Stacy's Blog Has Got It Going On

"My name is Sayid Jarrah...and I am a torturer." -Sayid Jarrah The 14th episode of season 2 starts off with flashbacks to Sayid's (Naveen Andrews) time in the Gulf War.  He is captured by American troops, including Kate's father, Sam (Lindsey Ginter).  Since Sayid is fluent in English, they use him as a translator to interrogate his commanding officer, Tariq (Marc Casabani), on the location of a missing American pilot.  When Tariq refuses to talk, Sayid is shown a tape of Tariq conducting a chemical attack on a village, which killed some of Sayid's relatives.  Sayid tortures Tariq and gets the location of the pilot's body.  He is later released by the Americans and swears he will never torture anyone again. On the island, Danielle Rousseau (Mira Furlan) approaches Sayid and takes him into the jungle where she has captured a man (Michael Emerson) in a net.  She claims he is an Other.  Sayid takes the man, who calls himself Henry Gale, to ...

"We all stand between the jungle and the stars, at a crossroads." -Dr. Thomas Morgan After the events of the second movie, a team of scientists venture into the Everglades and quickly capture the Creature from the Black Lagoon.  One of their number, Dr. William Barton (Jeff Morrow), turns out to be a mad scientist and wants to change the Creature and use what he learns to change humankind.  Dr. Barton might be the true monster on their ship. What Works: The 3rd film in this series is actually my favorite just because of how bizarre it is.  The Creature changes to become more human.  That's a bonkers concept and I'm shocked they went with it.  It's very refreshing after the snooze-fest of the second film and I love that they did something radically different with this series. The first third of this movie is pretty much par for the course.  A group of people go on an expedition to capture the Creature.  We've seen this before, ...

"Have you ever heard of the Three Sisters?" -Sara After receiving strange messages from his sister, Mark Elliot (Leigh McCloskey) travels to her apartment in New York City only to discover she is missing.  As other tenets of the building start to disappear, Mark investigates and learns something supernatural and evil resides inside. What Works: Inferno is actually a sequel to the film Suspiria   Like Suspiria , this movie makes great use of color.  The visuals are very striking and are easily the best part of film.  I love that Dario Argento isn't subtle in his use of color.  It's refreshing. Inferno also has a really solid score.  It's nowhere near as amazing as Goblin's score from Suspiria , but it's still really good Finally, there are some cool and memorable kills.  This is a supernatural horror movie, we don't just get stabbings.  One person gets eaten by rats and another falls out of a building while on fire....

"Queen slayer!" -Tony Vlachos Survivor: Winners at War  continues to deliver with a solid merge episode.  I do think this should have been a ninety minute episode though.  The game reentry challenge took up a large chunk of time, so the rest of the episode felt a bit rushed.  That said, it was still a fun episode with some good and bad gameplay, which we'll take a closer look at. Who Played Well: Let's start with Adam.  He was a likely candidate to go home due to his actions premerge, but played it cool in this episode and got on the right side of the vote.  He also had an epic voting confessional that was both bad-ass and self-aware. Tyson managed to get back in the game from the Edge of Extinction.  He also got into a Threats Alliance along with Ben, Jeremy, and Tony, which could benefit all of them.  They were all on the right side of the vote as well. Denise managed to win Immunity when she was on the chopping bloc...

"There's a new sheriff in town, boys!  Y'all best get used to it." -Sawyer Season 2, Episode 13 of Lost kicks off with Jack (Matthew Fox) and Locke (Terry O'Quinn) locking up all of the guns in the armory.  They are the only two with the combination.  Locke informs Jack that Sawyer (Josh Holloway) has taken some medication and Jack raids Sawyer's tent to get it back, which angers Sawyer. Sun (Yunjin Kim) is attacked and knocked unconscious, which causes an uproar in the camp.  The groups suspects the Others are responsible, but Sawyer points out some logic gaps in that idea.  Kate (Evangeline Lilly) suspects Ana Lucia (Michelle Rodriguez) is behind the attack to get her hands on the guns and to scare people into joining her army.  Jack and Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) prepare to get guns out of the armory only to find Sawyer has beaten them to the hatch and tipped off Locke, who has hidden the guns. Jack confronts Locke in front of the camp, but ...

"I hope you ain't going to blow up my boat, Mr. Johnson.  Like my wife, she's not much, but she's all I have." -Lucas A year after the previous film, a science expedition returns to the Black Lagoon and manages to capture the creature.  They transport it to Florida for further study.  The creature quickly becomes obsessed with one of the scientists,  Helen Dobson (Lori Nelson), and eventually breaks free to go after her. What Works: The underwater sequences look great.  It's absolutely impressive camerawork.  I have some criticisms of the underwater sequences, which I'll get to later, but they look great, that's for sure. I have to give major props to Ricou Browning who plays the creature in the underwater sequences.  It's incredible to watch someone swimming in that big, rubber suit.  There are some really long takes of him swimming.  That can't have been easy.  He also gives the best performance of the film whe...

"You're looking particularly beautiful tonight." -Johnny English When a cyber attack exposes the identity of all of MI7's agents, Johnny English (Rowan Atkinson) is brought out of retirement to combat the threat.  Allied with his old partner, Bough (Ben Miller), the two of them are the world's only hope in stopping tech-terrorist, Jason Volta (Jake Lacy). What Works: James Bond is my favorite movie series, so I'm always up for a parody as long as it's done well.  There are some pretty greats nods to the Bond films.  We have Johnny knocking over a bunch of cyclists in southern France, a gun sticking out from behind a curtain, which is aimed at a dance floor, and we even get a Bond girl, Olga Kurylenko, as Johnny's love interest.  It's evident that the filmmakers are fans of Bond and I really appreciate that. Rowan Atkinson is always fun in this role.  He sells the physical comedy like nobody's business and I love how c...