In Your Wildest Dreams

Watched February 3, 2023

1991

Director: Bruce Neibaur

Starring: Trevor Black, Lise Wilburn, Sarah Schaub

I had some Feature Films for Families as a kid, I think gifted by my religious aunt. I recall liking the Buttercream Gang but I couldn't tell you anything about it now. In Your Wildest Dreams is a FFF so I was a little concerned on it being too family friendly. The VHS cover I have is playing on Short Circuit but the robot isn't in it much, so no Johnny 5 energy.

Mark (Trevor Black) is a high school senior who's applied to Princeton but is waiting for his letter. His girlfriend Holly (Lise Wilburn) answers phones at her dad's company, Bank's Electronics. The very beginning is Holly's dad putting the AI robot in a car. Then Katey (Sarah Schaub), Mark's kid sister, is at the controls telling the robot what to do while driving the car. There is some funding needing, so some stock thing is mentioned, this will come into play later.

Mark, Holly and Katey go to lunch at a diner where all the business people eat. Katey asks Mark to check the change from their receipt. It's over so Mark takes it back, showing that he's a good kid. Justin (Brett Palmer) is a sleezy Wall St. (Gordon Gekko type) who it trying to make some insider trading deal with Banks stock and he's eating at the same diner. Mark has a scooter, Holly has a car and they babysit Katey a lot.

Mark's dad is an accountant who Justin owes money/taxes. At Mark's school, a woman from the SEC gives a presentation on insider trading. Then the class has to do a pretend stock investment assignment with $25k to see who can make the most with their stock pick. One computer is connected to the internet. Mark and his friends think they're pretend buying Bank's stock but it turns out to be real. Mark used his money market college savings account to buy the stock.

 Mark gets his Princeton acceptance letter and the family celebrates, it seems like a dream sequence, but it's real. Mark suddenly seems unsure because Holly's dad wants Mark to work for him and take night classes at the community college instead of going to Princeton. Mark's middle sister hints that Holly's making him change his mind about Princeton.

Meanwhile Justin gets mad at his accomplice because they discussed slowly buying Bank's stock and they don't know that it was Mark who bought the stocks. Mark buying that much stock puts a freeze on the stock. Mark and his friend talk to his stock savvy dad but there's nothing they can do, like try to un-buy the stock. The next day Banks announces the AI robot technology, the stock is for sale again and Mark makes a ton of money selling some of the stock.

Mark, Holly, Katey and middle sister go to pick up the middle sister's new boyfriend Enzo, he's a rollerblading punk and they're mildly shocked but they don't say anything. They go to a local amusement park.

When the money comes in from the stock sale, Mark buys a Ferrari and motorcycle for his dad, a faux fur coat for his mom, a stereo for his middle sister and a big play set for Katey. 

It turns out that Holly's dad needed the money from the IPO, this isn't how stocks work. But they keep putting it on Mark that it's his fault for buying the publicly traded stock. Holly wants Mark to give it back (that's not how stocks work...so?) Justin tries to trick Mark into trading the stock for Justin's abandoned warehouse he owns. Justin has two accomplices who try to muscle Mark but Katey stowed away and honks the horn, this distracts everyone. Mark steals Justin's phone, they have a chase around the empty building. Katey almost pushes a button letting a girder crush Justin's Ferrari. But the FEC lady stops Mark, the accomplice was an informant. They caught Justin, and Mark's a good kid. When he bought the stock Mark messed up their plan to catch Justin, but they got him after all.

Later, Mark listens to Katey and a friend fight about doing what's right. Mark gives the stock paper to Holly's dad. The End.

I've watched so many annoying kids in movies in was nice to see that Katey was not a super bratty kid even when she saves the day. Punk Enzo was the best secret rollerblading park of the moves and according to IMDB that dude is a Hollywood writer and show runner now. I didn't want Mark to get screwed over, I cared. Great ladies business power suits. Not enough robots. It wasn't clear on how why Holly's dad need the stock back, when the company was public and anyone could have bought the stock and sold it. I don't get it, publicly traded companies makes money when they do an IPO. It's not about robots, but it's family friendly fine.

Critters 4

Watched January 27, 2023

 

1991

Director: Rupert Harvey

Starring: Brad Dourif, Angela Bassett, Don Keith Opper, Terrence Mann

Somewhere in Kansas: A space bounty hunter,  Charlie (Don Keith Opper) has found two Krite eggs. He's about to destroy them when he gets a holo-message that he can't destroy them because they're the last two of their species. A space tube is sent, Charlie puts the eggs in the tube, but he gets stuck and frozen in the tube and sent to space.

Somewhere in space is a crew of salvagers. Al (Brad Dourif), Rick the angry captain (Anders Hove), Bernie (Erik DaRe from Twin Peaks), Fran (Angela Bassett ) and Ethan the intern (Paul Whitthorne) round out the crew. They see the tube, scan it but they don't know what's in it. The Captain is smoking in their ship, wouldn't the oxygen mix be combustible? They decide to pick up the capsule. They are able to decipher a logo from Terra Corp. and send a message to them. Perhaps the original bounty hunter plays the Terra Corp. guy? The company gives them a space station location to drop the capsule off at for payment. They arrive, it's a cube with a propeller. Once onboard they discover the station is empty.

The computer, Angela is only running at 50% so she's a malfunctioning computer. No one is at the facility, it's large including a science lab and pharmacy. Al gets the computer to show him several levels are blocked off, no other people are on board so he wants to leave. The nuclear core of the ship is also unstable. 

Fran takes a shower, the pervy captain hands her a towel while she's still in the shower and she punches him. The Captain gets space madness and goes to open the capsule without anyone knowing. After laser blasting it a couple times it sends a computer warning that Al sees. Al sends Ethan to check it out. Ethan gets stuck in the elevator because of the crazy computer. You have to say the opposite of what you want to get the computer to work for you. Angry captain knocks Ethan out and hangs him by a hook. Captain gets the capsule open and Charlie, now unfrozen, rushes out. Captain pokes around, the eggs have hatched. Two critters attack the Captain, one on the leg the other on his mouth. Charlie gets Ethan down from the hook. The rest of the crew finds the Captain. Ethan and Charlie are chasing/running away from the critters when they discover the lab. Charlie goes into a duct. Ethan follows but then it dumps them in the trash compactor. The computer is doing to jettison them into space but they the find another duct and escape.

They find Bernie and get cleaned up. They all meet in the astroturf lounge room. Charlie discovers he's been in the tube for 50 years and everyone he knows is dead. Charlie explains the critters.

They also unlock a video from the lab, showing that they were doing experiments to make critters clear out life forms on planets they wanted to colonize?

They find a key card. Leo goes to the pharmacy grabs tons of pills but then is critter attacked. The team gets back to their docked spaceship. Al loads Charlie's old gun with six bullets. Charlie shoots at the two critters, killing one but damaging the ship in the process. The critters have laid more eggs. Fran  smashes some. The Terra Corp. guys and stormtroopers arrive. Charlies recognizes the head guy who just wants the eggs. They've hatched! Ethan outruns the stormtroopers by using the computers reverse psychology to close doors. Ethan finds the eggs, juggles them, and threatens to smash them. Ethan shows Fran that he has the gun. Ethan tosses the last egg, the bad guy tries to grab it but Fran punches him with the gun. Al was already shot, Ethan is sad and Al was his surrogate dad. Charlie, Fran and Ethan get in the Terra Corp. ship. The Terra Corp. guy tries to attack Ethan but is eaten by a critter and then frozen and smashes to pieces. The station starts nuclear meltdown/self destruct mode. Fran, Charlie and Ethan get away. The space station blows up with all the critters. Charlies bushes a button after being told not to and the ship goes crazy.

 I had incredibly low expectations for this movie so it was pretty fun. Little bit of humor, but everyone is taking the story seriously. Fran doesn't die, so that's something. I liked it. The music is all over the place with weird western riffs and space music. Creature effects by the Chiodo Bros!

Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2

 

Watched December 23, 2022

1987

Director: Lee Harry

Starring: Eric Freeman (Ricky), Elizabeth Kaitan (Jennifer),  Darrel Guilbeau

It's awful! Garbage day indeed.

Ricky (Eric Freeman) is a dead eyed dude in a white room where a psychiatrist comes to interview him and record it on a reel to reel. Ricky tells the story of Silent Night, Deadly Night the movie. Billy is Ricky's older brother who witnessed Santa kill his parents. Ricky was a baby at the time but he seems to have all of Billy's memories. We re-watch Santa killing the family when they stop their car to help him. When Billy acts out about Santa fear he is punished by Mother Superior, the nun at the orphanage where both boys ended up after the murders of their parents. Billy sees two adults, who are supposed to be teen orphans according to the credits, having sex. Mother Superior belts them and Billy too. The younger, nicer nun had told Billy to go outside to play. Mother Superior gives a speech about what the older orphans did was naughty so they must be punished.

 

 It keeps cutting back to Ricky in the white room, it's awful. Then Ricky tells that Billy got hired at the toy store. Around Christmas time, they made young Billy be Santa. At the Christmas Eve party at the toy store, Billy sees a co-worker sexually assaulting another co-worker. He rescues the woman, strangles the man but then kills the woman too. Billy kills the husband and wife toy store owners too. He's on full naughty Santa kill rampage. We get a 'best of' of all the kills from the first movie. Billy kills a couple that were about the have sex, he hangs the woman on a rack of antlers, then kills the dude. He kills some bullies who were night sledding. The cops are now on Billy's tail, but since he's dressed as Santa they keep running into other people dressed as Santa. They think Billy is headed for the orphanage, it's Christmas morning now. At first a deaf Santa shows up and is killed by a cop, but it's not Billy. Then Billy does show up and kills that cop in the basement. Billy makes it into the building but is shot by the detective before he can kill Mother Superior in front of all the kids. 

 

Now that's we've watched the best of the first movie, we get back to Ricky. After Billy died, Ricky was adopted and it was mostly good. He freaked out at some nuns, but his adoptive parents were trying to make it work.Then his adopted dad died, he's supposed to be 15 at this point but he is played by Darrel Guilbeau who was 25 at the time. 

 

While wandering the woods, Ricky sees a picnicking couple. The get romantic, but the woman stops it stating that the guy is getting too aggressive. The guy gets the point, stops and goes over to his jeep, he turns around to suddenly see Ricky in the driver's seat. Ricky drives over the guy about 6 times. 

 

Later Ricky gets a job cleaning up at a restaurant, while taking out the trash he notices a guy beating up another guy, loan shark style. Ricky takes the extorter and stabs him with a closed umbrella, which he then opens. The rain starts to wash the blood away.

 

The doctor interviewer shows Ricky a photo/headshot of a woman and asks "What about her?" "Jennifer was my love" Ricky replies. It shows how Ricky met Jennifer (Elizabeth Kaitan), she ran her car into his motorcycle. They said nothing to each other but she got on the back of his motorcycle and they were dating. They have sex, holding each other and not moving at all. At a movie date, some heckler is making Ricky nuts. He leaves Jennifer seated, but the she is accosted by her ex-boyfriend, Chip who wants to get back together with her. She's not interested. Ricky kills the popcorn heckler and his embarrassed friend. 

 

Taking a suburban neighborhood walk, Jennifer and Ricky run into Chip, who's car has broken down. Ricky gets mad and electrocutes Chip with a car something. Jennifer tries to stop him, but he strangles her with a car antenna. Ricky is on a tear now. He grabs a gun from Chip? He walks the neighborhood in broad daylight, and the infamous garbage day scene happens here. No real context, I guess it could be that Ricky is taking out the garbage but he shoots someone taking out their garbage for now apparent reason. The cops do try to stop him, but he gets away? He steals a Santa suit from a Salvation army bell ringer. Goes to the 666 address that is Mother Superior's house. The younger nun is back in the mix. Mother Superior is wheelchair bound now and apparently had a stroke, but also has bunch of facial boils. Ricky attacks her, she falls down the stairs. The cops shoot Ricky and he falls out a window. The End.  

No fun.

Ricky is a bad actor there's no arc to his character. Ricky is bad, he does bad things and dies. He's killed a lot of people but doesn't care or get punished himself. The Santa trauma is still hard to explain especially for Ricky over Billy. There isn't a naughty/nice determination to killing. I do not recommend, this movie bummed me out a lot. The garbage day clip is it's own thing because even within the context of the movie it's nuts. I have seen the first one, and I knew this one had a lot of clips from the first movie, or most of the the footage from the first movie. It takes a lot of what is fun in a horror movie and cuts it out, it thinks you just want to see the kills but you need to have context to have the kills be interesting. It doesn't work and is a chore.

Airborne

Watched December 9, 2022

1993

Director: Rob Bowman

Starring: Shane McDermott, Seth Green, Jack Black, Edie McClurg, Alana Ubach. 

Mitchell "Goose" Goosen (Shane McDermott) is a laid back So-Cal dude. He rollerblades with his buddy to the beach to go surfing. Then they walk back home carrying their boards and blades. Mitchell comes home to his parents telling him they got a grant to study in Australia for 6 months. He's psyched! Australia's got surfing but he can't miss that much school. So he is sent to his Aunt & Uncle in Cincinnati for the Winter!

Mitchell brings his surfboard for no reason, it really shows how out of his element he is. His cousin Wiley (Seth Green) is a weirdo. Mitchell's California house is modern, whereas the Cincinnati house is grandma cozy vibes. California and Cincinnati couldn't be more different! Goose is set up on a cot in Wiley's basement room that has a hodge podge decor of motorcycle posters, an Eraserhead poster and hair metal bands.

Goose's first class in his temporary new high school is speech where everyone gets up and says their name and deal. Jack Black plays a bully who likes video games. Mitchell is a cool California dude who loves surfing. Wiley pretends to be into hockey, his dad is but he really isn't. Two girls drool over Mitchell and have a fantasy sequence of him sitting in swim trunks. After class, the main hockey dude is mad that his girlfriend is talking to Mitchell. Apparently there is non-school affiliated hockey games with this group playing the preps. Two of their players are out that day, so they force Wiley to play. Wiley gets hurt so Mitchell is brought in. He scores a goal in the wrong net and they are all pissed. Before playing hockey, Mitchell was sitting in the stands and he meets Nikki (Brittney Powell).

 After the ice hockey game went bad,  the hockey bullies play pranks on Mitchell all over school. They soak all the toilet paper while he's pooping, then infer that he didn't wipe and walked around with shit on his butt? They steal his clothes while he showers, but he finds some combination of clothes so he doesn't leave the locker room totally nude. They fill his locker with sand and dump water on him on the stairwell. 

Mitchell is bummed. The weather gets slightly nicer and his rollerblades arrive in the mail, yay! He goes out and runs into Nikki and takes her to a botanical garden greenhouse and skates around her. They makes a date for Friday but Mitchell said that he's hanging out with Wiley. Nikki brings her friend Gloria (Alana Ubach) so they can double date. Fashion montage of Wiley figuring out his look for the night. At first Gloria is not into Wiley. Mitchell and Nikki walk on the riverwalk and kiss then they all go to the teen diner. But the main hockey bully is Nikki's brother and he doesn't want her hanging out with Mitchell. He tries to fight Mitchell but Mitchell is too chill. But Mitchell makes the mistake of saying he'll be leaving town soon so there's nothing keeping him there. This makes Nikki upset and she runs off.

Mitch makes some rollerblading buddies, they skate around town on ramps and stuff. They run into a rematch street hockey game beteween the bullies and the preps. Mitchell ends up pantsing the main prep and you see his ball in his jock strap (?!) After this the bullies come to Wiley's house and tell Mitch how cool he is. They ask if he can help them with the devil's backbone race against the preps. It's a hill to waterfront race where a certain amount of each team needs to get to the finish line to win. The two teams set off down the hill and a bunch of folks eat it. Some preps make it. Mitch falls or something, then jumps off a flatbed truck. Mitchell ends up helping the main bully up and they skate together to the finish line into a huge crowd. Wiley and Gloria kiss and Mitch and Nikki kiss. The End. 

Mitchell has no growth. He doesn't want to go to Cincinnati, he thinks it'll suck and it does. Even with him being chill then doing the Devil's backbone race doesn't change that he'll head back to California at the end of the semester.

 One idea to have some sort of arc is that  Mitchell used to not be chill and get into fights but surfing helps him calm down so when he's prompted to fight he could turn to rollerblading. The other could be having some sort of stakes about staying in Cincinnati, like falling for Nikki makes him was to graduate high school there. His parents should have gotten an grant to study somewhere landlocked not Australia, or any other place not know for surfing, also they have schools in Australia where Mitchell could have gone for a semester.  The rollerblading is whatever, it's too muddled with hockey and surfing. Not X-treme enough either. Mitchell falls flat for me. Also two too many showers scenes.