Now Available: Geek Cutes

My latest book is now available on Amazon and Other E-Retailers. Only 99 cents!

Geek Cutes is a collection of eight light-hearted short stories, spanning a variety of genres, with a focus on lesbians (both cis and trans).

Stories included in this anthology:

Dungeon Therapy: Two women meet over an online tabletop RPG.

Gilded Cage: A young tech expert is locked in her room by her homophobic parents.

Mother's Day: A cop teams up with an occult expert to track down an otherworldly monster.

Fairy Dust: In a war between fairies and dragons, one pixie must embrace her destiny.

Hero Worship: A woman goes on a blind date with a superhero, but is it safer to stay single?

Think Tank: A team of scholars struggle to break a divine code, racing against the most serious of all deadlines.

Strangers in the Void: When the power goes out on a space station, two strangers work together to find the cause.

Vigilante: In a neighborhood riddled with violent crime, a masked hero protects women from the local gangs.

Across the Spider-Verse

Minor Spoiler Warning

Like the first one, this movie is chock full of eye-candy. It's seriously funny, and has lots of cute references for fans of the comics and memes. There's so much to look at, it's honestly exhausting at times. My only real complaint is that it feels a little bloated, and yet it ends with "To Be Continued." It's hard to say until I see the next one, but it feels like they padded it to make it into two movies.

Renfield

Renfield is extremely funny, with great action scenes, and unlike anything I've seen in a long time. It's gory, but the gore effects are so over-the-top cartoonish that it doesn't bother me. Cage really hams it up in the most delightful way. 

See it.

Knives Out and Glass Onion

Knives Out is damn near a perfect movie. Excellent script, perfect cast, great plot. I really can’t think of a single complaint. Okay, there’s a couple of scenes where a character throws up, which makes me nauseous (I’m emetophobic), but that’s my problem. Five star movie, ‘nuff said.

Glass Onion is almost as good. It still has an excellent cast delivering perfect performances. It has a decent plot and a snappy script. But the plot relies on a couple of contrived tropes. Anytime I see either of these particular tropes in a movie, it feels like lazy writing to me. Still, it’s impossible to watch this movie without a smile on your face, and its only real crime is not being as perfect as its predecessor.

By the way, if you want to see more of my movie ratings in one place, follow my Letterboxd account here.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods

Fury of the Gods is fun and enjoyable. It's extremely cheesy, but if you've seen the first one, you should know that going in. There's a few over-the-top parts that you'll either love or hate, like the "Skittles unicorn" scene. And like the first movie, there's a lot of tone whiplash - sometimes it seems a little dark for kids, but other times it's too light for adults.

If you liked the first one, you'll like this one.

Scream VI / Ranking the Scream Movies

We watched Scream VI last weekend. I thought it was pretty good; in fact, I’d say it’s my second favorite Scream movie.

My ranking would be:

1. Scream (1996)

2. Scream 6

3. Scream 2

4. Scream 5 – a.k.a. Scream (2022)

5. Scream 4

6. Scream 3

However, there’s still a huge gap between the original Scream and all the sequels. I like how each one carves out its own specialty – Scream makes fun of horror tropes, 2 makes fun of sequels, 3 makes fun of trilogies, and so on. But nothing beats the originality of the first one. It practically invented a new genre of self-aware horror.

It does drive me crazy how superhuman everyone is in the series, especially in the later installments. Nearly every survivor gets stabbed at some point, often in the stomach or chest area. It gets harder and harder to tell which characters have just suffered mortal wounds, and which ones are going to walk it off in a few minutes. 

Yes, humans in real life often survive injuries they shouldn't, but the reason those stories are so amazing is that they aren't very common. The Scream series would have you believe that one can build up an immunity to stab wounds.

Still, it's a fun series, and the newest one is one of the high points.

M3GAN

M3GAN is a fun movie, though it felt like I’d seen it before. The whole “A.I. takes its job too literally” trope is pretty common, but M3GAN is a standout just for its visuals. The title character is performed so well, that it makes me forget a lot of the other movies with similar plots. Unfortunately, the plot falls apart at the climax, when the movie stops following its own rules.

It seems like the writers just really wanted to show certain scenes, but couldn’t find a valid way to work them into the plot, so they just did it anyway. One line of dialogue could have fixed it. And maybe it did, and I just missed it. But if so, they needed to make it more obvious.

Somehow, Palpatine Has Returned

I'm so sick of “Somehow, Palpatine has returned” memes. It’s kind of a berserk button for me. It reminds me of how unpleasable Star Wars fandom has become. Palpatine’s resurrection is perfectly explained in the movie, but everyone quotes that one line from Poe as if that’s the movie’s only explanation. Of course Poe doesn’t know how Palpatine returned, why would he?

There’s a shot where the camera pans across some cloning tanks. With one shot they manage to answer two questions – it reveals that the new Palpatine is a clone, and that Snoke may have been a failed attempt to clone Palpatine. I mean, there's more to it than that – like, Palpatine’s force spirit was so powerful that it was able to possess his own clone – but please don’t tell me there was no explanation whatsoever.

People always tell writers that they should “Show, don’t tell.” Then this movie comes along and does exactly that… and everyone misses it. Stupid, toxic fans. Regardless of how you feel about the rest of RoS's pacing and exposition, the backlash against Palpatine's "unexplained" return is unwarranted.

Guardians of the Galaxy 3

The first two GotG movies are two of my favorite MCU films. GotG 3 is great, but it's not as laugh-a-minute as the first two. The animal cruelty and other seriousness means I probably won't rewatch it very often. I didn't like the soundtrack as much, either. 

I did love the villain, though. I also watched Quantumania this weekend, and I think the High Evolutionary is a much better villain than Kang.

Quantumania

I think the critics were a little hard on Quantumania. It's not a great movie, but then, none of the Ant-Man movies have been "great." It was no better or worse than the previous two films, though it is certainly different. Taking place almost entirely in the Quantum Realm, and therefore abandoning the comic relief characters from the previous movies, it's a bit of a tonal shift. It still has plenty of humor, but it doesn't feel like a flat-out comedy the way the first two did.

The movie is full of plot holes, or at least things that aren't explained as well as they should have been. There's several points where I wanted to ask, "Why don't they just..." and the writers may have even had a valid answer for these questions. One or two lines of dialogue would have saved lots of complaints. But oh well. It's a comic book movie with comic book science and comic book logic. You either buy into it or you don't.

Overall, it's a fun, if average, Marvel movie.

Blood Samples

 I've just published my fourth "book," though this one is just a collection of six short stories. It's called Blood Samples, and it's a prequel to my other books. It's also free on most e-retailers (99 cents on Amazon). You can get it here: Amazon  Other Stores

If you like it, please check out my other books here:

Xine Fury's Books

And if you haven't already, make sure you check out my writing blog:

Bloodhunters Blog

My Third Book Is Out

I've just published the third novel in my Bloodhunters series. If you're interested, you can get them here:

Books by Xine Fury

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Finally, a good D&D film. I was beginning to think the property was cursed. I mean, how hard is it to make a decent movie about Dungeons and Dragons? Given that D&D is such an open-ended system, technically every medieval fantasy movie is a D&D movie. But it seems like whenever they intentionally try to market the D&D brand, it’s a failure. Okay, to be fair, I actually liked “Wrath of the Dragon God,” but that says more about my taste than the quality of the movie.

Honor Among Thieves is a good time regardless of whether or not you play tabletop RPGs. If you don’t like D&D, then just look at it as a generic fantasy movie. It’s not as grandiose as Lord of the Rings, it’s more of a lighthearted heist movie with a fantasy setting. If you are a D&D player, you’re going to spend a lot of time pointing at the screen and saying, “I understood that reference.” All the locations are taken from Forgotten Realms lore, and every creature is straight out of the monster manual. But you don’t need to know any of that to enjoy the movie.

The actors were carefully chosen so they could pretty much play themselves. Chris Pine is his usual quippy self, Hugh Grant is at his smarmiest, and Michelle Rodriguez is the typical tough gal. The rest of the cast don’t stand out as much, but they play their parts adequately. I really liked Sophia Lillis as the druid, though her performance was kind of subdued.

The movie is not without its plot holes, if you really want to look for them. There’s a dozen places where the druid’s shapeshifting ability could have solved a problem a lot faster than the solutions the characters came up with. They could have fixed some of these with a simple line of dialogue, but the movie takes the “look, something shiny!” approach instead. And that’s a good thing. Over-explaining the limits of each character’s abilities would have bogged the movie down, and I really think the movie’s “this is what we’re going with” approach keeps the story moving at a proper pace.

Bottom line, it’s a fun popcorn-muncher, and I think you’ll like it even if you’ve never touched a d20. But if this movie encourages people to finally give the game a try, so much the better.

Bloodhunters

So, I wrote a book. You can buy it here if you wanna:

Bloodhunters v1: Bad Blood

You can also follow my Bloodhunters blog here:

Bloodhunters Blog

Thor: Love and Thunder

Eh, I thought it was ok. 

I kept thinking it reminded me of the Burton/Shumacher Batman movies. In both cases, the third movie in the series changed the tone drastically. In both "Thor: Ragnarok" and "Batman Forever", this lighter/flashier tone worked pretty well. So for the fourth movie in each series, they leaned too far into the new tone.

I loved Ragnarok. It's one of my top five favorite MCU movies. I loved how nuts it was, and the humor was great. But Love & Thunder leans into the stupid just a little too much.

Highlights: Great visuals. Sweet soundtrack. Fun action scenes. Jane Foster's Thor is pretty cool, and I love the new moves she does with the hammer. The villain was so perfect, so well-acted, so creepy, that frankly, he was too good for this movie.

Lowlights: A lot of the humor falls flat. The plot isn't very cohesive. The editing feels off.

Bottom line: It's just... ok. I had fun, but I wish it had been better. I'll give it another shot when it comes to Disney+. 

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

In general, I liked it. It’s probably not one of my top 10 MCU films, but that’s only because there’s so many excellent MCU films now. (Which reminds me, I need to update my ranking list one of these days.) This one is just a little too uneven and weird to make it that far up the list. But it is fun.

It’s jarring to me that this is only the second Doctor Strange film. Between Ragnarok, Infinity War, Endgame, and No Way Home (not to mention the What If? TV series), it feels like he’s had so much MCU screen time that we should be on Doctor Strange 3 by now.

 

Spoilers from here on out.

 

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it still wasn’t what I expected. I thought this was going to be about wrapping up the side effects from Spider-Man: No Way Home, with the Illuminati punishing Doctor Strange for interdimensional tampering. Kind of like the plot of the Loki series. But no, apparently there were no repercussions from the last movie, and it’s just a coincidence that Strange’s next adventure also involves the multiverse. If the mid-credits scene is anything to go by, it actually sounds like the next movie will be closer to what I expected this movie to be.

 

I also thought there would be a lot more world-hopping. In fact, I was even dreading it a little. I’ve mentioned it before, but the Arrowverse’s version of “Crisis on Infinite Earths” was a major letdown. Great fanservice, but incoherent and not enough substance. I was afraid Multiverse of Madness would do something similar, with so many references-for-the-sake-of-references that they wouldn’t be able to cram in a cohesive plot. Thankfully my fears were groundless, though I was a little disappointed that most of the movie was spent on the same three worlds.

 

The tone was darker than most MCU films, and many are calling it the MCU’s first horror movie. I don’t know if I would go that far. Director Sam Raimi definitely showed off his “Evil Dead” style, but then, I’m not sure if I consider Evil Dead a horror movie. Is it really horror if you spend more time laughing than jumping at shadows? But I will go this far, Multiverse of Madness may be the first MCU film I’d think twice about showing to a child.

 

I feel really bad for Wanda. The writers have her locked into a specific type of plot. I believe she’s a good person at heart, but she’s a magnet for tragedy and bad influences. Ultron, Agatha Harkness, and the Darkhold all take advantage of Wanda’s emotional scars, constantly turning Wanda into the Dark Phoenix of the MCU. She’s becoming the poster child for the “Heel-Face Revolving Door” trope, and I would love it if the writers would break that cycle. I realize her current form is too powerful to be a hero, her stories would be boring. But I’m just tired of the repetitive “Wanda does a bad thing, then says sorry at the end” plots. Either make her a full-on-villain or depowered good guy, I don’t really care witch. I mean, which.

 

I liked the Illuminati a lot, my only real complaint with them is that the trailers didn’t leave enough surprises. I kept hoping they were holding something back, like a RDJ cameo as an alternate version of Tony Stark. Sure, there were a couple of unexpected characters, but none of them were as good as the ones spoiled in the trailers.

 

But yeah, the star of the show was Sam Raimi’s directing style, the Evil Dead references, and just how over-the-top bonkers the movie was. Critics often complain that all MCU movies are basically the same movie. They can’t say that about this one. They took a big chance and it paid off. I hope they keep taking chances. They’ll produce a bomb now and then, but the winners will stand out so much more.

 

Injustice (2021 Animated Movie)

I loved the Injustice video games and the comics. The problem was, you needed to read/play both to get the full story. After the opening scene, the game jumps forward five years to a time when Superman is already in power. The comic fills in those missing years.

A quick summary for those not in the know: The Joker gives Superman a Very Bad Day. Superman is so traumatized that he loses his grip on morality and adopts a heavier stance on crime. The more people resist him, the more he doubles down. His views escalate until he is a full blown dictator.

The comics start out great, but some of the later years start to drag. The first year is especially quotable, with some of the best lines in the history of comics. The video game is a fun, solid fighting game with a well done story mode. The graphics are a bit dated at this point, but it often goes on sale for under $5. So if you haven’t played it, seriously, pick it up sometime.

With five years of comics and several hours of gameplay, it was hard to condense this story into a single animated movie, but I think they did a good job. The movie mostly draws from the comics, particularly the first year. In fact, I’d say that the first half of the movie is pulled straight from Year One. After that, it draws bits and pieces from the later years, smatters in a bit of the plot from the game, and throws in some original ideas as well. In other words, the climax is a little messy.

Now, here’s where I disagree with other reviewers. They complained that the movie wasn’t faithful enough to the source material. Actually, the first half is almost too faithful to Year One. Okay, there’s a few big changes. For example, one prominent hero is killed early on, probably just to avoid some plot holes. But I was quoting the comic as I watched the movie. My wife watched my lips moving. For the first half, I almost always knew what was about to happen. That’s pretty faithful.

The second half? Well, they did what they had to in order to tie things up. They could have made it an animated series instead of a movie, but I don’t think that was ever in the cards. Appreciate the movie for what it is, not what you feel is missing. I’m sorry your favorite scenes were cut, but suck it up and move on.

But on the flip side: Reviewers also praised the voice acting, and that’s the part I felt was a little weak. Okay, there was nothing wrong with who they cast for which voice. But again, I like the comics because they were so quotable. And when it came to the most memorable lines, the actors just didn’t quite deliver them the way I’d envisioned. They’re fine voice actors, but their comic timing was off, or they didn’t put the emphasis on the right words, or something. I know, follow my own advice and suck it up. But it irks me that they were so close to perfection.

They removed some plot elements that were only there to justify game mechanics. In the game, it was silly that Superman could go toe-to-toe with characters like Green Arrow without knocking their heads off in one blow. They explained this by inventing pills you could swallow that gave everyone the strength and durability of Superman. The movie thankfully removes this plot point. Seriously, the whole reason evil Superman is so scary is because he’s so powerful. Make everyone else just as tough, and the concept loses its teeth.

Also, the game involved characters from two universes, to explain why characters are able to fight each other. The movie does touch on the parallel universes idea, but not as heavily as the game. I won’t say more to avoid spoilers. But what it does with the idea, it does well, at least in my opinion.

Now, I know “Superman turns evil” stories have been done to death at this point. DC itself has put out stories like “Red Son” and “Crisis on Two Earths”, but the concept has inspired a lot of non-DC works as well, such as Invincible and Brightburn. But even though the idea is tired, Injustice is one of the best uses of the concept. And the Injustice animated movie is probably the most accessible way to see the story. It’s not perfect, but it’s definitely is worth a watch, especially if you haven’t read the comics or played the game.

Injustice is currently streaming on HBO Max.

Ranking the Batman Films

Okay, this is hard, because so many of them are apples and oranges. So instead of going by quality, I’m mostly going by which ones I would actually take the time to sit down and watch today.

1. Batman Returns (1992)

This might be a hot take, but bite me. Batman Returns is the movie that really made me appreciate Tim Burton’s gothic style. It has my favorite Batman soundtrack, and my favorite theatrical Catwoman. I’m not fond of this version of the Penguin, but you can’t have everything.

2. Batman (1989)

I have a soft spot for this movie. It came out at exactly the right time in my life, it was a cultural phenomenon, and it was hugely influential to future super hero movies.

3. The Dark Knight (2008)

This is probably the most legitimate super hero movie ever made. I can’t put it higher because it’s so heavy. I mean, I can’t just pop it into the Blu-Ray player for fun. It’s too… good.

4. The Batman (2022)

Thoroughly enjoyable, and sets a new standard for Batman movies.

5. Batman Forever (1995)

While this was the beginning of the end for the 90s series, it struck a great balance between flashy and dark. It’s too bad the follow-up movie dropped the dark altogether.

6. Batman Begins (2005)

I feel like this deserves to be higher, but it’s just not as fun as it was when it first came out. Impressive movie, but it became boring after a few rewatches.

7. The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

A good, solid movie, but the weakest of the Nolan trilogy.

8. Batman: The Movie (1966)

Pure, campy fun.

9. Batman & Robin (1997)

Dirty rotten franchise killer! Still, fun to watch if you’re in the right mood.

10. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

The Batman (2022)

Good movie. One of the better versions of Batman I’ve seen. There’s not a lot I can say about it, because it’s exactly what you think it is. Guy dresses as a bat, fights crime, solves a mystery, has a love/hate relationship with the cops, etc etc etc.

After the Schumacher series became too over-the-top, people praised the Nolan reboot for being more down-to-earth. While The Batman has a few moments that are hard to swallow, overall it feels even more real than the Nolan trilogy. Is this how things would actually play out if Batman existed? No, it’s still fantasy. But instead of comic book fantasy, it feels more like hard-boiled detective novel fantasy, or mafia crime film fantasy. But it’s still more believable than the previous films.

Some reviewers complained that the movie doesn’t break any new ground, that it’s too “by the numbers”. While they’re not wrong, I still disagree. There really isn’t a better “baseline” Batman movie. The 1989 film is too comic booky by today’s standards (though it was groundbreaking at the time), and Batman Begins (while excellent) is too focused on Batman’s origin story. I think The Batman is the generic Batman movie we always needed, the one that sets the tone for the modern Batman universe, one that other movies can build off of.

Also, some people complained that the movie was too dark. Not in violence (though it is more violent than previous Batman movies), but in brightness. This is true, but for once that darkness is actually done well. Every single frame is lit the way the director intended. If you only see a character’s face when there’s a muzzle flash, it’s because the director only wanted you to see their face when there was a muzzle flash. It’s artistic darkness.

Compare this to Disney+ shows like The Mandalorian and Moon Knight, where the night/underground scenes are just plain DARK, with no hope of the viewer having any idea what’s going on. The Batman does darkness right, using it to guide your attention rather than just hide the action.

Spoilers going forward.

I liked this version of Selina Kyle, but the romance felt a bit forced. It wasn’t bad, I just think I could have written better, and I suck at romance.

I thought the Riddler was great. For once he didn’t come off as campy. It felt like a Saw movie with Batman in it. This version of the Riddler had an actual reason to send Batman riddles, instead of just being crazy. And the riddles themselves were deeper, rather than feeling like they came from a 1960s joke book.

This was a great version of Batman, but I’m not sold on this Bruce Wayne. I get what they were going for, but he looked too much like “emo” Peter Parker from Spider-Man 3. Arguably Bruce Wayne doesn’t even appear in the movie, because he kept the Batman persona regardless of whether the costume was on. No “clueless womanizing socialite” disguise here, just the brooding recluse focused on his personal mission.

Bottom line: Overall, it’s a worthwhile reboot. They recently announced that a sequel is in the works, and I definitely will see it.

Retro Cheese Round-Up

The past couple of weeks I’ve been in the mood for cheese, and so I’ve been watching (or rewatching) bad 80s movies to see if they’re still bad. Spoiler alert: They are.

Heartbeeps (1981)

I actually saw this movie in the theater. I loved it at the time, but I was 8, and I loved anything with a robot in it. I do remember my parents said the movie was stupid. This week’s viewing was my first time seeing it since 1981, and… wow, what a pointless movie. Seriously, I probably could have written a better script myself, when I was 8. The whole thing feels like an excuse to show off the makeup effects, which admittedly weren’t bad for the time.

A trio of defective robots escapes from a warehouse. Well, I say “escape”, but they don’t really know they’re on the run. One of them mistakenly thinks it’s programmed to gather data about nature, and the other two have nothing better to do. Along the way they build a baby robot that’s supposed to be cute, except this was four years after Star Wars and we’d already seen cuter robots. In order for there to be some conflict, a crimefighting murderbot also malfunctions and escapes to hunt them down. Convenient!

Anyway, the script feels more like an outline than a finished story. It feels like it has placeholder lines and jokes, just waiting for the actual writers to come in and finish the job. If this movie were software, I’d think that this was the alpha build, and it was released early to hit the shelves before Christmas. Nothing specific is missing from the story - it has a definite beginning, middle, and end, it’s just that every single aspect feels unfinished.

It’s also a waste of a great cast. Don’t waste your time on this one, it’s not even worth watching to make fun of. Rewatch Short Circuit (1986) instead. Parts of it haven’t aged well (like Fisher Stevens in brownface), but overall it has a lot more charm.

Ice Pirates (1984)

This is one of those I only half remembered from when I was a kid. Did I even actually even see it, or am I just remembering the trailers? But some of the bits I remembered were too long for a trailer. All I can say is that when I rewatched it, I only got déjà vu in the first half. I’m thinking maybe I fell asleep halfway through, or my parents made me leave the theater.

Anyway, Ice Pirates makes Flash Gordon look like 2001: A Space Odyssey. The script is full of vaguely dirty jokes that don’t really land, and none of the characters really made much of an impact. Some jokes are worth a chuckle, but the funniest bits feel like they were stolen from other movies.

It’s one of those movies that feels like things just sort of happen because they happen. The heroes (if you want to call them that) just sort of “right place at the right time” their way through the plot, then there’s a gimmicky climax, and a sort of abrupt ending. The tone and special effects remind me of Barbarella (1968), which came out 16 years earlier and somehow aged better.

Anyway, even if you have fond memories of seeing this as a child, it’s probably not as good as you remember.

Krull (1983)

I did not see Krull as a kid. I wanted to, but I missed it. I played the arcade game, and I really liked that cool “glaive” weapon. Of the three movies in this blog, Krull is undoubtedly the best, but that’s not saying a whole lot, is it? It’s hard to explain why, but to me, Krull feels like it would have actually been better with a smaller budget. Not that the special effects are good, they’re pretty bad. It came out the same year as Return of the Jedi, but somehow Krull looks ten years older.

Wild tangent – comparing all these movies to the Star Wars films that came out around the same time, just makes me realize how much love certain filmmakers put into their movies. Krull had a budget of $27-30 million, and Return of the Jedi had a budget of $32-47 million. Not a huge difference in budget, but the special effects are as different as night and day. I feel the same way about Jurassic Park and Terminator 2 – they’re all films that look ten years newer than they were, when you compare them to other movies that came out the same year. Sure, they had bigger budgets, but a lot of it’s about the amount of elbow grease they put into polishing it.

Anyway, Krull feels like if Hawk the Slayer had a bigger budget. But since that bigger budget was spent on crappy visuals instead of any real polish, the movie suffers greatly.

It’s a bad movie, but this is not a bad review. The movie is actually kind of fun, despite its shortcomings. I like the concept, pitting swords-and-sorcery heroes against a sci-fi villain. It’s almost like a proto-version of Cowboys & Aliens. It might even be a good candidate for a remake. But it’s definitely something you watch to laugh at. If I were in that kind of mood, I’d probably rewatch The Beastmaster instead.