Shower Beer Vol VII: 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) Star Wars: The Bad Batch Season 2 - (Disney +) This show has become one of my favorite Star Wars things in the past few years. It is incredibly well written, and adds so much to the Star Wars canon for fans to appreciate. It feels much more concise than the Clone Wars series did as it focuses on a much smaller group of characters. I don't know how much longer it can continue based on the runway they are running out of in terms of Star Wars continuity, but I'll be here for the entire ride.

2) Summer House Seasons 3,4,5 - (Peacock) Everyone needs a guilty pleasure, trashy reality tv show that they watch. Summer House has become that for me. If you are unfamiliar, it is a part of the Bravo reality TV show library that has migrated to Peacock. The premise is several mid 20's and 30's young professionals in NYC rent a summer house in the Hamptons and every weekend get hammered drunk and drama ensues. It is mindless, and perfect. The highlights of seasons 3, 4, and 5 is of course Kyle and Amanda navigating their difficult engagement, Hannah's character arc into a full on bitch sho everyone hates, and Carl dealing with basically every possible shitty thing that could happen to a human being.

3) Murder Mystery 2 - (Netflix) I feel like I've been a stamp tramp the past few months and liking almost everything I watch, and there may be no better poster child for what I'm going through than Murder Mystery 2. Is it a good movie? Hell no it isn't, but it knows what it is and has enough laughs and interesting characters to be incredibly watchable. It doesn't have as good a scrip as the first one, but it does a good job of avoiding getting so ridiculous that it turns off it's audience. I'd file this under the "good" column for the Adam Sandler Netflix fare, although some may disagree.

4) C.H.U.D. - (VOD) This is a low budget monster movie from 1984 that I saw on a list of the greatest horror movies that you might not know about (I cannot remember for the life of me what website posted it otherwise I'd link it here). One interesting thing about it is it features two actors from Home Alone as the stars in Daniel Stern and John Heard who plays Kevin McCallister's Dad. I can say that this is an utter, incredibly boring, pile of shit. The monster doesn't show up until nearly the 40 min mark, and we are never really given a good look at him or given any memorable kills. It is so focused on the plight of the city it's taking place in, and these incredibly idiotic and self absorbed characters that it just collapses under the awful world building and doesn't deliver any fun or camp. Save yourself the trouble unless you want to torture someone and show them this movie.

5) Ghosted - (Apple TV +) I took the bait on this one. I'm a sucker for both Ana De Armas and Chris Evans, and while the trailers were pretty cringeworthy, when I read there were several cameos by MCU actors I couldn't resist giving this thing a poke. It's exactly what you'd expect. A premise that's absurd with it's budget thrown into a few action set pieces that are pretty fun to look at. It doesn't really go anywhere you wouldn't expect, but has enough charm that I was able to stick through it. Adrien Brody gives a fun performance as the movies villain, and I'd actually like to see him in more comedies. If they make a sequel I hate to say I'll probably check that out as well.

6) Champions - (Peacock) Woody Harrellson in seemingly his 44th basketball movie of his career. The plot is literally The Mighty Ducks for the first two acts, but it somehow worked for me. Kaitlin Olson in a dramatic style performance is a nice change of pace, and the heartwarming aspects of this story are what make it worth a watch. It is about twenty minutes too long, but the second act delivers some beautiful character stuff that I was pretty impressed with. This has an outside shot to make my top ten list for the year.

7) The Burbs - (Netflix) I couldn't remember if I'd seen this before, and Netflix was shoving it in my face every time I logged in so I finally caved. While I love the premise of the film, and especially the score, it's way too frenetic and has a nervous energy that I just found annoying. Tom Hanks and his neighbor have a disgusting style of dialogue delivery that I couldn't get behind. I think it will play better sometime around Halloween.

8) From Black - (Shudder) Heard about this one in one of those newsletters about what's new to streaming. Anna Camp from Pitch Perfect stars as a mother who has recently lost her son and is attempting to cope with that loss by getting sober when she is given a pitch from someone at an AA meeting to possible reconnect with her son in the afterlife. Visually I don't know how Shudder was able to throw as much budget at this as it did because it looks absolutely gorgeous. The makeup and costuming is top notch. Performances are very solid, but the script is where it falters in the third act. I don't think I understand the core concept of the movie, or even the characters motivations when the plot crescendo's, but I'm not a very smart man.

9) Last Action Hero - (Netflix) This was one of my favorite movies as a kid, and on a rewatch I realized how far ahead of it's time it was. The meta elements are a much bigger part of the story than I remembered, and they are pretty incredible. It plays in a world of humor and action that were pretty groundbreaking at the time. Arnold is at his best when he's playing a caricature that makes it known they are one. A quintessential movie of the 90's that I was glad I revisited.

-JH