I loved every second of Stranger Things (review here) and I hope that it leads younger generations to movies like The Thing and Evil Dead. The show proudly wears classic influences on it sleeves, and because of that it doesn’t feel like a shameless ripoff. The following post covers five films that you need to check out after watching the show. I know a lot of you cinephiles have watched them, but there are many people who aren’t insane movie watchers like we are.
Here are five films you should watch after finishing Stranger Things.
1. Under the Skin (2014)
Under the Skin is a mesmerizing film that captures Scotland’s dreary beauty while blasting us with the most sensory film of 2014. I love that there is zero backstory or expository hand holding. It is a remarkably simple movie that still leaves many questions unanswered. It is a pure and unadulterated experience that could be vivisected or simply appreciated. My advice is to turn off the lights, turn up the volume and allow yourself to fully appreciate a spellbinding experience.
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2. The Thing (1982)
The Thing is the greatest horror remake ever (aside from The Fly) and it features one of the best endings of all time (this isn’t hyperbole). If you are looking for gross practical effects and a great Kurt Russell beard you are in luck. John Carpenter stuffed The Thing with great music, suspense and characters. I could watch Kurt Russell and Keith David bicker and fight aliens all day. You need to watch The Thing.
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3. Evil Dead (1983)
My hope is that people watch the original Evil Dead then work their way through the statistically speaking greatest horror franchise ever. Evil Dead is a bonkers masterpiece that came from the brain of director and horror maestro Sam Raimi. What I love most about the Evil Dead series is the main character Ash (Bruce Campbell). He is a massive idiot who continually fails his way to the top and saves the day. Movies don’t get more bonkers than Evil Dead.
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4. They Live (1988)
They Live is a cult classic personified. It is weird, smart and features one of the best fight scenes ever. John Carpenter’s take on 80s consumerism is wildly uneven, but it has a fun personality that blends intelligence, insanity and glorious one-liners. You will never look at bubble gum the same again.
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5. Jaws (1975)
Jaws is my favorite film and if you haven’t watched it yet there is something wrong with you (or you are busy and have a life). I had a Jaws poster on my wall as a kid and I loved that the poster is featured prominently in Stranger Things. I know the majority of you reading have watched this film many times, but hopefully this serves as a reminder for those who haven’t. You need to watch it!
The MFF Podcast #66: The 2016 MFF Summer Olympics
You can download the pod on Itunes or LISTEN TO THE POD ON BLOG TALK RADIO.
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With the Rio Summer Olympics right around the corner we here at MFF decided to contribute to the games. We compiled highly scientific lists (not really) and picked cinematic athletes who could win gold. These athletes have been training for years (or not at all) and they are ready to represent the country of MFF. I am 100% certain this crew would sweep up all the medals and confuse many!
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As always, we answer random listener questions and co-host Leavengood once again proves his undying love for Deadpool. If you are interested make sure to check our fantasy football and basketball teams. They are amazing and will change your life.
Sit back, relax and listen to discussions about E.T. winning several gold medals. Check out the MFF pod on Blog Talk Radio or head over to Itunes and listen to the randomness!
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I love bringing together random cinematic characters and making them engage in sports. Whether it be Football or Basketball we here at MFF love considering whether the Sarlacc Pitt would be a great defensive back or power forward. The following post brings together a weird grouping of characters who could win gold at the Rio Summer Olympics. I’ve stayed away from the obvious picks and instead picked some more eclectic choices.
Here are the movie characters that could win gold!
James Bond (Skyfall) – High Dive
I love Skyfall and I’ve always wondered how Bond was able to survive the massive fall after being shot. if he can survive that fall I’d guarantee he’d kill it on the high dive.
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Snake Plissken (Escape From L.A.) – Modern Pentathlon
He already completed the science fiction pentathlon (surfing, basketball, motorcycle riding, hang gliding) in Escape from L.A. so I don’t see him having a problem with the modern version.
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E.T. (E.T.) – BMX Cycling.
I guarantee there is no rule for levitation because rulemakers would never expect that. E.T. would win on a loophole and the judges would be pissed.
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James “The Grim Reaper” Roper (The Great White Hype) – Boxing
I just want to see more out-of-shape Daman Wayans punching people. Dude was great in the 1990s.
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Ramada Thompson (Hot Shots) – Equestrain Eventing
Ramada’s horse skills are unparalleled and I guarantee she would win gold. You need to watch Hot Shots.
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Tiffany and Paul Solitano (Silver Linings Playbook) – Ball Room Dancing
They would definitely spice up the Olympics. I’d imagine they’d be the Eddie the Eagle of the dance world.
Frank the Tank (Old School) – Rhythmic Gymnastics
Frank did this beautiful routine on very little notice. Imagine what he could do with years of training?
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Nick Condon – (Blood on the Sun) – Judo
James Cagney has a black belt in Judo and this fight is bonkers proof. There are lots and lots and lots of flips.
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The Polecats (Mad Max: Fury Road) – Pole Vaulting
If they can master post-apocalyptic death traps these people would have no problem conquering regular sports.
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The Merman (Cabin in the Woods) – Freestyle swimming
The Merman would be a literal and figurative terror in a pool. Competitors would have no chance against this guy.
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Anybody from Top Gun – Beach Volleyball
The Top Gun fellas are absolute class at absolutely everything. It doesn’t matter that they do because they will be awesome at it. The net might have to be lowered though.
The Invitation: A Dinner Party With a Side of Cult
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What I like about The Invitation is I knew where it was going, but its destination was way better than unexpected. This little horror(ish) film takes its time and if you didn’t know about it beforehand you would expect this is simply another good-looking people at a dinner party film (is that a genre?). Director Karyn Kusama has made a film that delivers one of the best horror endings I’ve seen in years. She builds slowly and confidently and trusts her leading man Logan Marshall-Green to deliver a subtle performance that blends sadness, paranoia, anger and a great beard.
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The film opens with Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and his wife Kira (Emayatzy E. Corinealdi) heading to a dinner party thrown by his ex-wife Eden (Tammy Blanchard) and her partner David (Michiel Huisman). Eden and David have just come back from Mexico and they are hosting an “invitation” for a group of their closest friends. In Mexico, Eden and David joined a cult and they open up the gathering with a creepy video of a woman dying. The members of the dinner party are thrown by the video, but any skepticism is washed away by great booze and food. Nobody seems to notice the strange goings-on except for Will who picks up on random clues and is justifiably concerned that Eden and David invited a squirrely woman named Sadie (Lindsay Budge) and the creepy guy from Zodiac (John Carroll Lynch) over for dinner as well. As the old friends reunite everything gets weird and we left wondering where it is all headed.
The Invitation is told from Will’s uneven perspective and his paranoia begins to get the better of him. He is still reeling from the loss of his child and he begins to see things that may not be there. The film builds to a bloody conclusion that isn’t drawn out and plays realistic in the sense that nobody in this situation would know what to do. I don’t want to go any further into the plot but consider it something along the lines of The Sacrament meeting Coherence.
Movies like The Invitation are rare because they ask a lot of the viewer. In order to fully appreciate it you need to immerse yourself in it to get the full-effect. I totally recommend you check it out and embrace the dinner party shenanigans.
Bad Movie Tuesday: Gods of CGI Egypt
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Gods of Egypt is a weird movie directed by the talented director Alex Proyas (The Crow, Dark City). It is a bright blob of CGI that features stiff performances, white Egyptians and Gerard Butler yelling a lot. It is a mishmash of Egyptian history, glossy colors and a few really cool ideas. It represents the worst of big budget film making because it homogenizes cool ideas and moves so quickly you don’t care about anything. There are chases scenes, giant snakes and plunging neck-lines but it becomes boring. The $140 million film bombed at the box-office and feels like it was filmed in 2001, forgotten about, then dumped into the theaters this year.
I wonder if the distressed looks are from watching the dailies?
Gods of Egypt tells the story of the Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) attempting to get revenge on his uncle Set (Gerard Butler). Why does he want revenge? Well, on the day he was to become king, Set killed his parents, stole his girlfriend and ripped out his eyes. Set takes over world, and it becomes a gross place where nobody has money to go into the afterlife (Set is a jerk). However, a resourceful and underwritten thief named Bek (Brenton Thwaites) steals back Horus’s eyes and they go a mission to save the thieve’s girlfriend Zaya (Courtney Eaton) and kill Set. What follows is a bonkers movie that plays like The Immortals met Wrath of the Titans then teamed up with Prince of Persia and spawned something silly. It is stuck in a boring middle ground between blockbuster and Monty Python sketch. I kept waiting for this to happen.
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I’ve been a fan of director Alex Proyas for 22 years now. He stormed out of the gate with The Crow, then directed the beautiful Dark City. From there his talents were wasted in I, Robot, Knowing and now Gods of Egypt. His films are always best when they feature grimy settings and R-rated violence. His style doesn’t blend well with CGI because he needs something practical to ground the science fiction in. In The Crow and Dark City he created iconic characters and moments that thrived in the bleak and layered settings. His CGI PG-13 films are basically all smash, crash and more smash. The chase scenes follow a strict structure of people running from CGI creations while the CGI creations destroy CGI structures. There is no creativity to the action and I found myself missing the Brendan Fraser classic (yeah, I said it) The Mummy.
Gods of Egypt is a wasted world building opportunity. It feels like they put it together in a couple months and forgot about making it good. You can’t will a franchise into existence, and I hate that it might prevent future original properties from being released.
Everybody Relax, I’m Here: An Appreciation of Jack Burton and Big Trouble in Little China
Listen to our Big Trouble in Little China podcast episode!
Big Trouble in Little China’s Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) is my favorite action hero/sidekick because he is all too human. He is insecure, boisterous and has an unearned confidence that keeps him alive. The brilliance of Jack Burton lies in the fact that he isn’t a cop, spy, superhero, savior or robot. He is a truck driver who is prone to blowhard antics and loud proclamations. However, when it comes down to fighting for others (and his truck) he squares off against pure evil and puts a knife in its head.
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One of the reasons Jack Burton works so well is because of Kurt Russell’s partnership with writer W.D. Richter and director John Carpenter. The Big Trouble script was originally written by Gary Goldman and David Z. Weinstein and was supposed to be a western with Clint Eastwood in mind. However, once Carpenter got involved the plot changed and morphed into the story of a truck driver failing his way to the top. Richter, Carpenter and Russell created a unique character that pretty much everyone misunderstood because he was unlike anything audiences had ever seen. I love that there is no ego to Russell’s performance and his unselfishness allowed others to shine while be bumbled around and got uncomfortable in elevators.
I love the random burp.
John Carpenter wanted Burton to be an “anti-John Wayne” that featured all of the swagger and none of the skill. Russell took that to heart and imbued Jack with a legit physicality and little self-awareness. He is a blowhard with a heart of gold and gets legitimately flustered when a beautiful woman comes in contact with him. I like that Jack Burton wasn’t incredibly muscular and instead looked like he lifted drywall on his days off. Burton’s lack of cartoonish muscles helped create an everyday man vibe that stood in stark contrast to action heroes like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. I also appreciate that Jack Burton didn’t get the girl (Kim Cattrall was out of his league) and ended up in the same place he began. Jack Burton started the film on the road and ended the film on the road.
Much ado has been made of Jack Burton the sidekick. I 100% agree with him not being the hero because Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) is the real hero who can punch, kick and sword fight with the best of them. However, I’m more impressed that Jack kept swinging away despite his obvious limitations and skills. Big Trouble in Little China plays out believably because Burton’s only chance to live is by dumb luck. The fact that he has no formal training makes me like him more. The guy has no fighting skills yet keeps running into the fray and surviving. The fact that a truck driver survived an epic magical battle is pretty amazing when you think about it. Don’t even get me started on his disguises because they are incredible, terrible and delusional at the same time.
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John Carpenter recently did an interview with Uproxx and he said this about Burton.
“On some level I think we’re all Jack Burtons, we all talk too much and we’re comically kind of tragically delusional and I think that’s what’s fun about him and us as a species.
Carpenter’s comment reminded me of a chapter from B-movie king Bruce Campbell’s autobiography. In the book If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor, Bruce tells a funny story about the time he showed off his horse riding skills while training for a role. Bruce had some equestrian skills from Army of Darkness and thought he was wowing all the trainers and production staff. When he got off the horse he asked the instructor how it looked, the instructor replied “Son, you look like a monkey humping a football.” When you watch Big Trouble in Little China look for the nuances that Russell adds to the action scenes. He is clumsy, cheeky and never pretty while in action. However, I bet in Burton’s mind he looks like Bruce Lee met Clint Eastwood and spawned the greatest action hero ever. Take a look at the picture below and you will notice a difference in shooting faces.
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What sets Jack Burton apart from other cult classic blowhards is that he has a genuine heart to go with his absurdity. Unlike Bruce Campbell’s Ash from Army of Darkness he isn’t responsible for the troubles and inadvertently finds himself in one dangerous situation after another. I love Ash but he is a pure and unadulterated dipshit. He can’t remember three simple words and over the course of a couple of films he becomes a womanizing maniac.
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There is nothing mean about Jack Burton and aside from some delusions of grandeur he has other people’s best interests in mind. He walks a fine “blowhard” line that never veers into the throat-ripping territory of MacGruber or the gonzo territory of Ash. The Jack Burton character has always had the luxury of not becoming watered down due to terrible sequels. Until the comic books came around in 2014, Jack Burton remained a singular and unique creation that didn’t need a sequel. I think the sequels would’ve been in the joke and it would’ve been a Fletch/Fletch Returns scenario that took what we loved about the character, turned it to 11 and lost what we liked about him in the first place. The only sequel I’d pay to see is if Burton accidentally jumped into Optimus Prime and saves the world. I’d call it Big Trouble on Little Earth and it would be a buddy-comedy where Burton complains that Optimus won’t let him drive.
I’ve always been a fan of action heroes that feel like actual human beings. Whether it be Keanu Reeves in Speed, Boromir in The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring or Emily Blunt in Sicario I like fallibility in heroes. I like the Marvel cinematic universe but the superhero antics have kept me from caring about the action. The only scenes I’ve loved are when Tony escapes the cave in Iron Man and when Vision messes up the dinner in Captain America: Civil War. The same goes for the Fast & the Furious series. I appreciate that the first Furious movie features the heroes getting owned by a renegade truck driver. My favorite action films are 13 Assassins, The Raid, Aliens, Seven Samurai and The 13th Warrior (yeah, I said it). The characters in these films are outnumbered, outgunned and their victories are bittersweet.
If Dwayne Johnson ever gets around to the Big Trouble in little China remake I hope he remembers the moment when he got beat up by the villagers and monkeys in The Rundown. I think his size could be an advantage if he plays Burton as a muscular dude who has never been in a fight. Thus, the muscles would get in the way and become a joke. I’d prefer for the original to be re-released and become the highest-grossing film of all time. However, that won’t happen, and if it has to happen I think The Rock loves it enough to give it an earnest shot.
John Carpenter thinks that Jack Burton is an absolute idiot (in a good way). However, I’ve never looked at him as a total dope. The guy obviously has deep-seated insecurities but they never come to the surface because we don’t spend that much time with him. Thus, we are left with a beautifully original character who cannot be replicated or mimicked. Jack Burton is the most human of heroes and Kurt Russell played him perfectly.
If you liked the post make sure to check our podcast where we constantly talk about Kurt Russell.
It all started with an observation about Kurt Russell’s sleeveless shirts. I cheekily wrote a post about the sleeveless one and it ballooned into a whole lot of Kurt Russell randomness. The randomness has lead me to ponder the benefits of sleeveless knife throwing. This post is by no means scientific or logical, but I feel like I found enough evidence to make people consider the benefits of undeterred knife throwing.
I’m sure you could make an argument for sleeve wearers Bill the Butcher (Gangs of New York) or Lee Christmas (The Expendables), but I don’t think they could save the world if it came down to it.
Here are the best examples I could find for sleeveless shirt knife throwing. If you like this post make sure to read my piece about the best rock throwing of all time.
Jack Burton saves the day in Big Trouble in Little China
Jack Burton has great reflexes and sleeves would only get in his way.
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Sleeves are a hindrance in Prince of Persia 2: Sands of Time
The guy with no sleeves defeats the guy with sleeves. This furthers my point.
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Elektra don’t need no sleeves in Daredevil
I don’t know who hung up these sand bags. However, I know Elektra was free to twirl her arms anywhere without the hindrance of sleeves. I know she is using isn’t using knives, but I’d wager a knife/sai swap wouldn’t be out of the picture.
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Arnold does better without sleeves
In Predator, Arnold is only able to kill one guy whilst wearing sleeves and throwing a knife. In Commando he can kill two at a time while having free arms. Thus, no sleeves is better.
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Danny Trejo destroys folks in Desperado
Desperado features the best knife throwing of all time. Danny Trejo was able to wipe out countless people without sleeves. Nobody else could ever do this.
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Trinity has zero sleeves
Trinity puts a hurting on people in The Matrix. Her sleeveless stylings definitely helped.
We recently discussed who we would cast if they did another Street Fighter II movie in The MFF Podcast #32: Street Fighter Casting Call. Our picks were all over the place and I just wanted to share some of my personal favorite picks…
Beastly framed and 6’5” (various stats can be found on different websites), Blanka poses a significant casting problem if ever someone were to do Street Fighter any justice. Do you go pure CGI a la Hulk or just go with Carrot Top?
Or do you use a live action actor? Moreover, do you use a little artistic license and change the size of an otherwise iconic character for the sake of an actor preference. Such was the case in casting Tom Hardy (The Dark Knight Rises) as Bane, despite the fact that Bane was literally more than twice his size.
It would have made far more sense to cast someone like Nathan Jones (Troy, Mad Max: Fury Road) at 6’11” and nearly 400 lbs for the role of Bane. But maybe he’s, in fact, too tall and not proportionally stout enough for roles like Bane or the Brazilian beast Blanka, even if he plays ferocious charcters fantastically.
Speaking of which, is it me, or might Tom Hardy be just feral enough to play a “smaller” Blanka? Perhaps…but he’s just way too small even if he got back into Bane or Warrior shape—when he weighed a smidge over 200 pounds. Then again, Blanka–and many other characters–seem to have gotten significantly larger, taller and deeper into steroid use after 1991’s Street Fighter II. So if we were going with 1991 Blanka, perhaps Hardy would be an excellent fit! After all, he communicated almost entirely with grunts and facial expressions in Lawless (2012) and Fury Road (2015).
Andy Serkis–best known for his monstrous roles as Gollum, Caesar and King Kong–is often a favorite for full CGI roles. If that were the case, Blanka’s appearance easily falls into the hands of the CGI artists. That’s fun and all, but I’d rather a real person present the likeness of Blanka, even if it were CGI-modified to up his size or appearance.
Above all, I’d personally love to see John Cena in the role! Sure, he’s only 5’9”. But at 255 lbs he actually has body dimensions that fit the primal Blanka’s surprisingly well.
Remember seeing him basically naked in Trainwreck (2015)? Yeah, the dude is inhumanly thick. Best of all is that with Cena’s size, he’d offer a plausible match to much larger opponents.
I guess those are my picks…Andy Serkis for pure CGI Blanka, Tom Hardy for a more “human-sized” Blanka, Carrot Top as a cruel joke, and John Cena for the best-in-show and build. The only reason I don’t spout of Nathan Jones again is because he’s my “huge built guy” I’d turn to for numerous other roles like Sagat or Zangief.
Who would you choose for Blanka?
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