Shower Beer Vol XXXII: 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) Our Little Secret - (Netflix) Lindsay Lohan has a pretty sweet deal with Netflix, and I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve been gobbling up these movies. Yes they are trashy to a degree, but they have a surprising amount of charm and manage to just toe the line of cliche and then stop from going full eye roll. Our Little Secret doesn’t give itself as much credit as it should in the marketing as it played itself out to be a very predictable Christmas movie with some cheap laughs at the expense of very obvious awkward social situations. In actuality there is quite a bit of emotional meat on the bone for Lohan’s character, and the plot manages to have enough wrinkles to surprise you. Kristin Chenowith is awesome as always, and this was one of the bigger surprises of the holiday season for me.

2) The Merry Gentlemen - (Netflix) Everything good I said about Our Little Secret, take that and reverse it for the Merry Gentlemen. I think Chad Michael Murray is one of the biggest bitches in Hollywood, and now that his looks have faded a bit and he has to rely on his “acting ability” he’s up shits creek. The plot conceit here being warped into a Christmas movie makes little to no sense. This movie will claim it’s self aware of how bad it is, but it really isn’t. I won’t lie there are a few moments I laughed at (albeit unintentional on the films part) so it wasn’t a total waste. It’s a one and done holiday watch for me, but with how much content Netflix is giving us that’s perfectly acceptable.

3) The Polar Express - (Max) Every time I watch this movie it moves down my all time list just a little bit when I realize how uninteresting the film gets when we arrive at the North Pole. The first act is incredible, and really captures the whimsy of Christmas and that childlike feeling you get when going to bed on Christmas Eve. Everything on the actual Polar Express slaps really hard, and the original song centered around Hot Cocoa is an absolute banger. The stuff around the actual gift, and Santa’s workshop in general offers little to the already existing lore, and I wish we would’ve just spent that time on the train. I don’t have a way to wrap up the movie differently, but would’ve just suggested we spend way less time with Santa and the elves, and more time with the fun characters we meet on the Express. The book is one of my all time favorites, even though it’s like 18 pages and so I get that adapting it to a feature length film is basically impossible without filling in some massive narrative holes.

4) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone - (Max) I’ve only seen the Harry Potter films in sporadic order, and really only remember the Deathly Hallows two parts which I did absolutely love. Rony Seikaly and Nate Thurmond from the pod are massive Pott-heads, and in honor of them wanted to give this franchise a legitimate poke for once. I have to say, I’m in. While I’m not as in love with the wizarding world as it’s die hard fans are, I do find it a place with a ton of depth, and the inner workings of Hogwarts are more than enough to carry a movie. The houses are like a much cooler version of Greek life in college, and I think we all went to school with someone like Malfoy. The casting, especially of the faculty at Hogwarts is utterly iconic, and if you know me you know you could have put Alan Rickman in a fucking dental floss commercial and I’d have given it a standing ovation. I’ll be checking out Chamber of Secrets soon. I started it the other night, but passed out on the couch half way through.

5) Violent Night - (Digital rental) One of my Christmas favorites from a few years ago when it came out, I wanted to finally revisit it. This is an example of a movie completely delivering on it’s promise, and being an incredible time from start to finish. You get a pretty interesting conceit, a story that’s confined and takes place in one night, and David Harbour and John Leguzamo (definitely spelled wrong) having the time of their lives. I actually wish there were a few more ridiculous one liners, but that’s me projecting onto the movie. Seeing Santa kick the shit out of mercenaries is something I didn’t even know I wanted to see until the trailer for this, and I was instantly sold. The characters in this are utterly hateable in a very fun way and so watching them get battered, bruised, and stabbed repeatedly is a blast.

6) Trivia at St. Nick’s - (Digital rental) I’m not entirely sure if this was a Hallmark original movie, (and there’s no possible way for anyone to check that as we know) but if it’s not it should be. We have a couple who really has no business ever being together, but by a wild and zany holiday circumstance they’re forced to spend time together. Here the plot device is a four day bar trivia contest around Christmas where our two main characters are reluctant teammates as they work for the same University and have had their holiday plans fall through leaving them no other alternative. Through a series of wacky events, and a crew of goofy characters, they might learn a thing or two about themselves…and love. Our main female character is actually a petulant bitch who will sell out her own mother to a pack of wolves if it meant she won a night of trivia. Our male protagonist has spent his whole life playing and coaching football, and as a result is emotionally stunted to the point he doesn’t know how to eat from a dinner buffet. I think you can see where this is headed.

7) The Family Man - (Netflix) It’s been about 20 years since I’ve seen this film, and I had to double check if it really has as much heart as I remembered. While I’ve glamourized it a bit in my memory over the years, it is a very solid film around this time of year with some well crafted emotional beats. To see Nic Cage playing a relatively normal guy is actually a departure for him, and for the most part it works pretty well. I’m not sure I totally buy the chemistry with he and Teo Leoni, but the child actor in this is incredible and Don Cheadle is sprinkled in just the right amount to make the ancillary characters very fun. I remembered it being a lot like It’s A Wonderful Life, but it’s really not. At it’s core it is about the choices we make, and how we ultimately have to figure out what really makes us happy. You’re welcome for that free life advice.

8) It’s A Wonderful Life - (Freevee) I didn’t realize how many iconic quotes actually stem from this movie. “Mary tell me what you want. Do you want the moon? I’ll throw a lasso around it and pull it down for you.” “Clarence!!! Clarence!!!” “Every time a bell rings, and angel gets it’s wings.” Bedford Falls is a pretty square place…Pottersville is where it’s at. George Bailey is a guy who’s trust in others and his own penchant for putting himself second result in him getting played far too often, but you have to root for the guy. I do think he might have a case of bipolar disorder with the way he is so hot and cold with Mary. Their relationship almost gave me whiplash with how quickly he falls in and out of love with her. You hardly feel the two hour runtime, and in fact I think the movie actually ends when it’s really hitting it’s stride. I wish Clarence was in more of the film, and you could’ve taken the last 15 mins and spent way more time on George traveling around Pottersville seeing the repercussions of him never being born.

9) Carry-On - (Netflix) The trailer for this went hard, and when I saw Jason Bateman was in it as a pseudo Kiefer Sutherland in Phone Booth type of role I was really pumped. I realized about twenty minutes in that Taron Edgerton really sucks as an actor which is unfortunate, because this thing is solely dependent on him having some semblance of screen presence. The concept is cool as hell, and there is an interesting thriller in there somewhere. Even if you turn your brain off for the most part, there are a lot of plot holes and things that don’t make sense logically that it begins to get too hard to ignore all of them. I know nothing about the inner workings of TSA, but I can’t imagine they’re as incompetent as they’re painted to be in this movie.

10) The Family Stone - (Hulu) This is in my top 100, and is a once a year around the holidays watch. Incredible cast, and if you take away just two hard to watch scenes it would be a near perfect movie for me. Luke Wilson is as good as he’s ever been, and Dermot Mulroney proves he had what it takes to lead an ensemble cast in the early aughts. I think it was originally marketed as a comedy, which is really inaccurate and might have hurt both it’s box office and word of mouth. As a drama this works incredibly well, and even though I think there are about two too many characters it doesn’t manage to drown under the massive cast it has to support. I wish Claire Danes was in more stuff because she’s really fun to watch in this, and when her character gets introduced it is really effective to excite the audience at her arrival just like it does for Everett. If you haven’t seen this movie before I highly recommend it.

-JH