Stalking Chernobyl: Exploration After Apocalypse (2020) – More than just another documentary featuring footage in and around Chernobyl, Stalking Chernobyl explores the two main kinds of visitors that the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone receives: Legal tourists being brought through by licensed tour guides, and “stalkers” — illegal trespassers who backpack in and camp out in the abandoned buildings. (The name comes from the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. videogames, which come from both the movie Stalker (1979), and from the novel on which the movie is based, Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers. Just so you know.) This documentary goes through the rivalry and uneasy truce between the two groups, as well as the “Stalker subculture” in Ukraine, informed by both family histories with the area and post-apocalyptic imagery.
Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020) – Probably as good as it could be given that (a) it’s a completely unnecessary sequel that exists only to milk a few bucks from nostalgia and (b) it has to treat Bogus Journey as continuity. At least they tried to go back to the time-travel fun from the original, but… um… pulling disparate historical figures out of their eras and throwing them together? Kinda been done better thirty-some years ago.
Aside from [spoiler spoiler spoiler] changing the original premise, my main problem with the story is that Bill and Ted’s slacker daughters, who end up saving the day, make their slacker fathers look like overachievers. At least teenage Bill and Ted had a dream and were working toward it, even though their guitar-playing sucked. But their daughters don’t even HAVE a dream. Their great talent is… listening to other people’s music and knowing what they like. They’re as Current-Gen as possible, and it sucks.
(Also: Causality in time travel is ignored more here than the original ever dreamed of. How could Two-Years-In-The-Future Bill and Ted not have The Song, or Five-Years-In-The-Future Bill and Ted, or Ten-Years-In-The-Future Bill and Ted… but Rest-Home Bill and Ted somehow do?)
BraveStorm (2017) – Take two almost forgotten Japanese tokusatsu TV series from the ’70s and remake them jointly as one movie, and what you have is a combination of Terminator and Pacific Rim that’s not as good as either, but still amusing. Fun fact: People don’t change over the course of five years, not even to the point of changing their haircut incrementally (or their makeshift bandages).
Abandoned movies:
Robowoman (2019) – There is no reason in the 21st century for any movie to look like a camcorder epic from the ’80s. None.
The Ruthless Four (1968) – I finally cut bait when, at twenty minutes in, we still hadn’t approached the plot synopsis I had seen.
Robot Riot (2020) – It doesn’t cost any more money to shoot good dialogue than bad, people.
Time Loop (2020) – Does the acting make the script look bad, or does the script make the acting look bad? Yes.
Hoax (2019) – I came because Adrienne Barbeau and Brian Thompson were credited, but I couldn’t make it past the disposable horny teens on a well-lit campout.
The Outer Wild (2018) – Oh, please, begin with an overwrought voiceover about how the world arrived at the apocalypse. It’s such a foreign concept that there’s no way we’d understand the concept without you droning on and on.
The Story of Mankind (1957) – Ugh. A preachy morality fable. Not even Vincent Price as Lucifer could redeem it.
The Killing of Satan (1983) – Well-regarded as a piece of charming WTF cinema in some circles, but I just couldn’t stand it.
The High Crusade (1994) – All the production values of old Doctor Who episodes, plus it tries to be funny.
Sounds like you found quite the crop of losers this time! I don’t think I’ve ever seen more than three in your DNF pile.
Bill and Ted was always one of those movies that I didn’t think should have a sequel. I liked the first one (or at least I think I did; I was 8 when I saw it, and I’ve never watched it again), but it seems like any attempt to talk about what happened after or explain how “Wyld Stallyns” music ended war and poverty is just destined to be less funny than what I imagined.