Shower Beer Vol XXXIV: 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) Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl - (Netflix) I'd say I'm a casual Wallace and Gromit fan, but you know they're always good for a laugh. The villain Feathers is absolutely diabolical and in this film he is up to his old tricks. The conceit of the AI Norbots taking over isn't my favorite, and I wish we got more of Feathers, but in the third act he really takes over and the film picks up a lot. There are some great one liners from the police in this that might be common sayings in England, but to me they were brand new and cracking my shit up. A nice quick watch that was a fun way to end the movie year.

2) Scooby-Doo! And the Reluctant Werewolf - (Digital rental) I'm running through the Scooby Doo movies, and they're annoyingly hard to find. Why does Max not have these? Here we have Shaggy getting really fucked over when he's cursed to become a Werewolf forever unless he can win the Transylvania Grand Prix to reverse the spell. Tale as old as time. I know people hate Scrappy Doo, and him being in this is one of the weak points, but Dracula and his crew of monsters are utterly hilarious and his pronunciation of Shaggy is worth the watch alone. I lost a lot of money on the race at the end, but still had a lot of fun with this movie. It's wild how quick the hour and a half runtime goes by with these.

3) Wolfs - (Apple TV +) Clooney and Pitt getting back together are always worth a watch in my book. I'm probably the high man on them in terms of fandom, and I felt like their chemistry here wasn't as great as it's been in the past, but still some impressive comedic timing. The movie has a few interesting twists and turns, and oddly enough it ends at one of the most intersting moments. I could've done like thirty more minutes of this. Jon Watts is a beast as we all know, and it was cool to see him do something outside of the scope of Spider-Man. Apple TV probably paid a pretty penny for this thing, but in my estimation it was worth it.

4) Howl’s Moving Castle - (Max) I used to consider myself a big anime fan, but the more I think it through I'm really like the most basic ass bitch version of one. I love Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon, One Piece, and Digimon, but a lot of these popular anime movies I just can't get into. Howl's Moving Castle is one of the more famous films from the genre and is universally beloved, and I just couldn't get into it. It's very very high concept, and some of the world building is too much for me to wrap my head around. The visuals are cool in spots, but the main characters who inhabit the castle are so fucking weird and unrelatable that I didn't care if they died or got eviscerated in a fire. Maybe I need to give this another watch, or watch it with someone who knows what the fuck is going on because by the end of the first act it had totally lost me.

5) Spirited Away - (Max) So I'll preface this with I had respect for this film before even seeing it as it's in the AFI top 100, and I realize that the cultural impact it's had on anime is pretty significant. I don't know what happened here...but I fucking hated this movie so much. Like it's utterly unwatchable for me, and I found myself just praying it would end. It is utterly grotesque (I know by design, but it's painful to watch) and nothing in it makes any sense to me. We're dropped into this world and just expected to understand the powers of this day spa and the kabuki mask antagonist. I had so many questions, but cared so little about what was happening that it didn't bother me out of an intense sense of apathy. I'm sorry if this offends someone, but film is subjective, and this for me was one of the biggest misses I've ever seen.

6) The Lighthouse - (Max) I realized the other day that I hadn't actually seen a single Robert Eggers film and that needed to change. I'm very interested in checking our Nosferatu, but don't think I'll be able to make it out to the theaters so I'm anxiously waiting for it to come to digital. I had heard from our legal counsel Rony Seikaly that the Lighthouse was a tour de force of acting performances with Defo and Pattinson, but was mostly plotless by design. The film lived up to that description perfectly. Eggers does an incredible job of capturing the slow descent into madness that the isolation of this lighthouse brings about, and the unreliable narrator aspect of the film had me constantly wondering what was real and what was hallucinations. By the end of the movie things have completely gone off the rails, and watching Defoe and Pattinson go ape shit is worth the price of admission. I have no idea at all what happens at the end and so that brought the film down a little bit, but if you want to just watch two heavyweights show you what a real thespian is this is the shit for you.

7) House of Darkness - (Hulu) A fun little 90 minute horror jaunt on Hulu. Justin Long is in familiar territory here as he plays a pseudo douche bag who picks up Kate Bosworth at a bar and takes her back to her place, which happens to be a fucking castle. The next eighty minutes or so is Bosworth fucking with Long and him getting creeped out, yet turned on at the prospect of what the night could have in store. It is a very slow burn that is incredibly dialogue heavy, but never had me bored. Just when things feel like they're getting a bit stale or played out a new element to the story is introduced that keeps things kinetic. Ultimately there's not too much to it, but I had a good time with this and if you're a fan of the horror genre I think you'd enjoy it.

8) Heart of Batman - (Youtube) I was an absolute die hard fan of the Batman the Animated Series growing up, and it was a staple of my childhood. It is regarded as one of the greatest animated series ever made, and I've started rewatching it this past year and it absolutely holds up. This documentary on Youtube was produced by Warner Bros, and chronicles getting the show greenlit in the 90's when studios wanted their childrens animation to be very low rent and kiddy, but Bruce Timm the creator here had designs to go much darker than any iteration of Batman had before. The balls it took to stick to his pitch, and the group of people he brought in to help carry out his vision are both really sick to see revisited in the doc. You get a little bit with the voice actors and writers for a peak behind the curtain of the production process, but it mostly revolves around the studio politics and the innovation of the show charting a path that no show of it's ilk had done before. Some good stuff here for my fellow 90's kids.

9) The 4:30 Movie - (Prime Video) I usually don't like Kevin Smith stuff, but this movie had a few things going for it that I love in that it 1) is a period piece set in the mid 80's, 2) has a coming of age aspect to it, and 3) takes place in one day. The cast is pretty lovable, and although I don't really have a reference point for the time period as I was born around the time it takes place, it's a great slice of Americana and you can tell it was written and directed by a true cinephile with a lot of reverence for cinema. There are some cool appearances by the usual cast of Smith's acting crew, and the main three characters have decent enough chemistry. I'd equate it to something like an R rated Sandlot, or the movie Adventureland. Also there's a pretty cool way the movie ends if you're a big Kevin Smith fan that you'd appreciate.

10) My Old Ass - (Prime Video) I won't even mince words, this is my favorite movie of 2024. Holy shit it checked all the boxes. I was laughing, I was definitely crying, and I found myself reminiscing about my coming of age and calling Rony Seikaly to discuss just how fucking fast time flies in our lives. Aubrey Plaza is great in this, even though she is used very strategically in the second act. I think almost anyone will be able to relate to something in this movie, and the plot conceit of getting to go back in time and speak to a younger version of yourself and give them advice on how to live your/their life is something I know we've all thought about. Rarely do movies walk that balance beam of comedy and drama as well as this film did. I highly highly recommend this movie.

-JH