Super Brothers Luigi Movie

Now, I'll be upfront, I'm not a Nintendo fanboy. In fact, I don't think I've ever played a single Mario game, although I've certainly seen enough Let's Plays, especially of... that one... with the doors and stars? So, it's no understatement to say I'm not the target audience for this.

Mario and Luigi muck around in Brooklyn for a long while, and get into antics with a dog for... reasons? Eventually, they are transported to the Mushroom Kingdom, where Luigi is sidelined like usual, and it's all about Mario, as usual. He teams up with Princess Peach, then with Donkey Kong, and all together they transport everyone back to Brooklyn for a final battle. You know, as is usual in Mario games.

As mentioned above, I'm not that conversant so while I got some stuff, I have less than no doubt that I missed many, many, many (if not all) of the references. But hey, I do like the animation, I thought it was really spot on, and very faithful to the games. (Aside from Princess Peach's face. I don't know what it is about it, but it just looked odd.)

There is much about the plot that confuses. What is with the dog? Why go back to Brooklyn? Is the Mushroom Kingdom now just a transit stop away from there? (It seems so.) And yeah, that very weird philosophical blue star at the end... no doubt there are many many youtube videos explaining everything, but I'm not watching those.

Not for me, but there are plenty of people who enjoyed this.

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XFxaxsxtX

So, cars eh? And Family I gather. And Jason Mamoa's been here the whole time!

Back in Fast Five there was a new dangling plot thread and now we have this movie! Jason Mamoa is out to take down the Family and with all the characters we need to service, there are lot of scenes of people doing things, with some action sequences. With all that, it felt hard to actually establish much of a connection, because as well as different character scenes, there was also a vastly different tone. Dom was all serious stuff, Roman and co are all jocularity, and occasionally we get others as well with their own goings on.

The car stunts were as stupid as this series gets. And even though the movie itself calls out how they deny gravity, that doesn't make this any less nonsensical. [How is Dom's car still working after all that??]

Overall, I think this will work better when you binge watch them in order to actually remember who is who and how they connect, but things are left here set up for definitely another movie.

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Pop's Exercist

Have you ever seen an exorcism movie? Then you've seen 90% of this.

Back in 1987 a kid gets possessed, and the Pope's own personal exorcist is sent to take care of it. Because... because he does. As it happens, this is the most powerful demon evah and only Russell Crowe on a mini motorbike can deal with it!

As I said, this is just like 90% of other exorcism movies. The other 10% is the lore of this movie, in which we find out that the devil has been inside the church all this time. And that this is supposed to be from the exorcist's personal files. Although we start with the exorcist doing an exorcism that is more theatre than actual exorcisng, and that he says only 2% is actual evil, this of course happens to be the 2%. According to him. Do we have independent validation of any of this? I haven't looked, but I doubt it. [Again I ask that if this is still happening, why is it not better documented in our world of technology?]

There easily could be a whole series of these films, but let's hope they actually do something interesting with the concept.

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Rise of Evil Dead

The reboot had a sequel. Seemed to be well received, but this is my review!

In a random basement, a kid finds a book, and lo, are demons unleashed. That's all the setup we need, or get, and from that point on it's about the horror of family members being taken over and becoming evil. Although people largely immediately leap to "you aren't that person" and dealing to them, so that theme doesn't stick around, but that's what they were going for.

Now this is from a franchise that people liked, and the reboot movie.. happened. And this movie... also happens. Like, it is entirely independent of the previous movie, and about the only relation is that there is a book (not even the same book, just another random evil book) that incites things. And from that point on, this could be any horror movie in any franchise or any one off.

Which isn't to say this is a bad movie. It's well done, the effects are good, the story builds well (given it's a horror movie), but at no point am I saying "Hey, this is Evil Dead all right!". Not even a shotgun or a chainsaw is doing that.

Army of Dead could basically be considered unlinked to the previous cabin based movies, so it's not like they can't change up the formula/location, but if so, lean hard into this becoming an anthology series and don't pretend there's any kind of continuity worth acknowledging.

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Gone to the Zoo, Zoo, Zoo

Last month, I had a day off (as did other people), and so went to the Wellington Zoo. Definitely wanted to see the new snow leopards! As it happens, you can see animals before even getting into the zoo itself, as if you go the cafe there, at the back of the cafe you can see the Pygmy Monkeys. Cute wee things, and you can eat right in front of them (fair's fair, they also eat in front of you).

After entering proper, I was a little disappointed that there seemed to be less animals around, as the zoo is going through some display changes. Even more annoying they closed one of the paths off, so there was more backtracking that I was expected.

I did see a snow leopard... kind of.

There was one, sitting on the ledge at the end of the enclosure. Did not look to be having a lot of fun there. Still, I did see one.. sorta.

Some other animals were of full display. The lions where having a great time.

And here, have a big picture of a cock!

Other animals can be seen in my pictures here. (I hope the links work, photobucket changed their urls that all those ones on the side likely no longer work, but I haven't bothered trying to fix them.)

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Screammmmmming

It's a franchise. You know it's a franchise, because they say it's a franchise, and who would know better?

Something something kids from the previous movie are under threat again. Something something ghostface killer kills a lot of people. Something something it's people close to them...

As much as they go on about how this is a franchise, and everything is bigger and better, this is exactly the same as the rest of the movies. Aside from plundering their own history (somewhat literally!) you could close your eyes and lose track of what is supposed to be happening specifically in this movie.

I couldn't remember who did repeat, actor wise, from the previous movie (aside from Courtney Cox), but that probably speaks more to me not paying that much attention the previous movie, BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL THE SAME!

No doubt there'll be a million more, it's an easy cheap formula to cash in on, so hey ho, bring on the next one...

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Paranomally Wellingtony

Paranormal Wellington is a tv spin off of What We Do In The Shadows. It's a silly spooky cop show about paranormal events in Wellington.

Paranormal Wellington RPG is a silly spooky RPG based on the tv series, and created by TaleTurn, aka Morgan Davies! We knows him!

I haven't talked about my RPGing. I do a lot on SteamSteelMurder (go to the Live Tab), and just the other day, as a one off, we did Paranormal Wellington. And here it is!

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GGGuardians of the GGGalaxy

I could have seen this on Wednesday but I wanted too late to get tickets, so I had to wait until Thursday! Oh no, the agony!

Rocket gets hurt and so starts the plot to save Rocket, which involves going into the backstory of Rocket. If you've seen some scenes already on YouTube, you know this is going deep into the animal harm side of things and...

Animal abuse is a bad thing. Let's get that out of the way. But this is entirely presented in a very PG way, and with CGI animals (because doing anything with real animals would be insane), so while yes it is terrible... it feels a lot of "tell don't show" (and showing is not a good idea), but the movie very definitely beats us around the head about it without letting the audience just get there on their own. Fine, but if you already get that message, this is just shouting in your face.

We also get the issue of overloading the characters. As well as the main Guardians, we have all the other characters that the movies have included over the years, and they need to get their own character arcs (which might be brief and obvious, but they are still crammed in there). Some plot lines could easily have been excised and only improved the overall pacing (eg the entire Warlock thread).

I've already heard a lot of people love this, and I'm sure Marvel are already wishing James Gunn would hang around, but DC have him now, so time for them to put out good movies.

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Ghost Ted

It's a romantic comedy with a surface veneer of action!

A man and a woman get together, and when the woman ghosts him, he decides to stalk her. But she's a working woman and doesn't have time for love, but can he get beneath her tough exterior and will they end up together? ... which is presented as a good thing to want...

Oh, and there's an "action" movie layered over this, with agents and fighting and wanting to get some MacGuffin or another and all that that really means is a) the occasional five minute scene of fighting, and b) cameos by actors that Chris Evans knows. [And Ryan Reynolds, 'cos he seems willing to cameo in anything.] Adrian Brody does his best, but he's only getting in the way of the romance we are following.

So I'm coming across as a bit down on the action side and.. yeah, frankly I don't know why they really bothered. Was it to trick people into thinking "we're gonna get a big budget action sequence" and watch it that way? It's on Apple, it's not like they are needing to sell tickets to this. They could have just gone into the romantic comedy stuff, and people will watch because well... Chris Evans and Ana De Armas (and he is definitely getting higher billing that she did). It's fine, but just drags the movie out longer than it needed to be.

There's a core of a decent movie here that could have worked, but someone decided to pitch it as something else.

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