You know we're going on a special trip, don't you?

While I might be a tad cautious with actual currency, I tend to lose my f--king mind when given a gift card. Even the most trivial thing can seem like a sound purchase when it's somebody else's non-money. Oh, what's this? Utter trash that I don't need and will lose interest in as soon as I'm holding its receipt? Well, I've have had this gift card in my wallet since Christmas....

Netflix, though something I actually pay for, is the cinematic equivalent of the gift card. I often find myself indulging in something that I wouldn't normally, solely for the fact that it's, in my stunted mind, totally free. The only thing I'm wasting is my time. And if you've read this blog, clearly that's something I'm a fan of. A big fan.

But when I do something more than press that big red triangle? When I actually get out my wallet and pay good money to have a bad time?

That's f--king madness.

Horrid crushed-alien face or not, I ain't turning down the sponge bath.

Some of you motherf--kers swear Silent Hill is a good horror movie, but I think this 2006 shit-show is f--king terrible at best. Sure, not many genre flicks are as good as they were ten years ago, but I have a hard time believing anybody liked this one in the first place. This movie, coming in at a staggering 125 minutes, couldn't end fast enough. 

How bad is it? I'd honestly rather sit in a bottomless chair and have someone swing an original PlayStation controller into my ballsack Casino Royale style for two hours than to ever see a minute of this movie again. It doesn't even have to be Mads, either. Just like, a regular, non-handsome Dane will do.

Though it pains to me to even get into it, the short version of director Christophe Gans' Silent Hill goes something like this: a thoroughly-determined mother heads into a deserted town to find her creepy as f--k adopted daughter, who disappeared after a one-car accident. The closer she gets to the girl, the further down the rabbit hole she goes. And like a good number of dirty holes, this one is entirely full of shit.

Tell me something good.

At the one end, you've got Professor X. He's invading minds, looking dapper, and pretty much better than you in every single way. At the other, you've got this poor kid at Camp Crystal Lake, getting a knife buried in his head before he rolls down the longest staircase in North America. In the f--king rain, no less.

Cinema has given us quite the wide-range of wheelchair-bound gentlemen to root for, but rarely are we cheering for them to get the girl.

And as a person who often favors checking run-times over reading plot synopses, I was quite surprised (and delighted) to find myself able to be firmly in the corner of a disabled man in his quest to fall in love with a pretty young woman. It's soooo romantic.

I mean, what a happy story, right? Right?

What the f--k, Me Before You? You had one job, one job! and you totally f--ked it up. You were supposed to be a delightful love story set to the poppiest of pop songs and take place in a world where even a torrential downpour would make you feel happy to be alive. Wasn't that what I signed up for? Wasn't that what we all signed up for?

And you, with that poster, and those famous faces, you were supposed to make me, sitting there with my exhausted wife, in our messy house, on our shitty IKEA sofa, you were supposed to remind me that no matter what happens in this cruel world...love conquers everything. You totally f--king failed, didn't you? Didn't you?

But guess what, Me Before You? Even though you left something in the bed that would even gross Spud out, and even though you ultimately might not deserve it, well...

I f--king love you. With every fiber in my decaying, hate-filled heart.

I do. And I always will.

Quit being so f--king mysterious.

Election season is a real punch in the dick. And even if you don't have a dick, I'm sure there's a dick you'd like to punch. Candidates spend hundreds of millions of dollars vividly describing the limitless Hell we've found ourselves in, or will find ourselves in, assuming the other party wins. But cast your vote for me, angel, and we can both ascend together.

But that miserable f--king Hell is surely a relative place, right?, as likely half the people either didn't think it was so bad, or, maybe worse, didn't know until you told them. And we do this awful dance every four years, hoping things will change. 

Or...stay the same. For the most part.

It's like this endless f--king loop, that while truly inspiring (or awful) at times, ultimately ends up with all of us right back where we started. Which begs the question...

...why bother in the first place?

Seriously, that tagline should probably be plastered all over the polls in Nov.

Fine, Southbound, a 2015 horror-thriller, isn't actually about a certain political party here in the US, but it may or may not share some key features with it. Namely, narrow-minded murderous cults, a person who should not be in any hospital performing surgeries, and most obvious, a pair of decaying skeletons, flying over the Midwest terrifyingly eviscerating what's left of humanity. 

Though I counted four, apparently Southbound, something of a horror compilation, contains five interlocking stories, all set in a nameless shithole of a desert town. 

Our first story opens with a bang, as two bloody and battered dudes attempt to leave the aforementioned town, after some gnarly shit apparently went down. Off in the distance, some scary ass demon/skeleton thing is waiting for them, and eventually things get...well, messy.

From there, we get a couple of groovy minutes with a girl band, until their van breaks down along an isolated stretch of dreary, desert highway. Along comes a horribly Ned and Maude Flanders-esque creepy couple, promising to take the girls to the local mechanic...in the morning. After freshening up at their house, of course, and presumably taking long hot showers where each lady takes an environmentally-damning amount of time scrubbing their filthy bosoms. Oh, my bad. I was transcribing my dream journal again. Dinner is served, and chaos ensues.

My wife doesn't act like this.

Our photographer sucked.
We didn't even get a videographer.
I failed to invite any of my co-workers, some of whom are now basically family.
And my actual family?  Most of them didn't even bother to show up. Or send a card.
The guy who officiated the whole thing? Totally went off-script during the ceremony.

But the number one regret I have about my wedding? My Friday wedding?

The only place I went away to, afterward, was straight back to work on Monday. In a f--king middle school.

While we absolutely got what we wanted months after our wedding (uh, exactly nine months after [Will Smith ain't the only Deadshot]) with a healthy baby boy, we never got what we wanted days after, as a romantic getaway simply wasn't in the cards. But after finally digging up/into my first scary movie of the season, well, I might be okay with that, actually. More than okay.

In 2014's Honeymoon, young couple Bea and Paul take their post-marriage bliss to a cabin by the lake. Not only to get away from it all (and f--k like rabbits), but also as a bit of a f--k you to Indian food, as previously ingested spicy dishes shit all over prior plans to go camping. 

As newlyweds, they aren't exactly living inside of dead horses or finding mysterious stick bundles, as Bea's family has a fairly rad cabin. In the woods. And outside of some non bra-less sex (read that again) and a brief run in with a former...friend who was a boy, the whole getaway is perfectly romantic. But like any guy who thinks he's going to have days and days of uh, passionate love-making (I'd be more vulgar, but...I'll save it for the locker room) with his wife, something unexpected comes along and majorly f--ks up everything.

Let's just say long hairy things are supposed go in that opening...not come out of it. (Unless I've been doing it wrong all these years...)

You have never been a more endangered species than you are at this moment.

When a major Hollywood studio remakes something that people consider a classic, it's supposed to end up some soul-less cash grab that everyone rightfully hates.

And when that wholly unacceptable remake features live-action talking CGI-animals that occasionally break into song? We're supposed to collectively jettison the entire project to the darkest depths of movie Hell, and pray it stays down there for at least twenty seven years.

These are the rules, and it's foolish to even question them.

Well...unless the movie's really good. Then we're really f--ked.

Jon Favreau's The Jungle Book is really, really good. So good in fact, it's sure to only have the powers that be crank the Live-Action Regurgitron 5000 to eleven and churn out the remakes at warp f--king speed. But if they're as good as this one? Well, go ahead and pencil me in for whatever's coming next.

(Uh, after Beauty and the Beast that is...as the Beast looks like a Saint Bernard had sex with a goat in the Upside Down.)

You know the story, but here goes, anyway. Young Mowgli was left alone in the jungle as a toddler, only to be rescued by a panther and raised by a pack of wolves (an origin story that probably describes a quarter of my previous students' upbringing). He's doing well as the only man-cub in the jungle, but unfortunately, the times they are a changing. A mean-ass tiger named Shere Khan shows up, and doesn't exactly want a human at the top of Pride Rock. So, Mowgli's got to go.

While his wolf-mom's not too hot on that idea, it's in the best interest of everyone. And on the way out of town, that nasty tiger shows up (out of nowhere, my goodness!), and attempts to kill the kid, but the super-rad panther Bagheera holds off Kahn long enough for Mowgli to tumble away on the Wildebeest Express.

There's something wrong with this place

If you ever get the chance, look up the story of Centralia. It's a small town in Pennsylvania that has been all but abandoned after a series of awful decisions led to what some would call an outright environmental disaster. Basically, the town sits on an underground mine fire, one that's potentially going to keep burning for the next two-hundred years.

Basement walls were hot to the touch, the ground began to crack, a sinkhole opened and tried to eat a kid, and as a result the state bought the whole town and told everbody to f--k off.

Not all of them did.

Apparently, a handful of people, not concerned about their health (or the fact that the town has been taken off maps), still live there today.

Sounds like a great setting for a scary movie, right? About that...

As the only feature in Block E at the Harrisburg-Hershey Film Festival last month, Lotus Eyes certainly had my attention. Set in a future ten years after peak oil (and filmed in and around Centralia), director Joshua Land's film feels appropriately desolate and unstable. But, unfortunately, it also feels aimless and decidedly low-stakes.

Simon is a typical teenage boy, awkward around girls and uncertain about his future. When his mom's struggling business is robbed...again, Simon decides it's time to leave his shitty, dilapidated town and head south to uncle's idyllic commune. Despite the world being in a steady state of upheaval, his uncle's farm promises plenty of work, and even more enticing, plenty of food.

After a spectacularly awful attempt at getting the local hot chick to come with him, Simon loads up his backpack and begins the journey on foot. Lucky for him (and us, as watching this dude walk around alone for eighty minutes would have had me begging for the end of the world), he quickly runs into two twenty-somethings having a bit of car trouble on their way to wherever. Though Simon can't get a girl, he's a master at revving actual engines, and the three head out to a local campsite for the evening before parting ways in the morning.

Sounds cozy, right?