Into the Foxy Saint

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Over the weekend, we also caught a few movies. Saturday, I watched “Foxcatcher” starring Steve Carell, Channing Tatum & Mark Ruffalo while Izzy was at work… as I heard it was a pretty dark movie & she tends to not like those movies… but I was intrigued. This movie is based on the true story of a young Olympic wrestler (Tatum) who is recruited by bazillionairre & wrestling enthusiast Jon DuPont (Carell) around the 1988 Olympic games. Well, the young wrestler is invited to come out to his palatial estate in Valley Forge, live there & train there… and within a short time, the young man wins a gold medal. U-S-A!!! U-S-A!!! Well… Mr. DuPont then wants his legendary older brother to come out to the wrestling compound and be a teacher for the other guys… and the younger brother kind of resents that… and I think it all kind of climaxes towards the end when their respective mental illnesses kind of get the better of them… but I’ll leave that for you. The movie was pretty good… gritty, but good. I would highly recommend checking it out if you’re okay with a little slower paced movie & underplayed performances. I was also intrigued how hard that Tatum & Ruffalo trained for this movie… and reading about it… and it really shows on film too. Pretty good flick! I can see why it was nominated for Best Picture last year.

 

Saturday night after Izzy came back from work, we watched the 2003 horror clash-up classic “Freddy vs. Jason” starring… well, Robert Englund as Freddy Kreuger… and a behemoth of a man as Jason Voorhees… and a bunch of young cute things to get killed in horrible, gruesome ways. You’ve seen the slasher movie mold before, right? In this episode, it’s been a few years since Freddy Krueger has been able to terrorize the children of Elm Street in their dreams thanks to his diminishing powers & pharmaceuticals or something… so he devises another plan… to unleash the Crystal Lake mass murderer Jason on the local teenagers… and apparently with each death, Freddy gains strength so that he can terrorize… and then, it turns out that Jason may be killing too many people for Freddy’s liking and he’s losing victims… so now they have to battle each other for mass murderer supremacy. Sounds like a good premise, right? Totally… again, throw in the cute young things (and Kelly Rowlands) and same cameos from past entries in the various franchises… and you have a movie. That being said… you don’t grade the slasher movie for the plot… you grade it for the kills… and whether it was enjoyable on a horrible basic level… and this movie delivers. The kills are… ridiculous… but in a director Ronny Yu (“Formula 51”, “Fearless”, “Bride of Chucky”) kind of way that’s perfect… and this horror movie is actually pretty well lit too so that you can see the new-famous protagonists in all their glory. The one-liners are all over from Freddy… and the final battle between the two is pretty legendary. If you’re a fan of the franchises (and haven’t seen this movie for some reason) then check it out! It’s no Alien vs. Predator or Kramer vs. Kramer, but still pretty good…

 

Sunday night, we watched a movie that we’d been excited about for some time. About 18 months ago, we watched the 1977 movie “Grizzly” which was basically Jaws with a Bear… and learned that they were already well on their way to making a reboot called “Into The Grizzly Maze” starring James Marsden, Thomas Jane, Billy Bob Thornton & Piper Perabo. However… we got really worried a few months later when we hadn’t heard anything about it… and apparently it was released… but nobody had seen it… like anywhere. Well… the story is about a pair of brothers, one who’s the Pacific Northwestern town sheriff (Jane) and the other who’s been out & about the world… but has fallen on hard times and came back (Marsden). There are lots of poachers in the area… and some deaths by bear… so now they “team up” with a local bear hunting legend (Thornton), the sheriff’s deaf wife (Perabo) and an inexplicably well made-up lady cop to go on a two-day hike & get some answers. Spoiler alert: There’s a giant f**king grizzly involved!!! Now, the movie is not horrible. It’s not fantastic, but it’s definitely watchable. The effects are a little stilted at times as it’s a pretty low budget & they were working with a real bear (Bart the Bear of “Semi Pro” fame & many others) but there were also a lot of slow spots that caught me dozing off a little bit… until super loud bear rippings took place. Basically I can see how it didn’t get any play anywhere… but it’s not bad for a straight-to-DVD B-movie and you can get it through Netflix. So yeah… check it out if you’d like. You know the type of movie.

 

The new episode of the podcast will be coming up soon… and we may soon be working out a way to get it out on a particular day of the week… but for now, it’s kind of fluctuating midweek with our schedules… but we’re trying to keep it consistent for everybody. This next edition, we decided to take the movie that received absolutely ZERO votes in our Facebook & Twitter survey last week… but damn it, we’ve just gotta do it while it’s streaming on Netflix! Of course I’m talking about the spy thriller “The Saint” starring Val Kilmer & the lovely Elisabeth Shue. Izzy & I haven’t seen this movie in many years… so we’re just really curious if it holds up. Check it out beforehand& join us in the discussion on Facebook and/or Twitter… and get a free shout-out on the podcast. Until next time, have a great day everybody!!!