Monthly Media Recap - April 2020

I was going to start the post off with a cool cats and kittens salutation but I figure everyone is probably tired of it by now.

Streaming

Bloodride (Netflix) - This Norwegian horror anthology series is...okay. The thing that hurts it most is that the episodes are only 30 minutes so they don't really have time to develop and/or you can see the ending a mile away. The other thing is the English dubbing is flat in some places and removes any emotion from the dialog. 

My episode rankings: 2-3-1-4-5-6

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (Netflix) - I'm still loving this series! I like that it has "short" seasons and they're able to tell an overarching story. I really thought the next to last episode was the season finale while watching it. It would have been amazing if they ended there.

Tiger King (Netflix) - Just when you thought Walmart or "Florida Man" was the weirdest and craziest humanity could get, Joe Exotic says hold my beer. You just cannot look away once you start watching.

Movies

The Descent (2005, Amazon Prime)
Much like The House of the Devil from last month, this one has been on my list and was amazing. The whole claustrophobia thing was worse for me than the creatures. The thought of getting stuck in a tight spot underground or worse, being lost, is something that gets to me. I really enjoyed the story because it was something I wasn't expecting going in.

Rating: 8/10

Onward (2020, Disney+)
I don't know if the general public will enjoy this one as much as someone that's into D&D and the whole fantasy thing. I am one of those someones and having that history really gives this a whole extra level of enjoyment. We all know Pixar is good at giving you the feels and this one does but it's different. I was a little surprised by the ending and was impressed they went the way they did with it.

Rating: 8/10

The folks at my favorite movie review podcast, Now Playing, are doing a viral outbreak retrospective series. Every week, they're reviewing a virus movie from each decade, starting in the 1950s. Since I'm pretty much stuck in the house on weekends, I thought I'd watch along so I could listen to their reviews.

Panic in the Streets (1950) available from the Internet Archive
There's just something about a good noir film that tickles me. It might seem corny but the dialog, the acting style, I just adore it. It's that love of noir that really kept me glued to this one. Although this is about a plague, it's really a basic cops & robbers/detective style story. This is Jack Palance's first film and he is great as the main baddie.

Rating: 7/10

The Satan Bug (1965) available on YouTube
On the other hand, we have this one from director John Sturges (The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape). The plot is very Bond (chasing a wacko who stole a bio-weapon) but the execution is a little bland. In a good Bond flick, I can roll with bad film logic/script but this one just doesn't stay above the fun line for the most part. Huge props to the set designers of the lab in the trailer (it's in the movie too).

Rating: 5/10

The Andromeda Strain (1971)
I've kind of always wanted to see this because it had a cool name, not because I knew anything about it. It's essentially a two hour CSI: Virus Unit because most of it takes place in a lab. The opening scenes sucked me in right away and I was even not bored with all the science although it does lag a bit in places. They do some fun stuff with split screen and 70s "computer graphics".

Rating: 6/10

Month

New: 5  Rewatch: 0

Year to Date

New: 22  Rewatch: 0