I was too young to remember the controversy surrounding 1984’s Silent Night, Deadly Night (the movie that dressed a psychotic ax-wielding murderer in a red and white Santa Suit) when it was released, but I am old enough to to remember the heyday of video rental stores. As a teen in the mid-80s, I spent many Friday nights with my buddy Jeff wandering up and down the aisles of our local rental store in search of movies to rent. There were no cellphones or internet back then, no instant link to millions of online reviews at our fingertips. All a couple of teens had to go on back then was word of mouth, employee recomendations, and, perhaps most importantly of all, the artwork on the front of the rental box. There were many movies Jeff and I discovered and rented, movies like Chopping Mall, Ghoulies, and Return to Horror High, all because of their artwork. 1984’s Silent Night, Deadly Night, with its iconic photograph of Santa’s arm coming out of a brick chimney while holding an ax, was one of the films we discovered during that time.

The film opens with five-year-old Billy riding in the car, along with his parents and infant brother Ricky, on his way to visit Billy’s catatonic grandfather. When Billy’s parents step away for a moment (leaving Billy alone inside the “Utah Mental Facility”), grandfather briefly awakens from his comatose state and informs Billy that Christmas Eve is the “scariest damn night of the year,” because that’s the night Santa comes to punish children. For many children this might be the most traumatic event of their entire life, but for Billy, it’s only the second most traumatic event of the day. A few hours later during their return trip, a man in a Santa suit pretending to have car trouble flags down the family and, as Billy watches, shoots his father in the head and slits his mother’s throat.

If you’re wondering why Billy’s grandfather woke up from his catatonic state (or was he faking?), why he decided to scare the bejesus out of his grandson, who this murderous Santa is, or who rescued Billy and Ricky from the side of the road, don’t bother. You have entered the realm of the 80s slasher flick, a world where characters and plot points blow into and out of films as freely as the wind. Neither grandpa nor the murderous Santa return to the film — and as for Ricky’s story arc, you’ll have to watch Silent Night, Deadly Night II for that. Let’s just say the ornament didn’t fall too far from the tree.

Billy and Ricky wind up at Saint Mary’s Home for Orphaned Children. Despite the fact that Billy’s parents were murdered on the side of the road by a guy in a Santa suit, Mother Superior can’t imagine why Billy wouldn’t like Christmas, and punishes him with a belt when he turns in Christmas artwork featuring a decapitated reindeer (which, for the record, is way better looking than some of the things I’ve bought on Etsy). If Mother Superior has one lesson for the orphans, it’s that children should be nurtured and loved. Just kidding; her motto is, “those who do bad things need to be punished.”

Once it’s been thoroughly established that the orphanage is a rotten place for kids, we make our third time leap of the film. Now eighteen and “all growed up,” Billy has landed a job at a local toy store through some sort of orphan vocational program established by the nuns. There’s a long montage of Billy working at the toy store, which is really great if you love the 1980s because there are dozens of shots of Billy and his co-workers interacting with loaded toy shelves. Other than going a little haywire each time he sees a picture of Santa, Billy is a model employee.

UNTIL THAT ONE DAY WE ALL KNEW WAS COMING, the day Santa called in sick, Ira needed someone to fill in, and we all know who the rented suit just happened to fit. Finally, almost exactly halfway through the film, Billy snaps. That guy in the warehouse who was a jerk to Billy? HANGED WITH A STRING OF CHRISTMAS LIGHTS! The girl Billy caught having sex in the store’s warehouse? GUTTED LIKE A FISH! EVERYONE WHO DOES WRONG MUST ALL BE PUNISHED! Ira, the guy who gave Billy a job and treated him super nice? CLAW HAMMER TO THE HEAD! Wait, why did Ira get killed? Who cares! Halfway through the film, Silent Night is over and we’ve landed squarely in Deadly Night territory.

The last 45 minutes are reindeer-shit crazy. While Billy hacks his way back toward the orphanage, the local police can’t seem to figure out where he’s headed — despite the fact that since the age of five, the only two places on the planet Billy has ever been are apparently the orphanage and the toy store. If the first half of the film was the slow build up, the last half is the payoff. Billy heads off to the orphanage, dishing out some random seasons greetings along the way.

The extended cut of Silent Night, Deadly Night is only 85 minutes long (that’s with credits), and the theatrical cut (with most of the gore cut out) was only 79 minutes in length. With some tight editing and removal of several scenes that add little to the plot, it would be pretty easy to whittle it down to a solid hour. Neither pacing nor plot are the film’s strong points, and if the killer hadn’t been wearing a Santa Claus suit, I doubt this film would be any more memorable than any other 80s slasher flicks. Fortunately for them, and us, someone had the foresight to set this movie on Christmas eve, and if you don’t think Christmas and horror make a good combination, then I’m guessing you haven’t seen Silent Night, Deadly Night parts two, three, four, or five.

Silent Night, Deadly Night has been released on a special edition Blu-ray that includes both cuts of the film, along with a brief documentary and a commentary track. If that ain’t worth asking Santa for, I don’t know what is.

In the early days of reality television, you couldn’t turn on a television without catching a glimpse of Jesse James’ mug. Between Discovery specials featuring his motorcycle shop West Coast Choppers, an appearance on The Apprentice, and his hit television series Monster Garage, Jesse James — who claims to be a distant relative of the original outlaw — was on his way to becoming a megastar. Multiple seasons of reality programs featuring James’ boyish looks and bad ass biker attitude made audiences think they knew the real Jesse James. In American Outlaw you’ll discover just how little you know about the man behind the golden handlebars.

James, whose parents separated when he was six years old, spent his formative years living with his father, who was both physically and emotionally abusive. The only thing stable in James’ young life was a constant stream of instability. Before graduating high school, James had been kicked out of his father’s home (after falsely being accused of burning it down), moved in with a high school sweetheart (whom he discovered was cheating on him), and routinely stole and sold cars (until his best friend and cohort in crime turned him in to the police). His only outlet for years of pent up rage was football, and although he excelled at the sport, he was doing time in a juvenile detention center when recruiters came with scholarships. A brief college career was cut short by a freak knee injury on the field.

Before becoming Jesse James the Bike Builder, James worked a variety of jobs — from welding in Seattle to providing security for bands such as Danzig and Slayer. Eventually, James combined his nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic and welding skills and found success in a local hot rod shop. From there he started making motorcycle parts on the side, and by the time he was making ten times his regular salary by selling motorcycle parts on the side, James quit the hot rod business and West Cost Choppers was born.

With no examples of a healthy relationship as a guide, it’s unsurprising to learn about James’ multiple failed marriages. First there was Karla, the mother of his first two children, who filed for divorce after failing to compete with James’ first two loves: work, and alcohol. Then there was Janine, adult film star and mother of his third child, a manic/depressive who seemed more interested in James’ money and fame than him. Finally, the book delves into James five-year marriage to American sweetheart Sandra Bullock, and how it was rocked apart when news of James’ infidelity hit tabloid papers across the globe.

In the book’s final chapters, James leaves California and heads to a rehab facility in Arizona. Never one to be described as a touchy-feely guy, James does ultimately open up about the scars of his childhood. While his initial goal of saving his third marriage fails to pan out, readers can only hope the higher goal of self-healing pans out.

Throughout his whirlwind life, James seems baffled by his own fame, and wonders why anyone would wait in line for an autograph from a “blue collar welding monkey” like himself. But it’s precisely that attitude that draws people to him. At the end of the day, after all the film crews have packed up and gone home, James is still happiest building and riding motorcycles.

If you’re looking for the origin of the “shark attack” genre, you would have to travel back just over 40 years to 1975’s Jaws, which unleashed a Great White Shark on the citizens of Amity Island and spawned a series of sequels and copycats. To find the origin of the Megalodon, the prehistoric star of 2018’s The Meg, you would need to go back an additional 2-20 million years.

Billionaire Jack Morris (Rainn Wilson) is the proud owner of Mana One, a state of the art underwater research facility located in the Pacific Ocean. The oceanic researchers at Mana One believe that the floor of the Marianas Trench is not solid, but rather a layer of gas that, given the right circumstances, could be breached. Their theory proves right, and one of Mana’s research vessels is able to break through this layer where they discover uncharted ocean depths. They also discover THE MEGALODON, which quickly traps the vessel on the ocean floor and renders it inoperable.

Six miles up, the staff of Mana One quickly decide the only person on the planet qualified to rescue their stranded compadres is the disgraced Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) — previously shamed and labeled crazy having claimed to have encountered the Megalodon on a previous rescue mission. Initially Taylor refuses to assist in the rescue and claims there’s nothing in the world that could change his mind; however, thirty seconds later Taylor discovers his ex-wife is one of the trapped crew members, and suddenly he’s on the first train to Sharksville.

During the ensuing rescue, we learn of some scientific loophole that has allowed the Megalodon to exit its previous holdig cell and enter the ocean. This, like several plot points, are conveyed through official-looking computer graphics, displays, and touchscreens. None of the points matter much, of course. All viewers really need to know is a 75-foot killing machine has been unleashed, and is coming for the Mana One. (There’s also a computer graphic showing you how big a 75-foot shark is compared to a human being, in case you weren’t sure.) To borrow the tagline from Jaws: The Revenge: “This time, it’s personal.”

The rest of the movie — and any shark movie, really — consists of people hunting a shark, and a shark hunting people. There are plot holes and (occasionally fatally) bad decisions, but The Meg doesn’t linger on any of them long enough for you to think about them. Before you have time to ask, “isn’t going down in a diving bell near a 75-foot killer shark a bad idea?” you’ll already know the answer.

If there’s any surprise to the film at all, it’s that it’s PG-13. Ostensibly in search of a more mainstream audience, the film forgoes the hardcore gore and harsh language one would expect to see and hear when the plan involves “swim up to a 75-foot shark and poke it in the eye with something.”

It’s hard not to imagine what Stephen Spielberg and “Bruce” )the notoriously unpredictable mechanical shark used in the filming of Jaws) would have to say about the Megalodon itself. For Spielberg and fans of monster movies alike, the film’s ~$150 million budget is a shark-infested dream come true. Without a doubt, the film’s sets and special effects are probably better than the movie deserves. Where “Bruce” began to shake and malfunction after being submerged in only a few feet of water, the prehistoric shark in The Meg has no problem ascending the six miles from the (new) ocean floor to attack boats cruising along the surface. In that aspect, The Meg wins the depth war. When it comes to depth of characters or plot, Jaws still holds the title.

Adam “King Ad-Rock” Horovitz and Mike “Mike D” Diamond — two founding members of the legendary Beastie Boys — spend the first hundred or so pages of the new voluminous Beastie Boys Book describing New York City as it appeared in the early 1980s. It’s a bit wild, with lots of (unsupervised) teens hanging out at clubs, causing mischief, and discovering music both before and of their time. It was in that setting that Horovitz and Diamond met Adam “MCA” Yauch, discovered and dabbled in the hardcore punk music scene, and eventually went on to form one of the most popular hip hop groups of all time. And while the Beastie Boys were active for three decades working with multiple DJs, producers, and musicians, if there was ever a permanent fourth member of the band, you might say it was New York City itself.

If you (like me) discovered the Beasties in 1987 shortly after MTV added “Fight For Your Right (To Party)” into heavy video rotation, you should be aware that the recording of the band’s debut Licensed to Ill doesn’t begin until shortly after page 200. The book covers a lot of historical ground before ramping up to the band’s mainstream breakthrough hit. The earliest incarnation of the Beastie Boys can be traced back to a hardcore band called The Young Aborigines, featuring Michael Diamond (and, notably, Kate Schellenbach from Luscious Jackson). It was in 1981 when Adam Yauch joined the band that the group adopted the Beastie Boy moniker. Around the time Adam Horovitz joined the group in 1982, the Boys had already begun to dip their toes in the newly emerging rap genre. Not long after, the guys recorded their first rap single (a prank phone call played a drum beat titled “Cooky Puss”). For a short period of time the band split their live sets between hardcore punk songs and feeble raps, but as the band’s infatuation with hip hop culture continued to blossom, Kate Schellenbach was left behind, Rick Rubin (co-founder of Def Jam Records and the band’s first DJ) was in, and the lineup that existed when the band broke big was officially set in place.

The band’s story, almost 600 pages of it, is relayed here by Diamond and Horovitz in a first-person and mostly-linear fashion. The chapters are small and bite-sized — many only two or three pages in length. Like the musical samples the band is famous for, the narrative is sprinkled with guest appearances, recollections, and sidebars. Just like “Bouillabaisse,” a spicy fish-based soup that the Beastie Boys once named a track after, the book contains everything from a comedic review of the band’s attire by fashion journalist Andre Leon Talley, to a series of wisecracks about their music videos by comedian and New York transplant Amy Poehler. With frequent changes in authors and even typography, the book’s style is more Paul’s Boutique than Licensed to Ill.

With so many stories thrown in, it’s interesting to note who and what weren’t included between the covers. DJ Hurricane’s name (the band’s touring DJ for more than a decade) appears exactly twice in the book: once in a short list of the band’s former DJs, and once in the following sentence: “Then DJ Hurricane played some kind of intro, and we went onstage…” Mix Master Mike, Hurricane’s replacement and the band’s permanent DJ since 1998, gets a single two-page article in the form of an odd interplanetary space diary entry. Again, this is a book that devotes twenty pages to the kid who designed the first Beastie Boys website, and gives Spike Jonze another twenty to add captions to a series of photographs taken during the “Sabotage” video shoot. The nearly complete absence of any discussion in regards to the band’s two primary DJs is a glaring hole.

Also missing for the most part, in case you were looking for some, is dirt. There’s no mention of the band’s flare up with Prodigy, or the 2015 lawsuit against Monster Energy Drinks for using their music without permission. Other than briefly touching on their well-publicized beef with 3rd Base’s MC Serch (the Boys once threw garbage from an upstairs window at Serch when he rang their doorbell and interrupted their hangover sleep), the book mostly side steps (or completely ignores) any conflicts the band may have experienced, both external and internal.

The one exception is their falling out with Rick Rubin, parts of which are covered in more detail here than ever before. The Boys, particularly Horovitz, pull no punches when it comes to documenting the parting of ways with the co-owner of their label, DJ, and at least at one time, kindred spirit. Horovitz paints Rubin as a control freak in the studio and a flake who jumped ship during the Beastie Boys tour, leaving them without a DJ. Details about withholding royalty payments from their debut album (which sold more than ten-million copies) are included. While Beastie Boys Book is obviously Horovitz’s and Diamond’s recollection of things, some of their criticism seems one-sided. Many well-established factors in the band’s split with Def Jam (including the fact that Rubin had pegged Horovitz for a solo act, while fellow Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons was looking the steal Yauch from the group) go unmentioned. Both Rhyming and Stealing: A History of the Beastie Boys by Angus Batey (1998) and The Men Behind Def Jam by Alex Ogg (2002) cite Rolling Stone interviews with the guys about the falling out that don’t appear here.

Other than the split with Def Jam (a beef I assumed had been long been buried, until I read this book), the band seems content to not only let sleeping dogs lie, but make amends where they can. Most of their poor decisions and falling outs are blamed on their own immaturity and alcohol abuse. The take the high road and make several heartfelt apologies within the book, going as far as to give the early-ousted Kate Schellenbach her own mini-chapter to comment on her departure.

The Beastie Boys Book is not the ultimate all-encompassing story of the band; instead, it’s 600 pages worth of memories from a couple of guys (and a few of their friends) recounting one of the most memorable and amazing musical trips through modern history. From requesting an inflatable penis as a stage prop for their first tour to organizing the Tibetan Freedom Concerts in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park (attended by more than 120,000 people), the Beastie Boys have grown a lot, seen a lot, and done a lot, and this book documents hundreds of moments that took place along the way.

Also included are dozens and dozens of candid photographs culled from the band’s personal collection. Everything from the pre-Beasties (decked out in hardcore gear) all the way to live shots from the band’s final tour are on display here, many in full color. Specific moments, like Mike D tweaking the sliders on a mixing board in the studio as Run-DMC look on, capture pivotal moments in time. In an era where celebrities post every meal on Instagram, it’s easy to forget how rare it was to take (and keep) so many photos in the 1980s, and it’s wonderful to see so many of them here on display.

If the book is missing anything at all, it’s Adam “MCA” Yauch’s unique voice. Yauch was often the glue that held the band together and frequently the guy steering the ship. Yauch passed away from cancer in 2012 at the age of 47, thus bringing an untimely close to the band’s career. Both Horovitz and Diamond have done a good job of both including Yaunch’s stories while being careful not to speak for him, but they readily admit upfront that his unique view of the world would have added a different flavor to the book.

If you’ve always wanted to know more about the real Tadrach and Johnny Ryall, the King Adrock’s thoughts on carrying cassette tapes around New York City (winter is better, because you have more pockets), what it was like to tour with Madonna, and a million other things, Beastie Boys Book is for you. It answers a lot of questions, poses a few new ones, and, sadly, is the closest thing to a new Beastie Boys album we’re likely to ever get.

Filmgoers love to watch larger-than-life knights who fearlessly charge toward danger, and quarterbacks who always manage to time the game-winning pass just as the final seconds tick off the game clock, but even more than that, people love a protagonist they can relate to. And when a writer/director’s target audience is teenage boys, that often means building a story around things teenage boys love. Of course I loved Superman and Batman as much as the next kid when I was growing up, but who I really loved was Alex Rogan from The Last Starfighter, who scored so high on an arcade game that he was recruited by the Star League to go into outer space and save the universe. Luke Skywalker was a simple farm boy, stuck on Tatooine and working two droids showed up and changed his destiny. Sure, I rooted for Conan as he slashed his sword through countless enemies, but the characters who really gave me hope were the nerds from Revenge of the Nerds, the kids from Goonies, and, perhaps most appropriately, Charlie Bucket, a dirt poor kid who inherited Willy Wonka’s entire chocolate factory simply because he had a good heart.

2018’s Ready Player One, directed by Steven Spielberg and loosely based on the 2011 book by Ernest Cline, owes so much to Ronald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that you could almost call it a “reimagining,” as the kids say. Here, in the year 2045, Wonka’s factory has been replaced by the OASIS — an entire virtual world in which people work, play, attend school, and socialize. Roughly two-thirds of the film takes place inside the OASIS, which also means two-thirds of the movie looks a lot like a video game.

The story begins almost immediately with the death of James Halliday, one of the original founders of the OASIS. In death, Halliday has left behind a contest; the person who finds three virtual keys hidden in the OASIS and Halliday’s secret “Easter Egg” will not only take control of the OASIS, but also inherit 500 trillion dollars and, presumably, the entire staff of Oompa-Loompas.

Whenever he’s not hanging out in the OASIS (which, it seems, is only when he’s eating or sleeping), Wade Watts is an overweight teenager who lives with his aunt and her rotating series of abusive boyfriends in “The Stacks” — literally dozens of mobile homes that have been stacked on top of one another. Inside the OASIS, Watts becomes Parzival, a high-tech d00d who spends his time “gunting” (egg-hunting) along with his pal, Aech. Before long Watts/Parzival teams up with his closest competitor, the attractive Art3mis. The group of three becomes five when they team up with Japanese gunters Daito and Shoto in search for the three virtual keys needed to unlock Halliday’s Egg.

Unfortunately for Watts and his friends, the keys aren’t simply hidden in the OASIS. To find them, gunters must solve riddles left behind by Halliday. Halliday was a huge fan of the 1980s, and the more awesome 80s trivia you know, the better chance a gunter has at unraveling Halliday’s clues. To figure out what parts of history to focus on, gunters spend time in “The Journals,” which contain three-dimensional recreations of Halliday’s own memories.

The film’s ticking clock comes in the form Innovative Online Industries (IOI), led by corporate sell-out Nolan Sorrento. IOI has thousands of gunters (known as “Sixers” for their six-digit serial numbers) attempting to discover Halliday’s Egg and take control of the OASIS. One only needs to see the scene in which Sorrento’s evil plan after taking control of the OASIS involves “adding pop-up advertising to everyone’s virtual reality goggles” to remember who the film’s target audience is.

Either fortunately or unfortunately (depending on your point of view), large swaths of the book incongruous with an action film have been rewritten. In the book, Watts discovers the first key after completing a Dungeons and Dragons quest and then beating a monster at the video game “Joust.” All of this has been wiped from the film, replaced with a high-speed car chase that involves the DeLorean from Back to the Future, the motorcycle from Akira, and the car from Stephen King’s Christine — not to mention a pursuing T. Rex and a finish line-guarding King Kong. If reciting large portions of WarGames and playing the text adventure Zork sound more enticing than CGI cars racing at break-neck speeds, by all means, read the book instead.

That’s not to say the film isn’t filled with geeky references; it’s bursting with them. No doubt, so many computer-generated cameos have been inserted into the backgrounds of action scenes that real-life gunters will be pausing their televisions for years to come to document them all. And, truth be told, geeks who grew up in the 1980s are one half of the film’s target audience. The other half are teenage boys currently dreaming, like I once did, that playing video games might help them save the world and make them rich beyond their wildest dreams.

By the time both of the film’s climactic confrontations (one in virtual land, one in real life) came to a close, so many things had exploded that I had given up trying to remember who was doing what, and why. The film ends exactly as anyone who’s seen the trailer thinks it will. After a confusing interaction with a virtual rendition of Halliday (which begs more questions than it answers), Watts defeats “the man” and finds his precious Egg. Watts, now an eighteen-year-old multi-trillionaire, sole proprietor of the OASIS, and with a hot girlfriend and group of new friends by his side, does the only sensible thing — decreeing that everyone should only spend five days a week inside the OASIS now instead of seven. I’m sure the millions of people across the country still living in the impoverished stacks and using the OASIS as their only escape from reality will eventually thank him.

If (like me) you grew up on MTV, you’re probably familiar with VH1’s Behind the Music. Each episode of the show focused on a single band or musician and followed a fairly consistent cookie-cutter pattern. Each show covered the artist’s childhood, their early days as a performer, their big break, their personal demons, and where they are today (dead or alive). But one other thing every episode of Behind the Music had in common was that they all featured musicians people had heard of.

That hurdle for Last Fast Ride: The Life, Love and Death of a Punk Goddess is a steep one to overcome. No one, except those well-steeped in obscure 90s punk rock, will know who Marian Anderson was. (I sure didn’t.) Turns out, she was the lead singer of a California-based punk band known as the Insaints, who put out a single 7″ split (album) in 1993. Even if you wre into punk rock and had been living in the area at the time, there’s a good chance you could have blinked and missed them.

Marian’s story is not a happy one. The oldest of several girls, she was physically and sexually abused by her father as a young child. She abused drugs and alcohol, was diagnosed with multiple mental illnesses, attempted suicide “at least twenty times,” gave her daughter up for adoption, and worked as a dominatrix in the sex industry. In addition to all of those things, she also founded and performed in several punk rock bands, the biggest of which was the aforementioned Insaints.

The Insaints weren’t known for being particularly good as much as they were known for having a lead singer (Anderson) who would perform without a top on. And later, without a bottom on either. Anderson began inviting fellow sex artists on stage to perform during Insaints shows, often resulting in a literal orgy as the band was forced to play on and pretend everyone was there for the music. Anderson’s claim to fame, if she has one, was that she was arrested in 1993 and charged with three counts of lewd and lascivious behavior, one of which involved a banana. Anderson fought the charges in court claiming freedom of speech and artistic expression. After a year, she was acquitted of all charges. Shortly after that, the band broke up.

Last Fast Ride is narrated by Henry Rollins (which immediately gives it street cred) and contains interviews with established band members from The Offspring and Rancid, but some of the interviews add up to little more than “yup, we knew her.” A few of Anderson’s old band mates also testify that she was a brilliant person with a gentle soul, but as for us, the audience, we’re mostly treated to videos of her screaming incoherently on stage.

Other than Anderson’s sister, the most featured interview subject is her ex-girlfriend, Danielle Santos Bernal. Bernal and Anderson shared a love/hate relationship in which they made out a lot and then tried to stab each other with knives a lot. If you thought Anderson was going to settle down and become a boring housewife, you missed the part about the banana.

Anderson died of a heroin overdose in 2001 at the age of 33. Six months later, her father killed himself. It’s a depressing but somehow fitting ending to a depressing story.

Just before the closing credits roll, as a guy with a giant mohawk, leather jacket, eye liner and acoustic guitar plays a sappy song, I asked myself why I sat through this documentary. The filmmakers did a fantastic jpb of making Anderson’s life seem tragic, but not much in the way of making us care about her. With no way to make her relatable to the audience, the whole thing becomes, “we knew this chick back in the day; here’s her sad story.” There were lots of hints of things the filmmakers could have pursued — her work in the sex industry, her drug abuse, her mental illness — but none of those get much screen time. Instead, the best we get is “she stuck a banana up her hoo-hah on stage in the name of the First Amendment.” It’s a lot like defending Nazis or funeral protesters; even if they have the right to say what they want, it still doesn’t make them likable people.

If you’re looking for a depressing story about a troubled woman, Last Fast Ride is for you. If nothing else, it’ll make you want to go to the nearest coffee house and hug the smelliest person in the place.

The Double McGuffin begins with a voice over by Orson Welles (of all people) explaining to the audience what a McGuffin is. For the uninitiated, a McGuffin, a term popularized by Alfred Hitchcock, is an item in a book or movie that drives the plot forward that isn’t particularly intrinsic to the story. The necklace in Titanic, the glowing case from Pulp Fiction, and the Maltese Falcon itself are all classic examples. The voice over ends with an ominous warning that “most stories only have one McGuffin.” It’s a strange way to introduce a teen mystery, and an odd thing to name a movie. It would be like calling Star Wars “Green Screen Excitement,” or naming a novel “Murder Mystery.” It’s a literary term that has nothing to do with the on screen world.

But, it’s accurate. The film focuses on a group of (mostly) boys at a local boarding school. One’s black, one’s a cowboy, one’s a shrimp with an attitude, one’s a nerd, and one doesn’t do or say much of anything. The lone girl of the pack is the sole writer, photographer, and editor of the school newspaper. By chance the kids discover a briefcase full of cash and a dead body out in the woods, which pulls them into a deeper murder mystery.

The briefcase belongs to a mysterious foreigner named Mr. Firat (Ernest Borgnine), whom the kids suspect is planning to murder someone. The kids do their best to convince Police Chief Talasek (George Kennedy) with their evidence, but their history of telling tall tales to the chief makes it difficult for him to believe them — combined with every cliche in the book (“But I swear, officer, the body was right here!”)

With no help from “the man”, the kids are on their own to figure out who these men are, and who they plan to assassinate. With today’s technology (fingerprints, DNA, the internet) the case would have been cracked in twelve seconds, but it takes up the majority of the film. There’s a scene where Jody (a pre-Facts of Life Lisa Whelchel) takes spy pics and develops the film, another scene where the kids plant a walkie-talkie in the bad guys’ hotel room, and a third scene where the kids almost get busted while they wait for a computer to “turn on and process the megabytes.” Every grown up watching the film will ask why the kids didn’t contact their parents, a second police officer, or literally any other adult on the planet, but I don’t think adults were the original target audience for this film.

At least a few of the kids possess secret gadgets. It’s not really explained how they obtained them or who built them, but in their dorm rooms the kids have dart boards hidden behind panels, snacks hidden inside a globe, a phone connected to the dean’s extension, and even a built-in cooler hidden behind a false counter to stash cans of soda and beer. Most of these things are there so we will say “wow these kids are nifty” and don’t serve any purpose, although one of the kids does possess a Swiss Army Knife that allows him to pick any lock presented in the film. If these kids had more personality and back stories it could have been closer to The Goonies; instead, the radio stashed inside a wooden crate is just a radio, and the cooler hidden inside a counter is just an excuse for product placement.

But the kids are smart — smarter than any adult in the film, including the chief of police and trained assassins — and eventually they put a plot into place that saves the day. The whole movie has a “golly gee” feeling that is ruined by kids offering beer to other kids, a ten-year-old who looks at Playboy magazines, and at least a dozen cuss words. The end result is a movie for young kids that frankly isn’t suitable for them to watch. Adults will need a serious suspension of disbelief to enjoy the plot, starting with a team of hired hit men who can’t figure out a way to get rid of a bunch of kids that like to play alone out in the woods.

The Double McGuffin isn’t a bad film; it’s just flawed. It feels a lot like an episode of The Bloodhound Gang where each kid was magically granted the right to say three cuss words. It’s a light murder mystery, no harm no foul, but I have a tough time imagining teens today sitting through the film’s 1970s pacing.

As as for that dead body and briefcase full of money? They never come back, and now you know what a double McGuffin is.

While they both provide a rush of adrenaline, riding a roller coaster is different from falling off a cliff and plummeting to your death. Roller coasters contain dips, curves, and loops designed to both scare and thrill riders, but they are also designed with the safety of its passengers in mind. Barring a freak accident, those who ride roller coasters are typically no worse for wear by the end of the ride. Millions of people ride roller coasters because they are exhilarating, yet safe.

Movies are a lot like roller coasters. We jump while watching horror movies, and bite our fingernails when our hero faces certain death, but deep down we know that it’s just a movie. It’s safe, just like a roller coaster. The heroes and villains we watch on screen are just actors following a script. The ditsy blonde who got hacked to pieces in the first act, in reality, went home at the end of the day because she’s an actor, and what happens in movies isn’t real.

That brings us to Roar, the equivalent of placing a bunch of actors inside a mine cart and shoving them over the side of a cliff just to see what happens. Except in this film, it’s not the side of a cliff the actors are facing; it’s 150 wild lions, tigers, and jaguars — Oh, my.

Roar was written and directed by Noel Marshall, who also stars as Hank, the film’s protagonist. Noel’s then-wife Tippi Hedren is Madelaine, Hank’s wife, and the couple’s three real-life children (John Marshall, Jerry Marshall, and Melanie Griffith) play the couple’s three children. Noel Marshall produced The Exorcist and Tippi Hedren starred in Hitchcock’s The Birds, and Roar is more terrifying than either of those films.

The plot, such as it is, revolves around Hank’s African wildlife refuge. Hank has acquired over a hundred wild lions, all of which roam freely both on his property and in his home. People seeing Roar for the first time must have wondered how the actors were able to safely walk among wild lions — and the answer is, it wasn’t that safe. Our first hint of this comes ten minutes into the film. As Hank is discussing the different lions, one leaps from off screen and hits him the chest, knocking him to the ground. As the actor he was talking to wisely exits stage right, half a dozen lions pile on top of Hank as Noel Marshall shouts “they’re just playing!” It is unclear who he is trying to convince — us, himself, or the lions.

Word gets out, and soon local officials arrive to inform Hank his sanctuary is unsafe. We, as viewers, already know this. As Hank counters with how safe it is, lions arrive and attack everybody.

Everyone flees, just in time for Hank’s wife and kids to arrive on a surprise visit. For twenty minutes, the actors scramble from room to room and hide as wild lions, now covered in blood, attempt to eat them. One of the sons hides in a refrigerator. Another hides in a metal locker, which the lions knock over. The girls hide inside a wooden bookcase, which the lions knock over and destroy. The look of horror on these peoples’ faces is real. There is no doubt that these lions would have killed anyone they could have.

According to IMDB’s trivia section, during the making of Roar, cinematographer Jan de Bont was “mauled and scalped by a lion,” requiring 120 stitches to sew his scalp back on. Assistant director Doron Kauper was bitten on the throat and jaw and almost lost an ear. Jerry Marshall was bitten on the foot; John Marshall was bitten on the head, requiring 56 stitches. Tippi Hedren fractured her leg after being thrown from an elephant, and needed 38 stitches after being bitten by a lioness. Melanie Griffith was mauled, received 50 stitches and plastic surgery, and almost lost an eye. Noel Marshall was injured so many times by the lions that he contracted gangrene.

Yes, lions love to play. And when Hank flees the cabin on his motorcycle in search of help, the lions are still playing. First they play “chase the guy on the motorcycle” and then they play “eat the motorcycle.”

Some other stuff happens. The government employees kill some of the lions, some of the lions kill some of the other lions, and all of the lions try to eat all of the actors.

And while all the actors (somehow) lived through the making of this movie, all the animals did not. There was both a fire and a flood on the set. During the ensuing chaos, local sheriffs arrived and promptly shot three of the lions, including Robbie, the star of the film.

All of this behind-the-scenes knowledge makes watching Roar absolutely terrifying. It’s difficult to watch knowing that all of the blood that appears on screen is real. When the actors are hunkered down trying not to be seen by the lions, it’s difficult not to be afraid for them. It’s almost impossible to watch this film, and, once it starts, it’s almost impossible to look away.

Shortly after the release of this film, Tippi Hedren was quoted as saying there will never be a Roar 2. I think I speak for Tippi, everyone else involved with the making of this film, everyone who watched the film, and the lions themselves when I say that’s a pretty good idea.

This review contains minor plot spoilers.

If it ain’t one thing, it’s another.

Star Wars Episode 8: The Last Jedi picks up where the previous film (2015’s The Force Awakens) left off. The Resistance, led by Leia Organa, has been discovered (once again) by the First Order, and their attempt to flee is thwarted when it is discovered the First Order has developed the ability to follow ships through hyperspace. Due to simple logistics (big Star Destroyers have larger gas tanks than small rebellion ships), a ticking clock is introduced; if our heroes can’t evade or disable the First Order’s new tracking technology before the single space cruiser the entire Resistance is conveniently located on runs out of fuel, the First Order will blow them to smithereens.

While Finn, Poe Dameron, and newcomer Rose Tico attempt to evade imminent destruction, to ultimately defeat the First Order the Resistance will need help from Luke Skywalker, who, as we learned in the previous film, is living as a hermit on an island in the middle of nowhere. Old friends Chewbacca, R2-D2, and the Force-sensitive Rey have been dispatched to cajole Luke into helping the cause, but unfortunately for them, he don’t wanna.

Snoke, the mysterious and evil being we first saw in The Force Awakens is back, as is his young apprentice, Kylo “Ben Solo” Ren. After murdering his father in cold blood in the previous film, Kylo Ren is hell-bent on personally tracking down and killing Leia and Luke. Fortunately while he’s away, Snoke has a

More so than any previous installment, The Last Jedi is structured like a video game. To disable the tracking system, someone from the Resistance has to go “here.” Once there, they need to track down “him.” And then they need to get the “thing,” and take it to the “place.” Every twenty minutes, another mini-mission is introduced, and our pals in the Resistance have to hop in another ship, go to another location, and unlock another achievement.

To a large extent, the “old” characters — the ones I grew up with — don’t do a lot. Legendary Jedi Luke Skywalker has largely reverted to the whiny Luke we met 40 years ago in A New Hope. He doesn’t want to leave his island, doesn’t want to help his sister and save the Rebellion, and certainly doesn’t want to train Rey in the ways of the Jedi. Leia, for her part, can’t seem to hide the Rebellion (which again, fits on a single ship) from the First Order, despite having the ability to go literally anywhere in the galaxy. Chewbacca and R2 fail at their single task of returning with Luke. When the Rebellion is successful, it’s usually thanks to one of the new, younger characters. The reminder that this universe belongs to younger characters — and perhaps fans — is a little too on the nose at times. It’s possible BB-8 does more in this film to save our heroes’ hides than R2 and 3P0 did in the past seven movies combined.

Like The Empire Strikes Back, The Last Jedi serves as a bridge between two movies. By the end of this film, it is abundantly clear what stakes and conflicts are waiting to be resolved in the next episode. Older fans may spend the film’s 2 1/2 hour run time asking questions like, “why would Luke do that?” or “when did that become a Jedi power?” but younger fans, those who grew up with CGI Transformers bashing each other into a million pieces and thinking the Sharknado films “kind of made sense” probably won’t mind. If you’re more “how will they get out of this” than “why did they get themselves into this mess in the first place?” then you’ll love it.

(Spoiler-free review of Stranger Things Season Two)

In the second season of Stranger Things, newcomer Bob Newby (Goonies alumni Sean Astin) suggests something every viewer of show must be thinking: “We could always move to Maine.”

The first season of Netflix’s breakout hit dealt with the disappearance of and search for Will Byers, a pre-teen boy living in the town of Hawkins, Indiana. The official story was that Will got lost in the woods, but the truth was much more sinister and far more complicated. The city of Hawkins is connected to the Upside Down, an alternate plane of reality home to the Demogorgon (a creature as nasty as it sounds). Hawkins is also home to a government research facility that is good at studying children with psychic powers, but not so good at containing them. With all powers that be (both human and otherwise) in place, it was up to Will’s friends (Mike, Dustin, and Lucas), family, Chief of Police Jim Hopper, Eleven (a girl with telekinetic powers) and various other members of the community to find Will and defeat the Demogorgon.

That’s how the first season ended, and if everyone’s efforts had rid Hawkins of evil, there wouldn’t have been a need for a second season — and since there is (along with two more seasons planned), you can guess evil continues to lurk in (and under) Hawkins.

All the major characters from the original season return, along with a few new additions. New this season are Maxine (aka “Mad Max”, a skateboarding, arcade game-playing girl the same age as our heroes) and her pissed-off mullet-wearing brother, Billy. Inside the medical research facility we meet Dr. Owens (Paul Reiser), the yin to Jim Hopper’s yang. And then there’s Bob Newby, Joyce Byers’ love interest and local Radio Shack salesman.

If you love 80s nostalgia, Stranger Things continues to drip in it. The episodes contain toys, cars, and even a local arcade. More than the first, the second season cheats a bit more when dealing with the era’s lack of cell phones by equipping almost everyone with walkie-talkties, CB radios, and a working knowledge of Morse code. I remember spending a lot of time in the 1980s riding around on my bicycle just looking for people. The kids in Hawkins never have that issue (nor is there any shortage of batteries in the town).

Stranger Things wears its homages to films from the 80s proudly on its sleeve. There are scenes that reminded me of Jaws, Alien, Goonies, E.T., Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Ghostbusters, Stand by Me, Poltergeist, Pretty in Pink, and even The Exorcist, but perhaps an unintentional comparison I made was to Star Wars. When evil returns in its new form, it becomes obvious that in the first season the denizens of Hawkins were dealing with a single Stormtrooper. In season two, Darth Vader — or perhaps the Emperor — has come looking for them.

The show continues to grow. While the first season consisted largely of practical effects, the size and scope of season two all but ruled that out. Once praised for their lack of CGI and green screens, the show now relies heavily such technology. Pacing, on the other hand, has been greatly approved. At times the first season felt like two episodes worth of material, stretched out into eight. This season feels like twelve episodes worth of action, crammed into nine. Unlike the first season, viewers rarely have to wait for action or wonder where the story is headed.

The Duffer Brothers did a good job of typing up most of the questions asked not only in season two, but some of the ones left unanswered in the first season. In fact, so many things are wrapped up by the end of of season two that it’s hard to imagine where things will kick off in season three. If it’s anything like this season, it’s hard to imagine everyone not following Bob’s suggestion in regards to moving to Maine.