Top 10 Best Movie Climaxes

In terms of movies, the climax is usually the big payoff we get. For any movie, the more exciting or attention-grabbing the climax, the better the payoff. We sit through a movie, getting to know the characters, in many cases learning their obstacles and relate to them through those very same obstacles, and the climax is the point where the user overcomes the obstacles and becomes a better person in the end. This is called an "arc" in storytelling, and can many times be even more complicated than that.

I'm here to give you my personal top 10 climaxes in movies. These are the endings I felt like did their respective movies justice. In many instances, a good climax can save the movie, but in most cases a really good climax can improve an already outstanding movie. What are we waiting for? Let's dive right in!

#10 - "Superfight II"
MOVIE: Rocky II
Following the climactic end fight to the original Oscar-winning movie Rocky, Rocky and Apollo are beaten to the bone. Apollo clamors for a rematch but Rocky refuses, stating he's retired. Eventually, the movie progresses to show that Rocky is not meant for a world outside of boxing and he agrees to retrain himself and face Apollo in a rematch. Rocky II sees this second Superfight take place. The reason this climax is so good is because of the amount of hype and emotional attachment one feels toward Rocky. You rooted for him all through Rocky and now you want to see him do it again. Only this time, he's suffered even more hardships with Adrian's birth complications and his financial problems. After overcoming two movies worth of hardships, including a grueling fight that nearly blinded him for life, seeing Rocky get a second chance against Apollo and even winning and finally claiming the Heavyweight Championship of the World is truly a treat and its fun to watch. Watching both men fight to climb to their feet only for Rocky to get there while Apollo slumps back over is a great thing to witness, even if its a tad over the top.

#9 - "Django's Massacre"
MOVIE: Django Unchained (2012)
Django Unchained is a movie about revenge. It's two years before the Civil War in the deep south, and a slave named Django is hired by a bounty hunter named King Schultz to help him find and kill the Brittle brothers. From there, Schultz vows to help Django get his wife back from the evil slave owner Calvin Candie. The duo journey to Candieland (lol) posing as slave buyers for "Mandingo fighting" and keep this cover throughout the entire dinner scene. It gets so tense and nail-biting but when it finally blows up it's so jaw-dropping. The kill King Schultz and capture Django back into slavery. Django breaks away from his captors and returns to the Candieland, where he lets loose on the remaining hands in Candie's home. He kills Candie's sister, several of Candie's men, he releases two of Candie's slaves and then cripples Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson), leaving him in Candieland just before he blows the whole damn thing up! It's spectacular. If it wasn't for The Crow, I'd call this the ultimate revenge flick, but it's a close second.

#8 - "Battle with the Basilisk"
MOVIE: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
The second Harry Potter movie that was released in 2002 was the best (in my humble opinion). There's a lot of story to cover in Chamber of Secrets and the movie did a great job making sure all the marquee moments in the book were not only represented, but represented well. The whole movie is a murder-mystery story, without the "murder" part, that leads Harry Potter and Ron Weasley into the Chamber of Secrets, a room long-thought rumored by the Hogwarts staff. Harry leaves Ron behind and confronts Tom Riddle, the man who's behind the petrifying of many Hogwarts students. Tom Riddle reveals himself to be a young Lord Voldemort, held in Horcrux form inside his own diary, who then sicks the evil and deadly basilisk on Potter. The battle between this mountainous snake and Harry wielding Gryffindor's sword is classic. It's definitely the highlight of the movie. Being nearly three hours long, the movie can kinda drag at times, but this final battle makes up for any downtime. Solid climax.

#7 - "High-Speed Demolition Derby"
MOVIE: Death Proof (2007)
Another one from our good ol' buddy Tarantino. A high speed crash course along a desolate country highway between three innocent women in a 1970 Dodge Challenger, fending off and taking bumps from a maniacal Kurt Russell in a 1969 Dodge Charger. Two of the coolest muscle cars from America's past and they're bumping and banging at high speeds. The climax goes on for upwards of twenty-or-so minutes. The girls spin out, shoot Kurt Russell in the arm and wound him, and then chase him down and start wrecking and bumping into him. The whole things comes a Twisted Metal style conclusion when both cars crash and spin out on the side of the road. The three girls then take the wounded, delirious Russell and beat the living shit out of him. All for doing nothing more, then acting like a total creep. Yet another great few minutes of revenge, something Tarantino is good at writing a tale about.

#6 - "Attack of the Batwing / Cathedral Fight"
MOVIE: Batman (1989)
An epic battle that ends one of the greatest comic book movies ever made. Jack Nicholson's Joker holds a 200th anniversary parade for Gotham City, and his parade floats are attacked by Batman in his newly debuted aerial vehicle, the Batwing. In this movie, The Batwing was shaped in the motif of Batman's chest emblem and flies like a jet fighter through the night skies of the city. Batman takes the toxic gas-spewing parade floats and takes them up and away from the city out of harm's way, then descends and starts laying out the Joker's goons in gunfire. In an epic final shot, Batman takes flight straight up, then falls down back toward the city to gain momentum for a strafe run on the Joker. In an epic showdown, the Batwing's Star Wars style targeting computer malfunctions and the Joker shoots Batman down. The Batwing has a spectacular crash onto the steps of the Gotham Cathedral. Batman, wounded, then chases the Joker up the steps of the Cathedral and fights with him in the bell-tower. The fight takes them to the balcony, where Batman wraps a grappling hook around Joker's ankles and watches him fall to his death, weighed down by a gargoyle that he got caught on. Epic fight. Great conclusion to a great gothic comic book adventure.

#5 - "It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man"
MOVIE: Ghostbusters (1984)
In one of the greatest comedies of all time, you wouldn't expect such a great story-defining climax. Gozer the Gozerian has been brought back by Vince Clortho and Zuul. It tells the Ghostbusters that it will take the form of whatever they think about. Ray thinks of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, and sure enough, the twenty-story-tall marshmallow icon takes shape and stomps through Columbus Circle in downtown Manhattan. Home to such classic lines (most of which from Bill Murray), this is a great, yet hilarious entry in our list. "Ray has gone bye-bye, Egon", "Well there's something you don't see every day" and the always classic response to Stay-Puft flattening a church with his foot: "NOBODY STEPS ON A CHURCH IN MY TOWN!"  While the battle itself isn't very long and mostly doesn't even involve Stay-Puft, the entry of the ghostly food mascot is iconic enough to make the list. I love this part and I look forward to it everytime I watch the movie.

#4 - "Blowing Up Cyberdyne / Battle in the Steel Mill"
MOVIE: Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Coming from perhaps the greatest sequel ever made to something, and a rare example where a sequel outshines and outdoes its predecessor, Terminator 2 had a fantastic ending to it that lasts close to an hour. After escaping into the desert with Sarah Connor, John Connor and his protective Terminator cyborg stop at a colleague of Sarah's to stock up on clothes, food and guns before crossing the border. A nightmare Sarah has sparks her to go back into the city to hunt and kill Miles Dyson, the creator of Skynet and eventual reason mankind will be obliterated. She can't bring herself to do it, so in a more competent plan, the trio works together with Dyson to go to Cyberdyne Systems and blow up the lab containing all of his AI research that would lead to the launch of Skynet. They succeed, but Dyson is killed in the blast. Not over yet as the T-1000 reappears. It chases them along a coastal highway in a truly badass chase involving helicotpers, big rigs and smashing (lol). They wind up in a steel mill where yet ANOTHER chase takes place. The damaged T-800 fights the T-1000 a few times, but gets its ass handed to it two of the times. It isn't until the Terminator saves Sarah and John by blowing up the T-1000 with a grenade launcher. Only after all that, does the evidence of Skynet need to be destroyed by tossing the remains into the steel mill, and in the final, most gut-wrenching shot, The Terminator requests that Sarah lower him into the steel to destroy his chip as well. Powerful stuff, and one of the best climaxes to any movie I've seen.

#3 - "Brooklyn Bridge Battle"
MOVIE: Spider-Man (2002)
In one of the greatest comic book movies made in recent years, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man reinvented the wheel and reinvented it well. A mostly original retelling of Spider-Man's origin story, except this one's more personal. The father of Peter Parker's best friend Harry Osborn, Norman, is poisoned in a lab accident and becomes the super villain Green Goblin. By the end of the movie, the Green Goblin learns who Spider-Man is and captures Peter's love interest, leading to a battle at the Brooklyn Bridge. Goblin throws Mary Jane off of the Bridge as well as a cable car full of children. Spidey manages to narrowly save them both, at great risk to himself, before being tethered by Goblin and tossed into a nearby rotting mansion. There, the two have a knockdown, drag-out brawl that sees both of them get beaten up pretty bad. The final battle ends with Norman revealing himself to Peter before attempting to murder him. Peter dodges the runaway glider, watching as it impales Norman against a brick pillar and kills him. The whole story was a more emotional take on the comic book superhero movie, and the emotion swells up and boils over to the point of this climax. The icing on the cake is Harry vowing revenge on Spider-Man, all while he claims Peter is the only family he has left Awkwaaaaard...

#2 - "I Am Your Father"
MOVIE: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Time for the movie twist of all movie twists. The one that's so popular and so parodied, it can't even be considered a twist anymore. Even people who haven't heard of Star Wars know this one. In the battle on Cloud City between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, Vader soon easily overpowers Skywalker's inept lightsaber skills and his raw power and slices his hand off, rendering him helpless. Luke fights desperately to crawl away as Vader taunts. Ultimately, get under Luke's skin or even to just reveal a bad truth about himself to bring them together, Vader tells Luke that Obi-Wan lied to him and that Vader never killed his father, but that Vader is his father. Luke screams that it isn't true, but eventually excepts it as Vader tells him to search his feelings. Luke, realizing that its come down to joining Vader or dying, chooses to die and lets go of the antenna he's on, falling into the caverns of the city below. Of course, I won't go into the ending this time around, but it's pretty great.

#1 - "Race to the Future"
MOVIE: Back to the Future (1985)
I consider this to be the greatest film climax of all time, and with good reason. I don't care if you think I'm biased because it just so happens to be my favorite movie ever made. Following the dance that saw Marty McFly reunite his parents and save his own future, there's still one dilemma that remains. That's right, the movie's not over because Marty has yet to get "back to the future". He meets up with Doc Brown and, with awesome music accompaniment, the two walk through the plan one last time before going their separate ways. The entire climax, containing peril, thrills and fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat, down-to-the-wire feels to it all, locks you in place and makes you watch it. Start to finish. I can tell you no matter what I'm doing, if I come across the end of Back to the Future on TV, I'm going to watch it. The entire score plays with the scene perfectly and for that we can thank Alan Silvestri. It's nail-biting, tense, extreme and incredible and it all comes down to the absolute last final moment when the DeLorean makes contact with the wire at the precise moment that lightning strikes the clock tower at 10:04 PM, sending the necessary 1.21 gigawatts into the flux capacitor, and sending Marty and the DeLorean back to 1985. The entire score dies off as the DeLorean vanishes and to cap it all off, Doc Brown runs down the street along the DeLorean's fire trails before celebrating out loud that he's invented something that works and that he's seen it in action, and that he was able to get his friend Marty McFly home.

There you have it, my top ten movie climaxes. Were they all you hoped? Was there some that I'm missing. Feel free to shoot me a direct message somewhere and fill me in. I'd love to learn of new possible entries on this list.

A Review of "Jeepers Creepers"

Somewhere on a desolate Florida highway, two siblings Darry and Trish Jenner are driving home on Spring break when they come across a maniac in a beat-up 1940s truck. The truck blasts its horn behind them, but ultimately leaves them alone and continues past. Later, the two come across the same truck parked at a church. The driver appears to be dumping bodies out of the back down a sewer pipe that leads to the church's basement. Darry and Trish witness the driver doing this, but he catches them looking. He takes off in his truck and chases them. He rams their car repeatedly, but again, ultimately speeds by as they veer off the road. Darry and Trish return to the church while the driver is away and Darry investigates the sewer pipe. Rats cause Trish to mess up and let him slip. Darry winds up in the basement of the church and finds bodies upon bodies sewn together and decorating the ceiling of the basement. Darry, traumatized, returns to the surface and he and Trish flee to a nearby diner. As they exit the car, they witness the driver of the beat-up truck speeding back toward the church and duck inside...

What follows is one of the spookiest and, dare I say, creepiest races with the devil that I've ever seen...

SPOILER WARNING: I strongly recommend watching this movie before reading this review to experience it firsthand. Anything beyond this point is SPOILER material.

Originally titled Here Comes the Boogeyman, Jeepers Creepers is an independent horror movie released in 2001 starring Justin Long as Darry and Gina Philips as his sister, Trish. They play the brother/sister thing very well. You'd think it'd be a couple who goes through all this, as in other horror movies, but director Victor Salva didn't want any sexual tension in the movie. Just a straight up run from the devil. Together, the two of them commit themselves to this journey as they come across something that is most hellish in nature. They come across a violent killing machine dressed as a man, called "The Creeper". The Creeper is a demonic beast with green scaly skin, a tuft of white hair growing out of its neck, sharp teeth, claws and talons and large, leathery bat-like wings. To cover its monster features, it wears tattered clothes, including a long duster and a stetson hat. The Creeper travels by day in its custom built, suped up 1940s truck with rustic color and a cow-catcher in front for ramming purposes. At night, it flies with its wings and stalks people the animalistic way.

The Creeper is said to smell fear and uses the scent of fear to choose its victims, and to only be alive for twenty-three days of every twenty-three years. It is said that its lived for thousands of years and that it replenishes its body parts and failing health by eating the same body parts off of humans. If its leg is mauled, it eats a human leg to replace it. As Jezelle Gay Hartman, the psychic who ends up helping the kids, says: "Whatever it eats becomes a part of it."

The chase intensifies as the movie progresses. After the diner scene in which Jezelle calls Darry on the phone and correctly describes Darry's clothes and wounds, the two kids are escorted home by two Pertwilla County police officers. However, in a truly BADASS scene, the Creeper arrives by landing the cops roofs, throwing one out and decapitating the other after pulling his head through the roof. In another iconic scene, the Creeper eats the tongue out of the severed head and then chases the kids to the house of the spooky cat lady that Jezelle described on the phone. There, the Creeper intervenes, kills the cat lady and the two kids run away again. On the road just outside the cat lady's house, the Creeper taunts them but the kids eventually psyche him out and hit him with their car over and over again, eventually driving off into the night.

The final confrontation takes place at the Poho County Police Station. There, the injured Creeper breaks into the jail, mauls two cellmates to repair his body and stalks the kids through the jail. This is also the introduction of Sgt. Davis Tubbs, played by Brandon Smith. A minor character in this movie but he goes on to star in the third movie, which I reviewed back in September and that can be found here. In this final chase, there's another truly haunting scene where the Creeper toys but avoids cops on a stairwell, eventually ripping a cop's heart out of his back with his teeth. The kids find themselves cornered in an observation room with Creeper hot on their trails. He grabs them and smells their fear, deciding on Darry and letting Trish go. Trish and the police officers corner the Creeper, Trish even trying to beg for it to take her instead of Darry, but it squeals and flies off into the night with Darry, disappearing from Trish's sight. The movie ends with a chilling reveal of Darry's fate in the Creeper's later. His eyes have been torn out and eaten by the Creeper as he gazes through Darry's eye holes at the camera with Darry's own eyes...

The entire movie is shot in a weird filter on the camera, but it serves the movie well. It's night scenes are chillingly shot and the haunting atmosphere of rural Florida at night isolates us as the viewer as we follow these two college students on a whirlwind chase from hell with the thing that will never die. Jezelle, the psychic, warns the kids about the creature and its love of the song old timey jazz song  "Jeepers Creepers", which seems to precede any sort of appearance the Creeper is about to make. Again, as Jezelle puts it: "If you hear that song, you run and I mean run, because that song means something terrible for you." Again, in arguably the best scene of the movie, a similar song "Peekaboo" plays on the radio says the line "Jeepers, where'd you get those peepers?" right before the Creeper attacks the cops. I highly recommend watching the police attack scene on the highway at least if you're not sure about watching the movie.

Jeepers Creepers is very similar in tone to the movie Race With the Devil, which is also one I want to talk about one day. In that movie, two couples witness a girl being sacrificed by a Satanic cult and the cult chases them, popping up at every stop they make. It's what the Creeper does some how. It's a nightmarish chase that won't end with the Creeper appearing at every stop the kids make. Nothing anywhere is safe from it and it absolutely doesn't stop until it gets what it wants. It even includes kick-ass but tense car chases, two of them. First where the Creeper struggles to get around the kids but Darry eventually lets him past. The second, of course, after the Creeper sees them witness him throwing bodies into the church's basement, this time by ramming them and trying to gauge their fear to see if there's either of them it wants.

Jeepers Creepers is either my favorite or my second-favorite horror movie of all time. It's on a constant battle for top spot with Halloween 1978, but I'll watch Jeepers Creepers any day of the week. It's got action, suspense, horror, and thrills. The thing I like the best is just how creepy it is. It's sort of a horror movie, but it's moreso a monster movie. The thing that Jeepers Creepers does best is that it doesn't scare you by showing you what to be afraid of, it scares you by telling you what to be afraid of. The Creeper himself is terrifying to look at, but the dialogue is chilling, the mood is terrifying and the fear that wells up inside you as you wonder what the Creeper is going to do next. Jeepers Creepers is one hell of a spooky thrill-ride, and it leaves you with that unsettling feeling in your spine when you're done watching it of something not feeling right. It makes you double check your surroundings when you're done and wonder if he's really out there somewhere, stalking isolated drivers on a lonely highway...

Give it a watch. You won't regret it.

John Williams is Leaving Star Wars

How's it going my five faithful companions. Haven't posted on here in a while. Figured I'd beat a dead horse and talk about Star Wars real quick. Basically, I didn't want to take up a lot of your time. I just wanted to say it recently came across my Facebook feed that John Williams, renowned composer of many notable film scores, including:

• Jurassic Park
• Superman
• The Indiana Jones films
• E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
• and a hell of a lot of Spielberg movies

...is recording the score for what he is calling his "final Star Wars" film in Star Wars: Episode IX due out in December of 2019. The final entry in the most overhyped manufactured trilogy the saga has to offer will also contain the final bit of Star Wars music written and composed by Williams, who has composed the previous eight episodes to date. Williams wrote the iconic Star Wars main title march, he wrote the even more iconic "Obi-Wan's Theme" which later was rechristened "Theme of the Force" or "The Force's Theme". His theme for Darth Vader was dubbed "The Imperial March" and has become synonymous with evil-doers and baddies across the galaxy. Yoda's theme along with the "Parade of the Ewoks" round out the original trilogy's set of popular motifs that graced the soundtrack recordings.

Perhaps the biggest impact that Williams' Star Wars scores brought us was that from the unlikeliest of places in Episode I, when he composed and wrote a theme for the final lightsaber battle called "Duel of the Fates", which has become just as synonymous with the Star Wars brand as any other piece of music he's written for it. His love theme for Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala "Across the Stars" remains stunningly beautiful to this day, and even his epic grandiose opera powerhouse for Obi-Wan and Anakin's final battle dubbed "Battle of the Heroes" is memorable in its own way.

I feel like Williams fell out of love doing the Star Wars scores after the prequels were done, because George Lucas knew what Williams liked to do and gave Williams free reign to do what he does best which is compose and conduct orchestras for his movies as if they were mighty operas. Lucas knew this even more in the prequels by making sure each movie had its own theme and motif, much like a singer's album would have a lead single. In the newer movies, starting with The Force Awakens and continuing into The Last Jedi, I feel as though Disney simply gave Lucas the blank sheet music and just basically left him alone. Williams had no one to bounce his legendary intellect off of, as he had with George Lucas. For Awakens he had J.J Abrams, who really was more a fanboy than a collaborating director, and for Last Jedi he had Rian Johnson, who was and still is some guy. He probably thought either by choice or fate that for his final Star Wars trilogy, he'd just phone it in and get it over with it. Sure, Awakens had Rey's theme, which is a beautiful piece that sort of pays homage to Hedwig's theme that he wrote for Harry Potter that became the overlay for the entire franchise, but when you listen to it all its triumphant and grand, but there's no signature piece and it all gets overwritten/edited/cut/spliced/replaced in the movies anyway. Even in The Force Awakens, when you listen to the soundtrack and then watch the movies, Williams' work is being overwritten. When Kylo and Rey are fighting for the lightsaber, two very different renditions of the Force theme, the one in the movie is pulled from Star Wars when Luke sees his aunt and uncle's burned corpses. The one that Williams recorded for the scene is on the soundtrack, intact. Such a shame.

Anywho, just thought I'd ramble for a bit. Basically, Episode IX will be the final for a lot of things. It'll be the final film in the sequel trilogy, the final film in the complete episode saga, and really the final film that I give a shit for (lol). I'll go more into that in another post, but for now, thank you Mr. Williams for all the brilliant music you've given us not just for Star Wars, but for other movies and for really becoming the guy when it comes to scoring motion pictures. Congratulations on a historic career and good luck.

A Review of "The X-Files" (season 2)

Welcome back. Well we reviewed the first season of The X-Files last weekend and I'm happy (and sad) to say that in that week's time, I've finished the second season. The second season of The X-Files saw more mythological development, and more emphasis was put on introducing its side characters and future "plot twist" characters than it was its typical "Monster of the Week" setting.

The mythology arc continues in season two with the X-Files having been closed at the very end of the first season. Mulder and Scully are now working different projects and the two barely see each other in the FBI offices. Once spooky happenings start again, Mulder springs his paranoid behind into action and starts making his way to these crime scenes to investigate them. This includes getting assigned a new partner in the mysterious but determine Alex Krycek, Mulder moves to prove the truth of alien existence on planet Earth with Krycek's help. But this "Alex Krycek" is not all that he seems, eventually betraying Mulder and disappearing from the Bureau after a few episodes.

The Flukeman in "The Host"

Season two also sees the introduction of perhaps my second-favorite character on the show, after Mulder. FBI Assistant (or Deputy) Director Walter Skinner. Skinner is a fucking badass in every scene he's in. He's cool because you see him become an ally to Scully and especially to Mulder in their crusade to prove the truth. He is shown to have conversations with the Cigarette Smoking Man, but is also shown in a couple episodes to be very distrusting of him and his agenda. He allies himself with Mulder in a few episodes, one by even providing the CSM's home address so Mulder can interrogate him as to Scully's whereabouts. Skinner also is noted for just how many times in one given scene he utters "Agent Mulder" under his breath. There were episodes in season two where Skinner was in it for about three minutes and must've said "Agent Mulder" seven times. Still though, Skinner is cool. You get to really love Walter Skinner and his presence as a confidant to Mulder and Scully and that they can have such a high-ranking friend in the Bureau to aid them in their cause.

To replace Mulder's informant Deep Throat, there's a new character who was introduced in season two that seemed pretty wishy-washy in terms of quality. Simply called "X", he's a man who appears to Mulder in strange and unforeseen circumstances to present Mulder with insider information as to the secretive hi-jinks going on in the government. The difference between Deep Throat and X is that X hardly does provide Mulder with any hard evidence or insider knowledge. X moreso speaks with vague speeches that somehow lead Mulder and Scully to the right path and get them closer than ever to learning the truth.

There's also a mythology episode where Mulder's long-lost sister, Samantha Mulder, whose disappearance provoked Mulder to join the Bureau in the first place, returns home and just sort of rejoins her old home life. Alas, it was just another trick. Samantha was just a clone of a number of Samantha's that were made in a laboratory. Mulder's trust and determination in finding the truth waivers as he debates with himself over whether or not it was his real sister Samantha, or if the clones of Samantha are being made, where she might be held. Someone assures Mulder that she is "alive", which is the closest thus far we know of Samantha's whereabouts.

One of the vampires in "3"

As for the "Monster of the Week" episodes, the ones that take a break from the Mythology arc, they're pretty tame and not very memorable, as a whole. There's a few this season that are pretty good. My favorite is "Die Hand Die Verletzt", an episode that sees Mulder and Scully investigate a homicide where they find that the school's faculty are devil worshippers who commit atrocities with one of the worshipper's daughter. There even is a creepy older woman who's more evil than all of them and commits horrific acts through the use of voodoo. There's a particularly creepy scene where she's controlling a python that's crawling down some stairs. The music goes quiet and all you can hear is the sound effect of a man whimpering as a python inches closer to him as it comes down the stairs. Pretty intense stuff, especially for it being a TV show. Other "Monster of the Week" episodes from season two that were pretty good were:

• Humbug: Mulder and Scully investigate a series of vicious killings in a Florida town filled with circus sideshow freak performers
• 3: Mulder, alone, investigates the attacks and murders seemingly done by a group of vampires.
• Excelsis Dei: Mulder and Scully investigate a rape and attack on a nurse in a nursing home that the elderly residents say was done by ghosts of deceased residents.
• Død Kalm: Mulder and Scully find a missing Naval destroyer in the midst of the Norwegian Sea. There Mulder and Scully, like the men who were rescued from it, begin to age rapidly in a matter of a couple days.
• The Host: Mulder alone investigates the killings in the sewer done by a man-sized fluke fish who deposits eggs in its victims that erupt from their victims.
• Our Town: Mulder and Scully investigate two deaths in an Arkansas town where the inhabitants appear to be cannibals, killing each other for food.

The Alligator man enjoys a fish in "Humbug"

One last thing to note is how much the middle of the season is fixated on Mulder. Scully gets abducted by a homicidal madman that Mulder tries to reason with in the episode "Duane Barry", called (surprise) Duane Barry. Duane takes Scully away and she actually disappears for one or two episodes, in which Mulder tries to either find her location or go on a "monster of the week" hunt. She returns in the Mythology episode "One Breath" where she mysteriously is dropped off at a hospital and put on a respirator. Much of this was because of Gillian Anderson's pregnancy, but the solo Mulder stuff is always good. It's why the first X-Files movie, appropriately titled The X-Files, is so good. The stuff where it's just Mulder is so much fun and intense. This is of course not to harp on Scully's presence in the series, I'm just saying Mulder's determination and will to take risks is unmatched by anyone. David Duchovny has quite a grasp on this character, truly.

Overall, season two of The X-Files is pretty solid, though it isn't has memorable as season one, in my opinion. The mythology episodes raise the stakes and push the limits to what Mulder and Scully will and won't do to find the truth. The bar for them goes up as the search becomes more intense, the risks greater and the Lone Gunmen even get involved on a few of them. Also some of my favorite characters. Where the season kind of loses traction is its 'Monster of the week' episodes, which while most of them are at least decent, they just don't have the same memorable sparks that the first season's did. The plots were spooky enough and the characters were well-acted, however they just weren't as memorable as the first season classics, such as "Ice", "Squeeze", "Shapes" and "Born Again". Still, it's a pretty stellar season. We'll see what season three has to offer once I start it.

A Review of "The Walking Dead" (season 1)

Bonjour. Welcome back to my funhouse of pain. Or painhouse of fun. One of the two, anyway.

Today, I'm going to take a look at the first season of the hit AMC TV show The Walking Dead. Now this is a show that's been on the air since I was a senior in high school, aka "what feels like a long time ago, but really wasn't". It debuted Halloween of 2010 with a short, six-episode first season that was pretty much stellar, and I'm here to take you through each episode briefly and provide feedback, plus a whole season review, plus my own two cents...as usual.

The Walking Dead is based off of a popular comic book series that debuted all the way back in 2003. It follows Rick Grimes as he suffers a near-fatal gunshot wound, falls into a coma, only to wake up in a post-apocalyptic world surrounded by zombies. His family's missing and so begins the quest to find them and reunite. Both the show and the comic start off with basically the same premise, only they both take it in different, similar-feeling directions. I can remember hearing about the premiere episode from my peers and hearing nothing but insanely good things, so I did the only logical thing I could think of...I ignored the show and waited until it was about three seasons in to start watching it for myself. Smart, right? Anywho, let's dive in.

Episode 1: "Days Gone By". Rick Grimes, our protagonist, finds a random zombie girl whilst searching for gasoline. She chases him, but he kills her. Interesting enough to keep me entertained. Come back from opening, we see Rick and his buddy Shane Walsh chase two guys down on the highway and corner them with guns. A man springs out of the car and shoots Rick while he's not looking, sending Rick into an injury-induced coma. Rick awakens and finds that the world is radically different, and that everyone's a flesh-eating monster with rotting flesh, bad dental hygiene, smelly clothes and ugly faces. Rick is captured by two living beings, Morgan and his son Duane. Rick takes them to the police station, let's them take showers and have guns. While Morgan struggles to shoot his undead wife, Rick ventures into Atlanta and finds that city completely overrun with the undead. He corners himself in a tank (like a goof) and a voice calls to him on the radio asking if "he's comfortable in there".

Episode 2: "Guts". The voice on the radio is revealed to be Glenn, a pizza delivery boy with an attitude. He navigates Rick out of the herd of "walkers" (get used to that word) and leads him to regroup with his other friends, with so many colorful characters (that is of course a notion of personality diversity, not ethnic appearance). Andrea, the blonde bitch. Morales is the good guy who turns evil by season eight. The most colorful one of them all is Merle Dixon, played by "Rowdy Burns" from Days of Thunder. Merle tough talks everyone and basically votes himself leader because he's the one with a gun, but Rick overpowers him and literally handcuffs him to the roof. With Merle detained and walkers bearing down on them since Rick loves to fire guns and cause chaos, Rick and the others hatch a hair-brained scheme to dress themselves up in guts and sneak toward a truck big enough to carry them all out of town. The plan works and they leave Merle to die on the roof because T-Dog, who had beef with Merle earlier, hastily trip and drops the key down a pipe on the roof...

Episode 3: "Tell it to the Frogs". Rick is taken by the others to their camp, found to house his wife Lori, his son Carl (or "Coral" if you ask Andrew Lincoln's British accent) and his partner and best friend Shane. Shane has mixed feelings after this, as it now means he can no longer pork Lori thinking that Rick is dead. After the reunion, Rick tells Shane that he left a bag of guns in Atlanta that could prove useful. Plus, they find Daryl Dixon, Merle's little brother, and inform him that they left Merle on the roof. Daryl, along with Rick, T-Dog and Glenn, lead an expedition back into Atlanta to find Merle and Rick's bag of guns. There, they find Merle's sawn off hand and Merle missing. Daryl descends into weird wailing on the roof in angry tears.

Episode 4: "Vatos". Rick and company follows Merle's trail into a building and through a street where they find Rick's bag of guns. They decide to go after it, but a group of Latinos intervene and take Glenn in the confusion. Rick manages to make off with his guns and a member of the Latino gang, which Daryl interrogates. Rick decides to have a prisoner exchange, the Latino kid for Glenn. When talks break down over the bag of guns, Rick saddles up, locks n' loads, and returns to shoot up the gang and take Glenn back. Just before chaos and bloodshed break out, an elderly woman intervenes and breaks up the violence. Rick and them learn that the Latino gang is really a group of nurses who take care of abandoned retirees. Rick leaves them the bag of guns and ventures back to the group, finding a walker horde attacking.

Episode 5: "Wildfire". Rick and the others help defend from the camp, but at a heavy loss. Carol's husband Ed is killed, as is Andrea's sister Amy. Jim is found to be bitten, but doesn't fess up to it right away. The group debates what to do about both Jim and the grieving Andrea. As Amy reanimates, Andrea puts a bullet in her head to put her out of her misery. The group, against Shane's wishes, sets out for the CDC, seeing their current location as no longer safe. With Jim dying, they leave him on the side of the road and continue onward. They arrive at the CDC and demand entry as walkers bear down on them. At the last possible second, the door opens to the CDC and Rick and his group enter. There, they find a bewildered and exhausted Edwin Jenner, the last doctor inside.

Episode 6: "TS-19". Inside the CDC, Jenner introduces them to some inside intel as to what the sickness is and what it does to the human brain. He also provides them with a feast and alcohol, both of which they haven't had in a long time, as well as hot showers and rooms to sleep in. As life continues, the group thinks they can remain safe inside the CDC forever. However, Vi (the control computer) starts shutting down systems and prioritizing its power usage. Jenner explains that Vi will soon set the air on fire to decontaminate the entire building (basically explode). Rick and company then spend the next ten minutes fighting with Jenner to let them out and let them have a fighting chance. Jenner concedes, but Andrea refuses to go. Dale stays behind with her, so she agrees to leave with him so that he doesn't die. The group escapes the CDC as it explodes.

As far as my favorite characters go, I prefer Shane for his no-holds-barred attitude on the whole outbreak. Regardless of his crazy nature and how dangerous he was with certain things (or how dangerous he was going to be) Shane Walsh is a guy you would want on your zombie apocalypse survival team. The guy who knows hot to put a walker down with no remorse, no matter what. Rick is a tad overrated. He would, in later seasons, turn into a Shane-esque vengeful killer that took no prisoners, but even then he showed remorse for some of the things he did. Shane was just all balls, all fury, no rules. He almost even shot Rick behind his back when Rick came back, as Shane and Lori (Rick's wife) were sleeping together while they thought Rick was dead. So that must've been pretty awkward. I would also have to say Glenn is up there for me. I was genuinely sad to see Glenn go in season seven when Negan bashed his head in, but this first season Glenn was a pretty funny guy to have around. He was fast, agile and knew his way around town so that he made a very valiant cohort for Rick and the gang.

I've found the joy behind Daryl to be pretty well-earned. I used to think he was overrated, but I've lightened up on it. Daryl's pretty cool. Not a whole lot more to say that hasn't already been said. I find Lori to be pretty useless, but she's not exactly a 'damsel in distress' type either, she's somewhere in the middle. Dale, the older man with the RV, is pretty cool. In the first season he's that way, but in season two he loses traction with his constant whining. I enjoyed Morales, and even though he would later return as a bad guy in season eight, here he's a cool guy to have around.

See that? Short but sweet. The first season of The Walking Dead, in my opinion, is the one that feels the most "zombie apocalypse", as later seasons would develop more into a human-versus-human aspect and kind of lose sight of the whole "let's fight walkers" thing. It turns into a human warfare with zombies being the background ambience characters. As George Romero, aka "Mr. Zombie" used to say: "It's just a soap opera with an occasional zombie thrown in". Plus the later seasons get confusing with their usage of gasoline even though gasoline should be bad and unusable by that point, but hey its just a TV show. I like how this started a whole "zombie apocalypse" craze where people actually wanted this to happen. People were so fascinated by the aspect of bouncing from place to place fighting zombies and staying alive through extreme measures. It was a weird time to be alive. As for the first season though, it's still got a lot of rewatch value. Give it a try if you haven't. You're guaranteed to at least enjoy the first season.

A Review of "The X-Files" (season 1)

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Is It Overrated? - "Deadpool"

Oh man, I'm about to get my own grave dug for me, now.

Well, the "Is It Overrated?" post for The Dark Knight was pretty popular, at least for my standards of success, anyhow. So let's do another one shall we? In keeping with the tradition of these so far (this only being the second one), we're going to do another comic book movie. Which comic book movie over the past few years has been hyped, seen and hailed as a masterpiece of achievement? Well, Deadpool really. For those who don't know, Deadpool is a Marvel Comics superhero that's known for his wisecracking attitude while he disembowels people with katana swords and blows their limbs off with combat weaponry. Pretty exciting, right? Well I'm about to take all the popular internet opinions of Deadpool and give my own two cents on them. Prepare to be utterly disgusted, internet goers, because here we go!

OPINION #1 - It's the Best Comic Book Movie Ever: Far from it. Again, that's not saying it isn't good, so don't get your panties in a bunch just yet. I've said it before and I'll say it again; comic book movies have come a long way since they started rolling off the assembly line in 2000 with X-Men. Even before that, but much less frequent was Batman in 1989. Before that even was the Superman franchise, starting with Superman in 1978. There's a plethora of sixty or more comic book movies out there to choose from, watch and enjoy...so why was everyone shitting their pants when this movie's first teaser trailer dropped? What makes this movie so sought after over the others ones? What, because Deadpool's character is funny? Give me a break. You could make a comedy superhero movie out of literally anyone else and it'd be just as funny, or you could even make up your own comedy superhero and that one would work too. As for the "best comic book movie ever"? I'm going to have to balk on that. Quite a lot of different and much more artistically pleasing comic book features out there.

OPINION #2 - Ryan Reynolds Steals the Show: Yes, of course he does. He's playing the lead character, I would hope he would at least steal some of the spotlight in certain scenes he's in. He's acting no more vulgar than he has in other movies, especially Van Wilder. So when you watch a lot of Ryan Reynolds movies, then watch Deadpool he doesn't really feel like he's playing Deadpool even though he's clearly on the screen. So is it Deadpool who steals the show or is it Ryan Reynolds? The beauty of this is that it's a mixture of them both, which is why Ryan Reynolds' casting as Deadpool was so well praised and received. He just knows what to do with the character and knows how to make him fun for the audience.

OPINION #3 - The Comedy Was Amazing: If you watch a lot of teen comedy movies from the late 90's, early 2000's like I do, the vulgar, often raunchy dialogue can start to wear thin and you really start to question if anything can shock you anymore these days. Deadpool was no exception for me. I watched it and while I found many bits amusing, nothing was ever "laugh out loud, ribald hilarious" or "embarrassingly and ethically shocking and degrading". "What about the mashed potatoes in his butt?" I watched American Pie where Jim humps a pie because it feels like a vagina. Case closed. There were more subtle things about the movie I found hilarious, like Ryan's one-liners that were not apart of the conversations going on around him. "Oh your poor wife", "Or is that the on switch?", "Cup shot!", "I'm about to do to you what Limp Bizkit did to music in the late 90s!" The other scenes that were supposed to be funny, like all the goddamn fourth-wall breaking, came off as really forced and had a sense of "please laugh, we're funny, we swear". No, let me amend what I just said by saying I never read the Deadpool comics when I was growing up, so I had relatively little expectation while watching it in terms of its comedy. He does have some funny lines and most of which did make me chuckle, but I still didn't think it was 'amazing comedy'. It was just several one-liners strung together by one guy who made situations more amusing and gruesome at the same time. TJ Miller on the other hand was wasted comedy relief. He kind of just sat there, rattled off rehearsed one-liners and didn't really do much. One of the most sought-after comedians in Hollywood and he has to take a backseat to Van Wilder in spandex.

OPINION #4 - Deadpool, the Character, is Hilarious: Yes, he is. He makes all the scenes he's in painless and funny to listen to. As I've said, his use of one-liners is unparalleled and on par with Schwarzenegger, except Schwarzenegger used his to be a bad-ass. Deadpool just used his to act like a frat boy who drank for the first time. I can see why the character of Deadpool was often referred to as "The Merc with the Mouth", because he doesn't know when to shut the fuck up. Half the time I'm chuckling at his dialogue and sexual innuendos and two minutes later he's cracking more one-liners and sexual innuendos and I'm just hoping he'll shut up soon or the scene will change we can take a break. Even during the climax, he made too many pop culture references and one-liners, including a bit where he left his weapons in the taxi that drove him to the final battle.Jesus Christ, there's a time for comedy and a time for action, and Deadpool derails its action scenes with more one-liners, puns, quips and anecdotes than could fill the Grand Canyon.

OPINION #5 - This R-rating Was Absolutely Necessary: Was it? People talk about Deadpool being R-rated like it was the first R-rated superhero movie of all time and the only one that matters. Affleck's 2003 Daredevil movie was almost R-rated, I'm pretty sure at least one if not all of the Blade movies are R-rated. Hell, wasn't there another R-rated comic book movie that came before Deadpool where the characters were wise-crackers, talked filthy and made penis or other innuendo jokes? Oh yeah...Kick-Ass. This movie is nothing new, it was just an excuse to make sure Deadpool could be as raunchy as the studio needed him to be to sell tickets. Let's face it; if Deadpool was going to be rated PG-13, it wouldn't have done as well because kids aren't amused by something that has to feel like it needs censored. The R-rating for Deadpool wasn't required, but it was needed to make the film financially viable. Otherwise, you wouldn't be doing the character justice. So while it's not a new concept to make the movie raunchy and filthy, it really didn't have any other choice.

OPINION #6 - Ryan Reynolds Carried the Movie: Yes, and that was exactly its problem. The other characters? You couldn't even bother trying to reach into your wallet and pull out a couple of bucks to pay me to care about them. Even TJ Miller was a dud, and the fact that he got turned into a dud is still a sin in and of itself. The blind lady? His girlfriend? The bad guy? The two discounted X-Men that Fox could actually afford? You didn't give a shit about any of them. You just wanted to see Deadpool and Deadpool alone. If a scene didn't have Deadpool in it or didn't have any comedy in those scenes, it wouldn't have done well. The entire marketing campaign behind the movie relied too heavily on Reynolds' performance, even to the point of making him do extra-curricular appearances outside of the movie during its promotion just to get the point across that the movie's funny and you should buy a ticket.

Even Reynolds' performance was strong enough to hide the fact that the plot was completely recycled. From what? From literally every single other comic book movie you've ever seen? Wade Wilson's revenge story is so dull and phoned-in as a plot that you even wonder if the writers were even trying. Obviously, this further proves the point that the movie was written around Reynolds and the character he plays. He's as much Deadpool as he is Ryan Reynolds.

OPINION #7 - It Was a Fresh Movie for the Comic Book Genre: Yeeeeeah no it wasn't. Deadpool might've shattered box office records on its release and set up so many sequels that'll no doubt annoy the shit out of us and make our heads spin, but again, in terms of its plot, its dialogue and its action scenes, it's nothing we haven't already seen in previous movies. Deadpool may slice up a bunch of people, drop a lot of 'fuck' bombs and blow holes in people's faces with a shotgun, but is it really the 'breath of fresh air' for this comic book movie boom we're in? No, other R-rated comic book movies have gotten this violent and adult. It's a tough question: Will Deadpool be remembered twenty, forty or even fifty years down the road? Will it sink into obscurity, being remembered as nothing more than a product of its time? It's going to be fun to see. I'll be seventy-four fifty years from now (Holy shit balls), so if I'm still writing in this goddamn blog by then, I'll let you all know how it went and if they're showing Deadpool in my retirement home game room.

So, is Deadpool, the Merc with the Mouth's first major motion picture, overrated? Yes, quite a bit. It's fun, it's amusing, the action scenes do their job and the dialogue can make you choke on your soda, but beside that it's pretty run-of-the-mill naughty comedy schlock. Vulgar words strung together into filthy sentences in the hopes of getting cheap laughs out of you. It's still worth a watch, it's just not "the greatest comic book movie ever made" or "the greatest thing to come down the pike in recent years". We'll see if it remains notorious fifty years from now...