Stacy's Blog Has Got It Going On

Whoever came up with this movie certainly isn't well.  Demented and sick most likely. A Cure For Wellness follows the story of young financial executive, Lockhart (Dane DeHaan), who is sent to the Swiss Alps by his boss.  The CEO of the company has gone of vacation to a wellness center up in the mountains and he's decided not to come back.  Lockhart's mission is bring the CEO back.  Lockhart finds the employees of the center unhelpful in his quest, and soon after his arrival he gets into a bad car accident.  With a broken leg, Lockhart is now stuck in the strange wellness center, run by the mysterious Dr. Heinrich Volmer (Jason Isaacs), who prevents him from seeing the CEO.  Strange incidents begin to happen around Lockhart and it's becoming harder and harder for him to tell if he's losing his mind or if something sinister is happening at the wellness center. What Works: This movie is absolutely beautiful.  The cinematography is amazing, the ...

Hey, Fix-It Felix, can you fix this movie?  Hit Sarah Silverman's character with your hammer.  That'll do it. The hero of Wreck-It Ralph is the villain of the arcade game, Fix-It Felix.  Ralph (John C. Reilly) is tired of being treated like a bad guy all the time.  Every game, Ralph is unceremoniously thrown off of  a building, while the hero, Felix (Jack McBrayer) gets parties and metals.  After not being invited to the games 30th anniversary party, Ralph makes a deal with one of the characters Felix always saves, if Ralph can get a medal somehow, they will let him into the penthouse of the building.  Ralph sneaks into new first-person-shooter arcade, Hero's Duty, and manages to get a medal.  During his escape, Ralph lands in kart-racing game, Sugar Rush, where Vanellope Von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman), a glitch in the game, steals his medal, so she can enter the race to try and become a playable character.  Ralph and Vanellope are force...

Or as it should really be called, "Cliché: The Movie". The Open House follows high schooler, Logan Wallace (Dylan Minnette).  After his father is killed in a car accident, Logan and his mother, Naomi (Piercey Dalton), leave their home to stay in Naomi's sister's mountain vacation home, so they can get back on their feet.  The house is up for sale, so every so often Logan and Naomi have to leave the house so the realtor can host an open house.  Strange things begin to happen, objects move around the house, the hot water goes out frequently, they receive weird phone calls.  Is it one of the strange townsfolk messing with them, or is there somebody inside their house? What Works: I'll be honest, very little of this movie works, but I have two positives.  One: the acting is good.  Everyone does a fine job with the material they are given.  The standout is Dylan Minnette, who gives a great performance as the grieving and frustrated Logan. The on...

I am a big fan of the first Maze Runner  film.  The second film, The Scorch Trials,  was horribly disappointing.  If you're hesitant about seeing The Death Cure , I can understand that, but don't worry, it's worth your time.  I will be getting into some spoilers below, so if you were a fan of the first movie, go see The Death Cure, then come back and finish reading this. Maze Runner: The Death Cure  picks up a few months after the second film.  After his friend, Minho (Ki Hong Lee), is captured by WCKD, Thomas (Dylan O'Brien) and his friends set off to WCKD's headquarters to rescue him.  When they reach the Last City on Earth, they make allies, both old and new, in an attempt to rescue Minho from WCKD's heavily fortified facility.  The head's of WCKD are using Minho and several others in experiments to find a cure for the Flare Virus that has ravaged the planet, and they will stop at nothing to find a cure, no matter who they hurt or k...

“You don’t get to be the supermarket king of Minnesota without making a few enemies, all right?” -Stavros Milos The second episode of Fargo begins with a pair of hitmen from the Fargo syndicate arriving in Bemidji.  Wes Wrench (Russell Harvard), who is deaf, and Grady Numbers (Adam Goldberg) his interpreter.  Numbers and Wrench are there to investigate Sam Hess' murder from the previous episode.  The manage to track down a man who likes quite a bit like Hess' killer, Lenny Potts (Paul Braunstein), a regular at the strip club.  But they learn Lenny is not the actual killer.  And in the best scene of the episode, they whack Lenny in the most Minnesotan-mobster way imaginable.  They take Lenny out onto a frozen lake, handcuff him, drill a hole in the ice, and drop him in.  Now that's how you murder someone! Meanwhile, Sam Hess' actual murderer, Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton), starts his next assignment in Duluth.  After an excell...

I love the original Tremors.  It's one of my absolute favorite movies, and one of the rare films that I consider to be perfect.  I can watch it any time, and have seen dozens to times.  But did you know there are 4 sequels to Tremors?  While they have no chance of matching the original, are they worth watching?  I'll let you know.  This piece will explore the second Tremors film: Aftershocks. The graboids, massive worms that hunt by sound and have a taste for people, start attacking an oil field in rural Mexico.  One of the heroes of the first movie, Earl Basset (Fred Ward), is depressed that he didn't capitalize more on the opportunity and the fame he received after the events of the first film. He is approached by one of the executives of the oil field, who wants to hire him to kill the graboids.  Reluctantly, Earl agrees.  He teams up with his old pal, Bert, (Michael Gross), a paranoid gun nut, as well as fanboy, Grady (Christopher Ga...

With the third film in The Maze Runner saga finally coming out this week, now is as good a time as any to go back and look at the first film in the series.  Now, when I first saw this movie, I knew nothing about.  I hadn't read the book.  I hadn't seen the trailer.  I got dragged to the movie by a few friends.  I didn't even feel like seeing a movie, but I was pleasantly surprised. The Maze Runner follows a teenage boy named Thomas (Dylan O'Brien), who wakes up in a rising elevator, with no memory of who he is.  The elevator takes him to a small wooded area, surrounded by massive walls, with one exit.  There are several dozen other boys living in the area, led by Alby (Aml Ameen).  Alby and the others have been surviving in "the Glade" for over three years.  Once a month, a new boy is delivered to the group.  The only exit leads to a massive maze that changes every night and has monsters living in it.  Thomas joins the others i...

I love horror movies, specifically survival-horror movies.  In fact, my favorite kind of movie is where a group of people are trapped in an isolated or confined location, with some sort of horrific threat trying to kill them.  I really enjoy watching the characters try and solve the problem and succeed or fail in their attempts to survive and/or escape.  So, when I hear about a zombie-movie that takes place on a bullet train, I am all aboard. Train to Busan follows Seok-woo (Gong Yoo), a divorced, workaholic, fund manager.  His relationship with his young daughter, Su-an (Kim Su-an), is strained because of Seok-woo's busy schedule.  For her birthday, Su-an wants to visit her mother, who lives in the city of Busan, Seok-woo reluctantly agrees to take the morning off of work and take her there.  They board a bullet train, just as a zombie infection begins to break out all around South Korea.  Unfortunately, one of the passengers is infected and quic...

Spoiler Alert: With the movie out of the way, we can start the first episode of the TV show.  And boy, does it have a strong start.  How strong?  Let's find out. The Crocodile's Dilemma introduces us to peculiar hitman, Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton), who gets into a car accident near Bemidji, Minnesota, when a deer runs out in front of his car.  This allows  the man locked in the truck of Lorne's car, Phil McCormick (Dave Trimble) to escape.  Wearing nothing but his underwear, Phil takes off into the frozen wilderness. The next day, we meet Lester Nygaard (Martin Freeman), an insurance salesman.  Lester is a very timid man and a total pushover.  His wife, Pearl (Kelly Holden Bashar), doesn't even think of his as a man, and his younger and more successful brother, Chazz (Joshua Close), doesn't respect him.  Lester has a frustrating day, where he loses a sale, and runs into his high school bully, Sam Hess (Kevin O'Grady).  Sam ...

Well, now that I've seen The Suicide Squad , I suppose it's time to update my rankings of the DC Cinematic Universe.  It really is insane how bad some of those movies are.  I think it's much more obvious which films will be at the top of this list, so we'll start there and work our way down. #1. Shazam! (2019) Shazam!  is a really fun movie with a lot of heart.  It also has a different tone and type of story to tell than most superhero movies.  I love the foster home setting and giving a 14-year-old kid superpowers is a stroke of genius.  #2: Aquaman (2018) This may come as a bit of a shock to some.  How could Aquaman beat  Wonder Woman?   I just loved how over-the-top and goofy Aquaman was.  It's a bonkers film with tons of pure insanity.  I love how the film looks.  It has amazing visual effects and cinematography.  This film is a massive schlock-fest, which is right up my alley and that puts it p...

I love horror movies and I spend way too much of my time watching them, even the bad ones.  One thing I like to is rank all of the films in a series from best to worst.  And since I just watched Leatherface, I figure now is as good a time as any to rank the Texas Chainsaw Massacre films.  Let's go from worst to best.  Here we go... #8: Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994) Let's get this piece of crap out of the way.  A group of teenagers get lost in the woods when their car breaks down on prom night.  They run into Leatherface and his family and get brutally murdered.  We've seen it before and we'll see it again, but hopefully not this poorly.  Let me start off with the main reason this movie sucks...NO ONE GETS KILLED BY A CHAINSAW AT ANY POINT DURING THIS STUPID F***ING MOVIE!!!  Seriously, not one chainsaw kill.  Why even make a movie if you're not going to have at least one chainsaw kill?  Ugh.  The ...

You know those DVD sets you can find at Wal-mart that have like 25 horror movie, or 10 action movies, and when you look at the back of the box, you haven't heard of any of them?  Well, I received one of those as a Christmas present, but it was 9 movies that had actors from the James Bond series in them before they were well known.  Well, today I'm going to look at one of those films, because why not?  So, this is my review of Legend of Sea Wolf, which features Bond Girl, Barbara Bach (The Spy Who Loved Me), in a supporting role. This is the poster from the Italian release, which is much cooler than the American version. See? Legend of Sea Wolf follows Humphrey Van Weyden (Giuseppe Pambieri), a rich author who hasn't worked manual labor a day in his life.  Humphrey is kidnapped and brought aboard the seal hunting vessel, the Ghost , captained by the brutal, sociopathic Wolf Larsen (Chuck Conners).  Humphrey is forced to sign on a sailor, or else sta...

When I started "Stacy's Blog Has Got It Going On" one thing that I really wanted to do was write flashback reviews of TV shows, where I go back and look at how well shows hold up on re-watch.  While trying to figure out which show to start with, I eventually settled on Fargo for a few reasons: A: It remind me of home (Minnesota shout-out!). B: I've been dying for an excuse to watch it again. C: My roommate owns the first two seasons on Blu-ray. So, this is the first part of my Fargo flashback review series.  But I can't just start with the TV show, I have to back to where all this madness started: the movie. Fargo, the movie, follows car salesman, Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy), who hires two cons (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife.  Jerry plans to have his wealthy father-in law pay the ransom and then split the money with the cons.  Things begin to spiral out of control when the job is bungled and several people end up dead. ...

If you had told me a month ago that I would be seeing Paddington 2 in theaters, I wouldn't have believed you.  I hadn't seen the first one, and I really didn't have any interest.  Last week, I found out that I was going to be working the premiere for Paddington 2.  I figured, on the off chance that I might be placed inside the theater and forced to watch the movie, I wanted to know what was going on, so I sat down and watched the first.  Of course, I didn't get to see Paddington 2 at the premiere, but I liked the first one a lot, and upon hearing that the sequel has a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, I figured I should check it out.  Was going through all this craziness worth it?  Let's find out... Paddington 2 picks up not long after the first film, with Paddington (Ben Whishaw aka Q from Skyfall and Spectre) having settled in to living in London and becoming an integral part of the community.  With his Aunt Lucy's (Imelda Staunton) 100th birthday appro...

2017 was a hell of a year for movies, and since I have way too much time I my hands, I saw almost sixty movies (Ugh...so...much...money).  There was plenty of fantastic movies this year, so many that 9 of my top 10 movies all received 10 stars out of 10!  So, what made my list?  Let's find out. 10: Colossal Colossal is a weird-ass movie, and I've never seen anything like it.  It's a monster-movie/drama about a woman (Anne Hathaway) who discovers she is connected to a series of attacks on Seoul, South Korea, by a colossal monster.  Hathaway is great in the role, but the real star of the show is her childhood friend (Jason Sudekis) who gives one of the best and most underrated performances of the year.  The pure originality combined with the excellent execution gives Colossal a spot in the Top 10. 9: IT IT is the scariest book I have ever read, and while this is not the scariest movie I have ever seen, it certainly does the book justice. ...