Thank you for watching. Joining me as always, halfway across the world, is Jared Morgan. Hey, everyone. It's been a while. You know, I know it's been since last year. Yeah, we haven't talked since last year. No, no. The favorite thing that a friend of mine sent me, it was on December 31st. He's like, I can say that I am comfortably have enough money for the entirety of the rest of the year. Yeah. Cue all the end of year jokes. Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. So we're just going to jump right into what my beginning of the year has been. It's not the best. No. No. I will say that there's many, many, many, many, many, many, many people in Los Angeles that are having a much worse start of the year than myself. I will say that we're seeing this footage here, and it's not looking good. Yeah, Los Angeles is on fire, and it's scary how many people are being displaced permanently because of this. Yes. It's nuts. Yeah, it's – And the thing is – It's just – it's wild to see how many houses just leveled. Well, and it's – I've joked many a time, and it's – call it gallows humor around here. I mean, we talk about it every year, but we always say that, yeah, Southern California has seasons. We've got summer, and then we've got Oscar season and mudslide season and fire season. And literally, we have wildfires every single year. This just happens to be devastating with what had happened. And part of the reason why we have these wildfires is we have these things called Santa Ana winds. They tear through from the desert through the passes of the mountains into the valley, with you will. that goes all the way to the ocean um and you know they're very strong winds and so when we've been dry like southern california is for the past eight months um yeah yeah things get a little bit tindery so anyway uh yeah not to compare my woes compared to those woes but my woes started off with a shower that wasn't draining and then you had to pick either you want to flush the toilet or you want the shower to drain you couldn't have both at the same time and you couldn't do either within 45 to an hour of each other. Wow, that's a slow drain. It was a slow drain. Now, we've had slow drains in our house forever. My wife has very thick, long hair. For years, she's just apologized for it. It turns out maybe it wasn't her fault after all. No. You know, instead, I've got 70-plus-year-old pipes in my house. Metal pipes. What's that? Metal pipes. Yeah, galvanized steel. Yeah. So we called the plumber because we were dealing with this for about a week. And I was like, okay, this isn't getting better. Whereas previously it has just all of a sudden, you know, drained out of the way. Yeah, freed up. And so called the plumber in and he put a snake down through where the toilet is and could only get his camera down 11 feet. and he was like um it's a three inch pipe and my one inch wide camera can't get through it's like yeah you've got a big problem here so then he crawled under the house so our house went on a slab or on a raised uh footing and a little bit of a crawl yeah it's like a it's like a two and a half foot crawl space maybe yeah it's too much not much for pipes in yeah yeah Pipes and some electrical if they wanted to do that. But so, yeah, he goes crawling around down there, comes back up, and has bad news. More bad news. More bad news. He's like, first off, there is a leak at your toilet somewhere. There's moisture on the ground. And then he shows me pictures of all the feed pipes for all the water coming in. and at every single junction point they're just rusted and then he showed me one particular pipe and he's like that's about to go yeah and so then it was well what are our options and he goes well we can either put a band-aid on it and you're just going to be paying a lot of money to put that band-aid on and you're going to pay even more money when a different portion goes bad or you can re-pipe your house. Yeah, and you went, well, those are two both expensive options. One of them is more expensive than the other. One of them indeed is. So we went with that and it was only supposed to be a four-day job. It wound up being a seven-day job. Oh, excuse me, eight-day job. um as they were you got to wonder why how people build how they build again my house built 1956 um you normally have a clean out that's on the exterior of her house right so that if there's any kind of cliques they can run a big old snake through and let it all burp out that way well he was like i can't reach a certain portion of your house so when he went in underneath and right there where that toilet was it was hey i found your second clean out why they put it underneath the crawl space is an excellent question because 1950s building code said it was a good idea that's why um you give me some pictures of these these cancerous pipes yeah so so they took out they took out the um they took out the sewage pipes first the drainage pipes and uh go to the the cracked the worst one you're holding it no that's actually the guy holding it not me i wish i was that one no one before that oh yeah oh yeah that one here we go that was what was my toilet was feeding out there's a big old crack there that has daylight big crack in a big hole that's a three inch pipe and it was paper thin um yeah wow it was because that's the bottom of it where all the water would have been running, right? Yeah. And so what he was also saying was because it was so clogged, there was just standing water in these. So that was just eaten away and rusting like no tomorrow. Yeah. So it was exacerbating a already bad problem. So, okay, now go to the one where the dude's holding it. Oh, yeah. This is so bad. Look at that. Okay, here we go. What pipe? I can't see daylight through that. That's a two-inch pipe, I believe. Just really nice and flaky. Go to the next one. Okay, so then this is everything that they took out from underneath my house. Just a big old, well, I shouldn't say, that's not even everything. That's just what I was there in time to take a picture of. So, yeah, lots of galvanized steel and then some old PVC. But it was the steel drainage that was the issue. My house had been modified at some point. and we know this because also they found some really lovely mickey mouse jobs uh done in there where like there was a pvc fitting that was glued to a steel pipe oh that's always yeah that's effective yeah um now our drainage was a problem but so was our feed lines coming in um my kitchen in my one bathroom, the cold water just trickled. It was barely. And this next picture will show you why. Because it's just clogged with rust. That's an actual water pipe here. Yeah. You see? Yeah. What was supposed to go through that? I mean, maybe it's porous like a sponge. I don't know. And then that pipe underneath, that was about to give. That was one of those things where he showed me it was just a rusted mess. Yeah, that's not good. Yeah. Yeah. There's a whole lot of badness going on there. There was a whole lot of badness, but I said our house basically was very asthmatic and then needed drastic invasive surgery. This is really open-heart surgery. Yeah, and it truly felt it while it was going on. It was really just kind of nerve-wracking. Because pictures you haven't given me here because they're inside your house, literally they've cut away panels of your wall to find where the pipes were. yeah lots of holes in the house and um there was an entire day that was without water and when i say day it went all the way until one in the morning um that's how long that would they to try and restore water for you but now we've got true water pressure all throughout the house the drains make this wonderfully echoey noise as water is trickling down it's quite satisfying um yeah so here the money the money is just going right down the drain that's yeah yeah literally pretty much so yeah that's how my 2025 has started yay um yay but i'm i'm not even gonna ask you how much it's gonna cost because i know that that's like tens of thousands of dollars worth of work right there yep pretty much pretty much um but again it had to be done 70 plus year old house it'll be good for another 70 plus years now yeah i mean it'll outlive you guys it'll outlive me that's all that matters right yeah yeah uh so as we told so this guy he had come he'd fixed our air conditioning earlier in the year he had replaced a toilet midway through the year and now this and we're like we really hope we don't have to see you again we like you but we don't want to have to see you again yeah we yeah we we don't want to see each other again this year at all or ever really yeah so yeah good times that's not ideal no at all not ideal at all no um your your new year starting off normal jared uh it's yeah it's starting off okay i've i've had um it's just really really busy at work at the moment um but on the home front everything's good um actually today my sister and um some of her family coming over and we're going to play pinball and eat pizza the stuff hey now that's an evening yeah that is a good time so that's that's gonna be fun today um and apart from that yes everything is is chuffing along nicely i'm preparing to buy a whole lot of new boards displays and other paraphernalia for um my pinball machines downstairs the two the two new ones the new old ones that i've got um so i've actually got poker Since we last spoke, Pogarino is now flipping. It's not blowing fuses. It's playable. I hear it's too playable. Yeah, it's a little bit too playable. I need to go and devise a solution where I can put mini flippers on it because this is a long-playing game. It's like the risk of the scissors on this game is like, you know, there's two sets of stack flippers. so you do have an opportunity for scissors which i have been done by a couple of times but it it's way too safe like you can you can go for a long time for this era of pinball like it's the equivalent of like you know a marathon session on a modern stern but applied to 80s machines like you know ball times of over three or four minutes on one of these games is like oh okay yeah so i need to work out how to put i actually think almost two sets of mini flippers each side on this thing and really toughen it up for competition because i want to put this one in for b-pack this year i can um and it's not going to pass muster if it's this easy it's just too easy so i need to i need to brutalize it a little bit in fact there's actually a in my research for um pokerina which is a system for um williams what you can do is williams have pretty much iterated on their flipper mechs over the years and in a lot of cases you can put modern wpc mechs into these games and they will work so if you put modern wpc mechs but keep your 24 volt coils, you get the advantage of using basically really easy to find parts. Okay. And you get the advantages of being able to use the flipper cranks, which are the things where the flipper shaft goes into, that don't use those little thumb screws to do up the thing and put little divots into the thing. So you can use modern bats as well. So everything can be modernized. Would that make the flippers even stronger? uh it would make the flippers more reliable you're still using the the old 24 volt coils you're not using the 50 i was just wondering if you were able to get modern flipper strength then you can crank the the rake on that table and really make it a beast yeah i think i would i think the other thing i'd need to do would be it might actually probably wpc is probably a bit too far i probably need to go like system 11 okay or something like that of that era which is still pretty good like the coils on the the every everything to do with that machine is pretty solid like um because yeah it's just i i'm having trouble finding out where i could get a um a bat flip a bat and flip a shoe um assembly that's like a a small flipper um whereas i could just go to any of the pinball supplies and get a a mini flipper for a wpc game like you know medieval banders or something right the problem with that um shaft system is that because on the older games there's like a a recess where you do up the the little nuts that go into the um the shaft that recess is there because what happens is the the little set screws they burr up the shaft if that recess isn't there you can't actually remove the shaft it puts like a little pinhole I'm almost willing to take that risk because I've just rebuilt the flippers anyhow I would burn that bridge when I get to it but I just know that down the track it will cause problems for someone else so it's like maybe we just replace the bits of it and see how we go but yeah that's my current idea but yes full board set for Lost World is what I need basically, new displays for Lost World, new displays for Pokerino and maybe flip of bats if I can work out how to solve that problem. But yeah, it's going to be like... The Australian dollar is short at the moment. It's like 60 cents to the greenback. It's a 40% Aussie tax at the moment. It's not a good time to be buying things from overseas. So yeah. Apart from that, the year is good. So it's off to a good start so far. I've got nearly five machines to play. I'm going to have significantly... Well, not that I can't play any of these right now. I'm going to have significantly more tables to play in 2025. AtGames released their list of basically what they're releasing up through August on their machine. The crux of it being all of the Zen product, as well as they also have Magic Pixel AtGame product. so real quickly jared bring up the uh at games uh the zen one no the the other one okay okay so here we go that is the release schedule for all things oh okay so i take it back there the magic pixel at game stuff it goes through the entire year that's their entire so 26 tables are coming that are of that brand what's interesting to me note is that starting in july there is what's an says at games original legends pinball table and they've got one two three four excuse me five six of those coming out six of them um does not have magic pixel labeled next to it now as jared pointed out that might be just because they ran out of space yeah but it also might not be magic pixel working on it at all i don't know it's kind of interesting to uh to think about um because is that games designing their own tables or did they find another partner don't know it's kind of a big mystery um we'll have to find out more about that that's so semi-interesting there if you're into that it's basically just as you saw all of the Zacharia tables that haven't been put out yet. Oh, yeah. The remakes and the deluxe and all that. It's just rehashing those. It's just catching up with them. They did just release a... Call it Rare Pinball. So, you know, rare video games. Sea of Thieves. There's two more coming out. And people are really liking them. saying that the call-outs are better than ever, Jared. And we know how, personally, how wonderful the scripting for call-outs are with Magic Pixel, because they basically send the same script to everybody. Yeah, they do. But unfortunately, once again, the DMD is where it fails. It's the same stupid font, the same stupid kaleidoscope. It's just... Such a shame. I know. It really is. Especially when you're dealing with a video game that you have footage that you can put in, as Zen has shown. Yeah. So. Exactly. Yeah, well. I really wish they'd step up their game on that. But more importantly, in my world, and those that are fans of what Zen does, we have the calendar for Zen that goes all the way into August. Let's bring that up, Jared. Yep. There it is. So starting in February, we've got Star Wars packs basically all the way until April. And then we start in with the Williams. And that goes all the way, interestingly, until June. Well, into June. But on June, what's this Tomb Raider pack? Yeah, what's going on there? Interesting. Tomb Raider 1 and a second table. Sounds like a little leakage. yes just like your plumbing right there's a bit of a leakage happening oops so all I can say is I really really hope that one of those tables is what you can play on PC now the modern Laura oh yes and then the other one is old PS1 Laura I want oh yeah I want two different areas displayed here I hope or or zen give you the option because i was playing a shadow of the tomb raider and there is a skin that allows you to play in old school laura it's really wonky with photorealistic everything else and just her with her around yeah it's really weird but big with big triangles everywhere well i tell you no because they did they well i guess there was one skin that was that but then there was the other skin that was from tomb raider 2 which was much more polygon unfriendly. Less triangles. Less triangles, more orbs. But, yeah, so that'll be interesting to see exactly what that is. Now, Tomb Raider is owned by the Embracer group, so not entirely surprising. Oh, right. Okay. Just goes to show, if you want to possibly guess on things that Xen might be working on in the future, look up what Embracer owns. And that would probably Let the speculation begin. Let the speculation begin. And then after that, it's just a whole bunch of Williams pinball. So you might be saying, oh, that's everything. Is it not? And I'm here to tell you, no, it is not. Sometimes it's easier to tell you what you're not getting than what you are getting. Yeah, sometimes. So the missing Williams tables that still are not there are Space Station, Dr. Dude, and Indiana Jones. That'll be the... Ah, yes. Those are the three that do not have a release date yet. Of the Star Wars tables, what we're missing is Han Solo, droids, A New Hope, Masters of the Force. Finally, they withhold Masters of the Force from something. Yeah, yes. Our least favorite Star Wars table. The Force Awakens, Might of the First Order, The Last Jedi Octo Island Solo, Calrissian Chronicles Battle of Mimbon, Rogue One and Rebels That's a lot That's still a lot of content but again you still have between September and December to fill out That's right because they do say in very small print at the bottom of the thing it's like the remaining 19 tables were revealed in spring 2025. Just on the note about Space Station and Doctor Dude, unless I'm misreading it, it seems to be on the 30th or the 7th, according to the sheet, that they're going to be releasing Space Station and Doctor Dude. Did I miss it? Oh, you're right. I did miss that. As far as Indiana Jones goes... So it's just Indiana Jones? I don't think Indiana Jones is on the list so maybe that's going to be in spring 2025 well and here's the other thing we still don't have any new skins announced and if there is ever a table that should have its own skin oh it's definitely Indiana Jones yeah absolutely oh my god well not that they would but if they went the extra mile and put the pistol for the launch but then you wouldn't have a plunger you have to have a plunger you can't do it what I really wish ad games would do and I'm sure I could mod it really easily put a launch button underneath the plunger yeah that would actually be really good we need that and we need to be able to modify our second button to become a magnet for a magnet safe that needs to be done so yeah those are that's the batch of Star Wars and Williams that are missing. Obviously, no mention of any of the Marvel stuff. For Pinball M, you're still missing System Shock, Duke Nukem, Camp Bloodbrook, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Wrath of the Elder Gods. And then we have all those FX3 titles. So you still have your originals of Shaman, Eldorado, V12, Tesla, Paranormal, Earth Defense and Mars that are missing. And then you've got the problematic licensed stuff being Walking Dead Portal. Family Guy, Bob's Burger, American Dad, Archer, I think we can just go, yeah, that's never going to happen. Yeah, that's never going to happen. Aliens, Alien Isolation, Aliens Predator, Doom, Fallout, and Skyrim. And then you're... Yeah, I could pretty much leave all of those Xen original tables right on the cutting floor and not even be upset about that, really. Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay with any of those not coming over. They're not the finest of tables. None of the originals. And again, for me, I want my Aliens pack, and I would really like that Bethesda pack to come back. Yeah, they would be good additions. Like, all the other original packs that you mentioned in closing, those ones, yeah, they would really be nice to get back again. Although, you know, I don't mind Mars. I like Mars. yeah Mars is very chill it's almost like they've done a a twofer with the new terraforming Mars and the old Mars I think when we interviewed Mel a while back we said did you draw inspiration from just the original Mars because it feels the vibe feels like it's there and it was like no it didn't but I can see what you're going with there further down the list of well is hell freezing over Missplosion Man and Plants vs. Zombies. Those are from FX2. But hey, we got South Park, and those were also locked into FX2. They never came to FX3. So it's not out of the realm. Oh, and so did Super League. Super League came from FX2. Oh, that's right. Oh, did I not put Super League in the missing category? Oh, I didn't list any of the Zen Originals. It's too long of a list to go through. Oh, yeah. That a very long list that I think Zen can put out any time they felt That why it not so much Oh oh oh the really hell straight up is uh become the arctic uh street fighter 2 and ninja gaiden and yeah and that's definitely a hard no on those and we already know for a fact because mel has said they have no intention of ever revisiting those original xbox tables that were the rocky bullwinkle and buccaneer and uh i never personally saw those tables so Not me either. I've never seen them in my life. Yeah. But, yeah, those are never, ever coming. Yeah. So, anyway, those are everything that's looking. So, I mean, they weren't kidding when they said prepare your wallet because at least $5 a week is coming. Well, I shouldn't say. Okay, here's the other thing, Jared. It's very interesting. Right. The Zen stuff, economical. It's basically $5 a table. That's the long and short of it. Not $5 a pack. No, it's like $15. It'll be $15 for a three table. It's $5 for a table. So it's $5 a table. So you're not getting the sale prices that you would get on Steam. But compare that to this rare pinball pack. Basically anything that Magic Pixel puts out, three tables, $35. Whoa, $35? For three? Well, three or four. So they also just came out with another natural history pack. I think there was four tables in that. It was $35. All of their packs. Same thing, all the Zachariah, $35. The question you have to ask yourself is what packs will you have more fun with? Oh, I know the answer to that. Yes. That was more rhetorical than anything, but for the price of entry, $15 versus $35, and that's U.S. dollars. If I had to buy those down here, not that I can because the AtGames ecosystem doesn't exist down here in Australia, that's $50. For three tables? Yeah. No, thank you. No. So. So. But, I mean, you know, there are people that love those tables. Interesting they like them. Some people like them more than the Zen Originals. It's really odd. But, you know, different folks. It is, but part of that also comes down to they're looking at the graphical fidelity. Ah, yeah. And the responsiveness. Another thing I noticed. Yeah, yeah. And there's that line again, right? Now, funnily enough, I noticed in fine print that they have a little disclaimer about 4K and what games will actually display on the screen in the bottom left of the things now, which I won't read out, but I think you can get the idea. so that's now called out in print now so that's interesting I found that very interesting to read yeah but like I said I'm not noticing much I'm not caring let's put it to you that way Jared I cannot tell you how much Fishtails and Wild West Rampage I've been playing really? Wild West Rampage though really and i've never i mean like i've appreciated what wild west rampage was but i could never get into it oh my god i'm seriously really you're loving it it just works so well in cabinet form and i know it's spellerama but what you realize is there's a whole bunch of other shots that aren't Spellerama, that by the very nature of you going for them, you're completing the various spellings. Just by the very nature of you going for these other things. Once I got a grasp on what you're supposed to do when things start. A big problem is any of the pop-ups or things that, like, there's little bad guys that pop up that you have to shoot, the lane's not lit. And the guys blend into the background. That's the biggest problem I've found with the game. Everything's very flat. Same thing with, there's a whole thing where you blow up barrels. These barrels pop up, and I spend a lot of time just going, wait, where is the barrel? Me too. I can never find them. I wish Zen, I mean, because they have every power to do this, would make an outer glow on them so that the eye pops, you know where to go. Treat them like a flasher in the game, right? Put some sort of flashing thing around them or halo exactly like that um because they have done that in games since yeah like droids for example with the parts you go to collect for c3po so i would i but once i understood where these things were going to be it was like oh okay i know where to shoot for i know where to go the problem i mean there's there's a few problems with gameplay on the thing um one of these modes you start it and the first shot you have to do it's it's taunting the sheriff and the first hole you have to make is on the far left but the ball drains to your left flipper yeah and then you have to pass it and passing on this is not the easiest passing the ball over to your right in order to be able to get it and the problem is if you miss it and it goes around the whole loop it feeds to the left flipper again yeah um yeah so it's is there's and there's a couple of modes that are like that where it always puts you on the wrong flipper and everything is a hurry up so i don't like that that's that's what i would go with that's bad design that's bad yeah bad flow of game if you're doing a hurry up it should it should feed to the flipper that you need to use i seem to remember too there's a couple of modes in there where it's a shoot the shot but the shot doesn't immediately light when the ball yes back at your flipper again yeah well there's there's one that the frustrating that it's they're gonna throw a stick of dynamite at you yes it's and you know where you know the single you have to shoot in but it's not lit until that if you shoot it early and again where's the ball start on your left flipper and you need to get to the right clipper in order to make the shot yep it's yeah it is there's this little minor frustrations which you know would be great if they tweaked um so we don't understand why they don't code revision code revision we need version 1.01 of this yeah literally right um yeah but that being said like i'm really playing it a lot it's become something that's very easy for me to just casually hop on and bang away same thing with fishtails um oh it's just flow shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot yeah but i'm like what am i up to i'm up to two billion and some i think i'm number six on the boards two billion yeah wow yeah no i've learned much like when i was doing my my how to exploit it on the mobile app i've figured out how to exploit it um not as easily but I know where the safe shots are. Yeah. It's the orbits. It's the outer orbits. Yeah. And learning how to hit the multiball shot. If you can learn how to do that you can go for a very long time. It's been fun. Waiting to see what the next one is that grabs my attention because I don't know. I'm looking at these Star Wars tables and who knows. Bring on May. I mean, yeah, I mean, let's see what happens. Well, the first, yeah, May, May I get Medieval Madness and that's when it's, goodnight, it's all over, I'll be on Medieval for a very long time. Forever. Yeah. I love that table. Because you can be on it forever if you know what you're doing. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, and I have reached Battle for the Kingdom many a time before and so I know I can get there. Um, reaching, um, Conquer Mars on Mars Attacks it's a slog and so I've rarely done it that super jackpot always trips me up qualifying the super jackpot always trips me up on that one, everything else is pretty straight forward but just making sure you don't drain and multiball and you cash in that super jackpot always gets me yeah so anywho there we go, Jerickso6 there's your pinball talk you can go ahead and turn off the podcast now because it's time for movies yeah that's right well it's actually a bit of a pinball sandwich today isn't it because we had drains pinball and now movies so there you go it's a there you go a footlong sub of pinball content for you today uh so as is the annual tradition of uh i i go over what my movie viewing habits were for the previous year uh jared pipes in where he's able to um i for some reason have a lot more time to watch movies uh whereas jared i think spends a lot more time playing pinball i i do attempt to yes yes uh although admittedly i haven't really been able to sit down at the pc and play a lot of pinball it's more fixing them at the moment so yeah yeah um so that being said here's where we uh here's where we go uh this past year i saw 57 movies that were new to me in 2024. That's not a great deal. I usually am up in the 70s on average. Even worse, I only saw four in the movie theater. That's not much. And how did that compare to last year? Last year I think I saw eight in the theater, but I saw 58 movies, I believe. It was 56 or 58. So I literally saw the same amount last year that I saw this year. Right, okay. But I saw more in the theater. That being said, my best list, all four of those movies that I saw in the theater wound up on the best list. I know my taste. I think you must have known. I do know my taste. I know what's going to tickle that fancy of mine. What's worth sitting on a popcorn-encrusted seat is where you want to spend your money. Yes. So let's dive right in, and we're going to talk about what I thought were the best of what I saw in 2024. I don't normally go and rank them, but this year, because there's so few, I guess, it was kind of easy to rank. I'll go in reverse order, though. Starting with... I'm going to go start with Deadpool and Wolverine. Oh, yeah. I haven't seen this one. It's on my list. Look, it's fun. I had a blast with it. It knew its homework assignment, and it met that homework assignment, which was how do we introduce Wolverine into the MCU honoring past Wolverine. They did a bang-up job on that. I got no issues with what they did. The humor was there. I laughed a lot. Jackman and Reynolds, you're not going to have a bad time with that, are you? No, no. My biggest gripe was that all those side characters that had been in the previous two movies were in one scene. And that's it. So they really were trying to establish that connection and only that connection. Yeah, they weren't. I think it was, again, they knew that they had to bring in and introduce Wolverine. and if you were trying to make it an adventure with all these other characters, that would have just diluted him. Muddled it. Muddled it up, and so they chose not to. But it's also what makes this, of the three movies, my third favorite of them. Because it just, I love that dynamic, the friend dynamic that was in the other one. So anyway, that's where that one goes. Coming up next, The Substance. Have you heard about that one, Jared? Substance? What was that about? This is Demi Moore, and she is an aging actress who is basically Jane Fonda now doing a fitness show. Right. The writing is on the wall that the network – this takes place in an alternate universe where literally her show is airing in primetime and is a key ratings poll for the network, an exercise show. Um, but, uh, the writing's the wall of, oh, I'm sorry, you're too old. We're going to cancel you. All right. And, uh, she gets offered, hey, what would you do? We have this, the, we have the substance, um, and it'll turn you into the best version of you for a week, but then you've got to spend a week as your current version and you can trade off back and forth. You are one, you're the same person. there's just two versions of you what so so in the same body but there's two no versions no so there's a clone which births out of her and it's disgusting what so that sounds horrible this movie is a body horror movie. Oh, okay. The prosthetic work is amazing. There is... So it's actual... There is next to no CGI in this for those purposes. That would actually make it... It makes it very visceral. It sounds like it, yeah. And I won't go into any more detail of it. suffice it to say when I finished the movie I couldn't stop thinking about the movie I had a dream about the movie I looked up behind the scenes stuff I looked up an interview with the director that's how it wound up on this list because I'm like if it sticks with you that much what you're thinking about yeah and I mean like I said it's really gross but the subject matter yeah yeah yeah sell it it needed to be like that it did but but more importantly what it's actually talking about which is that aesthetic of why an aging actress is just completely disposable um and what sells and and the why uh and having her who's basically herself but in two different versions battling with each other uh that's yes it's it's a really fascinating subject matter but it lists out yes i'm actually writing these down because uh yeah these are like ones to watch out for for sure um okay up next of the uh what i did i only have five one two three four yeah i only had five in the best list um dune part two if you like dune part one you're gonna love dune part two it was good it was yeah it's no complaints and and that's just it it's it's where they succeeded even though they did not film these back to back or you know at the same time it feels like they were filmed at the same time um it is very easily you could watch the first one stop the credits, turn on the second one, and roll right in. It would not... I would agree. You wouldn't have any hesitation. And so I loved that aspect of it. It's just these next two movies tickled me far and above beyond. Like, I'm going to have no issues ever. I will re-watch the Dune movies. absolutely 100% but they're long and they're dramas they're not a fun boat these next two are pure fun so sign me up for that because I want more sand word writing and stuff like that because that's goodness so speaking of sand going up next I can't believe it didn't take the number one but Furiosa Mad Max Saga god damn this movie is so good i love the crap out of it it i i had we'll talk about my worst list where i was literally cramming in i think i crammed in 10 movies in seven days um and it was all those movies that i just like pushed to the side like all year long and finally was like oh later i guess i guess later is now i gotta watch these once i got done with those i was like where's my comfort food and i threw on furiosa and i was so happy it is just so this is like a single watch this is a multiple watch so far this year well last year yes yes yeah right um yeah because i saw when it came out one on your is this the only one on your list that you have watched multiple times no no no so i saw dune part two twice once on theater oh yeah and then at home Furiosa same thing I haven't watched Deadpool and Wolverine yet because I decided I was going to re-watch the last couple of Marvel movies also and just kind of build into it and then what else was I going to say about Furiosa oh things are dropping behind me Furiosa same thing with Dune You can watch Furiosa as soon as credits roll, stop it, throw in Fury Road. All right, so that's the order in which you watch them. Yes, it literally rolls right into it. Oh, that's so good. Why Furiosa didn't quite take that top spot is because, in a lot of respects, this feels like all the footage that was cut to make Fury Road a short movie. oh you reckon okay like because fury road is just a one one chase that's it it's a that's it it's just a chase it it is yes furiosa is story but you don't need that story to enjoy fury road it's just having the story is really really nice um whereas if you just watch furiosa you're going to feel you're going to be left wanting because you want the conclusion of her story you want more so that's basically because I had to split hairs why this would round up my number one Alien Romulus that was a good movie I really enjoyed it it's just perfect it was the perfect blend of all the alien stuff into one movie with eyes wide open of all the other stuff they've done. They just got the balance right with it. I'm not a diehard fan like you, but even I got it. I absolutely understood what they were doing there. Well, and it was nice to watch it the second time around because when I watched it in the theater, it was with angst. It was, are they going to pull it off? Are they going to pull it off? Are they going to pull it off? Don't screw this up sort of thing. Yeah, and then once the movie finished, it was like, okay, I'm happy. this time watching it through it was like well i know i'm gonna be happy so i'm just gonna enjoy the ever-living crap out of it and that's exactly what it was it was just like everything i was just smiling and enjoying the entire time through so yeah um yeah that's my that's my numero uno um not really gonna comment but my movies that are good well worth a watch but that's you know this wasn't really that great of a year of movies um truth be told it was a bit of a lot yeah like there wasn't a great yeah um no one will save you which was from actually last year uh from 23 uh that's that horror movie with a uh there's next to no dialogue the entire movie oh right okay because it's just a girl inside of her house and an alien trying to get in um okay poor things which is really a bizarre movie with emma stone um it's basically she's a frankenstein's monster oh um okay that's progressively getting smarter so um also discovers sex that's where he just goes okay uh because that becomes all she wants um okay right well i mean yeah you know i can understand Steve, a documentary in two parts for those of you that are interested in Steve Martin part one is just his stand-up career of which he then went I'm cutting that off and then he went into films so literally his life is two separate entities in two parts so it's pretty good Hitman that's with Glenn Powell and is directed by Richard Linklater which is kind of he's the one that did uh dacian confused um and it's basically about a guy who's a the police department winds up using him as an undercover decoy as somebody that is a hitman and they're trying to uh people are trying to hire him and then the police will come in and bust those people um because because according to the movie hit men don't actually exist it's a myth that has been created in the movies but stupid people out there believe that there are hit men for hire and then go about trying to hire people oh really it's based on a true story too it's literally based on a true story of this so um but it was a good it was it's a good fun watch um civil war which is what would a civil war in america um it's it's rather frightening for us americans you think that would actually hit as hard as it does if it was if you weren't american like me would you get it i i think it you would because it doesn't deal with american politics it just deals with what if two sides uh basically because it follows um war embedded reporters oh yes right yeah um um nox goes away which is another hitman movie um this one is it's uh michael keaton realizes he has Alzheimer's and he's in late stages. And so he knows that he's going to be forgetting everything. And so he's trying to button up his affairs before his memory, before it happens. Very interesting character study. This one, we'll see if it winds up on my best list later. I went through and I went through all my previous lists and there was a few that I was like, you know what? That one now gets to go on. uh challengers yeah which is the love triangle tennis movie that really has nothing to do with tennis i turned it off you turned it off no i turned it off it was just not wasn't it's too slow moving and i just didn't feel it enough like i i found it didn't catch me i found it very interesting um it's very well made um but yeah that's where i'm like i'm not the production's there i just didn't really the story was engaging to me yeah um rebel ridge if you are enjoying reacher on amazon oh yeah watch rebel ridge it's very much like reacher with a completely different character but it's that same lone man in a town an injustice happens he can't let it get away with it and and he sorts it out he sorts it out and it's very satisfying um they're doing more reacher as an aside there's a third season about to come out excellent yes i love reacher oh beautifully done with a dude that makes reacher look small what the dude is like the dude is that is in this is about six inches taller and about a foot wider it's just i'm like what the hell is that that dude belongs in wrestling um wow yeah that sounds really interesting um uh oh uh the shadow strays this is an indonesian movie if you know anything about indonesian martial arts movies they hit hard oh yeah The Raid that was an Indonesian martial arts movie the I'm not going to go into details at all about it, it's more fun to discover on your own suffice it to say it is a movie that thinks it's going to be a franchise and I do have problems with that so it's in that category it's in that category um kingdom of the planet of the apes was way better than i expected it to be i didn't think it would be good having talking apes and no humans and it turns out that's even more interesting to watch than when there's humans um so and and the if you have hulu there's two ways of watching it you can watch it as it was in the theater or you can watch it with all the mocap on display So they did all their mocap on location And so if you want to see the actual actors performing these roles and what they went through it the entire movie done that So they'll put on top of the screen the theatrical, and then directly below it will be the mo-cap version. So you can watch side by side. That's kind of neat. It is kind of neat. And then Gladiator 2. Yeah, I was on the fence about this one. I haven't seen it. it's worth watching it does not have that I was watching a thing where they were talking about the making of Gladiator and how both Ridley and Russell hated the script and so they just threw it away but they knew they wanted to make this movie and so then the guy that they hired he had about 30 pages of script and they went yeah that's good enough to get started and they and they filmed the movie in sequence oh and they were just making up dialogue on the spot in the scene really and one of the fascinating things was like there's that moment in the tent with richard harris and joaquin phoenix where richard harris is saying what a disappointment joaquin is and that he wishes russell had been his son or whatever and you know River or why did I say River? Joaquin. Joaquin Phoenix is, you know, breaking down and whatever. And at one point there's, you know, a slap to the face kind of thing. It was all created in the editing room. Like from various takes of them improv-ing this scene. Also, there was a super cut of like a whole lot of different scenes that they had on the cutting room floor. Basically, yeah. To do. Wow. um and and but then they but then they showed what they said was the worst dialogue in the script and it's that moment where maximus you know takes off the masks and reveals who he is and says you know son to a you know son to this uh you know husband to my wife you know and when they show that clip i'm like getting emotional as i'm watching going oh my god i can't believe i'm not watching the entire movie you just show me that scene and it just hits me like a ton of bricks it hits you right right in the field yeah and the reason why they left that in russell was like i'm gonna prove how good of an actor i am by taking this absolute terrible dialogue and making it into a masterpiece right so you take all of that there's nothing in this movie that makes you feel that way the villains of the piece whereas gladiator there was this build-up and you understand all the angst and urn of why the emperor would be the way he is here is hey here's some emperors they're bad um yeah where it's worth watching denzel washington just choose every piece of he's in and it's wonderful to see um right but there's even on the list i've got it right yeah Like I said, it's worth watching. They justify its very nature. It's kind of shoving a square peg into a round hole. But really hammering it in there. Really hammering it. It's stretching some believability, but like I said, it's worth watching. Let's go. I'm going to skip that. We're going to go to the worst. Yeah. What's the hot trash releasing that you saw in 2025? not necessarily released but you saw okay a 2024 oh my god okay so let's start with the beekeeper jason statham movie oh yeah it is in every way an exploitation knockoff of john wick right and it is terrible in that manner because it's so obvious what it wants to be and so obvious what it isn't um yeah not a good movie not a good movie um netflix had these zach Taylor Snyder sci-fi movies called rebel moon and oh yeah they had the pg-13 versions first and then over the summer they released the R-rated versions. Now, the PG-13 versions, I found them interesting. Not that they were good, but they were interesting. But you could tell that they were hacked. That there was some stuff missing. So then these R-rated versions come out. So it's Rubber Moon Chapter 1, Chalice of Blood, and then Chapter 2, Curse of Forgiveness. These are what these are called. Both of them are an hour longer. The first movie, there's a very obvious brand new scene right at the front of the movie it's maybe 20 minutes long and truth be told should have been in the other version because it actually is beneficial the second movie there's one sequence that i know of that was new but honestly in both of them i have no idea where this hour of material came from um oh really yeah both of them also feature an exceedingly long sex scene like uncomfortably long uncomfortably long that is like is this your zach are you wanting to direct game of thrones um all right okay but here's the funny part they're almost identical just with a different partner like take place in the same room take place in the same version is does not exist in the pg-13 version does not exist at all i was gonna say how they pull that off in a pg-13 does not exist at all and the r-rated version exists but again takes place in the same room almost at the same point in the movie and both of them are uncomfortably long right where it's like and you're literally just going i get it you could have trimmed this down quite a bit and we would have understood we didn't need the skinamax version of this though um right and at the end and and and but even more criminal it wasn't like these films there was no rejiggering of order of sequences or anything else like that it was just they're a little bit longer and there's a little bit more here and there but all the problems that were prevalent in the first version are just as prominent in the second version so it just makes it worse yeah so if you're going to watch these at all, just watch the PG-13 versions. Do yourself the favor. Save yourself two hours of viewing. Wow, yeah. Haunted Mansion. This is Disney's second attempt at making a Haunted Mansion movie. I never saw the first one, which was with Eddie Murphy. This one, within five minutes, I was just like, oh no, I'm in trouble. Oh, I can't do it. Did you have to turn it off? No. Did you watch it? I watched it because I was hoping that it would, like, the reason why I was, oh, no, was this little boy character. Basically, mom's like, hey, we lost our home or whatever, but this one's in our family. We're going to move into this mansion. And he's wearing the, like, please, sir, may I have another kind of clothing? Oh, really? Yeah. And I'm like, what is this? All of the twist 1800s sort of period clothing. I'm like, what is this? But then they go into this mansion that's been abandoned for a long time. But boy, it's fully stocked with no furniture. No nothing has been removed from this at all. Oh, right. And it's not covered up. It's all just there. Most of it's not covered up. Yeah, it's just covered in cobwebs. And so the little boy, he goes up to his bedroom like, okay, this is going to be my bedroom. And he goes up, and this thing is just like inches thick of dust, right? Yeah. And he's like, okay. And he flops down on his bed and poof. And I'm like, I'm sorry. What mom would have let their kid do that? And what kid would have done that? It's just, it was all style, no substance. and then the other problem is that the Haunted Mansion the whole conceit of the mansion is that there's 999 ghosts and as you go on the ride you can spot go ahead, count, but there's 999 of them, they're looking for one more and so this movie wanted to do that, but it couldn't figure out how and there's too much and it was too up its own butt about all of the Easter eggs that it wanted to do. And I was just like... It was focusing too much on the 999 ghosts. Yes, and it also wasn't trying to be scary, except for one sequence where I was like, you should have done that the entire movie. Because that would have made it fun. That would have made it fun. Because it's like, remember when there was kids' movies that were legitimately scary? That's what you should have made. I'm not asking for an R-rated horror movie. I'm asking for a kid-friendly horror movie that is legitimately scary. And I just realized... A whole bunch of family-friendly jump scares, you know? Yeah, yeah. It's not going to make the kids cry, but it's going to give them a little heart palpitation. Now we're going to get into the ones that really made me pull my hair out. Yeah. Uh-oh. What hair I have, right? Blue Beetle. blue beetle is uh the last model thing dceu so these are this is the second to last of the dceu movies to go before they're doing this entire reboot search with uh this new superman movie um right i had friends tell me oh blue beetle that was decent no they were like that was decent that was that was worth watching i was like oh okay holy crap i was so angry the entire movie it's it's a latin family this is set in miami it's a latino family and it is every single stereotype about a latino family you can think of on full display george lopez is in it being the most egregious character of the lot it also is dealing liberally from iron man and venom um they make a big point of as because basically this dude he gets this suit and it uh absorbs into him hence like venom but it talks to him and has armor on it much like iron man so it's like a female jarvis in the head um right it wants to take control like he wants permission to basically hey let me do the battle so if you've ever seen the movie upgrade which i highly recommend um oh yeah that also had somebody that had an ai implanted on them uh and that movie did a great job of displaying somebody who gives control to an ai and it very much looks like the actor is not in control of their own body just a wonderful performance whereas this you don't believe that it's just hey do you want me to enact all these weaponry or you know in the enhanced systems on this suit i can do it and And the guy makes this big old point of, no, I don't want to kill anybody. We're not going to kill anybody. Later on in the movie, they're raiding this compound, and his family is with him because it's a family movie. You know, there's strength in your family. I'm like, oh, I see we've watched way too many Fast and Furious movies. All they need to do is pop a Corona open, which I think they do at one point, too. and family goes they go raid in this compound oh they have no problem with the rest of the family killing everybody in sight like literally they have this blue beetle spaceship thing and it's like a crab walking and puts a leg right through a dude on the ground but so long as blue beetle himself is not killing it can't have it both ways it just was so all right that sounds like hot trash oh it's it's hot trash i was very very angry um godzilla x kong the new empire no bueno i hated the last kong because the humans were completely stupid um humans are also completely stupid in this one yeah the other thing that i hate about the other previous version they went into middle earth in that one and i was like where the heck is your sunlight coming from you know it was right it was all somebody designed this really interesting thing but they didn't think about the physics or the the realities of this space yeah at least make it look pretty at least here they had these giant crystal things that were emitting light and i went oh there's where my light's coming from okay peachy okay um but the problem is it lost completely this is what happened with ant-man quantumania it lost its sense of scale because it places kong in middle earth where all the other creatures are just as big as him and so unless you have a little human running around nearby kong just looks no banana for scale no he's just yeah he's just on a fiscal there um And then it does... You know how you know a movie has really lost all inspiration, or a franchise has lost all inspiration when it finally goes to space? Yes. Well, no, they don't go to space, but they do turn off gravity in Middle Earth. And so Kong and Godzilla and the creatures, they're bouncing between floating rocks and fighting midway as they're floating. Good. Yeah. Good. Sounds about just as much fun as they do invert gravity mode on the pinball machine. Right. Bad boys, ride or die. You don't even need to tell me about this one. I thought this was like, what are they doing with this? No. No. It's like, why would I? I know exactly what this is going to be. It's going to be absolute rubbish. Yeah. Martin Lawrence is not physically able to do this kind of movie anymore. Right. Yeah. And so they spent a lot of time basically devising excuses for why he's not in this portion of the movie. Really? Basically, yeah. they do just the will smith winds up having anxiety attacks nowhere previously in any of the movies he was always the rock full of absolute bravado and confidence and now he's going to have anxiety attacks and of course he's going to have him at the worst opportunities possible um something i should point out about blue beetle godzilla bad boys it's okay we're gonna do comedy now okay now we're gonna do some action now we're gonna do comedy now we're gonna do action right it's no seamless blending at all no and it's literally just like oh we're gonna take a moment out for that the other thing is you know what i said do you know what i mean when i say uh they do a needle drop yeah no yeah no needle drop is when you drop and all of a sudden the music kicks in full force and it's some rock song all right oh right with something yeah right Because it's so much easier to convey the emotion of the scene by all of a sudden have Ace of Spades playing rather than actually having your characters, you care about them and you're worried and just the orchestral score is doing the work. Yep. All three of them. And it's the, oh, really? We're using that song? So it's the most obvious of needle drops also, you know, kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. So just avoid all. Oh, last thing about Bad Boys. The level of action would have been fitting if this had been the second movie in the franchise. Because it's only just mildly more. The problem is Bad Boys 2 had them driving a Humvee through a flabella in Puerto Rico, mowing down an entire hillside, and ended with one of the best deaths of a villain ever because he died twice. Spoiler alert, he gets shot in the head and then falls backwards on a landmine and blows up. Double death. Amazing. It's fantastic. So good. And that's the problem. The bar got raised so much higher that the only way to exceed it would have been to go into space. To go speed into space. That's right. Okay, these next three I could not finish. Okay. Dragged across concrete. I don't know but it had Vince Vaughn and Mel Gibson in it and I was like I could go for some crazy Mel Gibson sure there was none of that it took 20 minutes to even get to those two characters of those 20 minutes there was an action sequence that was exceedingly boring and then when we finally got to these two characters their dialogue was painful and then i realized it's a two and a half hour long movie what so drag to cross concrete not only is the title of the film but also the experience you feel when you're watching it yeah um so i made it 30 minutes into that one because again 20 minutes and then 10 minutes then that i knew that's the rule like you know normally you can tell if a movie's going to be absolute cack or not in about 20 minutes you usually can but i also am the reason why i don't turn off these things i'm i'm curious to see like i don't want to shut it off before the good stuff happens you know what i mean so i'm going to give it up at least to the point where something should have happened like yeah where you could reasonably expect that you would see something redeeming about the film yes unfortunately i can't remember the title of it a few years back there was a movie that i did this to where it was all about guns and everything and there wasn't a single gun shootout the entire movie what i know okay but it was literally like okay it's right around the corner okay it's about to happen it's gonna and then credits and i went what i you're kidding me i i'm being betrayed i'm being betrayed so so this is why i watched aquaman and the lost kingdom and I made it to 47 minutes of this pile of trash. What was the tipping point in that movie that made you go, nope, I can't do anymore? I was just waiting for the actual plot to start. All right, okay, 47 minutes in and there was no plot. Okay. It was, no, it was a rom-com. Well, when I say rom-com, it was, no, it was one fish and a baby. It was Aquaman and his baby Aquaman, and aren't I a fun dad? And, oh, woe is me, I've got to rule the kingdom. And, hey, look, here's some, this is what I hated about the first one, because it was filmed what's called dry for wet. Oh, yeah. So they never touch water the entire movie when they're filming. Somebody might throw a bucket of water at them, but there's no underwater filming. um and it's just cg wavy hair and people talking as if they're talking through normal air it's terrible um but where it was finally about i was like okay are we finally getting to it it was because hey remember your brother from the first movie no i don't who you sent to a prison okay sure whatever yeah i'm gonna go i'm gonna go break him out for why i don't know because i'm going to okay fine um and so has to go through this ordeal to break him out for some reason the prison is in the middle of a desert because well fish people so yeah that'd be terrible um yeah yeah okay finally rescues the brother but with never taking it seriously and constantly quipping dumb jokes. It's not even good one-liners. They're just plain dumb jokes that the other actors are like, really? Here we go. They're not landing in any way at all. Oh, no, not at all. Rescues him. I can't even remember what I had a problem with with the rescue. It had something to do with, oh, isn't it convenient that the water is suddenly there? And and saves the brother who is like shagged out you know massive beard you know the hermit and cave look let me maceated and everything but for some reason as soon as he touches the water bulks back up and then so he's being shriveled up he's dehydrated more or less yes and then And then he gets into this ship with him, and he's had to – he's shaved, the hair is now groomed, and the dumb banter is still going on. Wow, that water must be pretty good water there. Yeah. Can I get some of that? Yeah, the dumb banter is going on, and I'm still going, wait, now what is the point? I'm 47 minutes into this movie, and I still don't know why we're here. What are we doing? So off it went. wow that's that's a special kind of bad oh but then there's this bad madam webb everybody i mentioned this one too they said don't do it i said but i gotta they said no you don't i said but come on it's so bad it's good right no it's not it's just bad bad i went but really And here's the tipping point for me. The executive from Sony, because they just put out Kraven the Hunter, and he was angry because critics just aren't giving this and Madam Web a fair chance. I don't know what that is that they have against us, just because Spider-Man's not in it, I guess. I don't know. But I think both of these are good movies. Oh, okay. Let's see how much is this executive, the head of the film studio, does he have a valid point or is he just blown smoke yeah he was just blown smoke because it's terrible and it's terrible on so many like like every level terrible wow um your lead dakota johnson it's the most wooden reading of dialogue ever she's supposed to be an emt and it'll be like i'm gonna go rescue you come on you're kind of just there's just like so it makes it it makes some of keanu reeves's work look well no because at least keanu tries this yeah right this is just thinking of all his work in the matrix where it's a little bit wooden but uh this is like no this this is literally just like i can't believe i gotta read this okay i'm gonna read it and because i'm wearing an emt outfit you're gonna know i'm an emt um it's it's me speaking and i and i'll let my outfit do the work for me rather than selling the right um right it it also the the setup of this is of it is absurd um needle drops that are bad everywhere the editing there's a scene literally of her driving the ambulance to the scene and it literally edits, ambulance goes this way, and then ambulance goes that way. If you've never watched, just Google it or go to YouTube, basketball scene from Catwoman. Okay. I've never put myself through suffering through Catwoman because I knew, don't. It was not good. When this scene popped up on YouTube, I watched the scene and I was howling with laughter because it is bad on every level. Like how the director has a job, how the editor has a job, how the production design, just everything is terrible. It seems like this movie looked at that and went, oh, I love that movie. Let's make that one. I made it up to the point, because what I knew is that there was three other people that were going to come in and be involved with this, that were all spider-adjacent powers. And I was waiting for them to at least get their costume on, because I know that they all have costumes. I was trying to find out how they were going to form this team or whatever. It was like they were in a completely different movie. each of and like while all three of them were in a scene together they were all in a different movie okay um and at one point they all supposed to be teens but one of the teens is sydney sweeney and she can't play a teen anymore um and neither could he no it's like you're very obviously a 20 20 to mid-20s year old you're not a high school teen and that was the same way with the other three or the other two yeah and madam webby she's not called madam web yet but whatever she saves these girls because this thingy that looks like a spider-man but isn't spider-man is coming to kill them and she takes them off into the forest and they had been attacked when she saves them and runs them off and they're just like i don't want to be in the forest This is so boring. And she goes, she's like, you all have to stay here. I got to go run back to my apartment and get something. Leaves them in the middle of the forest. And they're standing around, and they cut back, and they're, like, sniping at each other. And one of them's like, I saw a diner off the highway. Let's just go there. Yeah, okay. I'm like, the part where you all were about to get killed earlier, no, let's just go to the diner. So they go to the diner. Madam Web is able to see into the future and see a bad thing happening. This allows her to maybe alter the course of things so that the bad thing doesn't happen, right? So she goes back to the forest and she's like, where are they all? Where did these girls go? Who you abandoned? Do you know this? Yeah. And so she goes traipsing through the forest, amazingly in the exact direction that she needed to, and comes across this diner. And she goes into this diner and should note that before we cut to this point, the girls were all sitting at the bar of the diner, and one of them looks over his shoulder and sees this booth with a bunch of high school boys in it. And she's like, they're cute. Cut to Adam Webb coming into the diner, and the three of them are up on top of the table dancing. And I'm like, what kind of Denny's is this? What teenage girl would do this without alcohol in her system? And why do they think this was a good idea? And the boys that are at the table are just, I can tell their screen direction was, you're really happy that girls are dancing on the table. There's no rhyme or reason as to why. They're just like, hmm. And it was at that point I looked at my watch and I went, oh my god, this movie's been going on for an hour. And we still have nothing going on. And how long was the movie? Is it standard length? Standard length. Mind you, I'd already turned off the movie once on a previous day. Oh, really? And then was like, okay, let's just watch some more. So this was two seconds. I could have gotten out of this a lot earlier. But no, I was like, let's see what's more. And it was at that point I just went, I can't, I can't. And I'm so glad I can't because somebody later was like, oh, but you missed the best part. And that's where she leaves the girls in her apartment, takes the stolen cab that she's had to the airport. she's on a watch list but somehow is able to fly to Peru where her mother had discovered this particular spider that did this bite or whatever does her business in Peru flies back the stolen cab that she literally illegally parked in front of the airport is still there gets into the stolen cab drives it back to the apartment and the girls are all still there what after like four days i don't know okay i don't know i can't bring myself to find out don't do it don't torture yourself yeah so anyway there's um wow that's that's the the worst hopefully you all don't have to put up with it um just avoid it just avoid uh quickly my most Disappointing. Fall Guy. I love stuntmen. I love stuntman movies. I used to watch that show as a kid. It felt too safe. And it was also a rom-com. It was. Weird. It wasn't bad. It was just weird. Argyle. Matthew Vaughn, the director. He's done The Kingsman. He's done X-Men First Class. He's got an interesting style to him. This one, it started off well. And then about halfway through, it did its big switch, and it was not for the best. And then the movie went down a cliff. Monkey Man, which is Dev Patel-directed. It's supposed to be an Indian martial arts movie, which I was like, okay, I'm down for that. Really not edited well and steeped in what I'm guessing is Hindu mythology. that if you don't know Hindu mythology, you're going to be lost, because I was very lost. The Killer. Now, last year there was a movie on Netflix called The Killer. It was directed by David Fincher. It was decent. A little slow, but decent. Now, The Killer is also a John Woo movie from the 80s that, if it hadn't been for Hard Boiled, would be his masterpiece, you might say. Right. They remade The Killer, and John Woo directed it. That's the only reason why I watched it. He had an interesting take, but it doesn't justify being remade. Right, okay. And then Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. It just kind of was there. I watched this as well. It wasn't bad. It just is there. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't necessary. No, not at all. No. Okay, so this brings us to the special awards. Movie I knew would suck, but I watched all the way through. Anyways, Blue Beetle and Godzilla, Time's Gone. Movie I thought would suck, but didn't? Five Nights at Freddy's. Go figure. Yeah, see, I... So it didn't make it on the turn of the good or, like, you know, list, but it's like... No, but it just made it on the... Like, me and my son sat down to watch it, and he literally had told me, just so you know, I'm going to rip on this movie the entire way through. I'm fine with that. Great. After about five minutes, he shut up. And realized, hey, this isn't half bad. And I thought it did a lot of interesting things. I'll watch the sequel. No, it was decent. My only gripe was it wasn't gory or scary enough. But then my son... jump scares a little bit um but what my son pointed out he goes you got to understand he goes it's not meant to be an r-rated property this is a game that 13 year olds play that's who the core audience is and in that respect the movie paid attention which brings me back to what haunted mansion should have done made a movie that's scary for kids yeah so right um i'm actually added that to the list i may check it out because it got a lot of hype yeah usually movies get a little hype it's like yeah you don't want it movie i wanted my time back for maxine the entire trilogy so oh the entire trilogy so ty west is the director he made a movie called x and pearl both of those he made during covid that's just why he made them back to back using some of the same cast um this is a continuation of that story called maxine um this time he actually filmed it here in LA instead of Australia. And it's... Pearl is a bad movie. Just... It's a bad movie. X is interesting, but it's not great. It's just kind of eh. Maxine is better, but it's still just kind of eh. And the thing is, is I watched The Substance, like, maybe that same night, or the next day, and The Substance was so much better for horror that it just maybe really go away i pretty much could have not seen maxine so could have just not done it yeah um the maybe i just don't get it award that goes to inside out too it's not that it's a bad movie i just don't understand why you people went ballistic for that instead of watching furiosa well they're very different movies like but what and i and i asked you this i was like what about that made you go i gotta see that on the big screen and you didn't want to see furiosa on the big screen that's where i'm like i don't get it i remember this conversation yes because we had this at the time it came out because it's school holidays and we just want a nice movie to watch that's why yeah so and it was good like it was you're right like inside out 2 was you know it was it's a continuation of the whole thing it's puberty represented in the the way that um pixar does that so well and it hit the brief perfectly that being said they cheaped out on the big dark secret the big the big dark secret yeah or oh the yeah the big oh yeah yeah anxiety yeah the thing they cheaped out yeah um okay i thought it was interesting it was an interesting representation of that on screen i thought i'd see where they're going with that i went yeah that's going to hit hard for some people yeah um just seeing that visualized and it's like oh no but i mean what the actual secret was was like really oh right yeah well it's such a common thing these days right that it's good to represent it and give people a way of describing it you know so for that i think they actually did a really good job and sort of normalizing what that was um and giving people a way to think about it no i think you're thinking of something different spoiler here comes the spoilers if you haven't seen the movie folks shut your ears yeah she burned a hole in the carpet oh that oh yeah sorry yeah no that was that was no no that was just like anti-climax yeah it was like that's not a big deal yeah at all um apparently they were never going to reveal it and then they were told no you've been teasing it you need to come up with something and then And they were like, well, to a kid, that would have been a really dark secret. I'm like, that's not her secret. Okay, movie I'm glad I turned off less than 30 minutes into. Well, Jagged Across Concrete, that was the only one I turned off 30 minutes into. Yeah, right. Movie I wished I turned off but didn't. That would be Blue Beetle. Movie I could have immediately watched a second time. That would have been Furiosa. That was really easy for me to decide. That's a no-brainer. The Why Did You Have to Remake That Award. that goes to roadhouse oh that was i saw that as well that's not necessary at all not at all i mean it was it was all right i will give him this the connor connor mcgregor character he did a great job great job legit that's a bad nasty man legit the problem is he wasn't the boss he was the henchman and the boss is lame so lame whereas in the in the original movie the boss also was you know somebody that thought themselves an alpha male but obviously surrounded themselves by the heavies but the guy was so arrogant and clueless and aloof and you just couldn't wait for him to die whereas this guy you were just like oh my god you're just a dick yeah yeah so anyway um the well that was depressing award that goes to civil war um because it's just depressing um the you're not a franchise yet award again i commented that's the shadow strays um the i don't even remember your award so whenever i go through my list i'm like oh that movie that movie and i come across this title i go i have no clue what that was that i watched um it was called grounded and grounded too again i was like and i watched the sequel and i have no clue what this is it's a documentary on the making of the last of us and the last of us part two oh okay really good yeah but you didn't so worth watching but you couldn't recall couldn't recall what the title was which is like why didn't you call it a documentary about the last of us or the last documentary i don't know anyway um the when we used to title our episodes of blackay with random things that made no sense yeah stop doing that because we couldn't remember what they way yeah uh the yes it took me this long to finally watch it award that goes to smile this is the i i tried to watch a few more horror movies this year that normally i wouldn't have given the time of day to and smile popped up and i went sure whatever i watched it um again interesting conceit i'm not sad for having watched it i'll watch the sequel if it comes on netflix okay it was just an interesting uh way of doing things that's all yep um actor advertised but barely in the movie award uh originally i'd put josh brolin for dune part two but then mentioning haunted mansion jared leto's in that and i went wait he is oh oh yeah i guess he is so yeah um and then based on the trailer movie i'm just looking forward to next year i haven't seen a lot of trailers for movies next year but i did see the latest mission impossible trailer uh yeah can't wait for that so yeah well that's never a hard sell for you is it like you never have a bit of mi i've got a couple of random things i got one last thing to put in okay many of you are probably going how come borderlands didn't make your worst movie of the list here and it's really easy because it's not the worst movie it's just a movie that didn't do the homework assignment and kind of failed the production value is there the uh actors that they have are there other than why they hired kevin hart as a mystery to me um it really desperately wanted to be guardians of the galaxy i was able to watch it it just felt like a movie that was put together by committee and that there's wildly giant parts missing. Like there's a movie somewhere in there. They just didn't find it. But I wasn't angry at myself for watching it. I was more just like, eh, they could have tried harder. So that's, okay, now to you. So these are just some random things that I've found this year. Some of these ones are like, I'm coming late to the game here. The one that I'll classify this as I'm really coming late to the game here is Squid Game. so as far as the series goes we actually just started watching this last night and and because the kids are kind of old enough now to be all right with watching that that style of of how old are they uh so 12 and 14 so just be aware there's an episode six or seven then you're gonna go hide your eyes kids it's real bad is it okay all right yeah because we got to the the fingers being crushed scene which was like oh i wasn't expecting that to just be thrown in there yeah in the first couple episodes and we had just cleared the one where they had the tug of war okay so yeah we're up to about that point but i'll keep an eye out ones where there's like a real bad one yeah but it's the thing about it is it's you see the hype this is one of the things where i like to watch things but while the hype's died down and you know we knew the hype about it there's all the games but the thing that's really interesting about the series is it's actually quite character driven there's lots of stuff happening and it's really well told yes and like we were being drawn in and they'd leave a little cliffhanger at the end of each thing usually and it's like wow that's really good storytelling i can see why people were really getting into this at the time and uh so yeah we're kind of hooked on that i consumed season two in a day and a half yeah so for that reason right so same same sort of reason it's insanely addictive it's just it's wonderfully i want to see what happens next uh and you're right it's very character driven um i'll also just note you like that watch alice in borderlands Alice in Borderlands Alice in Borderlands it's on Netflix it's also I don't think it's Korean I think it's Japanese similar in that it's games being played with people yeah equal it's in a lot of ways I like it better than Squid Games and that's saying something because I enjoy Squid Games so look up Alice in Borderlands there's two seasons of it Yep, that is on the list. I like that. The other thing I found was, so I finally got around to watching Avatar 2. Ah, yes. And it was great. It really does. I see what you're talking about now with the whole underwater scenes being filmed underwater. Mm-hmm. Really believable. Mm-hmm. Really believable. It felt like you were there. It was amazing. Also, he puts on a master class of how to shoot action when you get to that, the whole ship sinking and them rescuing and coming on, and there's gunfight and there's tension and there's multiple locations that you're worried about. It is masterfully put together. That sequence of events is amazing in the movie. He's so good at directing action. So good. Yeah, really, really enjoyed it. I knew that it didn't really feel like Pocahontas. No. It didn't have that vibe to it, which I was really happy about. So this is a documentary, and I just came across it the other day. It was in 2024, so it does qualify. It's a documentary about Roger Moore. very interesting about how he sort of rose to fame and led himself into the 007 role that he had I was quite engaged with it it has Coogan doing the voice of Roger Moore because of course Roger Moore has passed does a really good job actually being a sound alike and narrates the movie really well um it's look if you even have a passing interest in that era of 007 it's actually really worth a watch so check it out on i don't know what platform but see if you can find it and you'll work out where you can see it uh the other thing that i really enjoyed and surprisingly was secret level so secret level is um a series of short like so think of it like um love death robots it's the same place around video game yeah it's tim miller yeah so it's all centered around video games so you've got things like all the triple a titles all the way down to like um ones i've never heard of or played well you haven't heard of them because they haven't come out yet ah that's why okay right so so i mean some the the take the biggest highlight for me was how they handle pac-man i was gonna say it's gonna be pac-man isn't it oh it's so good it is if you have not seen it just go and watch that one episode amazing it's amazing it's like taking a lot of the stuff that was floating around on the internet about what if the you know um the pac-man was a thing and the ghost was some other thing it really runs with that and it's amazing the way they've done it. The Dungeons and Dragons one is pretty good. Yeah. I watched... Oh, and the Warhammer one. Yes. Oh, my God. Okay. The Warhammer one literally made me then look up Warhammer stuff because I was like, wait, what is the lore of this thing? What is going on? It really made me interested and knowing that Henry Cavill's got a series that's going to be Warhammer, I'm like, okay, I'm down. We're cool with that. No, the one that made me laugh, I watched the episode for Concord which is famously that playstation game that they shut the servers down they they dropped the price of it down to 99 cents just to try and get people to play it because it utterly bombed in its first week of release oh really and uh they shut the servers down the next week and refunded everybody their money and this was sony's gigantic triple a title um right and obviously they made this short before any of that was known that was going to happen so i was like i gotta watch this to see what this was about or whatever and truthfully the short was pretty good i was like no i'm entertained so yep i like out of the entire like i guess series it was like one it was one sort of 12 episode series i think if i yeah anyhow however they slice it up there was not a bad one in it like every single one of those short stories i just loved and i didn't really feel like you needed to know the backstory of any of the things you just went along for the ride and they're all really entertaining so secret level do yourself a favor and check that out um the one that's absolutely on my shite list is the the the I'll call it bastardization because that's exactly what it was, of a beautifully animated Toei feature animation of Interstellar 5555. They went and took something that was beautiful and ruined it by upscaling it to 4K. And it's just got AI artifacts everywhere and it's like pointing at the screen and screaming at it in the cinema level artifacts that make you really angry when you watch it the only thing that was good about it was the fact that it was presented in cinema sound um so it sounded really good because it's essentially daft punk's discovery album in cinema sound which is not a bad problem to have but boy it was bad really bad it like you go and watch the like the 480p version available on streaming services now there you go ah thank you i don't mind it being 480p because it actually is better yeah you know really disappointing so yes that is my list of things that i found notable enough to speak about there we go um yeah so there's the there's the recap of uh 2024 uh i did start the new year off by watching wicked but I will save that review until next year. I need to watch that because I'm coming in dry. I came in completely dry not knowing I didn't know anything about it. I'll just say I enjoyed myself. It was good. My wife, who is a Wizard of Oz nut. Rapid fan. Like that was her childhood. It had her in tears. Now, granted, most movies put her in tears, but this had legitimate reasons. Yeah, right, right. You know, interestingly, as an aside, our local movie theme, theme park, movie world, Hollywood on the Gold Coast, has a Wizard of Oz precinct now, which is family friendly. It's got two rides in it. One's a boomerang coaster with like, you know, dueling coasters. Yeah. And one's a suspended coaster. So, yeah, we'll be going down and trying that out as well. Cool. Nicely coinciding with Wizard, not Wizard, Wicked. Yeah. So, yeah, good work getting that timing right, theme park. All right, so that is the summation of the movies. And don't worry, folks, next time we'll get around to some pinball. You know you have to put up with this every year. That's the buy-in for this show. Yeah, that's the price you pay. That is the price you pay. Because it's free. The show's free, so you've got to pay for it. Please don't unsubscribe because of this. Because we've only been doing this literally since, I think, our first year around. So like 2013 was probably the first year that I did it on air. So yeah, it's been going on a long time. There's one thing you can count on each year, which is a movie wrap-up. The other thing you can usually count on is an interview with Mel. Yes. I would say you can always count on it because, who knows, things might change in the future. but you know you can always count the movies being discussed at the end of the year yeah we are we are on the watch for Zen's announcement about VR we don't know when that is coming up other than sometime this first quarter so that's what we're hoping comes sooner rather than later but otherwise it's Jared's favorite phrase of what's going to happen next episode stuff and things so yeah alright we don't know but it'll be stuff and things until then folks thanks for watching bye bye bye bye