The film choices are limited to Prime and Tubi, because I’ve cut back on streaming services, but rest assured, there’s still a lot of rubbish to come. Yes, I’m returning to shark movies, because there are still around 17,000 I haven’t watched yet.
The Reef: Stalked (2022) – Prime
Much confusion surrounding this one. First of all, I thought this was a follow-up to the Blake Lively film, but that one was The Shallows. Then I felt like I recognized certain scenes and panicked thinking I’d seen it before. When I looked at my Letterboxd diary, it said I watched it last week and gave it 3.5 stars, but no review.
The film choices are limited to Prime and Tubi, because I’ve cut back on streaming services, but rest assured, there’s still a lot of rubbish to come. Yes, I’m returning to shark movies, because there are still around 17,000 I haven’t watched yet.
Empire of the Sharks (2017) – Tubi
SyFy and The Asylum, two things that go together like toothpaste and orange juice, or assault and battery. Here they combine to bring us the spiritual successor to Waterworld we never knew we dreaded. In a dystopian, flooded future, humanity ekes out a damp existence on floating towns beset by warlords and theatrical ne’er-do-wells. Warlord Ian Fein (John Savage) has taken a bunch of ladies from one such town to use as labor, and then as food for his collection of remote-controlled sharks.
For this new watch-a-thon, I’m returning to sci-fi, and in particular the elements that I love about sci-fi — forget about story and thoughtful metaphors for the human condition, I just want spaceships and robots and hardware. Bring it on!
Bravestorm (2017) – Tubi
It’s always fun when a visual effects artist gets to make their own movie (see: Godzilla Minus One) and Junya Okabe obviously managed to get his jollies off by shoving everything including the kitchen sink into this giant Rock ’em Sock ’em showdown in Tokyo. The story flies by at ludicrous speed, and along the way claims back everything Hollywood has stolen from Japan, including The Terminator, Pacific Rim, etc.
All you need to know is a bunch of young people go back in time to stop an alien invasion from wiping out the world in 2050, by getting a scientist to build a giant robot to battle the aliens’ giant robot, and then they go back again to recruit the scientist’s boxer brother to pilot the mech. If that sounds as silly as a sausage in a silk stocking then buckle up, baby, because that’s the most sensible part of this whole thing.
For this new watch-a-thon, I’m returning to sci-fi, and in particular the elements that I love about sci-fi — forget about story and thoughtful metaphors for the human condition, I just want spaceships and robots and hardware. Bring it on!
Outside the Wire (2021) – Netflix
One of those Netflix flicks that does what every other Netflix flick does for its algorithmically chosen audience. Find a vaguely competent director, pay for a ‘name,’ and have the characters repeat the objective of whatever goal they’re chasing every 20 minutes.
In this one, a drone pilot is taught what warfare really is by being yanked from his cushy operations room and onto the front lines of a messy ground war in Ukraine. He is under the command of Captain Leo, an advanced android prototype, played by Anthony Mackie, and yes, they do get a Captain America reference in.
For this new watch-a-thon, I’m returning to sci-fi, and in particular the elements that I love about sci-fi — forget about story and thoughtful metaphors for the human condition, I just want spaceships and robots and hardware. Bring it on!
Atlas (2024) – Netflix
We kick off with this recent actioner from the guy who brought us Rampage (2018), San Andreas (2015), and, um, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012), Brad Peyton. Brad knows a thing or two about spectacle, and he shovels it on in spades for this one.
In celebration of the recent streaming series, Alien: Earth (whether you enjoyed it or not), I have created a new list of films that most certainly exist in the Weyland-Yutani universe, and if not certainly, then enjoy an unbelievably tenuous link to it.
This will be an ordered list of sixteen films, four a week, in reverse order, and is guaranteed to enrage you. The Alien and Predatorfilms, and all those in between, are beloved by some, held sacred by a few, and the subjects of intense debate. My opinions will most certainly not align with yours, but I hope to keep you guessing as to my top four!
#4 – Predator 2 (1990)
Strong link, or tenuous as all hell? Fairly bloody strong.
What’s the link? This is the one that threw the chum into the sea of nerds.
What’s it all about? Stephen Hopkins, British music video auteur, fresh off his bonkers stint on the Nightmare on Elm Street series, with the fabulously daft Dream Child, was handed this and must have thought to himself, ‘I’m gonna make the most 1990s film ever 1990-ed in the year of our Lord 1990’. And lo, he made it, and it was good.
Alien vs Predator (20th Century Fox, August 13, 2004)
In celebration of the recent streaming series, Alien: Earth (whether you enjoyed it or not), I have created a new list of films that most certainly exist in the Weyland-Yutani universe, and if not certainly, then enjoy an unbelievably tenuous link to it.
This will be an ordered list of sixteen films, four a week, in reverse order, and is guaranteed to enrage you. The Alien and Predatorfilms, and all those in between, are beloved by some, held sacred by a few, and the subjects of intense debate. My opinions will most certainly not align with yours, but I hope to keep you guessing as to my top four!
#8 – AvP: Alien vs Predator (2004)
Strong link, or tenuous as all hell? Super duper strong.
What’s the link? It has a Weyland in it (more on this later).
What’s it all about? (Alec Guinness voice) “Paul W.S. Anderson… now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time… a long time…”*
I told you we weren’t done with Mr. Anderson, and here he is again, surprisingly high up on this list with AvP. P.W.S.A. gets a bad rap, and it’s mostly deserved, but I have certainly enjoyed some of his output, including the first Mortal Kombat flick (1995), the first Resident Evil flick (2002), and the genuinely brilliant, and criminally overlooked horror, Event Horizon (1997). One has to suspect that much of the snarkiness directed his way is through jealousy of him ending up with Mila Jojovich, but I digress.
In celebration of the recent streaming series, Alien: Earth (whether you enjoyed it or not), I have created a new list of films that most certainly exist in the Weyland-Yutani universe, and if not certainly, then enjoy an unbelievably tenuous link to it.
This will be an ordered list of sixteen films, four a week, in reverse order, and is guaranteed to enrage you. The Alienand Predatorfilms, and all those in between, are beloved by some, held sacred by a few, and the subjects of intense debate. My opinions will most certainly not align with yours, but I hope to keep you guessing as to my top four!
#12 – Prometheus (2012)
Strong link, or tenuous as all hell? Strong like ox.
What’s the link? It’s in the Alien universe. There’s an old geezer called Weyland in it.
In celebration of the recent streaming series Alien: Earth (whether you enjoyed it or not), I have created a new list of films that most certainly exist in the Weyland-Yutani universe, and if not certainly, then enjoy an unbelievably tenuous link to it.
This will be an ordered list of sixteen films, four a week, in reverse order, and is guaranteed to enrage you. The Alienand Predator films, and all those in between, are beloved by some, held sacred by a few, and the subjects of intense debate. My opinions will most certainly not align with yours, but I hope to keep you guessing as to my top four!
This list is as complete as I could make it, as I’m only including films I have seen, and I am sure there are one or two other movies out there that have a sneaky W-Y easter-egg buried in the background. Also note the absence of 2022’s Prey, which is indeed a Predatorflick (and would have ranked very high on my list), but Weyland-Yutani didn’t exist in its time period, so I’m not including it. Are these rules flawed? Probably. I’m making them up as I go along.
I am limiting this list to sixteen films. There are plenty of TV shows that have snuck in a Weyland-Yutani reference; Firefly, Angel (essentially anything created by Joss Whedon), the V remake, even Dr. Who, and of course the recent show, Alien: Earth. I won’t be discussing any of these, but for the record I really enjoyed Alien: Earth, so there.
Sick Nurses (Sahamongkol Film International, June 14, 2007)
A new, twenty-film watch-a-thon, this time looking at horror films from around the world. The rules are the same — they must be films I haven’t seen before, and they must be free to stream.
With a bit of luck, this new watch project will feature a lot more quality films as I unearth horror from around the globe. With that said…
Sick Nurses – Thailand – (2007)
Hey there, you. Fancy watching a film about six sexy nurses who sell body parts on the side getting offed by a vengeful ghost? Would you like your story with a side of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff, in an unspecified setting save a remarkably under-populated hospital? Would you like this tale to be at once hilarious and downright ghastly, with lashings of gore and death by handbag?
How about some frenetic filmmaking with surreal set-pieces, bizarre lighting, and a scary, long-haired spirit who looks like she’s doing a Vogue spread?
