It’s been a while, huh? A lot has changed, but also somehow, nothing has changed. I finished the school semester, but I’m still hopping back and forth between staying at my parents house, and living in my apartment. I graduated college, but the country is still under lockdown.
Honestly, good and bad included, it felt daunting to commit to anything, even something as low stakes and enjoyable as writing this post. But I don’t want to give this blog up. So, I’m back (I say with faux assurance).
Instead of a mega post, though, I’m just going to talk about this week’s watchlist. As always, feel free to reach out about particular things or episodes or movies, I’d love to talk about them.
During the shelter in place order these past few weeks months, I’ve been craving comfort. Something familiar, something I know I will enjoy, something that I can play in the background while I ponder the fate of society and the fall of man. Ya know, comfort food.
Which means a lot of rewatching. I rewatched iZombie, I rewatched Monsters University (2013), I rewatched Zootopia (2016). I’m also in the process of rewatching The Simpsons and True Blood (the latter of which I am an embarrassingly huge fan of, though I have yet to find anyone to share my fandom with).
But I did manage to sit through a couple new things. The first was essentially a Rick & Morty spin-off (so in reality it wasn’t that new to me). It’s a Hulu Original called Solar Opposites, about a kinda-family of aliens who crash-landed on earth and live here while they slowly fix their spaceship. Parts of it are really good (the parts that remind me of Rick & Morty, if I’m being completely honest), while other parts felt unexplored. The ongoing subplot of the people in the wall could have being interesting, but ended up feeling formulaic.
The second new thing I watched was Demonic (2015), a part-found footage, part-flashback, part-detective procedural about a group of young adults going to investigate a haunted house where a bunch of murders happened in the past and – get this, you wouldn’t believe it- a bunch of murders happen. Shocking, right? I had higher hopes than usual for this one since James Wan was attached to it, but it didn’t quite live up to Saw (2004) for me (the first one of the series, at least, the rest are… ehh).
I also found the time for Strange Magic (2015), an animated fantasy-musical about fairies produced by LucasFilm. I don’t put this lightly, but it’s a train-wreck. Like, I started the movie by taking notes of all the things I wanted to point out/nitpick, but I gave up about 15 minutes in because it was so constant. It’s about a fairy princess whose heart gets broken by some asshole who was only planning to marry her for the crown (ignoring the fact that this wouldn’t make him king but only a prince consort). There’s also an evil Bog King of the Dark Forest (next door to the Fairy Kingdom, because of course) who has outlawed Love Potions because they screwed him over sometime in the past or something. So you know that the fairy princess and the Bog King are going to fall in love. I also feel it’s important to note that none of the music is original and is instead covers of classic love songs like “Can’t Help Falling in Love” or “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)” or even “Wild Thing”. I seriously could not make up anything about this movie, even if I wanted to.
So that was my week! It’s a start, and I choose to be proud of myself for taking a break from wallowing in self pity and picking this blog back up again! See you all next week (I promise!).
Unofficial Ratings
Demonic
If I hadn’t seen the ending coming from literally the first 10 minutes, maybe I would have a higher opinion of this. It was so close to being interesting, but them patting themselves on the back for the “twist” ending- and then explaining it in a really confusing way for no reason- was a pretty major let down.
Strange Magic
I heard that the release of this movies was one of the requirements of the LucasFilm merger with Disney and that’s really fucking funny to think about, since that is literally the only way I could see this movie being released and even then Disney tried really really hard to hide this movie from the public. But they couldn’t! Viva la Internet!
Solar Opposites
I thought the two adult aliens were gay with each other since they are the de facto parental units of the show and they literally share a bed together but apparently they aren’t? Disappointing.
Film Student Watchlist 