Movies and Television
The Skull Island Times > Reviews > Movies and Television
H. Seitz
July 3, 2018
Movies and Television, Reviews
Al Bundy, Disney, Ed O'Neil, Gloria Delgado, Leave It To Beaver, Married With Children, Modern Family, Sophia Vergara, Spiderman, Walt Disney
Modern Family TV-PG At first glance, Modern Family appears to be progressive despite its standard archetypes. We have the goofy dad, the two hot moms, a hot 18-year-old girl pretending to be 14, and two guys living together. Gloria Delgado (the feisty latina hot mom) is played by Sofia Vergara, age 45. Her husband is played by Ed O’Neil, age 72, most famous for his role as Al Bundy on Married… with Children. This time around, he plays the exact same character, except old and rich. It’s like Al Bundy won the lottery, dumped Peg, and married a trophy wife. The other hot mom is also a housewife, and so is one of the gays. So we have a sitcom about three “modern” families. All three of them are led by rich white patriarchs, all three of them have wives that don’t work, and all three of the husbands have…
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H. Seitz
June 27, 2018
Movies and Television
Fonzie, Happy Days, Jackie Chan, Katie Holmes, Lena Dunham, Matt Damon, Mr. Cunningham, Mrs. Cunningham, Rosie O'Donnell, The Fonze, Todd Bridges
Happy Days: The Awakening Rated TV-MA For the love of God, another reboot. But let’s put that aside for a moment. I consider myself to be a “woke” individual. I’m an alcoholic who shoots speedballs and frequently cries in front of prostitutes and I refuse to judge myself (or let anyone judge me) for any of it. But Lena Dunham’s Happy Days is beyond temporally biased. It isn’t even insane as much as it’s totally incoherent. The Fonze is played by Rosie O’Donnell. And that’s about the only thing I’m sure about. As far as who anyone else is supposed to be, it’s anyone’s guess. Maybe it’s my unacknowledged biases coming through, but I’d assumed that Jackie Chan was playing Arnold. But apparently, he’s supposed to be Potsie? Or maybe Mrs. Cunningham? One minute he’s talking to Todd Bridges about picking up chicks, the next he’s wearing an apron and…
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H. Seitz
June 19, 2018
Default, Movies and Television, Reviews
Alex P. Keaton, American History X, Edward Norton, Emma Watson, Family Ties, Gabrielle Union, Jeff Goldblum, Justine Bateman, Meredith Baxter-Birney, Michael Gross, Michael J. Fox, Tina Youthers, Willem Dafoe
When I first heard about this, I thought “great, another fucking reboot.” Is Hollywood really this creatively bankrupt? (Yes.) With The Transformers reboot, at least there was the chance that today’s technology could give us a paradigm-shifting experience (and it did! Seven times!). And reboots of 90s classics like Sabrina the Teenage Witch just make sense. Who wouldn’t want to watch a cat puppet talk to a girl we’re not sure how to feel about wanting to hump? But Family Ties? Really? The only reason it worked in the first place was the spank-bankability of Meredith Baxter-Birney. Without the sexual tension between her and Michael J. Fox, what’s the point? I’m happy to report that I was wrong. Dead wrong. Family Ties: The Ties That Bind melds all of the classic archetypes of the original with today’s dystopian angst. We still have the liberal dad (Jeff Goldblum), the hot mom…
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RK Galaga
May 16, 2018
Movies and Television, Reviews
A New Hope, Alden Ehrenreich, American Graffiti, Beanie Babies, Bespin, Billy Hoyle, Capt. Kirk, Chewbacca, Chewie, Chris Pine, Chris Pratt, Clint Eastwood, Cloud City, Coen Brothers, Donald Glover, Ethan Coen, George Lucas, Hail Caesar!, Han Solo, Harrison Ford, Henry Fonda, Jabba the Hutt, James Stewart, Jawas, JJ Abrams, Joel Coen, John Wayne, Lando Calrissian, Millennium Falcon, Paul Le Mat, Ponda Baba, Repo Man, Richard Dreyfus, Robot Chicken, Ron Howard, Shia LaBeouf, Sidney Deane, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Star Wars, Storm Troopers, Walrus Man, White Men Can't Jump, Woody Harrelson
Solo: A Star Wars Story is the movie everyone was asking for but nobody really wanted. And why wouldn’t a Star Wars fan want a Han Solo origin story? Because they know what to expect from Disney’s desperate pandering. Focusing on the western film genre influences in Star Wars, Solo casts Alden Ehrenreich in the title role. This is undoubtedly due to his previous role as a goofy cowboy who can’t act in the Coen brothers film Hail, Caesar! Fan reactions to this choice were mostly negative. In discussions of who would have been better, many names are thrown around, including Chris Pratt (too obvious), Chris Pine (Capt. Kirk, really?), and Shia LaBeouf (seems like they weren’t even trying). In my opinion, all of those guys would have sucked, too. Clint Eastwood was the best cowboy of all time and therefore would have made the best young Han Solo. James Stewart’s…
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RK Galaga
March 3, 2017
Movies and Television, Reviews
Anthony Hopkins, Aziz Ansari, Batista, Buffalo Bill, George "The Animal" Steele, Guardians of the Galaxy, Hannibal Lecter, Hulk Hogan, Jodie Foster, Jonathan Demme, Lego, Lego Movie, Mindy Kaling, Robin, Silence of the Lambs, TCL Chinese Theatre, The Lego Batman Movie
“It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.” Did we need a re-make of Silence of the Lambs? Probably. Did it have to be a Lego movie? That, I’m not so sure of. One thing I do know for sure—Anthony Hopkins has really lost his shit. Rumor has it that the idea for a Lego: Silence of the Lambs movie came to him in a dream, and the very next day he got on the phone with director Jonathan Demme to pitch it. When Demme said he wasn’t interested in remaking his 1991 masterpiece, Hopkins decided to direct it himself. Knowing he’s never directed an animated movie before, he decided he would keep things simple by following the original film shot for shot. The problem is, he insisted on working completely from memory, and he hasn’t watched the film since it’s premiere 26 years…
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RK Galaga
November 11, 2016
Movies and Television
Garbage Pail Kids, Justin Bieber, McKenzie Astin, Roger Moore, Samwise Gamgee, Timothy Dalton
“Rats and thunder, wind and hail, send the kids back in the pail.” It was recently announced that Hollywood is planning to remake The Garbage Pail Kids Movie, so I thought I should write a review of the original. I always felt this film was underrated and under-appreciated. It was released in only three theaters across the country, and it never even made its money back in video sales. Apparently, it was recently released on Blu-ray, but the executive who pushed for this has since been fired out of a cannon towards the sun. Given that the sun is extremely hot, the guy probably died. From the start, Garbage Pail Kids was marred with production issues, not the least of which involved star McKenzie Astin (Samwise Gamgee’s half brother) and a nasty case of explosive diarrhea. In hindsight, it might have actually furthered the plot if they had kept those…
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RK Galaga
September 8, 2016
Movies and Television, Reviews
Brie Larson, J.J. Abrams, John C. Reilly, John Goodman, King Kong, Kong: Skull Island, Robert Zemeckis, Samuel L. Jackson, The Walk, Tom Hiddleston
Disclaimer: This website, The Skull Island Times, is in no way affiliated with the film reviewed below. Spoiler alert: King Kong doesn’t die in the end. That should be obvious—unless Kong was a zombie in the original 1933 film. Really, though, nothing is obvious these days. Thanks to directors such as J.J. Abrams, the lines between remake, reboot, prequel and sequel have become so blurred that anything can happen withwhat we once thought was canon. Anyway, rest assured, King Kong doesn’t die in Kong: Skull Island. But he does get amnesia after being bonked in the head by a giant coconut. Until that point in the film, Kong speaks with a British accent and aspires to move to Hollywood so he can become a movie star. However, after losing his smarts in the coconut accident, he only makes it as far as Detroit. This film is set in the 1970’s,…
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RK Galaga
August 27, 2016
Movies and Television, Reviews
Amy Poehler, Burger Time, Christian Bale, Don Cheadle, Macaulay Culkin
Sometimes Hollywood takes a break from rehashing old movies in order to make movie rehashes of popular video games instead. Most of the time these are based on action games, either involving zombies or big-breasted women with long braids. These modern games have life-like graphics and storyline formats that can keep addicts engaged for so long that they forget how to eat and piss. The stories they tell can easily be adapted into nice boring movies with over-the-top CGI effects. Old-school games, on the other hand, usually just feature a bunch of awkwardly moving shapes performing menial tasks. These tasks are often so nonsensical that it is hard to imagine how they could be turned into a coherent movie. What you should basically expect is that, aside from the title of the film and the names of some of the characters, the movie won’t have anything to do with the…
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RK Galaga
August 20, 2016
Movies and Television, Reviews
Autobot, Christopher Walken, Cy-Kill, Decepticon, Gobots, Guardians, Katie Perry, Leader-1, Michael Cera, Napster, One Crazy Summer, Renegades, Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat, Scooter, The Bounty Hunter, Transformers
Gobots were Transformers knock-offs which you got for your birthday when people were too cheap to by you Transformers. They were silly toys, and they inspired an even more preposterous cartoon. Fortunately, the new live-action movie doesn’t contain a single bit of animation, CGI or otherwise. Director Philip Seymour Hoffman once again defies expectations with his insistence on using people in foam costumes to play the rolls of shape-shifting robots. Yes, it is people in costumes even when they are in vehicle form. Even when other people are riding inside the vehicles. Retired professional wrestler Ricky ‘The Dragon” Steamboat makes his big-screen debut starring as the cleverly named Leader-1, leader of the Guardians (Gobot version of Autobots). For people who were fans of his work inside the squared circle, this performance will knock your slippers off. Who would have thought Steamboat could bring the house down with impeccable comic timing…
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RK Galaga
August 11, 2016
Movies and Television, Reviews
Ashton Kutcher, Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, Ghost, Jerry Zucker, Patrick Swayze, Road House, Rumer Willis, Sam Elliot, Vincent Schiavelli, Whoopi Goldberg
The 1990 romantic hit Ghost is exactly the type of movie one expects to be remade right about now in this cultural wasteland we call the twenty-first century. So when director Jerry Zucker told the world he was making a sequel instead of a reboot, most of us were a little shocked. When he said he was bringing back Patrick Swayze to play the lead, we were more than shocked—mostly because Patrick Swayze has been dead since 2009. So how did he do it? “None of your damn business” is what Zucker tells anyone who asks. Rumer has it that Whoopi Goldberg can actually summon the dead, but what the hell does Rumer Willis know? Just because both of her parents are in this movie doesn’t mean she knows how they summoned Patrick Swayze’s departed soul. Anyway, as one would imagine, a movie starring an actual ghost is pretty fucking…
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