Movie Night! ‘Relentlessly Positive’ Edition…

Well, maybe not that positive, one of these films wasn’t actually that great, but the next week and a bit is (hopefully) going to be a pretty big deal for me so I wanted to start it off on the right note. Well, try any anyway ;o)

Anyway… I did manage to get a little reading done over the weekend, there’s nothing like a long bus ride to make some headway in a ‘Siege of Terra’ book, but I started things off with a movie and ended up just continuing from there :o) And here’s what I watched…



‘Predator – Badlands’ (2025)

In which a young Yautja warrior (I believe they answer to ‘Predator’ as well) is cast out from his clan but finds a new family on his journey to confront the ultimate adversary…

I’ve got to admit, I was a little wary of what I think is the first ‘Predator’ movie to carry a ‘12’ certificate; I mean without the horror, gore and flayed bodies hanging in the jungle, is it really a ‘Predator’ movie at all? On the other hand though, my eldest daughter and I love to hang out and eat pizza while watching ‘Predator’ movies, hell, we’ve even watched both ‘Aliens vs. Predator’ movies, that’s how committed we are ;o) There was no question of us not watching this latest addition to the franchise.

And as it happens… ‘Badlands’ won’t be troubling my ‘Top 3 Predator Movies’ (‘Predator 2’, ‘Predator’ and ‘Predators’, in that order) but was still a lot of fun and holds its own in the franchise as a whole. What the movies loses in horror is balanced out by the action and I enjoyed the latest variation on the ‘hunters being hunted, through the jungle by an alien predator’ theme. I didn’t think they could do it again but they did and it worked for me. And I got to hang out with my daughter and eat pizza, pretty much the perfect evening then :o)


‘Vicious Fun’ (2020)

What would you do if you suddenly found yourself attending a self-help group for serial killers? If you’re film-critic Joel, you try to blend in and see how long you can get away with it. The alternative is you adding to the tally of one of your fellow attendees…

‘Vicious Fun’ has been popping up in my ‘Suggested Viewing’ for a long old time now but I never quite managed to get round to it until last night. And…

I didn’t think ‘Vicious Fun’ was as funny as it wanted to be but that’s just me to be fair. There were plenty of moments that surprised a chuckle out of me though, enough to keep me watching. And there were a couple of decent jump-scares as well, I’m looking at you in particular Fritz, you know why…

I’m glad I finally managed to give ‘Vicious Fun’ a shot. While I’m not sure that I’d watch it again, at least not for a long old while, it did its job and cheered me up ahead of, well… today :o)


‘Clown’ (2014)

In which a man tries to rescue his son’s birthday party by dressing up as a clown when the scheduled clown fails to turn up. When the clown suit doesn’t come off though, and there’s a man out there trying to chop off ‘our’ clowns head, our ‘hero’ doesn’t realise how bloody his night is about to become…

I’m not sure what led me to ‘Clown’ but it wasn’t that scary, laid on the fake blood a little too heavily and while I could see that the lead was having a tough time, the film did nothing to really make me feel it. So, I was left with a lead who didn’t have a lot going for him and nothing to really engage with. Nice touch with the ‘multi-coloured blood’ though :o)

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