Adventure Time (S01E12)

Episode #012
'Evicted!'
Season 1, Episode 12

Jake tells Finn a scary story involving vampires, which leads to Finn being terrorized by his own imagination. That is, until it's revealed that it's actually Marceline, the vampire queen. She claims their tree house as her own and moves in, kicking Finn and Jake out. They go house-hunting, which only leads to her following them and taking over the new place they find as well.

Adventure Time (S01E11)

Episode #011
'Wizard'
Season 1, Episode 11

Finn and Jake happen across a grim reaper-like figure who transports them to a wizard temple where he can learn magic powers for free. As they slowly learn more and more magic, Finn becomes obsessed and can't stop wanting to learn more. But what happens when they finally get to the last level of wizardry?

Adventure Time (S01E10)

Episode #010
'Memories Of Boom Boom Mountain'
Season 1, Episode 10

As Finn and Jake rough-house with the locals in a nearby barbarian village, Finn notices a mountain that's crying. The mountain is upset because it's spent centuries watching people fighting , so Finn takes it upon himself to find an answer for this problem by introducing new hobbies for the barbarians. But with every solution he comes to, there are side-effects that upset someone else.

Adventure Time (S01E09)

Episode #009
'My Two Favorite People'
Season 1, Episode 9

Jake discovers that time he spends with Finn takes away from time he can spend with his girlfriend, Lady Rainicorn, and time he spends with Lady takes away from time he could be adventuring with Finn. So he decides to try to make Finn and Lady become friends: a plan which backfires as Finn and Lady get along a little too well, as they spend all their time with each other, causing Jake to feel threatened by this budding friendship.

Top 15 Movies of 2016

15?? But last year, last year it was 50!!

I normally would make a top 25 (yeah, the top 50 was a huge mistake), and although the pool of movies to choose from are as good as they were last year and even better than the year before, I just don't feel the need to make a top 25 this time around. I want the entries on this list to feel a little more substantial. I might make a companion piece later, or just wait until I do some massive retrospectives (I have top 50s in the chamber whenever I feel like covering every year since I started writing reviews). Either way, I have decided to downsize my list.

As much as everyone likes complaining about 2016, I had a pretty good year. The popular music was pretty bad, there were a lot of celebritiy deaths (most of which were relative non-factors if you ask me), but the movies were solid and personal events in my life were pretty great. So whatever, people just love being overly dramatic. Anyway here is my list and I hope you all can find at least something on here new to watch and/or appreciate.

#15
Swiss Army Man
Directed by Daniel Scheinert & Daniel Kwon

Adventure Time (S01E08)

Episode #008
'Business Time'
Season 1, Episode 8

When Finn and Jake are on the beach melting giant ice chunks filled with scraps to build a "gauntlet dock", frozen businessmen are washed up on the shore. Jake hires them to help finish building the dock, and then allow them to come back home with them to work full-time on their adventures. This results in Finn and Jake becoming too lazy to want to do anything on their own, as the businessmen wind up essentially taking over.

Top 10 Male performances of 2016

Much like with my female performances list, I'm not going to waste much time with the introduction. To quote Homestar: "I'm not very good at speeches..."

#10

Adam Driver - Paterson

Top 10 Female performances of 2016

I really don't feel like doing too much writing on this post, so I'm going to basically not include much as far as descriptions and reasoning this time around. Call it laziness. Because it is laziness.

#10
Gillian Jacobs - Don't Think Twice

Top 10 UGH Movies of 2016

For the past several years, I've been counting down the most disappointing, overrated, annoying, or otherwise upsetting movies I've seen in a given year. Since I don't often purposely watch movies I know I'll hate, instead of counting down the actual "worst" movies, I'll just be covering the ones that make me let out a painful "UGH" when I watch or think about them.

So again, these are just the movies I personally hated for whatever reasons. Some of these are seen as good movies, others not so much; but they all have their fans and I couldn't disagree with those people more. Let's do it, my top 10 UGH Movies of 2016.

#10
The Light Between Oceans
Directed by Derek Cianfrance

Adventure Time (S01E07)

Episode #007
'Ricardio The Heart Guy'
Season 1, Episode 7

Finn and Jake save Princess Bubblegum (yet again), and at the party she throws later on when they get back to the Candy Kingdom we are all introduced to Ricardio, someone no one has seen yet. He's intelligent, smooth, and due to Finn's jealousy over the attention given to him by Princess Bubblegum, something about him just seems evil. Finn sets out to prove that he's a villain.

2016 in film (Part XI)

Again, I have too much other stuff I'd rathere do than write about movies I'm going to be writing about again in like a week, so here we go: the 101st through 110th movies I saw from 2016. Eh, let's throw a sentence in for each movie. Why not?

10. American Honey

Adventure Time (S01E06)

Episode #006
'The Jiggler'
Season 1, Episode 6

On their way back from an adventure involving saving a seemingly-inanimate watermelon, Finn and Jake come across a small dancing and whistling creature that they decide to take home with them. What they don't realize is that this "jiggler" needs to be taken care of in ways they could not foresee, and once the little guy starts to get sick they have no idea what to do to make it feel better.

Frankenstein (1931) - Universal Frankenstein series #1

Though not as organized and comprehensive as my Hammer Frankenstein post, this will be the first part in my small series of reviews covering the Universal horror movies. The small-scale plans are just to cover the shared universe (the Frankenstein, Wolf Man, and Dracula crossovers), but eventually I hope to tackled The Mummy movies, and some other treats of the era. So let's get started talking a little about the first Frankenstein from 1931, which is quite possibly the most important and influential horror movie in pop culture history.

Let's get the main points out of the way: I love Frankenstein. Boris Karloff is one of my favorite actors (though I never seem to remember to give him the credit that he deserves, because I'm an idiot), and this is the movie/performance that put him on the map. James Whale only ever directed 4 horror movies, which are all among the most important in the genre. In my eyes he's one of the top 2 or 3 greatest horror directors who ever lived. This is an incredible movie that has been covered thousands upon thousands of times, and if you don't know that you need to watch it by now, you're probably never going to realize this. So I'm just going to talk about how this movie shaped a pop culture icon, and leave some of the other bits to everyone else. The point is this: watch it.

Adventure Time (S01E05)

Episode #005
'The Enchiridion'
Season 1, Episode 5

After saving Princess Bubblegum from a nasty fall, Finn is given the secret of a book for heroes called The Enchiridion. The path to finding this book is riddled with trials and tricks, as Finn finds himself having issues with not being able to save everyone and questioning his heroics.

Adventure Time (S01E04)

Episode #004
'Tree Trunks'
Season 1, Episode 4

When visiting their friend Tree Trunks (a tiny elephant who baked pies), they offer to take her into the dark woods to pick a special apple to make into the ultimate pie. This proves to be quite difficult, as she may or may not be slightly senile and incapable of handling danger and adventure in the way Finn and Jake have become accustomed.

Adventure Time (S01E03)

Episode #003
'Prisoners Of Love'
Season 1, Episode 3

Finn and Jake mistakenly trespass on the Ice King's land, who in a rage knocks them out, kidnaps them, and takes them to his lair. It is there we find out he has kidnapped a few princesses to try and decide which one he will force into marrying him, so Finn and Jake try to trick the Ice King and orchestrate an escape.

Adventure Time (S01E02)

Episode #002
'Trouble In Lumpy Space'
Season 1, Episode 2

Jake gets bitten by Lumpy Space Princess, which gives him a limited amount of time to be cured before becoming lumpy forever. So he and Finn have to go with LSP to her home planet (?) in order to find the antidote. But LSP and her drama prolong the experience, as Jake slowly transforms due to the lumps.

I did it again

I overshot my target, people. I always make these glorious plans and am never able to follow through with them. In one of my previous posts, I described my next few months' plan for this blog, talking outlining my intention to write about the Universal monster movies of the '30s and '40s. It's now the midway point in January and I have done no such thing. I started to write one, but I got about this far - "Frankenstein" - before I drew a blank. Honestly, what could I possibly add to the discussion on the subject of the James Whale Frankenstein movies? What a fool I was! And still am.

But I do intend on watching and writing about blaxploitation this February, so hopefully I don't wind up being a major disappointment next month as well. I'll name a few of the movies I know I need to watch for that time, and probably write 200 words on each of them. One or two of the titles in particular is a bit...dodgy. But I'm not censoring myself, so fuck it. Here's a rough list:

Rogue One: A STAR WARS STARWARS

Star Wars Star Wars Star Wars Star Wars STAR WARS. Everyone loves Star Wars, because Star Wars is Star Wars. And I hope you nerds out there are happy, because we're gonna be seeing new Star Wars movies every single year until we're all dead. Ask 14-year-old me if that sounds appealing, and I would say absolutely. But 14-year-old me was basically retarded -- I used to love Jurassic Park 3, for example. So now that Disney owns Star Wars they're gonna milk it as much as they can, and while I enjoyed The Force Awakens (simultaneously admitting it's many flaws), this movie feels like the first example of the new age of Star Wars. The dead, lifeless, made-by-a-committee age. This wasn't a real Star Wars movie, it was a glorified fan film.