMDB had the film been successful it was intended to launch a television show, and since you’ve never heard of the television show Hard Knox, that tells you all you need to know about the movie.

Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret (2023)

August 19th, 2023

Judy Blume wrote books for tweens about tweens, and back in elementary school I read a bunch of them. Books like Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Blubber, and Superfudge featured regular characters in relatable settings and situations, always embroiled in some type of “coming of age” story. “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” is a 2023 film based on the 1970 Blume book of the same name.

The story opens as 11-year-old Margaret’s parents drop the bombshell that her father has taken a job that will relocate the family from New York to New Jersey. In one fell swoop, the family will be moving, Margaret will be changing schools, Margaret’s mother will be quitting her job and becoming a stay at home mom, and Margaret will no longer be able to see her grandmother, whom she is particularly close to.

Margaret has more than New Jersey to adjust to; she’s becoming a young lady, and Margaret and her new group of friends are constantly comparing bra sizes and in a rush to see who will be the first to get their periods. There’s also a religious angle, as the title suggests. Margaret’s father and grandmother are Jewish, her mother is Christian, and Margaret’s maternal grandparents have become estranged due to the marriage. A school report about religion has Margaret exploring different religions and her own relationship with God.

Blume’s stories are popular because she takes relatable characters and places them in situations we’ve all experienced before. Unfortunately if you’re a boy, you may have a tough time finding things to directly relate to in this film. My wife loved the book growing up and enjoyed the film as well. As Margaret and her friends do their bust exercises while shouting “we must, we must, we must increase our bust!” I was like, “girls really did that?” while my wife cackled with laughter. It’s a cute film full of experiences I couldn’t relate to. Your wives will love it.

Scream VI (2023)

August 18th, 2023

When did murdering people become so freakin’ violent?

There are a few things every Scream film is required to include. It has to have Ghostface as the killer; that’s a given. It has to establish early on that no one is safe, something the first film introduced in the opening scene courtesy of Drew Barrymore. It has to be full of twists and turns; the killer has to be obvious, then not so obvious, then implausible. It’s got to be filled with self-aware teens and young adults who understand the rules of the horror genre and still manage to get themselves stabbed. And, especially evident in the last few films, the levels of violence, gore, and blood must surpass the previous films.

All of this happens within the first five minutes of Scream 6. This time, the sacrificial lamb is a film professor and expert on the horror genre who possesses two things required for the role: a smokin’ hot body and a severe lapse in judgement. It only takes a phone call from a potential suiter to lure our professor into a dark New York City alley, and before you know it Ghostface emerges from the shadows to stab her. Violently. Again, and again, and again. It’s an uncomfortably long scene that establishes the film’s level of violence. The days of satisfying horror fans with a few jump cuts followed by a lingering shot of a bloody corpse are long gone. Anything less than a close-up of the knife going into a person’s gut no less than 10 times is unacceptable. Our sacrificial lamb gurgles as all of her blood empties itself into the dirty alley, and finally we can cue the opening credits.

Scream 6 continues the story of sisters Sam and Tara, who survived their encounter with Ghostface in the previous film (2022’s “Scream,” which for simplicity’s sake we’ll refer to as “Scream 5”). Courtney Cox reprises her role as pesky investigative reporter Gail Weathers as do a few members of the sisters’ friend circle because who else would we have to stab? Not returning are David Arquette (who was killed in Scream 5) and Neve Campbell (who wanted too much money for Scream 6).

In Scream 6 we learn the surviving sisters have moved to New York City, and when Ghostface shows up and begins killing the people around them, older sister Sam makes the smartest suggestion of the film and recommends they leave town immediately. But they don’t, because this is a Scream film, and soon we’re back in Stabbyville as Ghostface begins his traditional slaughter. Of course Ghostface isn’t the same “Ghostface” from Scream 5, Tara’s ex-boyfriend Richie, because he was killed. Then again, every entry in the franchise has featured multiple killers and they always get killed, and none of that acts as a deterrent to the next film’s killer. No matter the body count, there’s always just enough of a connection for someone to don the infamous mask and pick up the knife once again. If nothing, it saves the franchise from all the embarrassing hoops other franchises (Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Halloween) have jumped through to bring back a killer that was “we promise super duper dead this time.”

Like every other film in the franchise, you can’t trust much of what you see in Scream 6. In every Scream film Ghostface has had a partner that allows the killer to throw suspicion away from him or herself. We’ve literally seen people die in these movies only to return — sometimes the wounds weren’t quite fatal, while in other cases deaths were faked. People have swapped masks to make it appear Ghostface was in two places at once. By the time you get to Scream VI, all hope of figuring out who the killer is goes out the window as literally anyone in the film, including our two final girls from Scream 5, get fingers pointed at them. Is it the girls? The boyfriend? The FBI agent? Another film students? Gail Weathers? One of the new characters? A complete stranger? In Scream, the process of elimination happens as suspects are removed from the film in body bags, and even then you shouldn’t use a permanent marker to strike through their names. At some point with these films you have to quit worrying about where the rollercoaster is taking you and just enjoy the bloody ride.

One thing these films never account for is how multiple people of varying heights and often different sexes all pass for the same Ghostface. I suppose when you’re running for your life, estimating a killer’s height isn’t the first thing on your mind. Also, for the record, either putting on Ghostface’s cloak and mask gives people superhuman powers, or there must be MMA-levels of cardio training required as a prerequisite to wield the knife. Compared to his victims, Ghostface is always faster, always stronger, and always more resilient. In one scene, Ghostface shrugs off a hit to the face with a metal frying pan. My memories of wearing a latex Halloween mask as a kid was that I couldn’t breath and I couldn’t see anything. Somehow, the Ghostface mask has the opposite affect. Even characters that appear to be weak become Spring-heeled Jack once the cloak goes on.

I literally laughed when, after the release of Scream 4, everyone involved with the franchise — and I mean everyone, from the production company to the writers and directors to all the actors — said Scream 4 was the absolute, no bullshit, 100% last film in the franchise. After the release of that film, Harvey Weinstein famously said “we’ve milked that cow.” (He said some other famous things, too.) But if there’s one thing I know about horror movies and Hollywood in general, it’s that cows can be milked for a long, long time… and after the milk dries up, those cows can have baby cows which can then be milked. There will always be teens willing to get stabbed and always angry people with just enough of a motive to put on a mask and do the stabbing. There will always, always be milk.

Oh, and blood. There will always be blood.

Champions (2023)

April 7th, 2023

As part of a plea bargain, disgraced basketball coach Marcus Marakovich (Woody Harrelson) has been court ordered to serve 90 days as the coach for a not-very-good local basketball team. The idea of a coach inheriting a team of under performing athletes and turning them into winners is not new (see: A League of Their Own, Major League, The Replacements, Glory Road, Gridlock Gang, The Bad News Bears, Cool Runnings, Hoosiers, The Mighty Ducks, Remember the Titans…) If Champions brings anything original to the table, it’s that in this case, the athletes are mentally challenged.

The theme of Champions is revealed early in a bit of tough love assistant coach Marakovich’s receives from his coworker Coach Phil Perretti (Ernie Hudson), who informs Marakovich he’s not bad at coaching — he’s bad at relationships. And while the members of the “Friends” basketball team could certainly use some pointers on the court (one of the players insists on shooting backward granny shots; in six seasons, he’s never even hit the backboard), what the players really need is a mentor and a friend. It’s obvious that Marakovich has what it takes to improve his players’ skills on the court, but what they really need is a little help succeeding off the court, too.

The movie dips its toe into the stories of the individual basketball players (all of whom are played by actors with real mental challenges) but only inasmuch as their struggles overlap with the coach’s goal of turning the misfits into a winning team. One member of the team works for an abusive manager at a local restaurant, but it only becomes a problem when the manager won’t let him off to attend practice. The best player on the team has a personal reason for refusing to play for Marakovich, but resolving this issue seems less about helping someone with mental challenges and more about helping the team win. The de facto leader of team Friends is Johnny, a young man with Down Syndrome who is struggling to move out of his mother’s home and is too afraid of water to take a shower. Johnny gets more story time than most of his teammates, but his attractive sister is dating the coach. None of this is particularly detrimental to the film’s plot, but to be sure this is a movie primarily about the redemption and growth of a coach and not as much about the players. In the end it’s not the players who learn that winning means doing their best — they already know this — it’s the coach that needs to learn this lesson.

Costarring with Woody Harrelson and Ernie Hudson are Kairlin Olson as Alex as the coach’s love interest (and Johnny’s sister), Cheech Marin as Julio, manager of the local rec center, and Mat Cook as Sonny, Harrelson’s former assistant who mostly serves the story as someone who can give Harrelson a break from coaching so that he can do other things. Among the team’s players are Madison Tevlin, Kevin Iannucci, and Joshua Felder. I didn’t recognize any of the players from other films and most of them only have this film listed on their IMDB page, but a few of them are return actors and no doubt we’ll be seeing some of them again.

If you’ve seen the trailer you’ve seen the film, but that doesn’t make the 90 minutes any less of a feel good film.

Christmas Bloody Christmas (2022)

December 12th, 2022

There’s something inherently disturbing about Christmas-themed horror films. The holidays are a time of year when most people spread goodwill and exchange gifts, so I can see how a killer axe-wielding robot dressed in a Santa suit may not be suitable for everyone’s holiday party. For those who aren’t opposed to a little blood sprinkled over a fresh blanket of snow, Christmas Bloody Christmas might just be right up your chimney.

The setup to Christmas Bloody Christmas is criminally simple. A fleet of robots acquired from the US Defense Department have been repurposed as “RoboSanta+” units, designed to replace “degenerate mall Santas.” Unfortunately for just about everyone in their vicinity, the RoboSanta+ units have a flaw that occasionally causes them to revert back to their previous military programming, turning them into ho-ho-horrible killing machines.

The film stars Riley Dandy as Tori Tooms, the twenty-something owner of a local record store whose only goal this Christmas Eve is to get drunk and hook up with a random stranger on Tinder. Robbie, one of Tori’s employees, convinces her that drinking and hooking up with him would be less work. On their way to Tori’s the pair make a few stops, one to meet Tori’s friends who are having their own drunken and drug-fueled party at the local toy store, and another at the local bar. Along their journey Tori and Robbie drink, do drugs, and drop more f-bombs than Santa drops presents. The majority of the first act is spent introducing us to future victims.

The film wakes up the same time RoboSanta+ does, and unfortunately for our partying friends at the toy store, someone left a sharp axe a little too close to their robotic Santa. Before the couple knows what hit them, RoboSanta+ hits them. (Like, with the axe.) Soon, ol’ RoboSanta sets its laser sights on Tori and, with a belly full of Christmas spirit, anyone who makes the mistake of getting in its way.

The movie’s low budget hasn’t affected the cinematography. The film, shot on 16mm, looks great. The sets are highly stylized (seemingly every store and bedroom has neon lighting) and the synthwave music sounds like it came straight out of an 80s slasher. The film thankfully eschews CGI and serves up a series of practical (and very bloody) kills as RoboSanta makes his way through town. That being said, it doesn’t take long to see where the budget went and where they skimped. The film’s medium-sized town only seems to have about a dozen citizens, only about half of which are played by actual actors. According to IMDB’s trivia section, one is the writer/director, one is the producer, one is the costume designer, and one is the art director.

As fun as the movie is to watch, it’s also incredibly shallow. I can get over the fact that RoboSanta+ units spontaneously wake up and “break bad” (although it would have been nice to have some some inciting event — being struck by lightning worked for both Short Circuit’s Number 5 and Chopping Mall’s Killbots), but what’s never really explained is why this particular RoboSanta+ is after Tori. Its pursuit of her is unstoppable, just like the Terminator and Michael Myers, but in both of those cases we know why. Just a little bit of work in the story department could have elevated Christmas Bloody Christmas.

In the end, Christmas Bloody Christmas perfectly emulates an 80s slasher film. Unfortunately, like most of those films, it’s pretty forgettable.

A Christmas Story Christmas (2022)

November 18th, 2022

The year is 1973, and Ralphie — the young boy who wanted a Red Ryder BB Gun for Christmas more than anything in the world back in the 1940s — is now married, with children of his own. With the passing of Ralphie’s father (“the Old Man”), Ralphie and his family must rush from Chicago back to the home he remembers (the one we [i]all[/i] remember) in Cleveland to take care of family affairs while pulling off Christmas for the first time without help from his father.

Several actors from the original film have returned to portray adult versions of themselves including Peter Billingsley (Ralphie), his younger brother Randy (Ian Petrella), his childhood friends Schwartz and Flick (R.D. Robb and Scott Schwartz) and others. Sorely missed are Ralphie’s parents, The Old Man (originally (Darren McGavin, who passed away in 2006) and Melinda Dillon as the mom, who has been replaced by Julie Hagerty (of Airplane!), who plays the role completely wrong.

A Christmas Story Christmas has its own story of Ralphie attempting to pull of Christmas with a b-plot of him attempting to become an author, but there are so many callbacks and references to the original film that at times the plot gets lost. Multiple times throughout the film Ralphie reminisces about events from his childhood, after which we are treated to short clips from the original film. The original A Christmas Story is one of the most watched holiday films of all time. Nobody watching this film doesn’t remember the pink bunny suit, Flick sticking his tongue to a frozen flagpole, or what a triple-dog dare means.

Now that the Old Man has passed, it is up to Ralphie to put together Christmas for his family. Much of the plot is dedicated to how he’s going to accomplish this, but it’s almost played as if Ralphie has never seen or heard of Christmas before. Ralphie struggles to come up with things for his family to do, but he’s a married man with a roughly 10 year old son and slightly younger daughter. I guess… do what you’ve been doing the past 10 years? How much brainstorming is involved in putting up lights and a tree? Fortunately, everybody in the film takes a pact “not to be sad” early on, so little time is spent mourning, talking about, or even reminiscing about The Old Man. And how convenient that the Bumpasses still live next door, and still have a lot of dogs.

A Christmas Story Christmas isn’t terrible — it’s a Christmas story with people you know. There’s fun and laughs to be had, and more nostalgia than Cleveland has snow. The film relies heavily on nostalgia (in many cases nostalgia of the first film), but until the original which was about the magic of Christmas and a boy who would do anything to get the present of his dreams, this one is about a middle-aged man trying to hold together Christmas while dealing with the loss of his father. Merry Christmas!