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 Here, in the year 2045, Wonka’s factory has been replaced by the OASIS — an entire virtual world in which people work, play, attend school, and socialize.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.

When filming a Hollywood sequel, there are many methods in which writers and directors can bring back characters who have died in previous installments. The flashback is perhaps the easiest way to include new footage of a deceased character without breaking continuity. Directors can bring back the dead as ghosts, a’la Obi-Wan Kenobi. And then there are wackier methods; explaining away the person who died as the character’s evil (or good) twin, or claiming the death occurred in a dream sequence, unbeknownst to audiences.

Horror writers have it the easiest because, I guess, horror audiences are so forgiving. No matter how many times Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, or Michael Myers get killed, drowned, incinerated, or blown to smithereens, all it takes is 30 seconds of exposition to resurrect them. A random lightning strike or voodoo spell is enough to bring back the dead and get the murders rolling again.

We first met Chucky, the killer doll possessed by the soul of serial killer Charles Lee Ray, in 1988’s Child’s Play. In the original film we learned that the longer Ray’s spirit remained in Chucky the more human he became. He was so human by the end of the film, in fact, that a police detective was able to kill Chucky by firing a bullet into his beating heart. And if you think that stopped him, you haven’t seen any of the following six films in the franchise released over the past twenty-nine years.

At the end of 2013’s Curse of Chucky, the sixth film in the series, we witness Chucky transferring his soul into the body of a young girl named Alice. In the final, post-credits scene, Chucky has mailed himself to Andy Barclay (the young boy from the original film, now grown up) and attempts to stab him. Andy counters by placing a shotgun inches away from the doll’s head and pulling the trigger. This had to have been the end of Chucky, right?

Wrong.

In 2017’s Cult of Chucky we rejoin Nica, the wheelchair-bound girl from the previous film, who is being transferred from a maximum security mental institution to one with medium security. The other residents in the new facility make the folks from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest look downright normal, as she is welcomed by patients with multiple personalities, paranoia, and delusions. Nica is visited in the institution by Tiffany Valentine (a known murderer and accomplice of Charles Lee Ray) and given a Chucky doll. The twisted and sick Dr. Foley doesn’t see anything wrong with this, even after Nica apparently attempts to slit her own wrists. When a second doll arrives and faculty, staff, and patients all begin dropping like flies, Dr. Foley sees this is a therapeutic teaching opportunity.

Audiences spend much of the film trying to figure out which of the Chucky dolls is the killer, until finally we learn that they both are. Chucky has gained the ability to transfer his soul into anyone or anything (a power he says he learned from the internet) as many times as he wants. Keeping up with who is who, who is Chucky, and who is not, is fair game.

At this point, my mind began to wander. Could Chucky take over a car lot, creating a hundred killer Herbie the Death Bugs? Could he take over furniture, smothering innocent people looking to take a load off their feet? Once you can transfer your soul into inanimate objects (like dolls) and do it an unlimited amount of times, it seems (to me) that limiting yourself to a single model of a single toy line is small-minded. In fact, showing up in the shape of a Chucky-shaped doll seems to be about the worst choice.

Anyway, back to the film. There is a showdown, of course. At first it’s Nica vs. Chucky, then it’s Andy vs. Chucky, and, at all times, it’s Chucky vs. everybody. I won’t say how things end, but just so you know, there are already talks of an eighth film.

Cult of Chucky isn’t a bad film, but it doesn’t make much sense, even in the wacky rules established within the Child’s Play universe. The only reason Chucky would have for tracking down Nica would be to kill her, and then he doesn’t do it. Sure, he kills other people, which places the blame on Nica, but if he planned on killing everyone there, who cares who takes the blame?

Another part that doesn’t make sense is Chucky’s reaction to Dr. Foley, when he learns Dr. Foley has been molesting Nica during their weekly hypnosis therapy sessions. Charles Lee Ray (the soul inside Chucky) is a serial killer who has murdered multiple teenagers and young children throughout the franchise. It’s a stretch to think that hypnotic molestation (of a girl he plans to murder) is where Chucky would draw the line in the sand, but that’s the problem; he doesn’t draw a line in the sand. Instead, he cold cocks the doctor (twice) and tries to get Nica to kill the doctor. This means Chucky doesn’t really want the doctor dead (or he would have killed him), and doesn’t seem to condone the doctor’s actions either. The way the doctor is killed is even more confusing; Chucky, possessing Nica’s body, does it. This can’t be cathartic for Nica (who is now possessed with the soul of a serial killer), nor does it make sense that Chucky would do it now, when he had the chance twice before. It comes off as a writer who likes his own creation a little too much.

It’s ironic that the more Child’s Play movies you’ve seen the less this one makes sense, as the only possible audience for this direct-to-video seventh installment are those of us who grew up afraid of the red-headed killer doll. By giving Chucky the ability to transfer his soul into an unlimited amount of hosts at the same time, I’m afraid the Child’s Play series may have opened a Pandora-sized can of worms that they might not be able to logically write themselves out of.

Then again, while knives, guns, drills, and scalpels have always been Chucky’s thing, logic never has.

I never read It, Stephen King’s 1,138 page novel about the evil that lurks in (and underneath) the city of Derry, Maine. Instead, I opted for the four-hour mini-series that aired in 1990. From what I understand, that version did an okay job of taking the highlights from a 1,138 page book and condensing it into a four-hour television mini-series.

According to legend, every 27 years the evil that haunts the city of Derry returns. True to form, 27 years after the release of the mini-series, it — It — has returned, this time to theaters.

In the film, seven young teens known as the Loser’s Club discover that they have all experienced an evil being that inhabits their town. As more and more children from the town begin to go missing (including the younger brother of one of the main characters), the Loser’s Club decide that they are the ones who must fight the evil within Derry. The seven teens face push back from adults and are frequently harassed by an older group of teens, but in the end Pennywise the Clown will be the worst thing they face.

It’s impossible to compare 2017’s version with the mini-series, and impossible not to. The original was made for television with a budget to match, and was more creepy than scary. The 2017 version has several advantages, including CGI, an R-rating, and a Hollywood budget. In the original, Pennywise the Clown snarled at children to reveal a set of prosthetic fangs before the camera faded to black; in the 2017 version, his head bends open to reveal a computer generated mouth containing a thousand teeth while teenagers scream and drop f-bombs.

Two major differences to note: first, while the original and the book take place in the late 1950s, the 2017 version is set in the late 1980s. That updates the cars and pop culture references, but doesn’t change the story (although it does give the film a decidedly Stranger Things look). The other major difference is that the 2017 movie is only the first half of the 1990 mini-series. In the original (and the book), the kids return to Derry 27 years later to face It again as adults. Modern audiences will have to wait until 2018/2019 to see the second half.

For a horror movie, It wasn’t bad. My kids, who have never read the book nor seen the original mini-series, both loved it. The latest version is more faithful to the book in some parts and less in others. If you’re looking to complain about differences between the 1,138 page source material and this two hour film, I’m sure you’ll find plenty to sink your teeth into. On the other hand if you’re simply out for two hours of entertainment and a few jump scares, Pennywise is waiting for you in the sewer.

After all, they all float down there…

Viewers get only brief glimpses of life before “the incident” in 2009’s The Road. I suspect he reason we don’t see more of them is that life before the incident, much like the source of the incident itself, is irrelevant. No one cares what you used to do for a living when they haven’t eaten in two weeks.

The film follows a man and his son (both unnamed) as they make their way “south” toward water and, hopefully, less ravaged terrain. Whatever the cataclysmic event was has left the country largely barren. There is no grass on the ground or leaves on the trees, nor are there any birds in the sky. Everything that remains, including the people, is gray.

There is no guarantee that greener (both literally and figuratively) pastures lie to the south, but when resources run out, only hope is left. With little more than the clothes on their back and a pistol with two bullets as a last resort, the man and his boy head out. “Remember, put the barrel in your mouth and point it upward,” the man says as he places the barrel of the gun in his young son’s mouth, showing him the proper way to end his own life. In this post-apocalyptic world, there are fates worth than death.

Along the way, the pair encounter various groups of marauders who have resorted to violence and, in some cases, cannibalism. Multiple times the boy asks his father if they are the “good guys.” As resources run low and the two encounter others who are as hungry as they are, the line becomes as gray as the cloudy sky.

The Road mixes the hope of humanity with the despair of unknowing. The pair travels as long and as far as they can because, what else is there to do? Sometimes, survival comes down to one day at a time; sometimes, it comes down to a single step.

Originally published on Caltrops.com

In one final push to beat Hotline Miami 2, I decided to skip sleeping last night and blast my way through the game’s last five scenes. By 2 a.m., the tendons in the back of my hands burned so bad I had to start taking short breaks. At 3 a.m. I unlocked my first achievement, KARMA, by dying 1,000 times. Somewhere around 4 a.m., I fell asleep in my chair.

As the game’s synth-heavy soundtrack continued to pulse through my speakers, I dreamed that I was still playing the game. I was stuck in a never ending hallway filled with doors. The only way to see inside each room was to kick open every door and deal with whatever was hiding behind it. Some of the rooms were empty. Others contained hoards of enemies. The hallway was painted with blood. Much of it was mine.

Around 6 a.m., my wife entered my office to see if everything was okay since I hadn’t come to bed. The sound of the door opening woke me and almost caused me to fall out of my chair. She’s very lucky I didn’t have a nail gun or chainsaw within arm’s reach.

If you thought the plot of the first Hotline Miami game was twisted and confusing, don’t bother trying to unravel the sequel’s. Unlike the original game which had two playable POV characters, Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number has thirteen, with a story that takes place both before and after the original. In flashbacks we see at least one character die that appears later in the game, which means either the earlier story line was a hallucination, or the latter one was. Or maybe both of them are. I’ve read Wikipedia’s plot summary of the game a dozen times and understand twice as much as I did before, which still isn’t much. Fortunately, Hotline Miami 2 can be played and enjoyed without understanding a lick of the plot, which is good news for dullards such as myself.

Summaries of the game sound like the fevered nightmares of someone suffering from malaria. At one point in the game I was a prison inmate, disguised as a cop, killing other cops, and eventually other inmates. I think. In another level I played as two swans — one armed with a chainsaw, the other, a revolver. A few minutes later I was a girl wearing a zebra mask with deadly fists. Each level is designed with a touch of genius and a sprinkling of masochism. Get caught in an enemy’s line of sight and they’ll either charge you at full speed or fill your face full of buckshot. Walk around the wrong corner or past a window and a dozen enemies may come at you. If you happened to bring a knife with you to that gun fight, you might as well use it to start digging your own grave.

After beating the original Hotline Miami I swore I’d never play it again, and I loathe myself for playing the sequel. With unlimited lives you can play each level an infinite number of times until you figure out the pattern, but many times I just wished it would end. Some levels took me hours to beat. Once I was dropped weaponless into a room with two enemies, the only solution being to knock one out, steal his knife, stab the second, and slash the first one’s throat before he bashes your brains in from behind. On another level I appeared in a room (again without a weapon) with an angry cop and an aggressive dog. Killing dogs is a big part of Miami Hotline 2. Dogs killing you is an even bigger part.

With so many playable characters come different rules and limitations. Some characters can use any weapon they find in the game, some are locked into using the ones they start with, and a few cannot use any weapons at all. On a few levels you can pick which character you wish to control, but more often than not, one is assigned to you based on the narrative. On at least one occasion, I spent several hours attempting to beat a level only to run into a glitch that made completing it with that character impossible. My only two options were to restart the level with a different character and lose a few hours worth of progress, or curl up on my futon and cry myself to sleep. In the end, I did both.

Along with hundreds of dogs, I’ve slaughtered soldiers, mafia men, cops, inmates, and thousands of other people over the past month. Beating the game unlocks hard mode, something you’ll need if you want to earn the Genocide Achievement (50,000 kills). After a month though, my nerves are shot. After beating pixelated men to death with a lead pipe for hours, I… I just wanna go home.

The game’s final level is a drug induced nightmare where the walls bend and sway and motion blur distorts reality. Compared to the rest of the game, Hotline Miami 2’s final stage is relatively easy, and your reward for enduring some of the most sadistic game play of all time is literally nuclear annihilation. As for you… well, let’s just say anybody not wearing two million sunblock is gonna have a real bad day.

I need somebody to hold me.