Saturday Night

Year 17, Day 242 - 8/30/25 - Movie #5,126 - LABOR DAY FILM #3

BEFORE: I'm sending a Labor Day Weekend SHOUT-out today to the people who work in television production - I'd love to join their ranks but I have not been able to find a way in. I applied for some jobs at NBC and didn't hear back, so clearly they don't want me. So I've had to come up with other plans - life is what happens to us when we're busy making other plans, as John Lennon once sang. 

I think the trickiest part of linking movies together in a chain is not putting the chain together, hell, that's easy, but it's knowing WHEN to tear it apart and put it back together again. I already addressed the emergency work that had to be done when I saw there was a bad link in the upcoming October horror chain, but this is different - back in early August I couldn't see past August 31. I had no idea how September was going to play out, if there was any way to fill the gap between 9/1 and 10/1, since the entry point of the horror chain was already set, and I didn't want to change it. Really I had just put "Nickel Boys" on the schedule for the last film in August and I was hoping for the best. 

But something was nagging at me, and it was the fact that "Saturday Night" was going to fall on a Tuesday, and come on, I can do better than that. I found a set of nine films in August that could be flipped around, the former tail end happened to connect to another film 10 days before, and while that would put a different film on August 31, "Nickel Boys" moved up to August 19, and now my review of "Saturday Night" could fall on a Saturday, as God intended. 

No lie, once I did that, it reduced the September possibilities to a set that I could really focus on, and September's programming really just kind of all fell into place after that. In fact, I came up with TWO chains for September and I got to choose between them - you know I'm going to pick the road less traveled by, because I heard somewhere that makes all the difference. Linking to horror films was kind of a snap from there, plus we all know that once the horror films are witched, it's just a hop, skip and a jump to Christmas. So moving "Saturday Night" to a Saturday was a key part of getting a chain that would take me to the end of the year, who knew? 

James Logan carries over from "Paradox", and I mean, come on, who can forget the gravitas that he brought to the role of "Security Guard #1" in yesterday's film? I know that's the kind of acting work that's going to stay with me for a long, long time. 

THE PLOT: At 11:30 pm on October 11, 1975, a troupe of young comedians and writers changed television forever. Find out what happened behind the scenes in the 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of "Saturday Night Live". 

AFTER: This is the tale of plucky upstart producer Lorne Michaels, who is having one of those days - which would be fine, when you're a producer that kind of comes with the territory, but it's not ideal when your new comedy show is going live in an hour and a half and the network censor hasn't signed off on the script, the bricks on the stage have yet to be installed, and the lights are falling from the studio ceiling. To make matters even worse, two of the hired actors are fighting, one of them hasn't signed his contract yet, and the head writer is refusing to write a script for the Muppets. And then on top of all THAT, the network affiliates are in town and want to get a peek at the new show, a dress rehearsal still needs to happen, and a network coordinator is ready and willing to run a repeat of "The Tonight Show" if he feels the new show just isn't going to work. 

This is all told in the style of "Birdman" with the camera following the director/producer around the backstage area, only with fewer hallucinations and more crazy characters, much like the ones you might find in a Wes Anderson movie. I really would have loved to see the chaotic 90 minutes before the SNL premiere presented as one long take, but I realize how difficult that would have been to pull off. Though the film is about 100 minutes long (before credits) so there's a chance that it does play out in real time. 

I've done my time in the producing arena, and sure, I've had days like that. Well, not exactly because I never worked in live TV - my toughest days usually involved leaving the San Diego Comic-Con with four boxes and trying to find a cab that would take me to a UPS shipping center and then on to the airport, only to have the cab drop me on the wrong side of the strip mall, then having to figure out how to get four boxes the rest of the way all by myself. Maybe the other worst day I can remember was being in charge of the studio on 23rd St. in 2001 when the landlord locked the doors because of unpaid rent during a week when my boss was out of town. Then I had to convince him to let me in JUST to get the bare necessities of what we needed to finish the next film, I mean really, who needs office furniture anyway? The accounting and the copyright files were much more important. Maybe the Academy Awards paperwork, you know, priorities. 

If there WERE an Oscar for casting directors, which there is NOT, I would really say this one had a real shot at a nomination. I mean, come on, some of the casting is stunt casting, like John Batiste as Billy Preston - he doesn't really look like Billy, but he's got the musical chops, and we can all just imagine he looks more like Billy I guess. But the guy who played the Riddler in "Gotham" as Chevy Chase? That's DAMN inspired, he looks just like him, and he's got Chevy's arrogant confidence DOWN. Same goes for the guy cast as Dan Aykroyd, he nailed it, and I went right to the IMDB to figure out where I'd seen him before. A few more inspired standouts were Matthew Rhys as George Carlin, Lamorne Morris (no relation) as Garrett Morris, Paul Rust as Paul Shaffer, and of course J.K. Simmons as Milton Berle. 

OK, I lied, I'm going to nit-pick here, they couldn't find actresses who looked a bit more like Jane Curtin and Gilda Radner? I mean, why come SO close on Aykroyd and Chase and then miss the mark on some of the others? Did the casting directors even check to see if Jane Curtin had a daughter (OK, granddaughter) who maybe looks like her? 

I'm honestly shocked that none of the more recent SNL stars had an opportunity to get in on this, why not cameos from Sarah Sherman as a wardrobe assistant or Mikey Day or Beck Bennett as staff writers? Too real? Now I want to see the behind-the-scenes film about the making of "Saturday Night", which is the behind-the-scenes film about the making of "Saturday Night Live". Oh, sorry, is that a bit too meta for you? 

Now, do I believe that the night in question went down exactly like this? Eh, yes and no - I'm sure they hyped things up a bit for the sake of dramatic tension - like I'm pretty sure they'd rig the lights in a studio the day BEFORE the show, not two hours before air. The bricks for that special part of the stage really arrived the morning of the show, also not an hour before showtime. Did Chevy Chase and Belushi throw down? Yeah, probably. Did Belushi also wander off the set before showtime? That tracks, too, but it also feels like that may have seeped in from another time or another incident. Did Billy Crystal get cut from the first show? That definitely happened, though he did eventually join the show in 1984, Christopher Guest similarly got cut before the first episode and rejoined at the same time.

It was a different time, that's for sure - back in those days you could see a guy hawking "Free Comedy" tickets on the street outside 30 Rock and get a chance to witness TV history being made. These days if someone is handing out "Free Comedy" tickets it's probably a scam where you have to fill out a form and someone then steals your identity, or you have to listen to a whole time-share presentation before the "comedy" starts. What I really wanted to know was more about the 1970's vibe, like it's clear that everybody in the cast and crew was having sex with each other, I guess they just didn't want to name any names here. Lorne Michaels' wife is a very interesting character just because of that 1970's free-love vibe. It seems like they had some kind of open marriage and she took a shine to various members of the Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time Players at different times. Please tell me there's a tell-all book about this somewhere. 

You may recall that earlier this year SNL had their gala 50th Anniversary celebration broadcast, now I know it was probably a timing thing, but if you ask me, they celebrated just a bit too early. Check the calendar, the first episode was broadcast on October 11, 1975 - to me that means that the real 50th anniversary is still coming up in two months, we're not there yet. They chose to throw themselves a party midway through the show's 50th season, hmm, that's not how anniversaries work, though. The show was only 49 years and three months old when they whooped it up, perhaps that's when Eddie Murphy and Will Ferrell were both available or something. 

Sesame Street kind of did the same thing, they started celebrating their anniversary at the START of their 50th year, and nope, that's really your 49th anniversary, you have to wait until the END of that year. Some jack-off this July 4 (oh, right, it was the President) had a speech about celebrating our nation's semiquincentennial (umm, yeah, still workshopping that name, it's not going to fit on a hat) and nope, that's next year, because 2025 minus 1776 is only 249, not 250. I mathed it for you. Jesus, it's the new millennium "jumping the gun" all over again. 

Well, happy anniversary, SNL, I couldn't schedule this film any closer to your 50th birthday, so I'm watching it now. Hope you saved me some cake from January because I'm ready for it now, even though I'm still 2 months early. The Season 51 premiere of SNL will air on October 4. Maybe this year they'll finally consider adding punchlines, or at least endings to the sketches - I mean, why start now but I guess there's always hope. I met this film's co-writer, Gil Kenan, at New York Comic-Con a couple years ago, and I met Cooper Hoffman (who plays Dick Ebersol) at the theater where I work because he was there for screenings of "Licorice Pizza". 

Directed by Jason Reitman (director of "Men, Women & Children" and "Ghostbusters: Afterlife")

Also starring Gabriel LaBelle (last seen in "The Predator"), Rachel Sennott (last seen in "Bottoms"), Cory Michael Smith (last seen in "Wonderstruck"), Ella Hunt, Dylan O'Brien (last seen in "American Assassin"), Emily Fairn, Matt Wood, Lamorne Morris (last seen in "Desperados"), Kim Matula (last seen in "Fighting with My Family"), Finn Wolfhard (last seen in "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire"), Nicholas Braun (last seen in "Zola"), Ellen Boscov, Cooper Hoffman (last seen in "Licorice Pizza"), Andrew Barth Feldman, Leander Suleiman (last seen in "Bandit"), Taylor Gray, Mcabe Gregg, Abraham Hsu, Corinne Britti, Nicholas Podany, Rowan Joseph (last seen in "Pain Hustlers"), Kirsty Woodward, Kaia Gerber (also last seen in "Bottoms"), Robert Wuhl (last seen in "Shirley"), Drew Scheid (last seen in "The War with Grandpa"), Tommy Dewey (last seen in "Book Club"), Catherine Curtin (last seen in "Hangdog"), Jon Batiste (last seen in "American Symphony"), Brian Welch, Jef Holbrook, Willem Dafoe (last seen in "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice"), Paul Rust (last seen in "Pee-Wee as Himself"), Tracy Letts (last seen in "Ghostbusters: Afterlife"), Billy Bryk (ditto), Matthew Rhys (last heard in "IF"), Naomi McPherson, J.K. Simmons (last seen in "Men, Women & Children"), Brad Garrett (last seen in "Gloria Bell"), Josh Brener (last seen in "Old Dads"), Presley Coley (last seen in "The Boss"), Parker Wierling (last seen in "Yes, God, Yes"), David Michael Brown, Colby James West, Stephen Badalamenti (last seen in "Bridge of Spies"), Peter E Dawson, John Dinello (last seen in "Armageddon Time"), Mike Platarote Jr. (last seen in "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret."), Rob Barnes, Justin Matthew Smith, Grace Barlow, Alia Guidry, Christian A. Jenkins, Raiford Jackson, Martin Garner, Aidan Patrick Griffin (last seen in "Fly Me to the Moon"), Mark Cyr, William C. Tate (last seen in "American Gangster"), John Ross, Jeff Pope (last seen in "Assassination Nation"), Jacob Berger (last seen in "A Rainy Day in New York"), Alexander Glyn Bennett, Cassidy Kahler (last seen in "Jackpot!"), Casey Nicholas Price, Caroline Raad, John Mayo, Jamie Day, Ted Williams, Brandon Niederauer, Alvin Ford Jr., Cory Henry, Nick Freeland, Max Townsley, Ava Cuturic, Sergio Duque, Justin Michael Heter, Joey Lay, Cagney Noland

with the voice of Jeff Witzke (also last seen in "Men, Women & Children") and archive footage of Johnny Carson (last seen in "Rather")

RATING: 6 out of 10 script pages set on fire

Paradox (2016)

Year 17, Day 241 - 8/29/25 - Movie #5,125 - LABOR DAY FILM #2

BEFORE: Here we go, another time travel movie, this is another film that I thought I would NEVER be able to link to, but really, I've had three of those this week - "Butterfly Effect 2", "Apollo 18" and now this. We're making the impossible possible. The other films this week, "Land" and "Monster Trucks", I just figured I would never WANT to link to them, but this is where we find ourselves. 

If I want to keep up the theme and celebrate the working class this Labor Day weekend, then this is a shout-out to all those hard-working people in the science and tech industries, none of whom are currently working on unlocking the secrets of time travel for some reason. Come on, guys, let's get with the program, stop trying to cure cancer because if we can invent time travel instead, we can just ask people in the future how to cure cancer, because they probably know, right? RIGHT? Anyway, here's to you, hard-working future time travel inventors, I'm going to celebrate you in advance because I know someday you're going to get us there. Don't let the fact that nobody has ever come from the future to tell us how to avoid disasters stop you. They're just not doing that because it would create a paradox, OK? 

Malik Yoba carries over from "The Good Nurse". 

THE PLOT: A time machine is tested by a man traveling one hour into the future. He returns to warn his team about disaster in the next hour. Is it possible to change things in his past and their future? 

AFTER: Wow, it really pains me to say this, but this is kind of the low-rent version of "Tenet", though the time-machine worked differently in "Tenet", you don't jump around to go back in time, you just kind of have to walk there backwards, but really, the principle is the same. If you think about it "Tenet" is more believable in that if you teleport back in time one hour, but remain in the same point in space, you'll find when you arrive that the Earth hasn't reached where you are in its orbit yet, so you'll be floating in the vacuum of space and you'll instantly explode. Or if you don't blow up, then you'll die when the earth crashes into you one hour later. Seriously. Come on, I know your head hurts trying to grasp this, but we're all moving in the sea of space-time together and the earth is both our ship and our anchor. In "Tenet" if you want to travel back in time one hour you have to go through the turnstile machine that reverses your direction, and then it's going to take you an hour to get there, but you'll be standing on the earth that whole time, so it's much safer. (Hey, yeah, quick question, why doesn't gravity work differently in "Tenet" when you're going back in time, I mean, things fall up and bullets travel back into guns, so how come gravity works the same and backwards time travelers don't fly off the planet, is Earth's gravity a constant even in reverse? Great, now MY head hurts and I don't want to start thinking about driving a car on that backwards highway again, that kept me up all night once. Should probably re-watch "Tenet" this weekend.)

If you can't afford to watch "Tenet", there's always "Paradox" which came out earlier and is free on the Tubi or Plex platforms. And if it's free, well, you just know it's got to be good, right? JK. There's similarly a rich billionaire who's funding the project and is possibly getting information from the future, and there's a killer roaming around the lab whose identity is masked, he looks a lot like the two mystery men in "Tenet" (or the Ultraman character in "Superman"), which can only mean one thing, he's another character we know, but WHO?  If only he were traveling backwards in time while everyone else is moving forward, that would be so cool. The director of "Paradox" probably smacked himself in the forehead after watching "Tenet", and said, "Damn, why didn't I think of that? Eh, I never would have been able to afford the effects on that." We do what we can with what we have. 

In "Paradox", there are really a lot of unclear motivations, like who are these people, and why are they here? The simplest of backgrounds are given to us by the two agents who are watching them gather at the "secret" lab, which is in a crappy warehouse that's filled with corridors - this is possibly a nod to "Primer", where some teens built a time machine in a storage unit, and they can only time-travel to hours where the storage facility is closed, otherwise they'll have to explain to the staff how they could sign out before they signed in. (As with most things time travel-related, this is very complicated.). But conveniently one agent knows who everyone is and she tells the other agent, so we'll know too. THIS one is a trust fund baby, THAT one got kicked out of MIT three times (not possible...) and THAT one is a terrible actor who can't seem to get hired anywhere else - see, I told you.

But the mystery billionaire also shows up, and that means that tonight the time-travel experiment is a "GO", or at least they're going to test the machine for the first time. What could POSSIBLY go wrong? Jim, the most expendable (red shirt) team member is sent one hour into the future, and he sees that the lab is a wreck, people are dead and there's a killer dragging away his girlfriend, who is also on the team. Damn, and they only JUST had an argument over how to celebrate their anniversary, too. Worse, the lab is set to self-destruct in four minutes, so there's no time for Jim to fix anything, he's got to time-travel back to a minute after he left, with a video-camera that will tell everyone what happened (or will happen).  Once the people in the present have knowledge of the future, they can figure out how to fix it, right? WRONG, because that would create a paradox - once they have the video of what happened (or will happen), they can't use that knowledge to change anything, because that video is now "fate". Conveniently, their knowledge of what will happen actually helps make sure that it does, and they know where everyone and everything is going to be because they have a record of it from the future's past, which is now their future. 

I'll give some credit here, I can't really fault the story - everything fits into place, and even though time-travel stories are a maze of alternate outcomes and diverging timelines, this is surprisingly not messy at all. Whatever will be, will be and therefore happens, even if it's despite knowing about it or because of knowing about it. Like the guy in a wheelchair joined the team just so he could travel back in time and tell himself not to drive drunk a few years ago, but then he was told that would create a paradox - the version of himself that crashed his car can't go back and tell himself to be careful, because then the version of him that needs the wheelchair would not exist and would therefore not be able to travel back in time and correct the incident, so therefore the correction can't be made. That's all pretty neat and tidy, and while we'll never know if time travel will ever be possible, following those anti-paradox rules is good enough for now. 

There are, however, the usual questions about time travel, like can a future version of someone interact with a past version of himself?  Yes, provided the future Jim doesn't kill the present Jim, because paradox. Yes, provided the future Jim remembers the encounter from when he was present Jim, if not then paradox. And then when past Jim shows up in the present, present Jim has to hide and not be seen by his previous self, again because paradox. That's all well and good, once we establish what the rules are then it's just a matter of following them. (Another paradoxical question that remains unanswered is, if someone from the future tells someone in the past how to invent a time machine, then WHO really invented it?)

But the acting here is incredibly sub-par, like I'm talking CInemax late night almost-porn level of mediocre, non-believable line delivery. Except for Malik Yoba, he's fine. Zoë Bell, sorry, not so much, there's a reason she's known mainly as a stuntwoman and not for her acting skills. Everyone else  here I've never heard of, and I know so many "Hey, it's THAT guy!" character actors, that's really saying something. Check out the lack of connections below and think about all the thousands of movies that this cast collectively has not been hired for. There are guys here who have clearly worked as stunt doubles for Jack Black and Daniel Dae Kim, that was really the only way they were going to find work. But hey, work is work, that's a good enough message for Labor Day weekend. 

I'm sure if I really try to pick this story apart I may find something to criticize, but I just don't have the brain space for it right now. (Like notably there's one character who completely disappears, and nobody seems to notice, all the other characters apparently forget him at the same exact moment. I think this was put in as a red herring, like you assume he puts on the disguise and becomes the killer, and that's not the case.). It doesn't matter, I've got one more phone interview today and then after that, I'm on holiday weekend time. 

Directed by Michael Hurst

Also starring Zoë Bell (last seen in "Gamer"), Adam Huss, Bjorn Alexander, Brian Flaccus (last seen in "Movie 43"), Michael Aaron Milligan (last seen in "The Suicide Squad"), Steve Suh, Darren Bailey, Nick Benseman, Jonathan Camp, Courtney Compton, Dustin Cornelius, Ashley Hayes, Jesse Jacobs, James Logan (last seen in "The Mechanic"), John Nania, Malene Ostergard, Eric Perrodin, Zo Zosak

RATING: 4 out of 10 nosebleeds (relax, I'm sure time travel is perfectly safe...)

The Good Nurse

Year 17, Day 240 - 8/28/25 - Movie #5,124 - LABOR DAY FILM #1

BEFORE: I didn't really plan it this way, but I'm happy enough to take advantage of the upcoming holiday on the calendar. Honestly, Labor Day is the easiest holiday to program for, whatever lands on Labor Day weekend probably features some characters who have a JOB of some sort, so whatever that is, I can just say that was part of my plan. So part of my plan is an accidental tribute to doctors and nurses, how about that?  

I just finished a grueling week of school orientation, so shout out to teachers and college professors, too. I don't often use the word "grueling" when describing my current job, because it's typically light work with occasional lifting and infrequent emergencies. But getting up early to open up the theater at 7 am, 6 am, that's what was so taxing about this week. THREE morning shifts? I was already on vampire hours, and you want me to work in the morning now? Well, I did it, the freshman class has officially been orientated now, and I didn't get the shift with the ostrich statue, like I did last year, so that's something. Really, I wish I were kidding. 

I could really say that the Labor Day tributes began last Sunday, with "Monster Trucks" being about car mechanics, and "Apollo 18" being about astronauts. Hell, "Butterfly Effect 2" was about businessmen in some kind of tech field, so if you're playing along at home, you can count that one too. Whatever, I'm too tired right now to think straight, I came home at 7 pm after a 11-hour shift and took a nap, so there's your Labor, now enough already, it's time for a 4-day weekend. 

Kim Dickens carries over from "Land". 

THE PLOT: An infamous caregiver is implicated in the deaths of hundreds of hospital patients. 

AFTER: This film is based on a book, which was based on a true story, so if this all happened I can't really fault the story here, now, can I?  The shocking part is that the killer was able to find so much work at different hospitals around New Jersey and Pennsylvania over a 16-year period, and therefore was able to kill so many people, possibly hundreds. Most of the hospitals who employed him were willing and able to fire him for little technicalities, like minor mistakes on his resume when they hired him, rather than to report him after suspicions he was killing patients, for fear of facing liability themselves from potential lawsuits. Well, then, if nobody turns him in, he's just going to move on to the next hospital in the next town and start killing again, isn't he? Kind of like Andrew Cuomo, now trying to be NYC's mayor after getting removed as NY state's governor. 

I'm reading the back-story of Charles Cullen now on Wikipedia - he had a history of being bullied in school, then hazed by crewmates in the Navy. He got a medical discharge from the service in 1984, without reasons being disclosed. After nursing school he started bouncing around hospitals and somewhere in there killed his first patient, possibly an OD to an AIDS patient, who knows, maybe he considered that a mercy killing. After that, three elderly women with an OD of heart medication, so I guess there's a slippery slope there, the first few were justified in his twisted mind and then things just got easier for him, but also harder to justify. Not that any medical murder is justified...  Even through to the late 1990's, there was apparently no method of reporting mental health issues during employment checks, also there was a national nursing shortage going on, which explains how he found it so easy to get more jobs. Meanwhile his marriage broke down, his wife saw him abusing their dogs and feared for their daughter's safety, so that led to divorce, he stopped paying child support at some point, and made frequent suicide attempts. 

He tended to favor cardiac wards and burn units, but it wasn't until he was made to resign from St. Luke's hospital in Bethlehem, PA that seven of his former co-workers came forward and told the district attorney that they suspected he'd been killing patients. But investigators never followed up or looked into his past, so the case was dropped for lack of evidence. He moved on to the critical care unit of the Somerset Medical Center in Somerville, NJ, where he was caught accessing the records of patients he wasn't assigned to, also the computerized drug cabinets showed he was requesting medications that hadn't been prescribed, however he cancelled the orders right after getting the meds, making it look like the drugs had not been dispensed. The drugs he used included digoxin, insulin and epinephrine, and is it just a coincidence that the first letters of those drugs spells "DIE"? 

As part of a plea deal, Cullen promised to cooperate with authorities if they did not seek the death penalty, so as a result he's now serving 18 consecutive life sentences, and is not eligible for parole until the year 2,403. I just really hope he doesn't start killing again at the age of 443. The good news is that 37 states adopted new laws that encourage employers to give more honest reviews of the performance of medical professionals and provide legal protection for hospitals that report medical errors resulting in patient deaths. This should prevent this sort of thing from happening again. But I feel like there have been a lot of movies or TV movies about these "angel of death" incidents, the Wiki page for Cullen lists at least 10 other similar serial killers, including Donald Harvey and Harold Shipman. 

This movie is told from the POV of Amy Loughren, a single mother and nurse who was Cullen's co-worker at Parkfield Memorial (Somerset in real-life though) and Cullen was secretly helping her with her heart condition, as her health insurance coverage didn't kick in until she worked for the hospital for four months.  They were friends until she started to suspect he was killing patients, at which point she preferred to not let Cullen interact with her daughters. Seems reasonable enough, however she still needed to interact with him while the medical investigators got the information they needed to prove he was killing patients, so there were some tense moments when Cullen was taking care of her health, like where did he draw the line between tending to patients' care and then deciding to end their lives?  At this point, however, the film just kind became a very standard by-the-numbers crime film, with Amy wearing a wire to try to get a confession from him while eating at a diner and such. 

So yeah, there are still some improvements to be made to the system, however the current administration seems intent on killing Medicaid and other insurance plans, instead of strengthening them to provide better coverage for the majority of Americans. Something to think about as we head into the Labor Day weekend. 

Directed by Tobias Lindholm

Also starring Jessica Chastain (last seen in "Armageddon Time"), Eddie Redmayne (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore"), Nnamdi Asomugha (last seen in "Fire with Fire"), Noah Emmerich (last seen in "Cellular"), Malik Yoba (last seen in "Criminal"), Maria Dizzia (last seen in "Late Night"), Joseph Fugelo, Judith Delgado (last seen in "The Crew"), Jesus-Papoleto Melendez, Myra Lucretia Taylor (last seen in "Ezra"), Marcia Jean Kurtz (also last seen in "Armageddon Time"), Devyn McDowell (last seen in "Jerry and Marge Go Large"), Alix West Lefler, Ajay Naidu (last seen in "The Kindergarten Teacher"), Jennean Farmer, Navya La Shay, David Lavine (last seen in "Taking Woodstock"), Bruce MacVittie (last seen in "He Said, She Said"), Brooke Stacy Mills (last seen in "21 Bridges"), Charlotte Cohn-Williams, Shaun O'Hagan (last seen in "The Kitchen"), Maria Farrow, Moe Irvin, Gabe Fazio (last seen in "Maestro"), Anjelica Bosboom, Rebecca Watson (last seen in "The Normal Heart"), Denise Pillott, Dartel McRae, Christine Healy, Alex Bartner, Jennifer Regan, Beth Dixon (last seen in "Infinitely Polar Bear"), Brian Sayers, Steve Antonucci (last seen in "13"), Evan Bass, Andrew James Bleidner, Chris Henry Coffey (last seen in "The International"), Victor Cruz (last seen in "Side Effects"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 saline IV bags

Land

Year 17, Day 239 - 8/27/25 - Movie #5,123

BEFORE: Well, just like that, I may have another gig. I went on an interview for the company that runs concessions at Brooklyn Nets games, and they need a bunch of people to work for the upcoming NBA season. I love when companies hire in big waves, when there are a lot of positions open - so far this summer whenever I've applied for single openings, nothing has happened as a result. The last time I got hired for anything was when movie theaters were re-opening after the pandemic, and they needed a whole lot of vaccinated people to staff back up, I got not one but TWO gigs that way.  Right now I can't seem to get hired for movie theater management jobs because I don't have much concessions experience, so let me take a few months and get some. More news on this soon, I hope, but I could be working shifts by October at the earliest. 

Warren Christie carries over from "Apollo 18". 

THE PLOT: In the aftermath of an unfathomable event, a woman finds herself unable to stay connected to the world and retreats to the wilds of the Rockies. After a local hunter brings her back from the brink of death, she must find a way to live again. 

AFTER: This movie tonight is trying very hard to make me sad - thanks for harshing my mellow, "Land" - but I'm going to keep on keepin' on, because I've got a new job coming my way, I think, and also I joined Instagram for the first time!  OK, admittedly I've been lurking there for years on my boss's account, but maybe it's time to put myself out there and tell the world who I am!  Umm, besides my movie blog and my X/Twitter account, but the tweets there are mostly just links to the blog, and also limericks on the almost-daily. Really, what more is there to life? OK, photos of my beers and food - don't eat it till you tweet it! My first IG post was me eating a ginormous deli sandwich from 2010, the only food challenge I ever won - it would be hilarious if I just never posted again, and that photo was like the only thing on my account, right? 

But enough about social media, this film is about disconnecting, a woman drops out of society and buys some land on a mountain top in Wyoming. Yeah, that should do it - we don't know WHY she's dropped out of society at first, that comes much later, but clearly there's been some tragedy in her life, either a divorce or a death or maybe a job loss. But no, she's got money to buy the land and the cabin so probably one of the first two. Really, who among us hasn't felt that urge at some point in our lives to just drop out of the rat race, chuck it all and go live in Wyoming or Alaska or Canada, someplace that really represents the middle of nowhere, but you can still get access to groceries or medical care if you need it. Let's be real, after all, if you moved to the middle of the desert with no town around for hundreds of miles, who can you call if there's an emergency of some kind? You'd be dead by the time someone reaches you. 

Edee has trouble with chopping firewood, though, and hunting seems to be a no-go for her (hmm, that may be relevant to her backstory) even fishing is off the table when she learns that she's no good at it. Then a big black bear pays her a visit and eats all her food while she's hiding in the outhouse - so she may not be cut out for living off the grid. Alone with her thoughts and disheartened by her lack of survival skills, she considers shooting herself but remembers that she promised her sister she would not hurt herself, no matter what. 

When a snowstorm knocks part of her metal roof off, she gets injured trying to fix it, Miguel, a passing hunter and his nurse friend find her and help her recover. When Edee refuses to go to the hospital, Miguel stays and cooks for her, chops firewood and restocks her cabin. He also teaches her how to trap small animals and skin them for food, ironically spending time with her so that she can have the life of solitude that she wants. They share a bit about their backstories, him more than her, she really wants to keep that private. Then Miguel says he's got to go away for a while, without getting into too much detail either, but he leaves behind his dog to keep an eye on her - and come on, also kind of giving her something to live for. The healing power of caring for another living thing can't ever replace her loss, but it's something. 

After a few months go by, she finally digs out the old photos and has a good cry, then ventures into town to see if she can learn what happened to Miguel. No spoilers here, but really it's a very simple story on the surface, and you know, still waters run deep and all that. 

Directed by Robin Wright

Also starring Robin Wright (last seen in "Damsel"), Demian Bichir (last seen in "Dom Hemingway"), Sarah Dawn Pledge, Kim Dickens (last seen in "Great Expectations"), Finlay Wojtak-Hissong, Brad Leland (last seen in "Deepwater Horizon"), Dave Trimble (last seen in "Forsaken"), Rikki-Lyn Ward, Mia McDonald, Barb Mitchell, Dennis Corrie, Valerie Planche (last seen in "The Claim"), Laura Yenga, Vattanak Khun

RATING: 4 out of 10 blisters from chopping wood

Apollo 18

Year 17, Day 238 - 8/26/25 - Movie #5,122

BEFORE: Speaking of films on my list that I just figured I would NEVER get to, I seem to have tapped into a whole vein of them. That almost makes up for having to watch "Monster Trucks" to get here. Almost, but not quite. 

I've been on the morning shift twice already this week, because it's school orientation time and that means early am staff meetings and department meetings with students taking place at the theater. This is an arts college that doesn't really have an auditorium or ampitheater to hold a large number of students, so really, this is probably why the school bought the movie theater in the first place, about 20 years ago. Solid investment, and they often rent the theater out for film festivals and other events, so you have to figure that the theater is a money-maker for the school. So, umm, OK, then why are they cutting back our staff due to budget cuts?  Just asking.

But being on the morning shift, for me, should mean going to bed early, getting a solid 6 to 8 hours and being up and ready to go at 5:00 am. Yeah, that's not going to happen - I've stayed up until the wee hours of the morning so much, especially during the pandemic, that I've found that I can't go back to a normal human schedule. "Vampire hours" seems like a more appropriate term for the way I live - so I'm looking for more jobs at movie theaters, concert venues, that sort of thing because I'm mostly nocturnal now. 

Andrew Airlie carries over from "The Butterfly Effect 2"

THE PLOT: Decades-old found footage from NASA's abandoned Apollo 18 mission, where three American astronauts were sent on a secret expedition, reveals the reason the U.S. has never returned to the moon. 

AFTER: I have not watched a lot of films from the "found footage" genre, I mean, the original "Blair Witch" and that's about it, I have not tackled the "Paranormal Activity" movies or anything like that. But I gather you're supposed to keep a close eye on the screen and not be distracted by your phone or the games on your phone or even the web-browser on your phone. I know, I know, that's just not the way we do things now. I had to deal with this year's incoming freshmen today, and well, I'm not hopeful - many had not picked up their student ID's yet, and exactly HOW did they think they would get into our building without the required school ID?  Really, it's a mystery. Others were incapable of answering when I asked what their major was, and come on, don't say, "Well, I draw and I'm working on a web-comic and I really want to get my own zine at some point..." Dude, just say "Illustration" so I know which theater to send you to - just think of me as that Sorting Hat from the Harry Potter movies, just tell me if you're a Slytherin or a HufflePuff so we can move on. Other students had their headphones on and seemed incapable of hearing me, let alone answering the question. OK, it's college time, the real world is here and it wants to know which department's meeting you're here to attend!  I may sound like an old person for saying this, but the younger generation is full of dumbasses, and I hope they draw better than they interact with other people. End of aside. 

Officially, NASA's last Apollo mission was number 17 in 1972, it was the program's only night launch and the sixth landing on the moon. The mission had the first geologist to be part of a moon landing mission, and members of the crew spent 22 hours on the moon's surface, coming back with 243 lb. of samples, which seems like a lot - like, how did the rover take off with all that extra weight?  It just seems like a lot of moon rocks, that's all - and this film points out that many of those moon rocks were given to foreign dignitaries. Nope, nothing seems amiss there, not at all - but it's part of the inspiration for tonight's film, which suggests that's it's possible that the 18th Apollo mission wasn't cancelled after all, but instead took place in 1974. Well, OK, but already we have our first NITPICK POINT (of many, I think) which is - could NASA launch a mission to the moon and have nobody find out about it? Like, there are people who gather at Cape Canaveral to watch launches, and if one took place there, even without notice, then somebody would be sure to see it, night-time star gazers at the very least. Did they launch from a secret rocket base in another country?  The same reporters who broke Watergate would probably have been all over this, claiming some new post-Nixon conspiracy like Apollo-Gate. 

But OK, let's roll with this for a moment, but remember I'm watching, and you've now ticked off my B.S. detector.  The crew of Apollo 18 is told that they're on a secret mission for the U.S. Department of Defense to deliver a classified payload to the moon - common sense dictates that it's some kind of early warning detector for Soviet missile attacks, but does that really track?  The moon is very far away from the earth, how can that be an early warning detector?  Even the opposite side of the planet Earth is closer to where you are than the moon is. Wait, is that correct?  The diameter of the earth is 7,926 miles, and the distance from the earth to the moon is about 238,855 miles, so yeah, I'm right. You could fit 30 other earths between the earth and the moon, so an early warning system makes no sense - by the time the detector on the moon told you about the missile attack, I imagine that warning would come too late. 

But OK, on with the mission - one crew member stays in the command module ("Freedom") while two land on the moon's South Pole in the lunar module ("Liberty") - they plant the detector on the moon (if that's what it is, again B.S.) and then take some rock samples back to their module. What could POSSIBLY go wrong? Well, they start hearing noises outside and the motion sensors keep going off. The next day, while setting up the device, they discover footprints that are NOT their own, and follow them to an abandoned Soviet lander, which has ominous blood stains inside.  In a nearby crater, they find a dead cosmonaut and a broken space helmet. OK, the Russians made it to the moon, good to know, I guess they weren't as behind us in the space race as we were led to believe. But clearly something went wrong - the noises continue as the crew tries to sleep, and the next day they find that the U.S. flag that they had planted is gone. 

It's impossible that another cosmonaut has survived on the moon, so who or what is behind all of this? To make matters worse, something has also flipped over the astronauts' Rover and damaged the foil on the module, so they can't re-launch and rendezvous with the command module.  And that's about as far as I'm willing to go with a plot re-cap, because spoilers. But here at this point there are so many questions - what took the flag, what damaged the spacecraft, and what is making all that noise on an atmosphere-less moon?  What is the real purpose of the device, and how in the hell are they going to get home?  I'm quite sure Mission Control's not going to be much help, if they can't even answer questions about the Soviets making it to the moon.  

I'll only say that's it's not long before panic sets in, followed by delusion and/or madness, as you might expect. Or what the astronauts are seeing is real, and that's kind of even worse. Of course conveniently the signal between the two modules is being jammed somehow, so they can't even make plans to make plans. Really it's the two astronauts on the moon against whatever else might be out there. Jesus, at that point even a ghost in a haunted house or a witch out in the woods seems like an easier scenario to deal with. 

Did this happen? Of course not. (But maybe....). Could this happen? Same. (But maybe...)  You know, maybe the moon has changed a lot over the years, it's been like 53 years since anyone's been back there, and honestly it feels like we did everything we could do there, the itch got scratched and there's really no reason to go back unless we're going to build a base there where we can launch a rocket at Mars or something. I personally don't see how gaining a 238,000 mile head start gets us to Mars, which is 34 MILLION miles away at closest possible range. But hey, there's less gravity on the moon so maybe launching from there is easier?  It's not exactly rocket science, oh wait but it is. 

Do I believe that the U.S. government would try to cover up space mission stuff if something went wrong? Honestly, that's the easiest part of this film to believe - however that doesn't mean that it's anything close to true. Next NITPICK POINT, this found footage film features so many different camera angles, inside and outside the module, really it's impossible, a NASA module would not have 170 different cameras recording inside it with another 10 or 12 covering angles outside on the moon's surface. 

When I hear "Apollo 18" I think of the acclaimed 1992 album from the band They Might Be Giants that shares that title, which I'm listening to right now as I type this. Some of the songs featured on that album are, no lie: "Space Suit", "See the Constellation", and "Spider", which all seem kind of appropriate. The album also has a montage of song snippets called "Fingertips" which includes the following mini-songs: "Who Is that Standing at My Window?", "Who's Knocking on the Wall?", "Something Grabbed a Hold of My Hand", "I Heard a Sound", "Mysterious Whisper" and "I'm Having a Heart Attack".  Again, no spoilers but at least some of those titles sound like they represent tonight's film.

Directed by Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego

Also starring Warren Christie (last seen in "This Means War"), Lloyd Owen (last seen in "Miss Potter"), Ryan Robbins (last seen in "Coffee & Kareem"), Michael Kopsa (last seen in "Come and Find Me"), Kurt Max Runte (last seen in "The Humanity Bureau"), Kim Wylie, Noah Wylie, Ali Liebert (last seen in "Wonder"), Erica Carroll, the voices of Jan Bos (last seen in "The Company You Keep"), Thomas Greenwood and archive footage of John F. Kennedy (last seen in "Rather")

RATING: 5 out of 10 family photos

The Butterfly Effect 2

Year 17, Day 237 - 8/25/25 - Movie #5,121

BEFORE: If you want to know about a film that's been on my list for a VERY long time, possibly even THE longest, that would be "The Butterfly Effect 2". As long as there's been a list, this has been on the list. I started this blog back in 2009, but before that, in 2004 I was at the Sundance Festival for the premiere of the first "Butterfly Effect" film. Ashton Kutcher, the star, and Demi Moore were in attendance for that - I was blown away by that film, it was quite the time-travel movie. 

So the big question then, why did I wait 16 years, no, wait 19 years, to watch the sequel?  Well, OK, maybe I didn't think about it much in 2009, but it made its way on to the list at SOME point, and then, just look at the cast list, it's nearly IMPOSSIBLE to link to, once I finally got my system of linking down. Over five thousand films viewed, and I haven't seen ONE other film with Eric Lively in it - must be a good reason for that. And Erica Durance, same deal, I've only seen her in ONE other movie, what's the deal there? Didn't she used to be famous for being in "Smallville"?

Chris Gauthier carries over from "Monster Trucks".  

THE PLOT: Nick Larson discovers a supernatural way to alter his life and travels back in time to key moments in his life by looking at photographs. 

AFTER: If you haven't seen "The Butterfly Effect", it's a twist on time-travel movies when a teen gains the ability to travel back to key moments in his life when he blacked out, and by taking control of his younger body, he can change the present by taking action in the past, however he learns that while improving his situation is quite difficult, making things worse is the easier and more likely result. So if you have seen the first film, same effing shit tonight. 

Maybe this one's on me, because by avoiding this sequel for nearly three decades, I sort of built this up to carry a certain level of importance, at least by way of justifying all my expectations, and there's just not enough here to satisfy that. Really, how could any film live up to twenty years of expectations? 

The trouble starts when young tech guy Nick is celebrating his girlfriend Julie's birthday with their friends Trevor and Amanda. Nick pulls Julie aside to discuss their future (big mistake, never do this, man, just let the future happen) and Julie is having trouble deciding about going to art school or just heading to New York to start her own photo studio, and Nick is, well, less than encouraging and rather self-centered, if you ask me. We're about to find out where Nick stands on the state of their relationship when he gets a phone call from his office, and decides to cut their camping weekend short because he's up against Dave for a promotion, so he simply has to attend the meeting. (big mistake #2, never answer a call from work when you're away for the weekend with your girlfriend, especially if it's her birthday weekend.)

So they cut the weekend short, and while driving down the mountain, a tire explodes and the car spins out, placing it right in the path of an oncoming truck. Nick wakes up in the hospital a week later and learns he was the only survivor of the wreck - he recovers but suffers from bad headaches like his father once did, and a year later, he discovers that by looking at photos of that camping weekend, he can travel back there, or at least his mind travels back there and enters his younger body, I guess. Now you might think that given a second chance, he might replace that tire before it explodes, but I guess that would make too much sense - instead he knows how to steer into the skid, and also get the car out of the path of the truck, but I think not having the accident in the first place would have been a simpler solution. 

Anyway, Nick's propelled back to the present, only this time Julie is still alive, and they're living together. However, Nick's co-worker Trevor gets himself fired due to budget cuts, and Nick makes the mistake of backing him up, getting himself fired too. Well, simple solution, just find a photo of the office Christmas party and time-travel back to it, and take control of the deal that Dave was about to make, and take credit for it. Easy peasy, what could POSSIBLY go wrong when you mess with your own timeline?  Well, everything, really. 

Back to the present, and Nick's moved up to the corner office and is now a VP at the company, however Julie is nowhere to be found, and he's apparently having a long-term affair with the boss's wife. Hey, nice work if you can get it, I suppose. The new Nick might have broken up with Julie, but the old Nick is still in love with her, and just recently brought her back to life. But she's now a successful photographer with her own studio, working the fashion shows, and she's got a new boyfriend who apparently knows how to listen to her when she talks about her needs and feelings, and Nick just didn't. 

Well, it doesn't really matter because Trevor's still bad news in the new reality, he took on an investor who's tired of waiting to see some return on his money, Nick offers the investor a personal check from his own account, but this just illogically leads to the investor killing Trevor for some reason. One of the investor's goons shoots at Nick but hits Julie instead, so it's back to the old drawing board, I guess. 

Nick's got one last jump in him, so he travels back to that camping trip, and this time he breaks up with Julie, for her own good, since he figured he brought so much trouble into her life in the long run, when he succeeded at business but couldn't make the relationship work. I know, I know, the logic breaks down here, but being a good boyfriend is HARD, guys, Nick just wants to take the easy way out, and since Julie's going to end up in NYC with her own studio, breaking up with her is just going to put her on that career path sooner, so this makes perfect sense. JK, it makes no sense at all. 

Julie speeds away from the camping trip by car, and only then does Nick remember about the tire failure and the tractor-trailer truck. So naturally he drives after her and puts himself in harm's way to try to save her. But, NITPICK POINT, telling her to pull over isn't going to change the tire to one that isn't about to explode, and all it does is put him in the wrong lane, with traffic headed right for him. Sure, Nick, drive the car off the cliff, that should fix everything.

The solution was simple, and it's kind of shocking that Nick just couldn't see it - jump back to that camping weekend, and instead of breaking up with Julie, just DON'T ANSWER the phone when his office calls, just stay at the campground with her and try to have a good time, then just tell your co-workers you were in the mountains and didn't get good cell service. Who cares if Dave gets the promotion? Let him have it, you can always blackmail him later and take his job. Nick was just a bad boyfriend all around, and very misguided if he thought that breaking up with Julie, or sacrificing his own life would make her life better. Why not stay with her and learn to be a better life partner? Or is that too basic? 

By the way, there is a "Butterfly Effect 3", but as you might imagine, there are no actors that are shared by this film and that one - so I should be able to link to it some time around 2042 or so. 2045 at the very latest. 

Directed by John R. Leonetti (assistant director of "Fever Pitch")

Also starring Eric Lively, Erica Durance (last seen in "Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie"), Dustin Milligan (last seen in "The People We Hate at the Wedding"), Gina Holden (last seen in "Code Name: The Cleaner"), David James Lewis (last seen in "How It Ends"), Andrew Airlie (last seen in "The Company You Keep"), Susan Hogan (ditto), JR Bourne (last seen in "Girls Trip")  Lindsay Maxwell (Last seen in "Good Luck Chuck"), Zoran Vukelic, Jerry Wasserman (last seen in "Black Christmas"), John Mann (last seen in "The Chronicles of Riddick"), Tom Bulmer (last seen in "The Big Year"), Veena Sood (last seen in "Connie and Carla"), Brad Kelly (last seen in "Shooter"), Caeli MacAulay, Malcolm Stewart (last seen in "Miracle").            

RATING: 4 out of 10 splitting headaches 

Monster Trucks

Year 17, Day 236 - 8/24/25 - Movie #5,120

BEFORE: The general rule, of course, is that horror films must be watched in October - BUT, rules are made to be broken, right?  Sometimes there's a film that seems too weird or silly to fit into that traditional horror mold, and I think that's the case tonight. Some other times, the linking kind of demands that I break the rule, right now the best way for me to GET to the October horror chain is to put this film here - because first I've got to get to September, and for some reason the road goes right through here. Also, I've still got way too many films in the horror section, and some of them just don't link to anything else in that section.  

OK, so three good reasons to watch "Monster Trucks" tonight. Let's be honest, this does not look like a great movie, or even a great genre film. But I've got to just buckle down and get through it so I can move on, not every film is going to be "Watchmen" or even "Superman", doing things this way occasionally means watching a very silly film in order to get to something better, it's my special habit of punishing myself, or building up a tolerance perhaps. Look, as a reward, the next day I'm going to watch a sci-fi sequel that I've been meaning to watch for 20 years, it's kind of been on the list longer than there even has been a list. That's significant, I hope - it will feel great to finally cross that one off. Tonight's film, really, who cares? 

I've got a few more films coming up in September that don't really feel like traditional horror, five I think, and that's just going to help clear that sub-genre and narrow the focus a bit, plus create more room to add horror films that come my way. I think I've got next year's horror chain figured out, but after that things get very fuzzy, I'm not sure if I can put the remaining pieces together for a decent chain in 2027, just a heads-up.

Holt McCallany carries over from "The Iron Claw". Only 1 week left in August after this, so the real horror films will be here before you know it. 

THE PLOT: A young man working at a small town junkyard discovers and befriends a creature which feeds on oil sought by a fracking company. 

AFTER: Yeah, this one was pretty painful to watch. It might have helped a bit if I were eight years old, but I'm not. Really it's a big riff on "E.T", only the Elliott analog is a little older and a budding car mechanic, the alien is from underground, not outer space, and instead of making bicycles fly, the creature makes a truck do all kind of impossible things. But really, it's the same stuff we've seen before, if you're going to copycat, you might as well start with a great movie and then change every element so nobody figures out where you stole the story from, except me. 

Ugh, I just can't figure out what purpose this movie serves, like who is the target audience, and in what way does it help for them to imagine that there are creatures living deep below the earth's surface who survive by drinking oil and gasoline? That makes no sense, because we drill down there to get oil, and if there were creatures down there drinking it, then it wouldn't even BE there. This also makes no sense from a scientific point of view, because oil and gas are NOT FOOD. I don't see how this animal could have a working biology because there's no animal that could process oil or gas and get nutrition from that. So this is just weird on top of weird. 

So I guess this is supposed to be a movie for kids, I mean, I guess kids like trucks and kids like weird creatures, so when you put those two things together this movie should be like a beer float is to adults. If you like beer and you like ice cream, then logically you should LOVE a beer float, right? Not so fast, because I love them and I tell people about them, but quite often it's a hard sell. Very few of my friends over the years have been willing to try beer floats, even though I know how to make them, some people are still reluctant. The reason is, they have to be done right, you can't just take ANY beer and ANY ice cream and put them together in a (frosty) glass. Like the other night I combined a "Sexual Chocolate" imperial stout with some Vienna Mocha Chunk ice cream - now that's a mainly chocolate beer with notes of espresso, and a coffee ice cream with chunks of chocolate. Perfect pairing!  

In the same way, you can't just throw monsters and trucks into the same movie and call it "Monster Trucks", because I guarantee, nobody really thought this one through, they just did a focus group to find out what kids like and tossed those elements together into one story. Like, let's have a teenager character but NEVER show him going to school, because kids want to be cool teens but also they hate school. Kids want to (apparently) find a unique monster creature of their own and then become friends with it, I mean, who doesn't want a loyal pet? BUT they don't want to walk it or feed it or do any work to take care of it, so OK, there's none of that in our little story. Kids love trucks, even though they're too young to drive, they probably fantasize about the day that they CAN drive a truck, but again, they don't want to do the work like filling it up with gas, checking the oil, rotating the tires when necessary, so let's just have all the good parts of truck ownership on the screen. Yeah, this all sounds like a winning formula, too bad that things just didn't add up. 

I mean, COME ON, what are the odds that this creature would perfectly fit under a truck frame so that he can see out through the front grill but can't be seen by humans looking directly at the truck, that he would have tentacles that are PERFECT for spinning the axles, and that somehow pulling UP on the steering wheel (which, umm, is not really a driving thing) would make that monster jump straight up in the air with the truck on him, totally defying the laws of physics but enabling the truck to hop over any barrier that gets in its way?  Really, the chances against all of this are quite astronomical, hate to be a buzzkill but that's what I do. 

The bad guys are frackers (of course) who set out to disrupt the natural order of things, ignored the warning signs of underground life (to be fair, it is quite impossible that far down) and then decided to capture two of the three animals that came up through their drilling pile (honestly the creatures are way too big to fit through the long drilling hole, I can't be the only person who noticed this) and then send a group of mercenaries out to hunt down the third. 

Tripp, that teen mechanic, is lucky enough to find the missing creature and along with his classmate and future love interest Meredith, retrofits his truck so that it can be monster-powered and do all of these amazing things. Or, looked at another way, he enslaves the creature and makes it drive him around so he doesn't have to pay for gas. Yeah, it's not so much fun when looked at from that angle, is it? But he still has to find oil or gas to feed the monster, who he names "Creech" - so that's a zero sum advantage, why not just have a normal truck like everybody else and just leave this creature alone? 

When they find out that the evil Terravex corporation has captured the other two creatures, and those creatures are Creech's parents, Tripp and Meredith team up with the lead scientist who's become attached to these creatures, and they work together to find two more trucks so that all three of them can drive around in the new monster/truck combo, really that's the only way they're going to win this crazy thing, by harnessing the combined power of monsters and trucks. IT'S RIGHT THERE in the title. 

Really, what a complete waste of my time, and I wish I could get all 105 minutes I spent on watching this back. Now I'm really glad I didn't save an October slot for this, because it is a horror movie, sort of. Maybe calling it a disaster would be more appropriate. 

Directed by Chris Wedge (director of "Epic" and producer of "Spies in Disguise")

Also starring Lucas Till (last seen in "Stoker"), Jane Levy (last seen in "I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore"), Thomas Lennon (last seen in "Unfrosted"), Barry Pepper (last heard in "Creed III"), Rob Lowe (last seen in "Brats"), Danny Glover (last seen in "Places in the Heart"), Amy Ryan (last seen in "Beau Is Afraid"), Frank Whaley (last seen in "A Midnight Clear"), Aliyah O'Brien (last seen in "Crash Pad"), Daniel Bacon (last seen in "The Edge of Seventeen"), Jedidiah Goodacre (last seen in "Tomorrowland"), Samara Weaving (last seen in "Ready or Not"), Stacey Scowley (last seen in "Eagle Eye"), Tucker Albrizzi (last seen in "Sicko"), Chris Gauthier (last seen in "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed"), Scott Patey (last seen in "The Show"), Ryan Cowie (last seen in "The Mother"), Adrian Formosa, Philip Granger (last seen in "Tucker and Dale vs Evil"), Alex Kliner (last seen in "Deadpool 2"), Pat Waldron, Peter New (last seen in "American Dreamer"), Devielle Johnson, Jordana Largy (last seen in "Come and Find Me"), Ian Carter, Candice Zhao

RATING: 3 out of 10 crushed oil barrels