Shower Beer Vol XXX: 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) The Good Half - (Digital rental) I love the Jonas Bros and I'm not ashamed. Nick Jonas as an actor I've never been able to get on board with though. He gives an admirable performance here in a movie with a very sentimental plot and framing device of him reliving memories with his late mother after she passes away. Jonas and Brittany Snow have really good chemistry as brother and sister and make for a very believable pairing. This movie is really lacking in Jonas characters backstory to the point where the movie feels like it was really chopped up on the editing floor. We don't know why he is so emotionally distant from his family, and can't empathize with why he acts the way he does after the tragedy. If you've experienced the loss of a family member I feel like this movie would resonate in a unique way.

2) Fatal Games - (Plex) If you've followed the pod at all over the years you know that Seikaly and I have a weakness for these late 80's slasher films with disposable victims. Fatal Games is one of the OG's that I just recently heard about. I'd put it in the vein of Slumber Party Massacre and Chopping Mall (both of which we've done commentaries on so check those out on our Youtube channel) and it has some big ambition. I won't lie it gets a bit slow in the second act, but my god the fucking swing for the fences it takes with the twist it drops on us had a full star bump happening in a matter of seconds. The killer in the film murders people with a javelin and can snipe you from 100 yards away. If you want to see some teenagers get savagely murdered in droves this is the movie for you.

3) That 90's Show S2 - (Netflix) Took me awhile to get around to this one after the second season fully dropped. While season one was definitely a disappointment, it left off with the promise of some potential in a second season. Sadly, that was not fulfilled. Ultimately of the new characters there is only one who I found funny, and that is Oz. Red and Kitty are of course fucking incredible, but they can't carry the show and worked so well in That 70's Show as foils to our main group of characters and not leads. Here they have no choice but to shoulder a heavier load, and the entire premise of the show doesn't work as a result. I saw it was not renewed for a third season which I'm not surprised by. I don't want to shit on the cast, but I really don't see any of them getting out of here alive with much of a career...except for Oz of course that guys the man.

4) Cellar Door - (Digital rental) The trailer and premise of this movie had me counting down the days till it was available on digital. To fill you in, Jordana Brewster and Scott Speedman (who is in fucking everything these days) play a couple grieving over a recent miscarriage who are looking to move away from the city to start anew. They are introduced to a man named Emmett played by Laurence Fishburne who introduces them to the Matrix--I mean he makes them a very enticing offer. He says he will give them his mansion free of charge as they remind him very much of his late wife and child, but the house has one stipulation. They may never open the cellar door. Crazy shit starts to happen, and I will say I saw none of the twists coming even though I was looking for them like a freak. All I will say is that there is no paranormal aspect to this or anything so the resolution is something completely practical.

5) Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark - (Netflix) I had this on my Halloween watchlist as it kept coming up the past few years as something I'd like on a few lists. It looked in the vein of Trick or Treat, or some of the other anthology Halloween movies out there. It is not an anthology movie per se, but does have an element of several stories weaving together throughout the narrative. Unfortunately this was way too paranormal for me, and some of the creepier elements are only glossed over (like the scarecrow and the insane asylum lady) and it's so focused on getting us to the next story that it never really sinks it's teeth into any one idea. The cast was also pretty unbalanced for me with a few of hte child actors giving incredible performances, and some feeling way in over their heads. Can't say it'll make it onto my Halloween watch list next year, but I might get the itch again.

6) Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island - (Max) I'm on a quest to watch all the Scooby-Doo movies, and while I skipped around in the order with this one I distinctly remember watching it as a kid because it was supposedly the first time ever that the gang encountered monsters that were real. Here we have the crew heading out to a remote island somewhere in Louisiana as Daphne is the host of a paranormal reality show and they get wind of a legend of a haunted village to go investigate. All the friendly Cajun folk they encounter turn out to be full of shit in the end, and when things go off the rails it takes the whole team finally realizing that it's not Old Man Withers they're up against this time and they need to step up their game. The short runtime of these movies makes them super digestible so I'll probably have another one on my next protein shake.

7) 'Tis the Season for Love - (Peacock) Buckle up because I'm starting to get into the Christmas season, and I've got an itch that only the Hallmark original movies can scratch. Here we have your classic girl from the big city goes back home to the small town she grew up in for Christmas, and even though the town is still the same....she is not. I actually thought this movie was really competently made and acted, and you can tell that even though it has a paint by numbers formula it has to adhere to, it has a few tricks up it's sleeve. The initial conceit has you thinking that the lead will fall back in love with her old flame form high school, but that's not where it goes. Add in a ton of gingerbread cookies and a school play that just can't seem to catch a break in it's production and you have a nice Christmas cocktail of a movie. I'd spike your egg nog and fire this up if you have 80 min and are feeling holly jolly.

8) The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - (Max) It's probably been a decade since I've revisited any of the LOTR movies, and I felt like checking in on my hobbit homies. I don't remember loving this movie as much as I did this time. Holy shit the world building is so subtle, but also rich and well put together that you can't help but get totally sucked into Middle Earth. I think I really undersold the action in this one in my head, because once we get out of the Shire there are some really great set pieces. The cast of characters give you a little bit of everything, and Gimli is a total scene stealer, Boromir and the performance by Sean Bean are perfect, and even though the movie is flirting with a three hour runtime when it ends you're still in the mood for more. Ian McKellan as Gandalf is of course an iconic performance, and his vocal delivery of anything and everything he says is one of the greatest things in cinema. I'm watching the second one as I type this, and it's even more badass than this movie so I'll fill you in next time.

9) Meet Me Next Christmas - (Netflix) As much fun as I had with "Tis the Season for Love, I had the opposite of whatever that is with this movie. Here we have the Netflix algorithm just not working and I found both of the characters in this grating and really uninteresting. The premise is kind of cool with a woman needing help going on a wild goose chase for Pentatonix tickets to try and reunite with a man she thinks could be the love of her life, and seemingly falling for the man helping her get the tickets. There is nothing that moves the plot forward at all, and only one character that I found funny which is the cousin who organizes the Jingle Ball performance. Pentatonix is actually really fun in this, but they can't save the movie and the over dramatic final scene is laughable, and not in ways that are intentional.

10) Dragon Ball Z: The History of Trunks - (Digital rental) Maybe my favorite Dragon Ball Z movie, and by far the one with the highest emotional stakes. Normally I say the DBZ films are perfectly suited for their 40-50 min runtimes, but here there's so much meat left on the bone with the story I think you could stretch it to around an hour even with how much it ties into the Android saga. The Trunks and Gohan relationships is a great one, and the impetus for them becoming master and apprentice after the fall of all the Z fighters is really compelling. We hardly get to dive into the Bulma and Trunks relationship at all, and her desire to fix the timeline by getting an antidote to Goku, but that's a story that is really gripping. The Androids are just great villains with how callous and cold they are, and the fact that they represent how our own creations are often the demise of us is never so on the nose that it gets annoying like it often is in the Frankenstein's monster trope.

-JH