The Walking Dead: Season Two (2011)


Am I the Only One Zen Around Here?

The Walking Dead: Season 2 (2011)Season one of The Walking Dead was so good, I couldn’t help but continue.  Especially since I knew that season four was starting.  Truth be told, season four has already started by this point, and I’ve already caught up and readied myself to start the fourth season, but I’ve resolved to finish putting out the reviews before I start watching.  So let’s rush through this, shall we?  I had a little bit of trepidation before starting season two even though season one was so good because I had heard this was slow and more about human interaction than zombies.  Let’s see what I thought as I review The Walking Dead: Season Two, based on the graphic novel series by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard, developed for TV by Frank Darabont, and starring Andrew Lincoln, Jon Bernthal, Sarah Wayne Callies, Scott Wilson, Steven Yeun, Lauren Cohan, Laurie Holden, Jeffrey DeMunn, Emily Kinney, Chandler Riggs, Norman Reedus, Melissa McBride, IronE Singleton, Madison Lintz, Pruitt Taylor Vince, and Michael Zegen.

After the CDC turned out to be a bust, Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and his group set off for Fort Benning.  On the way, the group gets stuck in dead car traffic and must hide while a large group of walkers passes through the area like a herd.  In the confusion, Carol (Melissa McBride)’s daughter, Sophia (Madison Lintz), is chased into the woods by walkers.  While searching for her, Rick’s son, Carl (Chandler Riggs) is accidently shot by a local farmer named Otis (Pruitt Taylor Vince).  Otis hurries them back to the farm of Hershel Greene (Scott Wilson), a former veterinarian, who attempts to fix Carl up.  Lacking the necessary supplies, Rick’s former partner Shane Walsh (Jon Bernthal) sets off to find them with Otis while the rest of the group continues their search for Sophia.

Y’all people be trippin’!  This season didn’t seem to suffer in my opinion at all.  I guess people complained that there wasn’t enough action in this season and that it was too much about interpersonal relationships.  …Who cares?  The show is awesome BECAUSE of that stuff, not in spite of it!  I don’t think I’d be that into this show if it was all mindless action and zombie killing.  They need some of that (and they get plenty enough for me) but I like it better because it’s more about the human interactions than just the zombies.  So anyone that told me that is a stupid jerk and I hate you.  The Sophia situation kind of slowed things down in the lives of the survivors, but I liked it on a human level.  It probably would’ve been more effective if I hadn’t watched Chris Hardwick’s All-Star Celebrity Bowling before I saw this season, enabling me to put a few things together with a joke that he made to figure out exactly what the outcome of the situation would be about five episodes before it happened, but that’s really my fault for not having watched a great show earlier.  I was still able to get angry early on when that dumb little bitch ran off in the first place.  I don’t want to sound harsh or anything, but maybe she deserves to die in order to punish Carol for not raising her daughter to listen to what adults tell her while trying to save her life, or for running off in the first place when the herd of zombies were about to pass by.  And speaking of bad parenting, why the hell did Rick let Carl approach that reindeer?  Even if he didn’t get shot while trying to pet it, that thing could have gored or kicked him to death pretty easily.

There were lots of very effective moments in this season as well.  The entire scene of the zombie migration was intense and aptly handled.  I also found myself crying, “OH NO!” out loud while Andrea pointed the rifle at Daryl.  My love affair with this show could have ended right there if one of my least favorite characters on the show had killed my favorite character in her stupidity.  I also really liked Daryl’s story about the Cherokee Rose.  Later on, Beth drops a pretty heavy argument in favor of suicide.  Her logic was strong on that one.  It was also effective when Rick admitted he had killed Shane and that if anyone stuck around, it was going to be his way or the highway.  It was like the “This is not a cheerocracy; this is a cheertatorship” speech from Not Another Teen Movie.  I wish he had said it was now a zombtatorship and not a zombocracy.  There were also a couple of moments that were less than effective.  I was not at all surprised by the results of the pregnancy test.  They wouldn’t even have included it if it was negative.  That would’ve just been a giant waste of time.  I think the reveal of what was in the barn wasn’t that much of a surprise either.  Maybe when they got more specific about what was in the barn it was a surprise, but the general contents were not.  The reason for locking them up in the barn seemed much stupider than was typical for Hershel, but I guess he wasn’t in his right mind about it.

I can’t really say much about the look of this show.  Still great.  That swimmer in the well was exactly as disgusting as it should’ve been, and the part where the walker was peeling off his face while trying to stick it through the hole in a windshield was pretty awesome.

All of the performances in the show remain fantastic.  About half of the characters remain assholes.  I didn’t have many thoughts about Rick this season.  He may have spent too much time whining around his unconscious kid.  I couldn’t really get behind how quickly he let Lori off the hook for cheating on him.  Sure, she thought he was dead, but maybe take more than a month to mourn before moving on.  Now that I think about it, that’s more of a complaint about Lori.  And here’s a couple more!  I hate that bitch so much!  Not that I was on board with Shane through most of this season, but this bitch could have stopped dragging him along.  Do you want him or not?  “Stay away from my son!”  “I’m so happy you risked your life for my son!”  You don’t know what you want so much it’s like you’re a woman or something.  Speaking of which, she’s also terrible at driving!  She crashes a car and almost gets killed by walkers because she’s full on reading a map while driving.  I assume she was on her way to pick up makeup that she could put on while driving on the way back.  I got mad at her again when she was shitting on Hershel because he was trying to save her sons life and he was just a veterinarian.  Alright, bitch.  Go pick from one of the thousands of human doctors you have at your disposal.  Animals basically function in the same manner as humans do, and you don’t have a whole lot of choices.  The worst thing she did was getting pissy when Rick killed Shane.  He was trying to kill him!  Are you just mad because he narrowed down your options of men to cheat on him with?  Now you have to start considering Hershel?  I also don’t understand her logic in not wanting to let Carl learn how to shoot.  I’m not saying let him carry around a gun all the time, but would you rather he get killed by walkers because he can’t hit shit?  Speaking of which, Carl was a bit of a little shit in this season.  Most of the time I couldn’t tell if he was gravitating more towards his dad or Shane.  There’s even a point where we’re not sure if he’s going to shoot his dad or Shane.  It was a good shot when he finally made it though.  Of course, the little asshole is the cause of one of the nicer people on the show dying because this little asshole had to go and pester a trapped walker until it was able to free itself.  Never really got on board with the Andrea character either.  First off, she shot Daryl.  She also sucked with a gun for most of the season, and she fucked Shane.  I don’t think I disliked her enough to just forget she existed when abandoning the farm as the other survivors did, however.  I don’t know what the kid’s name was, but I also thought the young kid that lived on the farm was a dumbass.  Why didn’t he start driving off once Carl and Rick jumped onto the RV?  Fuck letting them climb down while you wait so you can get eaten by walkers!

I do like a lot of the people in the show, however.  Daryl is the best.  He seems like such a nice guy under his gruff exterior, and he’s the most useful person in the group.  He can track, his weapon can be used at any time, and he carries around a giant baggy of useful drugs.  I loved how dedicated he was to finding Sophia, and I kind of hope he winds up with Carol.  She looks like she needs a little lovin’.  Glenn is also great, but I think my favorite thing about him is Maggie Greene.  It’s about damned time I got to see some of that sexy ass Lauren Cohan!  I also liked Otis, and I was pretty sad to see what happened to it.  I wasn’t surprised by it because that Shane is a piece of shit, but I was sad.  Hershel was also very likeable, especially since he was supportive of Glenn’s relationship with Maggie.  I wasn’t expecting that conversation to go that way.  She wasn’t named in this season, but the lady with the samurai sword seems like she’s gonna be my jams.  That’s exactly how I’d roll in the zombie apocalypse.

Season two of The Walking Dead was every bit as enjoyable to me as the first season.  I suppose if all you want out of a series is random glory shots of zombie’s heads exploding then you might find the human drama a little boring.  I would also find you a little boring.  The only problems I’ve had with this series so far are that some of the characters are assholes and idiots.  But I only hate those characters, not the performers.  They are also awesome.  And I suppose the show wouldn’t be as interesting if there weren’t some assholes for me to want dead.  Check this season out on Netflix.  I already purchased it.  Moving on to season three as soon as possible.  The Walking Dead season two gets “Merle Dixon’s clap is the best thing that ever happened to you” out of “If I hadn’t done what I did, you would be dead now.”

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The Walking Dead: Season One (2010)


You Just Rang the Dinner Bell.

The Walking Dead: Season One (2012)I believe I intended to write a review for this TV show last October but I must’ve forgotten.  This year I would not make the same mistake.  The October Horrothon has given me the excuse to watch the Blu-ray that I purchased when it released in 2011.  It sat on my shelf for 2 years, forgotten.  It was not intentional on my part.  I’ve heard nothing but great things about this show, but it got filed away with the other shows like Game of Thrones, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad that I subconsciously refuse to watch because they’re supposedly so good.  Maybe I’m afraid that these shows can’t possibly live up to the expectations that the world has set for me for them.  But it’s October, season four is about to start, and I need to find out if I wasted money on The Walking Dead Season One, based on the graphic novel series by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard, developed for TV by Frank Darabont, and starring Andrew Lincoln, Jon Bernthal, Sarah Wayne Callies, Laurie Holden, Emma Bell, Steven Yeun, Jeffrey DeMunn, Norman Reedus, Chandler Riggs, IronE Singleton, Jeryl Prescott Sales, Melissa McBride, Adam Minarovich, Andrew Rothenberg, Michael Rooker, and Noah Emmerich.

Sheriff’s Deputy Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) is shot in an altercation with some criminals and slips into a coma.  After an undetermined amount of time, he awakens to find the hospital torn apart, with blood and bullet holes lining the walls.  He returns home to find it deserted, his wife Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) and son Carl (Chandler Riggs) apparently having escaped.  While trying to wrap his mind around the situation, a young boy named Duane (Adrian Kali Turner) hits him in the head with a shovel.  When he wakes up, Duane’s father Morgan (Lennie James) explains that while Rick was unconscious the world was overrun by zombies, or “walkers.”  Rick gets them into the police station where they get stocked up on guns and ammunition, and then Rick sets off alone to Atlanta, where it’s said there is a safe zone.

This show gets a mighty “Hell Yeah!” from me.  And I’m told this isn’t even the best season!  I can only hope that’s true because this season was fantastic.  It’s awesome because it’s equal parts zombie horror and human drama, and both of them work fantastically.  The show opens very effectively, giving the audience the zombie stuff that we need because that’s what brought us in before giving us the backstory we also require.  And it gives us so much in that small amount of time.  It shows how long things have been like this, how bad they’ve gotten, and the scene with the little girl zombie shows us that Rick is a good guy.  He tries to save her until he realizes half her face his missing.  The length of time was well-illustrated by the deserted cars at the gas station, but poorly illustrated by the mail overflowing from the mailbox.  How does that make sense?  It was bad enough for Lori to abandon her home but the mail service continued for a week?  But that first episode doesn’t only open strong; it also closes with a bang.  The reveal of the picture at the end of the episode was harsh.  The second episode taught me a couple of things.  The first is that women really do like to fuck in dangerous situations.  I thought that was just a thing they did in bad horror movies because they wanted to get some boobies in their movie.  But when this show does it I believe them.  The second thing I learned is that this show is good enough that they can make me feel bad for a racist dick like Merle Dixon.  When they reached episode four, I was surprised to see that the Vatos Locos from Blood in, Blood out apparently survive the apocalypse.  They weren’t kidding when they said “Forever” were they?  Then they started making me angry because they were acting like Rick’s crew started the fight.  You guys jumped them!  And if you’re going to argue that those guns could’ve belonged to everyone since they were just left in the street, then you’re right.  So it’s a good thing that the first people that came across them were the actual owners, I suppose.  Then they take a rather interesting and unexpected turn with the Vatos, catching me off guard yet again.  I was also expecting some huge reveal near the end of the season that Merle brought the walkers to the camp.  That’s not the way they went, but what they did was still very emotional.

I can’t really say a whole lot about the look of this show.  It’s fantastic.  There’s not much more to say than that.  The corpses are amazing, the walking corpses are amazing, everything is amazing.  I specifically use the term amazing because I think about how amazed the people that inspired these stories would be if they realized what was possible now.  On TV no less!  Romero’s first movie couldn’t even imagine this level of zombie effects.  All they did was white face paint!

Every actor in this deserves the accolades they’ve been given.  They’re all amazing.  I was especially impressed with Andrew Lincoln when I watched the Behind the Scenes stuff.  That dude’s from England!  He has an English accent!  Never would have guessed that from the show though.  And beyond that, he’s still one hell of an actor.  Lennie James was also fantastic, particularly in scene in the when he was about to shoot his wife.  I would’ve liked a little resolution with his story, but the story is so well-written that I have to imagine they will pay it off at some point.  They did with the grenade and I was all but sure they forgot they had that.  I did get irritated with his son though.  I understand the reason for him crying when he sees his mom as a zombie, but do you have to be so fucking loud about it?  I know people can cry without screaming; I’ve seen it happen.  I might have smothered him with that pillow instead of getting him to cry in it.  I would have to say I never really got on board with this Lori Grimes lady.  Sarah Wayne Callies does a great job playing her, but that woman works my nerves something fierce.  Much more in season two, but she did her part here too.  I could say it was because she fucked Shane, but I don’t really blame her for that.  Now when she fucked Rick in the same tent where her young son was sleeping, I can blame her for that ickiness.  How do you know he won’t wake up?  Did you test that theory out with Shane a few times?  I kept going back and forth on my feelings about Laurie Holden’s Andrea character.  I hated her when I was first introduced to her, when she got all up on Rick’s jock for getting them into the situation with the walkers.  He didn’t do shit to you!  He got HIMSELF into the situation.  Glen got you all into the situation by choosing to rescue Rick.  Rick owes you a thanks, but you can go ahead and shut the fuck up.  Then I got a little confused by her when she started complaining about having to do the laundry, but mainly because it was an instant before it cut to four of the menfolk risking their lives to save Merle.  But you’re right: rubbing clothes against a washboard is tough stuff.  I did get back on board when I thought she might make a critical (and cliché) zombie survival mistake involving her sister, but thankfully she did not.  I also found myself quite fond of Steven Yeun as Glenn, especially since we meet him as he’s dressed like a grown up version of Short Round or Data from Goonies.

I’m done wasting time on season one of The Walking Dead.  I’m almost done with season two by the time I’m finishing writing this.  Season one is real good.  I was not disappointed, and that says a lot with the level of praise I had heard for this series.  Season two seems to be turning out well also, but we’ll get to that later.  For now, I will recommend you find a way to watch this series.  I had already purchased season one, and season one caused me to purchase season two.  I’m told it’s on Netflix.  Do it whichever way you like.  Season four is not far away, as I have been told.  GET INTO IT!!  Season one of The Walking Dead gets “I remember my dream now; why I dug the holes…” out of “We’re going to need more guts.”

WATCH REVIEWS HERE!  YouTube  OTHER JOKES HERE!  Twitter  BE A FAN HERE!  Facebook  If you like these reviews so much, spread the word.  Keep me motivated!  Also, if you like them so much, why don’t you marry them?!

The Fly II (1989)


Something Odd is Happening to Me and I Don’t Know What It Is

I was looking through my older reviews today when I realized that I had unfinished business to take care of. Nearly a month ago I reviewed a movie that was a remake of a movie I reviewed a few days later, but I neglected to review the sequel to the remake that came out three years later. Though the original movie didn’t resonate with me, I somewhat liked the 1986 remake, so it stands to reason that I should also review the sequel, but I didn’t want to do too many of the same kind of movie in a row. The days I put it off led me to forget about it until I saw my original review and was reminded of my duty. And so I bring you my review of The Fly II, written by Mick Garris, Jim Wheat, Ken Wheat, and Frank Darabont, directed by Chris Walas, and starring Eric Stoltz, Daphne Zuniga, Lee Richardson, John Getz, Frank C. Turner, Ann Marie Lee, Gary Chalk, Harley Cross, and Jeff Goldblum.

The biggest loose end left by the first movie was the pregnancy of Veronica Quaife by Seth Brundle before he became the gruesome fly creature that he died as. They tie up that umbilical cord by having her give birth at the beginning of the movie and quickly die. That’ll take care of that pesky inability to get their actors to return for the sequel! The baby is named Martin and is not the most usual child there is: he ages faster, doesn’t sleep, and has a photographic memory. Anton Bartok (Lee Richardson) takes the boy in to study him at Bartok Industries. At age five, he already looks like a 20 year old man. For his birthday, Bartok gives him his own bungalow to sleep in and the opportunity to continue his father’s work on the Telepods he had been working on. Martin gets to work on them and thinks he has a breakthrough, but wants to try it out on some living organism. He finds a cactus belonging to another Bartok employee named Beth Logan (Daphne Zuniga), and the two become friends, and later more than just friends. But, since Martin has reached maturity, his father’s dormant genes start to take effect and he starts changing.

I can’t say I took a liking to this movie. It drags in the beginning and ends in a really goofy way. So much of the early part of this movie is just about watching Martin grow up and the early stages of his relationship with Beth. That’s definitely what I want out of my sci-fi horror movies. It doesn’t start becoming science fiction until about halfway into the movie when he starts degenerating into a fly. It sticks with that until about ten minutes from the end when it tries to become a horror movie, but it gets itself up to slasher film at best. None of the story really made much of an impact on me. It seems as if Bartok has lost the motivation for the development of the Telepods. They made sense as a super-fast means of conveyance, but Bartok tells Martin that he wants these things developed for how they’ll help surgery by making it so we won’t have to cut people open anymore. I realize they deconstruct and reconstruct matter, but they still don’t make much sense to me as a surgery assistant. If that were the case, it wouldn’t be saying that the only way to separate Martin from his fly genes is to sacrifice another person. They do other things to try to satisfy fans of the previous movies, like having John Getz come back in the movie. But when he says that the situation cost him “an arm and a leg” because he had those disintegrated by Brundlefly in the first movie, it caused me severe pain in my gonads with the corniness of the joke. After Martin has turned into a vaguely fly-like creature, Bartok starts ordering all of his security personnel to capture Martin instead of killing him because he needs to study him. They react to these orders by immediately grabbing machine guns, even as an announcement is blaring through the building that it’s to be captured and not killed. I understand because of the danger involved. Even though the Fly is really flimsy and slow-moving, it can spit acid that will melt someone’s entire face right off … or give you an irritating chemical burn on the top of your hand. Not sure how it decides which one to use when. And, after all of that, they go for a really stupid, cheesy, “happy” ending. Everything works out well for our intrepid heroes at the end of the movie. I’m sure they probably felt like the ending of the first movie (where everyone seemed either dead or wishing they were) was too depressing, so they had to make this one end well for the heroes, no matter how stupid or corny it is.

Three years of technological advancement did nothing for the look of this movie. Some things looked better, some things looked much worse. The dog creature that resulted from it getting turned inside out was much less convincing than the baboon from the first movie, and just looked goofy when they made the mistake of showing the whole body. And what made it worse was that it didn’t make sense. How would the dog still be alive if it was turned inside out? The baboon died. That’s what happens to creatures when they’re turned inside out. Speaking of dogs, the dog that the guards sicced on the fly creature was never trained to act like he wanted to kill something. When it saw the Fly, it barked but still clearly looked happy and playful. The fly did cause some good violence near the end of the movie, but I was already far too bored to be brought back around by this point. When the Fly vomits on the guys face, the melting was about a midway point between the face-peeling scene in Poltergeist and the face-melting scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. It was pretty cool. The scene where the guy got his head crushed by the elevator was also pretty brutal, but not nearly as convincing, unless I’m unaware of the fact that the human head is a thin crust of skin filled with blood like a blood-filled water balloon.

I also can’t say I liked any of the performances in this movie. Eric Stoltz was the only one that did anything that I liked. For the majority of the movie, he just came off as annoyingly naïve and wooden. The part of what he did that impressed me was when he was starting to turn into the Fly. At first, he was just acting really weak and running goofy, like an old man. But right before he was going to go into a cocoon, he seemed like a completely different person. He was really kind of dark and malevolent. If this was indeed him still, it was a pretty drastic change in performance. Daphne Zuniga didn’t do anything that impressed me, but she did capture my attention. Granted, that was almost completely because I was trying to figure out where I recognized her from. When I realized she was Princess Vespa in Spaceballs, I lost interest in her again. At least until she had sex with Eric Stoltz. My problem with this was that, even though he appeared to be a 20 year old guy, let us not forget that he was actually only 5 years old when they had sex. That makes you a pedophile, Zuniga!

If I was too vague by saying I didn’t like most of this movie by talking about not liking its individual parts, let me be more clear by saying this is not a good movie. It is, however, the sequel to a good movie. This movie spends the majority of the movie being really boring, only getting interesting in the last half hour of the movie, and even then not being that interesting. Most of the special effects looked cheesy, and most of the performances were more cheesy. But none more cheesy than the ending of the movie. That takes the cheese. You can skip this movie, even though it’s available to stream on Netflix at your convenience. The Fly II gets “You can’t walk … and you’re getting worse” out of “Oh my God!  There’s something wrong!”

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