Shower Beer Vol XXIV: 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) Hell House LLC III: Lake of Fire - (Tubi) So the OG Hell House LLC has become a guilty pleasure of mine, and I’ve been checking out the other entries in the franchise hoping to be pleasantly surprised. While the third entry has some fun moments, it’s basically running back the plot of the original and utilizing the same scares which become very tired very quickly. The lore is just about coming to the point where it collapses in on itself as often is the case when franchises stretch themselves out, but the final few minutes of the movie were to me pretty satisfying. I don’t want to shit on the budget or acting with these films, because that’s really part of their allure, but a few of the performances in this are rough. I know it’s a lot of actors trying to cut their teeth and I really respect that, but it did take me out of a few scenes. I found the main character, Russell, to be the least interesting protagonist we’ve had in the three films. The callbacks to the first movie are what kept me going through this, even though they could be looked at as cheap fan service by some.

2) Too Funny to Fail: The Life & Death of The Dana Carvey Show - (Hulu) I don’t even remember the Dana Carvey Show existing, but it turns out I had seen some of it’s more famous sketches. This doc is interesting as it gets all the important players in his show, and dives into the politics of being on network tv and the constant pressure to please advertisers. The sense of humor the show had and it’s aversion to playing by the rules makes for an interesting dynamic between the creators and the people actually putting it on television. You get some great interviews from Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Robert Smigel, and of course Carvey himself. If you are a fan of SNL or sketch comedy in general I think there’s an interesting story here to be told, and some of the old clips from the show are freaking hilarious.

3) Sympathy for the Devil - (Hulu) Turd alert! The concept of this movie was what got me in the door. Taking place almost in real time, it follows a soon to be father being taken hostage by a psychopath played by Nicolas Cage who has him drive him around Las Vegas one night claiming to know a secret about him. What it inevitably turns into is a very self serving and gratuitous performance by Cage (which sometimes works, but not here) and Joel Kinnaman proving once again that the piece of sushi I ate for lunch has more charisma on screen than he does. The film does get a bit interesting in the last ten minutes, but it’s far too little too late at that point and I was basically begging for this thing to end by around the half way mark. There’s a good movie in here somewhere, but it’s buried beneath fifteen feet of Nicolas Cage chewing the scenery in the most annoying way possible. It did make me want a tuna melt though…

4) Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor - (Tubi) I’m a completist, and so this was a must watch as it completed the four movie series of Hell House films which I found to be very interesting at first, and began to precipitously decline in quality. This one is the worst of the bunch, and feels like the most unnecessary of them all as it barely connects to the lore of the original three. The scares are nothing new to this series, and even bring back the one and only scary element of the same clown from the other movies. The acting is hit or miss, but is not the biggest issue I have with this. There is no tension, and what few jump scares are provided are not followed up on at all and never capitalize on the tension. Some very stupid character decisions are to be expected, but I think this film used more than it is allotted in a 90 min or so runtime. While I’m glad I watched this series, this is definitely my least favorite entry, and has me hoping they will just leave the story as is, but based on the ending I fear that will not happen.

5) Guy’s Grocery Games S16 - (Max) As you might know if you’ve read some of our previous Shower Beer Blogs, this is my go to watch with the wife right after we eat dinner most nights. Season 16 continues to reinvent the game itself with a few very fun twists. One of my favorites was the frozen food showdown wherein the contestants were only allowed to use frozen ingredients which really brings out their creativity as they find themselves forced to deconstruct a lot of dishes in order to get specific things they need. Another fun part of this season was the no shop showdown where Guy provided all four contestants with the same standard cart of groceries, and they had to ration/use them throughout the three rounds trying to make sure they produced the best dish they could each round to avoid getting eliminated, but also by saving enough quality ingredients for future rounds if they were to advance. Lastly, an episode where GGG judges cooked against each other with the help of their spouses. It was cool to see how they interacted with their significant others, and really leveled the playing field with them competing against one another.

6) Scooby-Doo Meets the Boo Brothers - (archive.org) First off this movie was a pain in the ass to find, but eventually the internet archive website had a copy of it that I was able to watch. I had the Scooby-Doo itch for some reason and thought I might as well go back and start with the first feature length movie from 1987. The film has just Scooby, Shaggy, and Scrappy-Doo with the rest of the mystery gang not even mentioned. I have to say I fucking loved this movie for what it was, and the scavenger hunt plot device was an absolute blast. The basic story is that Shaggy has been informed that his late uncle Beauregard has passed away and left him his mansion, and all the belongings for him to come claim. He grabs the mystery machine van and heads that way with Scooby and Scrappy in tow, and once they arrive at the house they realize several locals and those employed by his uncle do not want them there to claim what he’s inherited. What ensues is utter ridiculousness, mixed with some fun puzzle elements that feel like a watered down version of the Riddler leading Batman on a wild goose chase.

7) Urban Legend (1998) - (Max) I love me a good slasher film, and while I’ve definitely seen parts of this movie I’d never given the whole thing a watch front to back. It’s glaringly obvious that it wants to be Scream so badly it hurts. Jared Leto cracks me up in a role like this as it was before we knew how self serious he was. The basic idea is pretty cool with a killer going around a college campus and offing people in ways that resemble famous urban legends. The story really loses it’s way in both the design of the killer, and how sparingly we get a glimpse at the person we’re supposed to be afraid of. The “twist” is admirable and maybe my favorite part, but the characters feel even more disposable than they should in a slasher movie. I also have no idea how Joshua Jackson found the time to do anything in the late 90’s and early 2000’s as he’s seemingly in every fucking movie that came out around that time. I know there are a few sequels to this which I’m sure are horrible, but based on that thought I really want to check them out.

8) X-Men: The Animated Series S3 - (Disney +) Working my way through this to get caught up with X-Men 97 which I’ve heard some really interesting things about. Season 3 is probably my second favorite season after the first. The big highlight here which takes up almost half of the episodes are both the Phoenix Saga, and the Dark Phoenix Saga. I did not remember how batshit crazy the original lure behind the Phoenix was in the comics, and based on what they gave us in the show I think it’s legit an unadaptable storyline to film. The cosmic characters introduced in this season are pretty interesting, and the power sets are very fun to see mesh with that of the X-Men. The whole Scott Summer story arc is a total wet fart, but it does help give the team some personal stakes even if it feels a bit shoehorned in. The Dark Phoenix saga is set up very well with it’s predecessor and has the epic feel that it needs to. Professor X has never been more useless when he’s really needed in this season which is a bit frustrating. We also get really cool one off episodes with Ice Man and Nightcrawler, and the season finale (at least according to my TV Time app which has a few major discrepancies from Disney +) ends with the backstory behind the Weapon X program that involved Wolverine.

9) Atlas - (Netflix) High highs and low lows. Two action set pieces in this are fucking incredible, and very visually unique. The world building is so unbelievably sloppy in the first fifteen minutes of the movie it feels like you’re watching the film in 2x speed. The performances, even grading on a curve because it’s a sci-fi movie, are really rough. Simu Lu is totally mailing it in here and he’s better than that. The concept of the film has the potential to be interesting, but it seems to not even care about the key points of the plot. The background into why this battle is happening is what I think should have actually been the plot of the movie, but instead it’s relegated to a speech given to us through news clips. If you’ve ever seen a really bad adaptation of a novel to the screen that’s what this feels like. To be honest it might be, but I’m way too lazy to even take three seconds to Google search it and find out so if you’re aware of it let me know. No regrets though on watching this because the final fight sequence was a lot of fun and even when this thing is plodding along it is a feast for thine eyes.

10) Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School - (Amazon Prime Rental) Everything fun about Scooby-Doo! Meets the Boo Brothers is absent here. First off, there’s no fucking mystery. Like what are we doing? That’s like going to a Buffalo Bills tailgate and there’s no beer. Also this feels like three episodes stitched together, which normally I wouldn’t have an issue with, but the “main antagonist” is only introduced in the third act and by that point you really don’t give a shit anymore. There’s one fun gag where Scooby is trying to tell Shaggy that he saw a bat, but as we know he substitutes the letter “r” for the first letter of every word he says so Shaggy thinks he saw a rat and gives him a whole strategy on how to catch rats in a rat trap.

11) Host (2020) - (Shudder) You might know I'm a huge sucker for screen life movies, which initially drew me to this. The sub one hour runtime is pretty sexy I have to admit, but there's really no conceit here except that it takes place during the pandemic which adds a bit of an interesting wrinkle. Unfortunately that same runtime that was so alluring is also it's downfall as we don't get to know anything about the characters relationships, and it doesn't give the movie any time to introduce anyone we haven't met who could be involved with the demonic elements of this. There are some really good scares in the last ten minutes that I think are worth giving it a watch, but overall as far as screen life movies go it doesn't utilize the concept very well.

-JH