Alien Nation

Damn I have a soft spot for this movie. It stars James Caan, Mandy Patikan and Terrance Stamp it is part buddy cop flick, part Neo Noir LA cop story in a sci-fi wrapper. It is about an slave ship full of 100s of thousands of genetically enhanced alien slaves that crashed landed outside of LA. The filming style and film stock used is totally 90s TV and the production values of the movie are utter shit. The three leads are spectacular as they always are.

It wasn’t a huge financial success but has spawn a TV show, books and many TV movies.

I liked it. Not as good as the last one.

Currently watching:

The Furious - it was excellent.

Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender - it was outstanding

Spider-Man: Brand New Day 3/5 - After the last movie brought in all of the people associated with Spider-Man I knew this was going to have to tone everything down and it did. It's a good Spider-Man movie with an interesting villain, better than most of the MCU stuff right now

Ice Cream Man (2026) 1.5/5 - It's in the splatter horror genre like Terrifier which I've found to be disappointing in general. Usually there's an emphasis on over the top gore but it often comes around to being cartoonish because it's so unrealistic and that's the case here. Add in AI scenes, child sexualization, and vague racism and there's not much redeemable here

The Hobbit (1977) 2.5/5 - Watched this in honor of the new magic set. It's goofy as hell, but has a lot of hand drawn charm. It's been a long time since I read The Hobbit but if you told me all the songs in the movie were from the book I'd believe it. The Gollum scene drags on for far too long, but overall I appreciate it as being pretty faithful, if not abridged

Heat 4/5 - My first time seeing this and it was pretty good. I think an hour of build-up and character building is on the long side for what the movie needed, and the heist itself was a little simplistic for my tastes. Overall still very well executed

SOULM8TE 2.5/5 - If you're going to rip off movies like Companion and Ex Machina you gotta do something to differentiate yourself, and the opportunity was right there considering this is (supposedly) in the M3GAN universe. They don't really bother taking advantage of the crossover and while there are some interesting kills and funny moments, overall they don't really capitalize on the premise

The Dink 4/5 - What if we made Challengers palatable for Republicans? I jest, it's funny, pretty self aware, and manages just enough swerves to keep you engaged. I appreciated that the main character was a fucking moron and that they never redeem that. He is just so dumb. Also John McEnroe is fucking hilarious in every movie he's in

Watched Ivanhoe (1952) on Monday. It was a pretty good movie. The acting was great. The choreography fell a bit flat for me but other than that it was still good.