Shower Beer Vol LII: Stuff We’re Watching

Hey there fellow movie and television fans. If you've ever listened to our podcast you know that the second segment of our show is called our "protein shake" where each bro discusses things that are "in our cup", or what have we watched lately. Well recently I've been watching too much shit to bring up on just the podcast, so with the help of our creative team (Nate Thurmond) we decided to blog about a few of the things we've seen recently that we wanted to discuss that we might have left out. We're naming it after the greatest pre-gaming invention of the 21st century, the shower beer!

Here are the things I've seen lately as well as the link to their IMDB page if you want a little bit more info to see if it's something down your alley. In addition, I write Letterboxd reviews for all the movies I see without any spoilers, but I might go into a bit more detail in this blog than I do over there.

1) Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 - (Digital rental) While I have never played the game, I’ve heard a ton about it and know people who are borderline obsessed with it and the lore. I know there is a lot here to mine, and the animatronic killing people motif is one I am a fan of. The first movie I thought was very solid and delivered some good scares with surprisingly good performances. Here we go full possession genre, and it really fucking falls on it’s face. McKenna Grace’s character is utterly ridiculous, and there is a twist at one point in the movie that feels like something a bad anime would try to pull off in the third act to get a big “oh shit” moment. The stuff at Freddy’s is still fun, but it’s wrapped in so many layers of retconning and the way the movie ends it’s very cocky that it’s getting a third entry. If it does, I will pass.

2) Predators (2025) - (Paramount +) The show “To Catch A Predator” has always captivated me, and I know it has had a life beyond it’s days on aire with Chris Hansen still catching these fucking creeps. This doc focuses heavily on what ended the show, and I won’t spoil it for those who do not know the story. Suffice it to say it is obviously really heavy subject matter, and we get interviews with a lot of the decoys from the original sting operations who talk about both how scary and heavy their work was. Imagine being a prospective actor, and you book this gig. You’re on Dateline NBC, but you have to literally be within eight feed of pedophiles who show up to a house under the impression that they’re going to have sex with you. That shit will stick with you. The doc is a bit longer than it needs to be as it really gets into the conception of the show for the first thirty minutes, but then shit really hits the fan.

3) Better Watch Out - (Netflix) Holy santa claus shit. This movie blew me away. More so in the genre bending conceit that I think is one of the most brilliant ideas for a horror movie I’ve seen in a decade. I won’t spoil anything because if you don’t know what this is going in like I did it really has your jaw on the floor. The performances are eerie and creepy as fuck when they need to be, and the pacing of almost taking place in real time is super effective. I think this will be on my every other year Christmas movie watch list, and it’s unlike any film I’ve seen in recent memory. If you’re a fan of the invasion genre, which is the one I find most unsettling, this is a must watch. I don’t know how it wasn’t even on my radar until this year, but I’m glad Netflix had the idea to suggest it to me, because they know me better than my own wife does.

4) Celebrity Weakest Link - (Hulu) I’ve been a casual fan of the Weakest Link, but honestly have never really gone out of my way to watch it. Hulu threw this bad boy in my face, and I’m a big fan of Jane Lynch so I said why the hell not. While the celebrity groups they get are pretty underwhelming, they dumb the questions down to a point where I feel like a genius because I know most of them, and can have fun berating the contestants when they don’t get them right. The strategies of some of the groups in terms of who they vote out is pretty wild. In the pro football player one it becomes a grudge match, while in the housewives episode things get a bit petty which I’m here for. The episodes are a bit longer than you’d like a game show to be, but I’d rather they have a wider contestant pool to have more eliminations than shorter episodes.

5) Marcello Hernandez: American Boy - (Netflix) The first comedy special I’ve watched in awhile. I love Hernandez on SNL, and while I think he is pigeon holed a lot on that show to play that latin characters, here he really leans into that. I don’t think he has enough material to really stretch out to the hour long format that Netflix prefers for this, but he definitely closes with his strongest stuff. He talks a ton about growing up in a Cuban household surrounded by women, and as you can imagine that’s pretty ripe to mine for comedy. His physicality always stops short of being over the top and taking away from his delivery, and I really root for this guy.

6) Commando - (Digital rental) You wanna see Arnold destroy an entire small town looking for his daughter? Here you go. I love these mid 80’s action movies where the start is in insane physical shape, but the guys he’s fighting look like tailgaters at a Green Bay Packers game. In this one the second in command on the villain side is wearing this chain mill vest the whole movie, and I’m pretty sure it’s actually part of an S&M outfit, but no one has the heart to tell him. Arnold’s motivation is simple…get my daughter back. And we know he is father of the year and he loves her more than anything because the two minute montage in the beginning of the movie told us so. I mean for fucks sake he even cheated on his diet and got ice cream with her! The physical explosion budget here is solid and you can tell where the focus was when making this. I had a lot of fun with Commando, and will definitely be checking out other movies of the same time period in the same ilk.

7) Detective Conan Eps 21-23 - (Digital rental) We’ve got “On Location, TV Drama Murder Case”, and a solid two parter called “Luxury Liner Serial Murder Case” I’m slowly running through this anime, which has ascended my list of favorites and might be sitting at number three or four at this point behind Dragon Ball Z and Digimon. Let’s start with the TV Drama Murder Case first. Here Conan gets to visit the set of one of his favorite television shows and learns that sometimes people in the entertainment industry are fucking douche bags. Here the murder victim is a camera man who’s blackmailing one of the actors, is a huge asshole to everyone he encounters, and isn’t reliable at his job. He also does a horrible job of using the lens flares like what are you JJ Abrams bro stop it.

Luxury Liner Serial Murder Case is a two parter, that probably could’ve been condensed into one episode. Here Conan and friends are invited on an exclusive luxury cruise (albeit to the chagrin of the Patriarch of the family) that is only for this well to do family and their spouses. The oldest member of the family is murdered before dinner the first night, and suspects abound based on their relationship with him, and who stood to gain the most from his inheritance. I will say I rarely predict the outcome of these episodes correctly, but at the beginning of the second episode I had this one solved. The family in this is utterly ridiculous I don’t think there is more than one sane person in the whole bunch, and the marriages are pretty toxic and explosive. They should get a Vanderpump Rules style show on Bravo.

8) Dr. No - (Netflix) Someone told me all the Bond movies are now on Netflix, and knowing how chaotic their licensing has been the past decade I wanted to take advantage. I’ve never see Dr. No, but have to say five mins in I knew I was going to like it. The murder mystery plays out very well in the first two acts with everyone Bond comes into contact with a person you might suspect. 007 beds three women in this movie, however one is French so that might not really count. The action in this surprised me as there was more of it, and the physicality Connery brought to the role exceeded what I was expecting. There is a cool car chase scene in the beginning that culminates with a fight on the side of the road and the dude trying to take down Bond is so out of his league it’s pathetic. I do think the movie slows a bit in the third act when you get to the island, and the lack of Dr. No throughout was a bit frustrating, but I kinda get why he was more the man in the shadows and not seen. The people around this island must be sponsored by Red Stripe beer because that shit is everywhere. Gotta get the bag when you can.

9) Distorted (2018) - (Netflix) I know it’s early, and obviously I’m counting ALL movies and not new ones, but this is the biggest piece of shit I’ve seen so far this year. Christina Ricci as the lead drew me in, and the concept of a couple moving into a creepy state of the art apartment complex where weird shit starts happening was enough to get me to click “play”. What we have here is a super pretentious and poorly shot movie that focuses so much more on it’s opinion of subliminal messaging and some psycho therapy that I was begging for it to end just twenty minutes in. All the performances are awful, even Ricci’s, and the end of it you can tell the Director had a smirk on his face like he pulled something off. It’s horrible in every sense of the word, except the base concept is still pretty fucking cool if it wasn’t wrapped in layer after layer of turds. I feel like if you just read the outline of the movie you’d be like “oh that’s kinda cool” and then once you get in you go “oh no that is not”. Stay far away from this one.

10) Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Eps 11-15 - (Netflix) Continuing my run through of the Power Rangers. There are about a thousand episodes so I expect to finish sometime before next Tuesday. Here I checked out eps 11-15 of the OG show and noticed a theme of family members of the Rangers getting introduced. I’ll do a few quick highlights.

Ep 11 “No Clowning Around” Trini’s cousin gets abducted by a super fucking creepy clown at the fair sent by Rita. Apparently here Rita staged the entire fair, but at the end of the episode after the Rangers defeat the villain all of Angel Grove is there partying so maybe she opened it back up, but made it a cash bar.

Ep 13 “Peace, Love, and Woe” here I really thought Billy was finally going to get laid…and he almost did. He finds a chick who loves science as much as he does, but of course fucking Rita has to abduct her and make the Rangers go to some alternate dimension to get her back. Not your standard first date, but Billy played it cool and I think he will close the deal at some point.

Ep 14 “Foul Play in the Sky” so Kimberly apparently has an uncle who’s a pilot. What we also didn’t know is that Bulk and Skull are obsessed with flying and stake out at the Angel Grove airport fangirling over the planes. Kimberly gets forced into letting them go on a flight with her and her uncle even though I can guarantee you that Bulk put the plane over the weight limit. Rita can’t help herself and drugs Kimberly’s uncle pre flight giving me Denzel vibes from Flight, and chaos ensues.

-JH