Shower Beer Vol XXII: 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) Romy and Michele's High School Reunion - (Hulu) I somehow missed this movie, even though I'm a big fan of early aughts comedies. LIsa Kudrow is built for this role with a character that is Phoebe-esque and gives her the chance to play around on the big screen with the same comedic sensibility she so expertly crafted in Friends. I think this would've been much better were it not for this weird, and very prolonged dream sequence that happens in the third act. When they get to the actual reunion there are some great gags, and several really good character actors are in this. Solid watch and I would recommend if you're looking for a good comedy on a Friday night.

2) X-Men: The Animated Series S2 - (Disney +) I'm going through a rewatch of this show before I start X-Men 97 (which I'm really pumped for) and season two had some pretty big highlights. The main arc centers around Mr. Sinister as the villain as opposed to Magneto from season one who is now more of an anti-hero. We also get a cool time travel arc with Bishop, and some fun stuff introducing the Savage Land. Low point for the season was MojoVision which is an episode where a Jabba the Hutt ripoff abducts the X-Men to his alternate dimension where he forces them to act in television shows for his own amusement. Yes, it is as bad as it sounds.

3) Mother of the Bride - (Netflix) A definite Netflix algorithm production, this movie is the type of trash I normally am all about, but it’s just too shitty for me to give it much praise. Miranda Cosgrove bless her heart, is just not a good actor by any stretch of the imagination. I guess the royalty checks for Brooke Shields started to dry up and that’s what got her out of bed for this. Benjamin Bratt is his usual reliable self, but I swear he is this exact same character in basically everything. The one thing that’s so cringe it’s worth the price of admission is this ridiculous dance Chad Michael Murray does during the end credits.

4) Godzilla Minus One - (Amazon Prime Rental) I love me some Godzilla, and after seeing this got some Oscar love for it’s VFX I was really pumped to see it on digital. The visuals live up to the hype, and setting it in a post WW2 Japan adds a great element for the human characters. In fact I think the human narrative stuff is so strong if you took Godzilla out of this movie entirely it would still be very solid, albeit devoid of the genre of course. Godzilla does not show up often, but when he does his presence is felt. I give the movie credit for showing us the titular monster early in the film to whet our appetites, and building up his other appearances by establishing the fear Japan has about him.

5) Abigail - (Amazon Prime Rental) I’m not sure what happened to me in the past year and a half, but I’ve been bit by the vampire movie bug. I’ve fully transformed and there’s no going back. The past three vampire movies I’ve seen that came out I’ve fucking loved, and although I’ve always been a fan of horror that was one part of the genre that missed me. Abigail is so unique in it’s concept and blends two styles of films very well that I had a blast with it. I’ll admit that the characters are one note (I believe on purpose) and Dan Stevens still sucks at acting, but this movie had me locked in and the disposable nature of the characters is what made it fun for me. There are a few cool twists or plot wrinkles that I didn’t really see coming that helped, and a nice cameo that really ties things together.

6) All Good Things - (Netflix) Total wet fart of a movie. Netflix suggested I give this thing a poke, and I was hoping for something along the lines of Fracture which came out around the same time since that also had Ryan Gosling, and a murder plot to be solved. This thing is just so lifeless and devoid of anything interesting. Gosling is so neutered that it’s hard to even see him as the same actor he is today. In the third act it really goes off the fucking rails, and the end credits had me really confused, and not even remotely interested in doing any internet research to see what other people thought of this movie because I was that pissed off.

7) Guy’s Grocery Games S15 - (Max) The show I watch almost every night with the wife, and one that I’m so pumped still has like a billion episodes left to watch. Season 15 has Guy giving us the GGG last judge standing tournament where he takes judges from the show, and puts them in an eight person competition to see which of them is the best at the Flavortown Market game he’s been conducting. Not having the chick from Iron Chef whose name is escaping me in the tournament was refreshing because she always wins and this opened things up. Guy has started to make himself more visible in the contestant’s kitchens in this season which was really fun.

8) Conan O’Brien Must Go S1 - (Max) I love Conan, and while I’ll admit his style of humor can definitely be an acquired taste, I feel like his travel remotes are the most four quadrant thing he does. This show is him at his best, and while it’s only a four episode season I saw it recently got renewed for a second so that’s exciting. I’ll rank the four episodes below as my official list of best to worst:

1. Argentina

2. Ireland

3. Norway

4. Thailand

The Argentina episode has a hilarious ending and something Conan was able to pull off in the town he visited that I’m pretty amazed at. The Ireland episode has so much naturally going for it with Conan’s Irish lineage, and him being able to trace his family routes. The way this ties into his podcast is also really cool as he goes to each of these places to visit fans of his show who he’s had come on and they already have some friendship when he arrives in their country.

9) The Stranger - (Hulu) Interesting concept here that features a rideshare driver picking up a passenger who ends up being a total fucking psychopath who makes her night a living hell in an attempt to hunt her down and kill her. The movie felt really disjointed at times in efforts to be kinetic, and after I watched it I realized that it was originally a 13 episode series on that streaming service Quibi whose whole pitch was bite sized episodes that were around 7-10 min each which makes so much more sense. The movie is pretty cheesy at times, and the attempts at building tension are hit or miss. There are some really stupid character decisions which produce some laughs, but ultimately this thing takes itself just a bit too serious for the most part. I did enjoy Dane Dehaan in this even though I’m not totally sure I can buy him as the psychological superior antagonist he’s trying to be.

10) Dragon Ball: Sleeping Princess in Devil’s Castle - (Digital Rental) I’m a massive Dragon Ball Z fan, and have been going back and rewatching the few Dragon Ball movies that precede the show out of curiosity. The first one, Curse of the Blood Rubies was almost unwatchable. Here we have righted the ship, and having Goku and Krillin finally meet was really cool to see. I also find it hilarious that the impetus for the mission they go on is basically to help a horny Master Roshi. Yamcha is still in his phase of being somewhat useful to the team as a martial artist, and the villain is pretty fun and as I mentioned earlier a vampire! I wish this actually had like ten more min of runtime, especially in dealing with the enemy and his cult of followers, but I get this was made for little kids.

11) Madame Web - (Netflix) When I saw this was in the top 10 trending movies on Netflix it drove home that every day we drift further from God’s light. We are of course sick fucks on the Bro Force Squad Podcast, so we did a movie commentary track on the movie. Which I’ve linked on this entry. I’ll save most of my thoughts for that, but suffice it to say that I do empathize with the villain of this movie as his only real motivation is to just prevent himself from being murdered by three teenage girls…in the future.

12) The Fall Guy - (Digital Rental) Ok now THIS is the Gosling I need to see. The trailers for this played right to my sensibilities and fully delivered. Seeing Aaron Taylor Johnson as a douchebag villain is a blast, and the chemistry between Blunt and Gosling propels this film. I’ve never seen the show from the 80’s, but it didn’t take away from my experience here at all. Some great action set pieces, a killer soundtrack, and a perfect balance between action and comedy. It got a Broscar nomination for our end of year movie awards, but I won’t spoil if it’s for Action or Comedy!

-JH