S-T

One other thing: By the way, where is John's wife, Jillsaw?

Saw 10 - As a stand-alone film, it is bad. As a sequel/prequel, it is even worse, as well as incomprehensible. This must take place between Saw 1 and Saw 2. It could potentially take place between Saw 2 and 3, but is most likely is the former. The movie is not clear when it happens. But as I said when I addressed the trailer, both Jigsaw and Amanda look 20 years older than they should be for the timeline of this movie, because Tobin Bell and Shawnee Smith are twenty years older than they were when the first movies were made. Same with Hoffman, who shows up in a mid-credits scene. If you made a movie with me in 2004, I would not look the same either. I have a bald spot that I didn't have then, my hairline is farther back, and I have a lot more gray than I did when I was 31. People age. They made no effort to hide that at all. And again. Is this the treatment that would have saved him in Saw VI? If not, why choose this shady operation (which looks straight out of InfoWars) instead of the option from 6? Is Jigsaw a big fan of Alex Jones? Is Jigsaw afraid that Big Pharma is conspiring to kill him? Something else I considered: Jigsaw is an American serial killer. He goes to Mexico and kills people. Seems like the Mexican government would want a piece of him. Now to spoilers. A bunch of people applauded at the end. I hope @James D. and @Missy review this one.

I wrote a 1670 word review of Jigsaw when it came out in 2017. Bad as the movie was, it was a great theater experience with a full theater of people laughing at it. Even the trailer for Saw X is filled with plot holes.

M3GAN - Not sure what I was expecting, but this was way better than I anticipated. Very close to the 2019 Child's Play remake in plot, but this is a better movie.

The trailer for Saw X is up. @Missy posted about it on Twitter. Oh dear. Where do I start? It's not a sequel. It's another prequel. All indications are that this takes place before Saw 1, and presumably before Jigsaw (Saw 8). Obvious problem, before we even get into plot holes: Tobin Bell is clearly 19 years older than he was when the first movie came out in 2004. At least in Star Wars: Rouge One, they de-aged Carrie Fisher with CGI back to what she looked like 39 years earlier. The CGI was not very good, but at least they tried. There's no effort to de-age Tobin Bell whatsoever. Now, on to the premise: Jigsaw goes to Mexico to get treatment for his cancer, and it turns out they charged him for the treatment without actually removing the tumor. So naturally he puts all of them in deathtraps. So where is Dr. Gordon in all of this? Does he appear at all? This directly contradicts Saw 1, where the cancer was inoperable from the beginning. This also directly contradicts Jigsaw (Saw 8) where it is revealed that Kramer could have gotten treatment much earlier, but Logan mixed up the x-rays. Logan's mistake caused the cancer to grow undetected, and by the time the error is discovered it is too late for treatment. Kramer retaliated by putting Logan in a deathtrap, and Logan was so grateful for being put into a deathtrap that he became the very first member of the Jigsaw Cult - before even Amanda or Hoffman or Dr. Gordon. Will Logan appear at all? Will this plot hole be addressed, or will it be ignored? What about the treatment that Kramer was seeking in flashbacks in Saw 6? The experimental treatment in Europe that could have cured him? This is the treatment the evil insurance company denied, and Jigsaw said he could afford the treatment without their approval, because he was loaded. Is that going to be addressed at all? Are we retconning that movie out of existence? They are not even trying to keep continuity straight anymore. Best line of the trailer: "This is not retribution. It's a reawakening." It's not retribution. Sure. You just want to make them appreciate their lives. Right. Whatever. If this is a reboot, fine. The plot holes don't really matter in that case. Since they are calling it "Saw X" and keeping Tobin Bell, it does not appear to be a reboot. Think about this for a minute: I just wrote over 370 words on how the trailer makes no sense and directly contradicts eight previous movies. If the trailer is that bad, imagine how bad the movie is going to be.

Becky - Kevin James shows his range and is believable as an intimidating villain. I wasn't sure Paul Blart: Mall Cop would be believable in that role, but I was wrong. It is a little strange how a 13 year old girl becomes Rambo at the flip of a switch. Maybe there was a line of dialogue that said she had survivalist training, but if there was I missed it.

I'm putting the whole thing in a spoiler tag. I don't think my post spoils anything but better safe than sorry.

Oh, this is for @Missy, given what the Earth-2 boss thinks of Skittles. DC really went over the top with product placement.

Shazam: Fury of The Gods - A lot of fun. Worth watching. Michael Gray, who played Billy Batson in the 1970's TV show, has a cameo. That's awesome. I recognized him as soon as he appeared on screen, even though I was a kid when I last saw that show. The number of people who would recognize him is pretty small, but it was a great addition for those of us old enough to remember it.

Jennifer Garner will be back as Elektra: https://www.ign.com/articles/jennifer-garner-will-reportedly-return-as-elektra-in-deadpool-3

The communicators in Star Trek 2009 drove me nuts. My flip phone did more than they did, and smartphones had just started then. So Hercules.

I thought Teri Hatcher was perfect, and IIRC the comics even started drawing Lois to look like her.

The Flash: I have seen a bunch of people talking trash about this one, but it was actually fun to watch. I think some of it comes from people hating on the DCEU generally and some of it probably comes from dislike of Ezra Miller personally. The CGI was bad. It looked really fake and unfinished. They had two and a half hours for this movie, so they could have cut the parts with the bad CGI out and would not have lost anything. But even with the bad CGI, this is worth watching. Maybe not worth spending $20 to see in the theater, but at least worth renting to watch at home. I groaned when I saw it was two and a half hours long, but it did not feel nearly that long. One plus over Black Widow: They actually cast actors who are old enough to be Miller's mom and dad, respectively. The actors who played Black Widow's adoptive parents were 14 and 9 when Scarlett Johansson was born.

Black Widow: So does Black Widow have super powers in the MCU? Because the amount of punishment Natasha Romanoff is taking in this movie is insane. She was taking ridiculous hard hits and falls. There's no way a human being without superpowers takes that kind of punishment and is not seriously injured or dead. If Brock Lesnar can't walk it off, your human hero can't either. I have problems with male characters taking ridiculous punishment and no-selling it too. I've complained about the various killers in Scream not showing physical signs of the abuse they take, and the no-selling of the severe hand injury in The Crazies drove me... well... crazy!

Obvious solution:

I made it through most of Season 9 of The Walking Dead before losing interest. I didn't actively dislike it, I just wasn't motivated to keep going. Now my Netflix plan doesn't carry it. Oh well. But I got to see Michonne's katana at the Smithsonian Museum of American History when I was in Washington D.C. last week. I marked out.

I have seen nothing but negative press on The Flash. I am looking forward to seeing it anyway. A college friend said he saw it and loved it.

Happy Birthday!

Logan, thanks to stupid retcons, was part of the Jigsaw Cult before Saw 1. A large part of the the events of Saw 8 take place before Saw 1.

This is what they show on Google. I have no idea how they move forward with two dead main characters. Hoffman was never confirmed as dead.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/saw-x-release-date-returning-cast-and-everything-to-know-about-jigsaws-return/1100-6511826/ This franchise will never end.

Transformers: The Last Knight - This is not the worst Transformers movie, by far, but it is 18,000 dinglehoffers more incomprehensible than the others. I asked this before, but why do they bleed? They are robots. Grimlock actually vomits at one point. It's a robot. Why would a robot puke? Bumblebee can disassemble and reassemble himself at will. Fireball! Why is the John Goodman robot fat? And why is he smoking a cigar? Why does he have a beard? No one mentioned Merlin and his staff in TWELVE HOURS of movies before this? No one mentioned that Earth was actually Unicron in TWELVE HOURS of movies before this? There are baby Dinobots? How are there baby Dinobots? Do Transformers reproduce sexually? After Megatron has tried to destroy the human race multiple times they are now trusting him and working with him. I literally burst out laughing when that alliance was announced. The humans are working with the Decepticons to hunt the Autobots. Of course, Megatron turns on the humans the first chance he gets. The human characters get dumber with every movie. Not even Sam Witwicky was this stupid. And "was" is the operative word. This movie confirms that Anthony Hopkins is the last surviving Witwicky. They even show a photo of Shia LaBeouf as Sam. Sadly, we don't get to see him die, as he died offscreen. He is probably in Robot Heaven. I was really hoping when the knights came back to life at the very end that they would break into a song and dance routine singing the "knights of the round table" song from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. If that happened I would give this movie a quarter of a star! They cannot stand for Megatron to be the top bad guy, can they? They have to make him a henchman of the primary bad guy. It was bad, but the others are worse. Not exactly a high bar.

I thought the same thing when I re-watched it three years ago. They want to have it both ways. No, D-Fens is a villain. You can't redeem him by having him kill a gay-bashing neo-Nazi. Especially given how he treats his family. I was in high school when this came out, and my co-workers at the supermarket joked that D-Fens reminded them of me because I also had a flat top and glasses. I can't do the flat top these days, as it would look silly with the bald spot and receding hairline.

The Call - Tobin Bell is in this movie, and he utters the line "I want to play a game." I say this for your benefit @Missy. It isn't a Saw ripoff, though. It was... OK. Justice League X RWBY: I didn't like it. I really don't like the anime art style. Personal preference.

Did they ever explain why Counselor Troi was allowed to wear low-cut tops, when all of the other women had to wear the uniform? Other than the male gaze, which is not an in-continuity explanation.