Schlock Mercenary

As promised, here is my spoiler-free review.

Keliana Tayler’s “Coloring Trees” project has funded! I love the project, and am absolutely unbiased except maybe a teency bit.

I’ll be seeing Avengers: Endgame on Friday morning. My review will be pretty basic. I’ll let you know if I liked it, and I’ll tell you whether or not it boosts my Infinity War review back up over my Threshold of Awesome. That’s it. I won’t be saying anything about who does what, or how, or when/why/where. I will likely complain about the run-time, because three hours and one minute (per IMDB) is a loooong time for me and my bladder to stay in one place while holding a soda. I love long-form entertainment, but as the form gets longer I’m more inclined to love it at home, where I have a pause button, a kitchen, and a clean toilet. At any rate, you do not need to worry about visiting Schlock Mercenary. I’ll hold off on Avengers: Endgame details for a couple of weeks, after which point I will probably forget that I wanted to write more things.

The new Hellboy film is fun, and gooey, and gross, and David Harbour does just fine taking up the horns and crown from Ron Perlman. Yes, Perlman’s chin (and entire demeanor) felt almost typecast for 2004’s Hellboy, but Harbour stepped up and delivered the goods. The film is R-rated for graphic violence. The filmmakers chose to do cinematic renditions of the splattery enrupturing found in the Hellboy comics, and while I don’t ordinarily go in for those kinds of things, in this case I feel like it worked very well in service of the story. Hellboy crosses my Threshold of Awesome, and I was excited to have an epilogue, a mid-credits scene, and an after-the-credits scene, because they did a convincing job of offering me more Hellboy films in the future.

I saw SHAZAM! at the megaplex this morning. It started slow, but the familial relationships are central to the story—they’re much more than just a screen against which someone gets super-powers—so by the end of the film that slow start was completely forgiven. I wasn’t excited about the possibility that the film might just be Zach Levi doing a 14-year-old adult, so I was quite happy when not very much of the film was Big with capes. Some of it was (there’s even a keyboard mat in a department store) but for the most part the conflict is that a 14-year-old superhero is inherently unprepared for super-powered villainy which has been practicing, and that was just fine. Better than just fine, even. This is my second-favorite DC Comics movie, just behind Wonder Woman. It clears my Threshold of Awesome, and I’m looking forward to picking up the Blu-ray so I can watch it a few more times (a thing I am wont to do with things I like.)

It’s been a while since I blogged about anything. For those of you awaiting movie reviews, I apologize. I’ve been busy with a great many things, and kind of forgot how to leave the house. Building this kind of thing probably doesn’t help in that regard. The work surface and the wooden cabinets are new. Sandra did all of the sanding and staining, and they’re gorgeous (and a delight to touch.) Also, all those wooden cabinets light up when I open the doors. It could be argued that this is a huge expenditure of time for a hobby station, but I did this as practice for when we install illuminated cabinets in the kitchen we’re about to remodel. As anyone who has hung cupboards can tell you, practicing this kind of thing is key, because there are mistakes you only learn not to make by making them. Fortunately for my office, I’m a fast learner. None of this is particularly interesting to you, I’m sure, but at least that photo explains why I haven’t yet seen SHAZAM or How To Train Your Dragon 3. (I’m going to see SHAZAM today, so you should be getting a proper movie review this evening.)