Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 11/19/21
Thanksgiving Overload Edition
The Holidays are Nigh, Field Excursions are Eminent
The staff here at the bunker is on full alert as incoming dignitaries are set to collide with timely departures of both the bunker administrator and the mascot to the Fetid Hell-Swamp of Central Texas. Here the bunker mascot greets Rhonda Eudaly and her private security detail, Jimmy Simpson, freshly liberated from that wretched hive of scum and villainy, The Metroplex.
Food Safety and You
The next two weeks will be laden with casseroles, side dishes, and desserts that not only didn’t emanate from the bunker’s ample kitchens, these culinary mysteries are also positively saturated with unknown ingredients, allergens, and booby traps in the form of deadly tree rocks. You know what I’m talking about: nuts. Fortunately, we’ve penned a helpful safety guide to help you navigate the holiday foodscape. Our Holiday Food Safety Protocols can be found here: Keep Your Nuts to Yourself
The NTAB Library
In a joint effort with Bunker Operations and Administration, we are putting the entirety of the NTAB’s extensive and overly indulgent library into a cataloging program called Goodreads. We are using the Goodreads app that lets you scan the covers of the books in, making the task much easier than keying in ISBN numbers over and over. We have created a new account on Goodreads for this very purpose, and you are welcome to become a Friend of the Library if you want to watch our haphazard cataloging process in real-time. Simply search for NTAB Library to friend us.
Once the library is digitally represented, we’ll launch Phase Two, currently in the planning stages. Also, in the event of a duplicate (or triplicate) title, or we come across titles that need to be de-accessioned for whatever reason, we will be offering these books up as incentives for completing various field assignments. Stay tuned for your chance to obtain a genuine artifact from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker.
Weekly Report from the N.T.A.B. Agency of Media Review
Red Notice (Netflix)
An FBI agent (the Rock) has to join forces with a wily and renowned art thief (Ryan Reynolds) in order to thwart their mutual nemesis, The Bishop (Gal Gadot). At stake are three priceless MacGuffin, football-sized eggs from the dawn of antiquity. The quips fly faster than the bullets, and action-and-chase-sequences abound in this nesting box series of plots full of heists and capers, cops and robbers, and globe-trotting action.
This movie is comfort food. It’s a burger from the good Jack in the Box, the one that doesn’t mess up your order and always gives you fresh fries. The movie isn’t empty calories; it’s not Diet Coke. It’s...it’s grocery store cola. It’s fine; you like it. It’s not great, but it’s not terrible, either. The real star of the movie is the ever-evolving plot, which fits inside itself like a stack of Russian nesting dolls, and even manages to deliver one or two clever turns. Mind you, it’s not as clever as they think it is, but for fans of heists and capers, it’s juuuuust enough to keep you engaged. Mind you, it’s not really a heist movie, either. It’s straight up action adventure. Puzzles, traps, villains. You know what I mean.
No one is at their best here, but they are all dutifully hitting the marks and checking all the relevant boxes that are expected of them. The Rock: charming, dumb, likeable? Check. Reynolds: motor-mouthed sarcastic smart ass? Boom. Done. Gadot: sexy bad-ass, holding her own with the dudes? Of course. This film breaks absolutely no new ground, but it’s a comfortable piece of kinetic entertainment, with a few full little Easter eggs scattered about, including a clear nod to one of their inspirational films, Raiders of the Lost Ark. If you want something loud and comforting, or you want to watch quintessential Ryan Reynolds without having to find your Deadpool Blu Ray disc, here you go. Put it on, crank it up, and be moderately entertained.
Hit-Monkey (Hulu)
An injured assassin finds his way high in the mountains, where he is saved by a tribe of monkeys who live around a hot springs. When the assassin’s enemies find him in the sacred grove, they end his life and the monkeys, too, as collateral damage. All except one, that is, and now the ghost of the assassin and the super-intelligent monkey (who can see the ghost and talk to him) must form an unlikely partnership to get a little payback.
This really obscure Marvel property (which is a good thing for what they are trying to do) does not come with forty years of fan-baggage and notes on how it should have been done. Gun-toting primates are nothing new; this story, however, has something going for it. It’s not the blood (there’s a lot of that). It’s not Jason Sudeikis (but he’s welcome in the role). I don’t know what it is, but I’m intrigued.
Hit-Monkey won’t be anyone’s favorite Marvel property, not even mine. The show is held together by Jason Sudeikis’s line readings, a throwback to his “lovable scumbag” meta-character he used to play all the time. The animation is mediocre, with occasional flashes of better than average storytelling. The story is weird enough to hold my interest for the first three episodes. See if you make it that long.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife (Sony, in theaters only)
A single mom and her two kids inherit an old farmhouse and all of its contents, which is a good thing, because they are out of prospects and have to move to a small town in Oklahoma. As the kids explore their new surroundings, the mystery of who their grandfather was becomes more clearly delineated and dire, as spooks and spectres are released and havoc is wrought. And when there’s something strange in your small Oklahoma farming community...who ya gonna call?
The set-up for Ghostbusters: Afterlife starts out by riffing on, if not ripping off, the premise for William Castle’s Thirteen Ghosts. What follows afterwards is some of the most lavish fan service I’ve ever witnessed in a movie, coupled with an attention to the gear and gadgets that approaches the realm of pornography; loving, show tracking shots and intimate dolly-in shots of all the tech that we wished we could have seen close up in the 1984 movie. Propmakers, rejoice! Your forums will soon be buzzing with high res screen captures of proton packs, traps, PKE readers, and all the rest. The last time I popped such geek wood over so much sci-fi technology, I was watching a James Bond movie.
That’s not a dig, or rather, if it were any other movie, it would be a negative. Ghostbusters: Afterlife gets a pass, mostly because this movie fulfills some promises that the original two movies didn’t deliver on. I think it’s fair to call this movie the “King Conan” of the series, an ending of sorts, chock-full of call backs (maybe a little too full in a couple of places), the aforementioned tech porn, and, as a very pleasant surprise, a great script, full of action and humor. The kids are well-written, the dialogue is genuinely funny (or grin-inducing, at the very least), and while the building blocks of the film are ones we’ve all seen before, you won’t mind a bit. In fact, you’ll likely tear up at least once. I did.
Every aspect of the Ghostbusters franchise is alluded to, including a quick nod at the animated series. I promise, you’ll feel both seen and heard. Stay through all of the credits. There’s one last scene you’ll want to watch. A great movie for all fans of the original movies.
Well, I find that very encouraging because I was hearing some negativity about Afterlife but I didn't want to go digging and spoil the whole thing for myself, as I don't know when I'll get to see it given the local situation. It feels fitting for them to take the approach you're describing - would I be right in getting a "Rocky Balboa, but with gadgets" vibe in terms of how it relates to the previous films?
And YES, I am as ever glad to see your Stop Hiding Nuts In Foods manifesto. People need to catch themselves on.