300: Rise of an Empire: Directed by Noam Murro. With Sullivan Stapleton, Eva Green, Lena Headey, Hans Matheson. Greek general Themistocles of Athens leads the naval charge against invading Persian forces led by mortal-turned-god Xerxes and Artemisia, vengeful commander of the Persian navy. This is a prequel / sidequel / sequel to “300”, but it misses most of the great things of the first movie and doesn’t really add much to the awesome stuff that came from the source material. In this movie, everyone are apparently made of water balloons filled with blood, just waiting for the slightest scratch to...

Heading for Heaven: Directed by Lewis D. Collins. With Stuart Erwin, Glenda Farrell, Russ Vincent, Irene Ryan. Stuart Erwin plays a small-town real estate agent who owns much property which, for several generations, has failed to sell even while the town has grown. It becomes known, except to Erwin, that the property is being considered for the new airport and the owner will make a small fortune. He is swarmed upon by an unscrupulous swami (Russ Vincent)and his equally-crooked business partner, and Erwin is soon convinced that he hasn’t long to live. With his life a mess, he leaves home...

Annihilation: Directed by Alex Garland. With Natalie Portman, Benedict Wong, Sonoya Mizuno, David Gyasi. A biologist signs up for a dangerous, secret expedition into a mysterious zone where the laws of nature don’t apply. I remember seeing this film in the theater alone and it absolutely blew my mind, particularly the final 20 minutes in the light house. The 4k/HDR disk doesn’t disappoint and is worth every penny that someone spent to give it to me as a gift. Buy On Amazon!

Strange World: Directed by Don Hall, Qui Nguyen. With Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid, Jaboukie Young-White, Gabrielle Union. The legendary Clades are a family of explorers whose differences threaten to topple their latest and most crucial mission. I remember seeing a few trailers for this in front of movies at the theater, but other than that, there was a significant lack of marketing, which is a damn shame, as this is a fun and unique take on a hilarious concept that opens all sorts of questions about eh universe that these characters all live in. It’s on D+ now, so if...

Sonic the Hedgehog 2: Directed by Jeff Fowler. With James Marsden, Jim Carrey, Ben Schwartz, Tika Sumpter. When the manic Dr Robotnik returns to Earth with a new ally, Knuckles the Echidna, Sonic and his new friend Tails is all that stands in their way. Still a fun movie with some minor issues, none of which are show stoppers. I have some major complaints about what’s going on with the HDR in the movie, but I’m not entirely sure if that’s some weird interaction between my streaming device (xbox one this time) or my television. I still smile like a...

Betty White: First Lady of Television: Directed by Steve Boettcher. With Betty White, Valerie Bertinelli, Sandra Bullock, Tim Conway. A look at Betty White’s life and career features behind-the-scenes clips of her work on television and comments from her friends and co-stars. One of the last films that I watched in 2022, but here I am saying I watched it during 2023. It’s a great look bad at a wonderful career, one that I didn’t know spanned as many tv series and decades as it did. I also didn’t know that the entire seven seasons of the Mary Tyler Moore...

300: Directed by Zack Snyder. With Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, Dominic West, David Wenham. King Leonidas of Sparta and a force of 300 men fight the Persians at Thermopylae in 480 B.C. I’m pretty sure this is the movie that gave Zack Snyder the political clout to be given the reigns to the DCU. Sadly the success of “300” was accomplished with slow motion, hyper masculine men doing hyper masculine things, all with some extremely heavy filters and high contrast cinematography, none of which translated well enough to be effective in comic books movies. They did certainly work for this...

Woooooo! Becoming Ric Flair: Directed by Ben Houser. With Ric Flair, Tom Rinaldi. “Nature Boy” Ric Flair, the most prolific and controversial Superstar in professional wrestling history, discusses his 50-year Hall of Fame career. I never did watch a ton of wrestling during Ric Flair’s time at the top, but it would be hard to say that I never heard of the dude, he was at the center of a LOT of interesting stuff going on in the industry. This is a great, if self serving, documentary about his blessed but troubled life. It barely touches on his less than...

It’s Christmas, Eve: Directed by Tibor Takács. With LeAnn Rimes, Tyler Hynes, Gwynyth Walsh, Laurie Murdoch. An interim school superintendent finds herself in a tough spot when she is assigned to shut down a school’s failing music program, and must come to terms with her musical past. I was only able to hear about 1/10 of the film and only visually saw about 1/3 of it, but it was on a tv that I was sitting near for several hours, so I figured that counts as being technically “watched”. the bits and bobs that I was able to see were...