Sunday, January 5, 2025

What I've Caught Up With, December 2024 Part 2

I managed to do something unpleasant to my knee a few weeks back, which means I wasn’t able to do anything in the gym for a few weeks. I had to give up on Peaky Blinders as my workout show, so instead of finishing it at the end of the year as planned, I’m only about halfway through. I did watch a few shows, though, getting through both seasons of Altered Carbon, finishing Killing Eve, and watching Death and Other Details. This really wanted to be a variation of the Benoit Blanc movies and really wasn’t. I also watched Exploding Kittens on NetFlix. You can (and should) get through it in an afternoon. I’m in the middle of the sixth season of Parks and Rec, and have also started Doom Patrol, which is the right kind of weird.

Saturday, January 4, 2025

What I've Caught Up With, December 2024 Part 1

So I finished the year with 366 movies watched. Of those, about 285 or so were new to me, with the rest being rewatches. On the They Shoot Zombies list as it currently stands, there are 205 I haven’t written reviews for, and ten or so more than that that haven’t been posted and I have in reserve or for Halloween. The big list of movies that have been recommended to me dropped under 1000 briefly, but with 2024 to not catch up on, it’s ballooned back up. Feel free to recommend anything from 2024 that is worth watching.

Thursday, January 2, 2025

Sacre Blech!

Film: An American Werewolf in Paris
Format: Streaming video from Peacock on Fire!

Sometimes, when someone drops a sequel years after the original movie, it turns out decently. Sometimes, you get An American Werewolf in Paris. This is a movie that very clearly wants to capitalize on the vastly superior first film that is more than a decade and a half older. Honestly, it feels like a cheat. If you’ve seen An American Werewolf in London, you’re likely to go into this with expectations. Those expectations are not going to be met. This is equally true if you thought it was instead a riff on An American in Paris.

In terms of the set-up, you don’t really need more than the title of the film and the knowledge of the London version. This time, there’s a trio of Americans, and this time, they’re not walking across the moors but instead find themselves in the City of Lights. Andy (Tom Everett Scott), Brad (Vince Vieluf), and Chris (Phil Buckman) are touring Europe and attempting extreme thrills. Andy, who we are going to be following here, is behind on points, but plans on upping his total by (sigh) bungee jumping off the Eiffel Tower, because that’s something that you won’t get caught doing.